Prato, Diocese of

PRATO, Diocese of. - City and diocese in Tuscany, united with Pistoia (v.). The diocese, established in 1653 by the dismemberment of a part of the territory of the diocese of Pistoia, embraces the valley of the Bisenzio and extends as far as the municipality of the city, plus the commune of Vaiano. It borders on the dioceses of Pistoia and Florence. In 1916, 12 parishes dismembered from the diocese of Florence and 28 dismembered from the diocese of Pistoia were annexed to the diocese of P. It has 83,000 inhabitants, 49 parishes; 5 forane vicariates; 4 male religious houses, 30 female religious houses. The number of secular priests amounts to 62; the regular priests are 31. It has a seminary founded by Msgr. Gherardi in 1682; its first seat was the abbey of Grignano, today it occupies the ancient abbey of S. Fabiano. The patron of the diocese is St. Stephen.

I. CIVIL HISTORY

Pratum is situated on the banks of the Bisenzio. Originally it was a small village, Borgo al Cornio: like other localities of that valley, once the dominion of the counts Alberti was broken, it later governed itself as a commune and had its consuls. It was part of the Guelph league in Tuscany and followed its fortunes. But from the middle of the 14th century it became a possession of Florence and with it shared and merged its history; and when Florence underwent the siege of the imperial arms, P. suffered a cruel sack at the hands of the Spaniards (1512). Today it is a populous city, rich in industries and factories, from which it draws the motive for continuous expansion.

II. RELIGIOUS HISTORY

The population living in the locality that later took the name of P. had its church dedicated to Sts. Stephen and Lawrence, at least from the 6th century, since in 530 Pope Felix granted a plenary indulgence for the solemnities of the titular saints. In 1133 Pope Innocent II took this church under apostolic protection: except that the clergy and people of P. gave frequent signs of insubordination toward the bishop of Pistoia, their legitimate pastor. At the beginning of the 15th century a strong conflict took shape between the provost of P. and the bishop of Pistoia, the former contesting, by notarial deed, the latter's right to make the ostension to the people of a relic, venerated then, and venerated also today in P. under the name of the Sacred Girdle. To remedy this situation, the lordship of Florence in 1409 asked Alexander V for the erection of the church of Prato as a cathedral. The request not being granted was the reason that Pius II in 1460 withdrew the church of P. from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Pistoia, constituting it a provostship nullius dioeceseos. Since the territory had then notably increased, Innocent X with his bull of 22 Sept. 1653 erected the provostship of Prato as a cathedral and raised the town to the rank of city, detaching it from the diocese of Pistoia and uniting it, as a new diocese, to it aeque principaliter. From then on the religious history of P. is identified with that of Pistoia.

III. ILLUSTRIOUS FIGURES

Besides Catherine de' Ricci, a Florentine, who adorned the Dominican cloister of P. with her sanctity, mention should be made of Cardinal Niccolò da P., peacemaker in Florence between the Neri and the Bianchi; Msgr. A. Martini, the well-known translator of the Bible and archbishop of Florence; Msgr. Giovacchino Limberti, who from canon of his cathedral became archbishop of Florence, consecrated by Pius IX himself. Among the laity, Cesare Guasti, a name well known in our literature, left a reputation for outstanding piety in the last century.

Emilio Sanesi

IV. ART

Within the polygonal circuit of its walls, opened by 5 gates, P. no longer presents the appearance of a towered city that it still preserved in the 18th century; but among the reworked buildings and the modern ones, erected for the needs of its life as an active center of the wool industry, there are many monuments that bear witness to its past with forms that for the most part reflect the powerful and wealthy neighboring cities.

1. Architecture

With the constructions prior to 1200 having disappeared or been reduced to a few remains (the remnants of the primitive circuit of walls, dating back to the beginning of the 12th century; the church of the abbey of S. Fabiano, founded around the year 1000, whose facade bears one of the earliest examples of Tuscan polychrome decoration; the ruins of the church of S. Barnaba incorporated into the Hospital), the oldest monuments of Prato may be considered the Cathedral and the Emperor's castle, both of which date back to the 13th century. The Emperor's castle, which legend says was erected by Frederick II with the bequest of the Prato native Panfollia Dagomari, who died in 1233, is in reality a radical reconstruction, on the ruins of an older castle, commissioned by Frederick of Antioch, natural son of Frederick II, vicar of Tuscany with the royal title, around 1248. Quadrangular, reinforced by powerful towers at the corners and at the middle of the sides, it recalls in its plan the Castello Ursino of Catania and in its portal the Castel del Monte near Andria, so that it seems likely that Frederick's master builders worked there.

The Cathedral, existing since the 10th century under the name of Pieve di S. Stefano di Borgo al Cornio, arose with its present construction in the first half of the 13th century, probably through the work of Guido Bigarelli da Como, called Guidetto. The primitive Romanesque appearance can still be observed both in the southern side, with the series of twin little arches of white lunense stone and of green stone from P.; and in the three longitudinal naves, separated by great two-colored arches. Gothic art impressed a new appearance on the Cathedral (where the Prato native Michele Dagomari had deposited the "S. Cintola," found, according to legend, in the Holy Land. The construction of a chapel for the S. Cintola in the space of the first arch led in 1365 to the erection of a new facade close against the first, still visible in the gap that Niccolò d'Arezzo, called "il Pela," already known for his work in S. Maria del Fiore, executed with a triple division into pilasters and two-colored bands. The Campanile underwent a similar fate, in ancient times a massive Romanesque tower with three stories of double-arched windows, then raised by two more by Niccolò di Cecco del Mercia da Siena and by his son Sano. To the 13th century also belongs the beautiful cloister of which only one side remains, incorporated into the Bishop's Palace.

