SAPONARA

SAPONARA. – In Valle di Agri, an ancient diocese whose name was Grumentum.

The diocese was vacant in 495 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 678), when Pope Gelasius ordered Bishop Sabinus (perhaps of Consilinum) to consecrate a certain Quarto, a deacon of Grumentum, as visitor; and in 496 he commended to the same Sabinus and to the otherwise unknown Bishop Crispinus two clerics of Grumentum who had been mistreated by the local archdeacon (ibid., 727–28). In 558–60 there was Bishop Tullianus (ibid., 1015); a parish “ecclesiae Grumentinae” is mentioned in 599 (ibid., 1737).