SASSARI, DIOCESE OF. — It has a population of 149,000 inhabitants, all Catholic, distributed across 39 parishes served by 110 diocesan priests and 48 regular clergy; it has a seminary, 10 male religious communities, and 1 female community (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 370).
Also called "Turtirana," from the first episcopal residence, which was Turris Libisonis, a port and ancient Roman colony. Epigraphic titles and notable archaeological remains reveal its importance. It is credible that a Christian community existed there during the Constantinian age, but the first historically certain bishop is Felix de Turtibus, who on 19 February 384 attended the Conference of Carthage under King Huneric of the Vandals. The diocese (Turtirana civitas) reappears in the Register of St. Gregory the Great (590), which transmitted the petitions of Bishop Marinianus to the Exarch of Africa and, through his apocrinarius, 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 massive architrave, discovered in 1927 near the ruins of the ancient city and now in the left nave of the basilica of St. Gavinus, extols the heroic naval victory won in the waters of Torres over the Lombards and other barbarians between 680 and 717, according to critics, or, according to acceptable manuscript tradition, in 695. At the beginning of the 8th century, Arab hordes, having overcome Byzantine resistance and already masters of the African and Spanish coasts, began to raid the coastal cities of Sardinia, though they never succeeded in permanently dominating them. Torres, among the most tormented cities, began to decline perhaps in the 8th century.
Scarcely had the barbarian period been overcome, after the defeat of the pirate king Mujāhid, than between the 11th and 12th centuries the Basilica Cathedral was erected in honor of St. Gavinus and his fellow martyrs. This is the first, in terms of size, of the medieval churches and one of the grandest monuments of the dawning Romanesque evolution in art. It has three naves; the central one is supported by six cut-stone pillars and 22 monolithic columns from the ruins of Roman buildings and, as decorative Romanesque-Byzantine elements suggest, from the old Christian church of Turris Libisonis. A very important feature, rarely found in Italian churches, is the presence of two terminal apses in the central nave, and there are many planimetric differences between the two opposing apses of St. Peter in Civate (Como) and St. Peter in Grado near Pisa.
In the diocese resided the Benedictines of Monte Sacro, the Vallombrosans, the Camaldolese, and the Cistercians. In 1073, in a letter of Gregory VII, Constantine of Castro appears with the title of archbishop, promoted from the cathedral of Bosa. The Turritan metropolitan had jurisdiction over the episcopal sees of Ampurias, Bisarcio, Castro, Bosa, Ottana, Ploaghe, and Torres—villages that took the name of cities.
Meanwhile, within the territory of the diocese of Torres, about 40 Christian communities had organized themselves before the year 1000, under the titles of chapels, parishes, and pievanie. The most populous was the pievania of St. Nicholas of Sassari, about 20 km from Torres, with its beautiful Romanesque church (11th–12th centuries). Around it there formed an autonomous commune with its own statutes, which later became the center of the diocese. In fact, the bishop resided there for greater security and pastoral needs (propter guerram et piratorum pericula). On 25 September 1278, the pievania church was divided into five parishes.
Sassari, Diocese of — Interior of St. Mary — Sassari.
On 5 April 1441, with the bull *Super universas*, Eugenius IV obtained the transfer of the see from the basilica of St. Gavinus to the church of St. Nicholas of Sassari. This was enlarged and transformed, with its grandiose Baroque façade of 1714. It has recently been restored. With the bull *Aequum reputamus* of 8 December 1503, Julius II aggregated to the metropolitan see of Sassari the dioceses of Ploaghe and of Torres, whose cathedral is one of the most complete and elegant constructions by Tuscan artists of the 14th century. The great abbeys of the Most Holy Trinity of Saccargia (Camaldolese, a jewel of architecture) and St. Mary of Paulis (Cistercian) also came under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Sassari.
In the territory of the diocese also remain St. Michael of Plaiano, not yet restored, and St. Michael of Salvenero, both Vallombrosan. The aforementioned unions were carried out under Archbishop Salvatore Alepus (1524–1566). Born in Valencia and appointed at the age of twenty as apostolic administrator, he took an active part in the Council of Trent. He turned to St. Ignatius of Loyola to obtain some fathers and open a "Studio" in Sassari. He visited the diocese repeatedly and held synods, initiating the disciplinary reforms later approved in the first two periods of the Council of Trent. He worked to improve the solemn liturgy of the basilica of Torres, reprinting the proper Office of St. Gavinus, which had been vulgarized in the 16th century into a work that remains the finest in Sardinian dialectal literature.