Among the civil buildings are to be remembered the Palazzo Pretorio, which since 1910 has housed the Municipal Gallery, the massive building of the Pia Casa dei Ceppi, formerly the residence of the Prato merchant Francesco di Marco Datini, whose walls bear remains of frescoes by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, a rare example of exterior decoration of a 14th-century house. Among the religious constructions of the Gothic period are to be remembered the churches of S. Francesco, of the second half of the 13th century, but with a later Renaissance facade with two-colored bands and a triangular pediment, and that of S. Domenico, begun in 1281, slender and grand, enriched on its left side by a series of tombs surmounted by Gothic arches of the Pisan and Florentine type. The Renaissance did not renew the appearance of the city, already marked by the Gothic, limiting itself to some remaking or to the construction of some palace (Palazzo Pugliesi); but it created in P. one of its purest architectural masterpieces, S. Maria delle Carceri, by Giuliano Giamberti da Sangallo. Built in 1485-1492, Sangallo's building, on a Greek cross with two superimposed orders, clad in white and green marbles, reveals its descent from Brunelleschi. The interior, on the other hand, although it repeats forms and decorations of the Cappella dei Pazzi, has an already 16th-century breadth in the amplitude of its proportions. The 18th century left its mark in the beautiful construction of the Convitto nazionale Cicognini, risen on the site of the Badia di Gragnano.

2. Sculpture

With the Romanesque and Gothic sculptures for the most part lost (there remains, however, in the Cathedral the very beautiful Madonna della Cintola [1317], the last work of Giovanni Pisano), the city reflects in its plastic decoration the style of the Florentine school of the 15th century.

Projecting from the corner of the Cathedral facade, the Pergamo della S. Cintola, built (1433-38) for the exposition of the relic, in replacement of the Gothic one by Niccolò di Cecco del Mercia, which formerly rose on the southern side, is the work of Donatello, not without the involvement of his collaborator Michelozzo, in the balustrade adorned with dancing putti; while the harmonious baldachin and the bronze casting of the admirable capital modeled by the great companion are due to Michelozzo. Other works of the Florentine school decorate the Cathedral: the very fine railing of the chapel of the S. Cintola, the work of Bruno di Ser Lapo Mazzei da Firenze and of Pasquino di Matteo da Montepulciano; the pulpit by Mino da Fiesole and Antonio Rossellino (1473), conceived by the Fiesolan as a great holy-water stoup; the beautiful Madonna del Tabernacolo dell'Uivo by Benedetto da Maiano (the construction of the Tabernacle and the Pietà of the base are due to the brothers); the Lunette in glazed terracotta by Andrea della Robbia on the portal (other works by the same artist are scattered in various churches of the city). Of the plastic decoration of the following centuries it will suffice to cite the Fontana del Bacchino, now in the Municipal Gallery, which Ferdinando Tacca executed (1657-1665) for the piazza del Comune, where it is replaced by a copy.

3. Painting

Pictorial decoration had better fortune than sculpture in the Gothic period. The disappearance of the frescoes of Bettino da P., a disciple of Giotto, both in the Cathedral and in the Palazzo Pretorio, and of those of Guido of Siena in the apartment of the Podestà, is compensated by the survival of some important mural cycles of the end of the 14th century: such as the Stories of the Virgin and the episodes of the Legend of the S. Cintola, painted by Agnolo Gaddi shortly after 1367 on the walls of the chapel where the relic is kept; the Stories of St. Margaret and of St. James the Greater, also in the Cathedral, attributed to Lorenzo di Bicci; the Episodes of the life of St. Matthew and of St. Anthony Abbot frescoed by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini in S. Francesco. Far more imposing are the testimonies of Renaissance painting, which also count local elements, such as that Pietro di Miniato of Prato to whom the frescoes of the refectory of S. Niccolò are due, and interesting anonymous artists, such as the two masters who decorated with the Stories of the Virgin and of St. Stephen the chapel of the S. Cuore in the Cathedral. Among the paintings of the 15th century emerge the grandiose cycles of frescoes that Filippo Lippi executed in the main Chapel of the Cathedral with the collaboration of fra' Diamante (Stories of St. Stephen and of the Baptist, 1452-64). To the same Lippi belong two other works: the panel with the Funeral of St. Bernard, also in the Cathedral, and the very beautiful one in the Municipal Gallery that the Florentine painted in 1453 for Francesco di Marco Datini (Virgin enthroned and two saints). In P. was born Filippino Lippi, son of Filippo; of him there remain the frescoed triptych of the tabernacle of S. Margherita, which despite the damage is among his most delightful works, and the Virgin with the Child and two saints, in the Municipal Gallery. The paintings of the 16th century are scanty. It will suffice to remember the Virgin of the Cintola by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio in the Cathedral (1514). - See pl. CXXIX.

Amalia Mezzetti