SAN MARCO ARGENTANO and BISIGNANO, DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the province of Cosenza (Calabria), suffragan to the metropolitan see of Catanzaro. The population is 145,000 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, distributed among 72 parishes served by 97 diocesan and 20 religious priests; it has 4 male and 15 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 357).
It is a legend that the city of S. M. in Val di Crati near Cosenza received the refugees from Sybaris; it is less disputable that it is the heir of the ancient «Argentanum»; without foundation is the assertion of the old regional historians that it received the faith from the evangelist St. Mark, from whom it would have inherited its name; there is, however, some basis for the existence and martyrdom of the Argentano saints Senatore, Cassiodoro, Viatore, and their mother Dominata, whose relics were venerated in the Cathedral, from where some of them were transported to the church of the Most Holy Trinity in Venosa. Delchaye, followed by Lanzoni, considers this to be a legend originating from the inscription on Cassiodoro’s sarcophagus. In reality, S. M. appears in history around 1060, when Roberto il Guiscardo made it the center of his raids in Val di Crati. He himself established the episcopal see there around 1080 and obtained its confirmation from the Pope. It must therefore be excluded that it is the heir of Tempas, whose records disappear at the end of the eighth century, Malvito (v.), which continued to exist until the middle of the thirteenth century. It is true, however, that when this diocese was suppressed, its territory was absorbed by S. M.
The two very powerful Benedictine abbeys of Cetraro, given to Montecassino by Sicelgaita in 1086, and S. Maria de Matina, founded by the same Sicelgaita in 1066 and later transferred to the Cistercians in 1185, stood within the diocese. At S. Sosti there was the monastery of S. Ciriaco, and in the mountains the shrine of the Madonna del Pettoruto, which seems to have been of Basilian origin. In the city there were also the convents of the Franciscans, the Minims, and the Capuchins, who also had houses at Cetraro, Belvedere, and other places.
Among the men distinguished for virtue, besides the Argentano martyrs already mentioned, the following deserve mention: St. Ciriaco of Buonvicino, a Basilian ascetic of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; St. Daniele of Belvedere, a Franciscan who died a martyr at Ceuta in 1227 at the head of a group of six other Calabrian Franciscans; Albensio Rossi of Cetraro, a seventeenth-century hermit whose memory remains alive in Rome in the mosaic shrine at Porta Angelica; Anselmo of S. M., a Capuchin; Matteo of Cetraro, a Reformed Franciscan, etc. Among the distinguished prelates of this see are remembered: Tommaso (1321–48), formerly Cistercian abbot of S. Maria de Matina; Goffredo de Castro (1473–84), whom Sixtus IV charged with conducting an inquiry into St. Francesco di Paola in preparation for the apostolic confirmation of his Order; Rutilio Zeno (1484–1513) and Luigi de Amato (1513–18),
humanists; Coriolano Martirano of Cosenza (1530–51), a poet who took part in the Council of Trent; Cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1566–69), one of the most distinguished cardinals of the sixteenth century; Matteo Guerra of Cosenza (1576–78), who distinguished himself at the Council of Trent; Reginaldo Coppola of Altomonte, a Dominican (1797–1810).
In 1818 Pope Pius VII united S. M. aequae principaliter to Bisignano; since then the bishop has resided six months of the year in each of the dioceses.