Sant'Agata dei Goti, Diocese of

SANT'AGATA DEI GOTI, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in the province of Benevento. It has an area of 50 sq km with a population of 38,000 inhabitants, all Catholics; it has 31 parishes served by 47 diocesan priests; it has a diocesan seminary, 47 male religious communities and 4 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 362). It is a suffragan of Benevento.

The present S. A. dei G., according to some, probably arose on the ruins of Saticula, which was a theater of war during the struggles between Romans and Samnites in the 4th century B.C., and eventually became a colony and a city loyal to Rome; according to others, less probably, it arose where the other Samnite city of Plistia stood. In the 5th century A.D., after a defeat, a colony of Goths settled there, to whom the city's name also traces back; in the 8th century it passed to the Lombards and in the 11th to the Normans; Pope Gregory IX had it loyal to him in 1230; afterward it became a possession of various comital families of the Kingdom of Sicily.

The first bishop of whom there is certain record is a certain Madelfrid (970), elected and consecrated by Ladinulf, metropolitan of Benevento, who, in the bull of Madelfrid's appointment preserved to this day, states that he wished to reconstitute the diocese of S. A. because it had always had a bishop of its own: ut olim semper episcopum habituram. Historically, therefore, the beginning of the episcopal series of S. A. must be placed at a date earlier than the 10th century, but the data for establishing the starting point are lacking. Among the bishops who adorned the see of Sant'Agata are found: Giovanni Beroaldo (d. 1566), who took part in the Council of Trent; Felice Peretti, who later became pope under the name Sixtus V; St. Alphonsus de' Liguori, Doctor of the Church (1762-75). Of the medieval city there still remain the walls, the castle, the churches of S. Menna, consecrated by Pope Paschal II in 1114, and of S. Francesco from 1267. The Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption, belongs to the 10th-12th century, but was transformed and given Baroque embellishments in the eighteenth century.

In 1849 the diocese, following the transfer of Msgr. Iavarone, lost the municipalities of Arienzo (where the episcopal palace inhabited by St. Alphonsus still stands), of Cervino, of S. Maria a Vico and of S. Felice, which were annexed to the neighboring diocese of Acerra.

Gennaro Auletta