SAPONARA

SAPONARA. — In the Agri Valley, an ancient diocese whose name was Grumentum.

The diocese was vacant in 495 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 678) when Pope Gelasius ordered Bishop Sabinus (perhaps of Consilium) to consecrate a certain Quartus as deacon of Grumentum as visitor, and in 496 recommended the same Sabinus and the unknown Bishop Crispinus to assist two clerics of Grumentum who had been maltreated by the local archdeacon (ibid., 727-28). In 558-60 there was Bishop Tullianus (ibid., 1015); a parish of the “church of Grumentum” is recorded in 599 (ibid., 1737).