Ruvo Diocese

RUVO DIOCESE. - City and diocese in the province of Bari, of whose metropolitan see it has always remained a suffragan. R. has an area of 39,880 sq km with a population of 57,387 inhabitants, of whom 57,200 are Catholics, distributed in 21 parishes, served by 71 diocesan priests and 5 regulars; 1 minor seminary; 1 male religious community and 10 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 343). The Cathedral is dedicated to the B. V. M. Assumption; the patron of the diocese is St. Blaise, bishop.

HISTORY

The tradition that the origin of the episcopal see goes back to the episcopate of Cletus, who was after Linus the 2nd successor of St. Peter, is not tenable. Nor is the absurd catalogue of the first seven bishops of R. tenable either, whose names, as Lanzoni rightly saw, are unknown to Apulian onomastics until the 4th century. The eighth in the series, a Joannes, is cited in a Vita et translatio s. Sobini (BHL, 7443) of Canosa as present in 493 at the blessing of the church of S. Andrea at Barletta, performed by the pontiff Gelasius I. The institution of the diocese of Ruvo could have occurred during the period of Byzantine domination, when the Easterners, having become masters of Bari and the Apulian coast, set about creating new episcopal sees everywhere, in order to draw those populations into the orbit of the Church of Constantinople. If this were so, the diocese of R. could have arisen in the 8th century or a little later. In the 11th century we find the first prelate, Gioacchino de Zonicis, whom Coleti assigns to 1009 and who, on the faith of an indiculus Episcoporum huius Ecclesiae, would have governed the diocese for only 44 days. The successor Abiatarus de Barghettinis is also doubtful, given the lack of any supporting document. Guilberto (or Gisilberto), according to the anonymous Cassinese, took part in 1071 in the consecration of the church of Montecassino performed by Alexander II and, according to Lupo Protospata (Chr. ad an. 1082), donated to the prior of Monte Peloso the church of S. Sabino of R. in exchange for 4 pounds of wax annually and an escort of one knight, each time he traveled to Bari or Canosa.

The reasons for these journeys, if they are explicable for Bari, the residence of the metropolitan, are entirely obscure for Canosa, unless relations then existed between the two Churches that are unknown today. Among the successors is a Pietro, not further identified, who would have lived in 1110 (but this is very doubtful); Orso, who consecrated the church of the Madonna dei Martiri at Molfetta (1162); Daniele, who took part in the Lateran Council of Alexander III (1179), already known even earlier (1177) for having received substantial donations from the Norman Robert, count of Conversano and lord of R., in favor of the church of the Most Holy Trinity « pro expiatione Roberti patria sui suorumque parentum ». Of the others, finally, are remembered: Domenico Ursi of R. (1417), cited in an instrument of emphyteutic grant preserved in the Capitular Archive; and Domenico Galesio (1676), who consecrated the church of the Capuchins and left his name linked to unfortunate works carried out in the Cathedral. In 1818 Pius VII, with the bull De ulteriori Dominicae, united to R. also the episcopal church of Bitonto, declaring it « aeque principaliter » a co-cathedral.

MONUMENTS

Many of the oldest churches of R. are today destroyed; thus S. Sabino, the Most Holy Trinity and S. Giovanni, which a tradition holds was the first cathedral. Of the Middle Ages only the magnificent Romanesque Cathedral remains, with its severe forms, which bears in its structures the signs of the attempts made and of the innovations due to political vicissitudes. The church, in the Latin cross plan, has three apsed naves in an oblique position with respect to the facade; its original plan was later enlarged by the opening of various chapels in the side walls, chapels that were eliminated during the last restoration works. The facade, tall and with a steep pitch, has characteristics entirely different from the other Apulian cathedrals, with the exception of that of Trani: no divisional pilasters and little predilection for voids. At the top the seated figure in the cathedra, which some claim is that of the founder, closes so to speak the series of small hanging arches that adorns the slopes and begins that decorative verticalism which continues with the marvellous radial rose window embroidered like lace, with the beautiful central triforium, and ends in the three portals below. Here too nothing is finished: the architraves and the engaged columns without any structural function are the remains of a portico never built. In its place, the artists built an elegant pronaos with stylophorous lions, griffins and telamones, which admirably complete the very rich decoration of the main portal, where there is found, among ornaments, symbols of the Apocalypse and of the New Testament, a fantastic figurative repertoire represented in a singular manner. In the interior the forms live on absurd contrasts, from the very dissimilar capitals to the ogee arches, to the unequal bases. Everything is unfinished: the long pilasters between the great arches full of a matroneum never built, the gallery supported by large ornate corbels, the crossing interrupted at the springing of the great arches that would have supported a dome. The cathedral of R. was born Romanesque and ended by welcoming Gothic elements; it was conceived by the spirit of the native craftsmen and was permeated with northern and eastern influences. It is not known when it was begun, but a date is marked in a trefoil of the rose window: 1237. Whoever said that a Swabian had completed it was right: it was Frederick II of Swabia.

The bell tower beside it, originally a tower of defense and observation, then transformed into a prison and finally into a bell tower, is perhaps earlier than the year 1000. Of the other churches, that of S. Angelo preserves only the memory of its Basilian origin in the eighteenth-century remodellings. A few arches remain in the Romanesque church of S. Luca; few vestiges in the thirteenth-century S. Lucia and only surviving walls in the little church of the Capuchins. The crypt of the church of the Purgatory is nothing but a remnant of a Roman bath hall.

Pasquale Testini