SASSARI, DIOCESE of. – It has a population of 149,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed among 39 parishes served by 110 diocesan and 48 religious priests; it has a seminary, 10 male and 1 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 370).
Also called “Turritana,” from the bishop’s first residence, which was Turris Libisonis, a port and ancient Roman colony. Epigraphic inscriptions and significant archaeological remains reveal its importance. It is plausible that, in the Constantinian age, an organized Christian community already existed there, but the first historically certain bishop is Felix de Turribus, who on 1 February 384 took part in the Conference of Carthage, under Unneric, king of the Vandals. The diocese (Turritana civitas) reappears later in the Register of St. Gregory the Great (590), who forwarded the petitions of Bishop Mariniano to the exarch of Africa and, through his apocrisarius, to the court of Constantinople. It is known that the great Pontiff urged the magister militum and the defensor to take measures to avert the dangers of invasion.
The Byzantine inscription on a powerful marble architrave discovered in 1927 near the ruins of the ancient city, now in the left aisle of the Basilica of S. Gavino, celebrates the heroic naval victory won in the waters of Torres over the Lombards and other barbarians, between 680 and 717, according to the critics, or, according to the acceptable manuscript tradition, in 695. At the beginning of the 8th century, hordes of Arabs, having overcome Byzantine resistance and already being the effective masters of the coasts of Africa and Spain, began raiding the coastal cities of Sardinia, which nevertheless they never managed to dominate permanently. Torres, among the most tormented cities, perhaps began to decline in the 8th century.
As soon as the barbarian period had ended, after the defeat of the pirate king Mugahid, between the 11th and 12th centuries the Cathedral Basilica was erected to the glory of St. Gavino and his fellow martyrs. In terms of size, it is the first among medieval churches and one of the most imposing monuments of the dawning evolution of Romanesque art. It has three naves; the central one is supported by six ashlar pillars and 22 monolithic columns taken from the ruins of Roman buildings and, as Romanesque-Byzantine decorative elements suggest, from the old Christian church of Turris. A particularly important feature, found only very rarely in Italian churches, is that of the two terminal apses of the central nave; there are also many differences in the ground plans of the two opposing apses of S. Pietro in Civate (Como) and S. Pietro in Grado near Pisa.
The Benedictines of Montecassino, the Vallombrosans, the Camaldolese, and the Cistercians had residences in the diocese. In 1073, in a letter of Gregory VII, Constantine of Castro appears with the title of archbishop, having been promoted from the cathedral of Bosa. The episcopal sees of Ampurias, Bisarcio, Castro, Bosa, Ottana, Ploaghe, and Torres depended on the metropolitan of Torres; these were villages that took the name of cities.
In the territory of the diocese of Torres, approximately 40 Christian communities had meanwhile been organized before the year 1000, under the titles of chapels, cures, and pievanies. The most populous was the pievania of S. Nicola di S., about 20 km from Torres, with its beautiful Romanesque church (11th–12th centuries). Around it the autonomous commune was formed, with its own statutes, and it later became the center of the diocese. In fact, for greater security and pastoral needs (“propter guerrarum et piratorum pericula”), the bishop resided there. On 24 September 1278, the pievanial church was divided into 5 parishes.
On 5 April 1441, by the bull Super universas of Eugenius IV, Archbishop Pietro Spano obtained the transfer of the see from the Basilica of S. Gavino to the church of S. Nicola di S. The latter was enlarged and transformed, with a façade in the grand Baroque style dating from 1714. It has recently been restored. By the bull Aequum reputamus of 8 December 1503, Julius II annexed to the metropolitan see of S. the dioceses of Ploaghe and Torres, whose cathedral is one of the most complete and graceful constructions by Tuscan artists of the 14th century. The great abbeys of the Most Holy Trinity of Saccargia, Camaldolese and a jewel of architecture, and S. Maria di Paulis, Cistercian, came under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of S.
The territory of the diocese also contains S. Michele di Plaiano, not yet restored, and S. Michele di Salvenero, both Vallombrosan. The unions mentioned above were carried out under Archbishop Salvatore Alepus (1524–1566). Born in Valenza and appointed apostolic administrator at barely twenty years of age, he took an active part in the Council of Trent. He appealed to St. Ignatius of Loyola to obtain several fathers and open a “Studio” in S. He repeatedly visited the diocese and held synods, initiating the disciplinary reforms approved during the first two periods of the council at Trent. He took steps to improve the solemn liturgy of the Basilica of Torres, reprinting the proper Office of St. Gavino, which was rendered into the vernacular in the 16th century in a short poem that remains the finest work of Sardinian dialect literature.