SANTA SEVERINA, ARCIDIOCESI of. – City and archdiocese in the province of Catanzaro (Calabria). It has an area of 800 sq. km, with a population of 60,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed among 24 parishes served by 34 diocesan and 8 religious priests; it has a seminary, 4 male and 6 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 364).
It is the ancient Seberene, Latinized as Severiana and finally Byzantinized as S. S. Following the victory of Nikephoros Phokas over the Saracens (886), it also bore the name of Nicopolis for a short time. But it is absurd to identify with it that «Andreas episcopus Nicopolitanus», mentioned by St. Gregory the Great, who refers to Nicopolis in Greece. The city of S. S. rises on the eastern foothills of the Sila, in the Neto valley, a short distance from Crotone. Owing to its strategic position, it was fortified and developed by the Byzantines, who left many traces of their civilization there in the church of Pozzolio and in the Baptistery. As a diocese, it owes its existence to the Byzantines, who created it from the ground up, at the same time elevating it to a metropolitan see with five tiny suffragan dioceses, all erected at the expense of the ancient see of Crotone, which was reduced to the city alone. Its existence cannot be admitted for a period earlier than the ninth century, since it does not appear, either as a metropolis or as a suffragan of Reggio, in the oldest Greek catalogues. The first mention occurs in Notitia III of the Diatiposi, dating from the time of Leo VI the Philosopher (886–911), where it appears as a metropolis. Cut off from the principal routes of communication, it subsequently lost its former importance. Thus the Holy See ultimately left it, in 1818, as the sole suffragan of Cariati, and finally suppressed it in 1952, while retaining its archiepiscopal dignity: Cariati was incorporated into the Metropolitan Church of Reggio Calabria.
Several Cistercian and Florensian monasteries flourished in the archdiocese of S. S., including S. Angelo in Fringillo at Mesuraca and S. Maria delle Terrate at Rocca di Neto. Among the mendicant convents, mention should be made of that of the Dominicans at S. S., that of the Ecce Homo at Mesuraca, and that of the S. Spina at Petilia; the latter two are famous Franciscan sanctuaries.
Among the men who have brought honor to this metropolis, the following deserve mention: the popes St. Anterus, St. Zosimus, and St. Zachary, whom tradition assigns respectively to Petilia, Mesuraca (Reace), and S. S.; Leonardo Caruso of S. S., a friend of St. Philip and palfreyman to Gregory XIII, who founded in Rome a hospice for abandoned children and the house of S. Euphemia for poor unmarried girls.
The first bishop whose name is recorded is Ambrose, mentioned in the Greek inscription commemorating the consecration of the old Cathedral, assigned to the ninth century. A Stephen, metropolitan of S. S., appears in the life of St. Nilus before 985; Basil was present at the Council of Constantinople in 997; Giulio Antonio Santoro of Caserta (1566–82), known as the Cardinal of S. S., who founded the Seminary and saved Greek monasticism from certain ruin; and Fausto Caffarelli, nuncio in Savoy (1624–51). The archdiocese of S. S. is no longer the metropolitan see of an ecclesiastical province; its suffragan Cariati has passed to Reggio (AAS, 44 [1952], pp. 516–18).