SCALA. — Town and ancient diocese in the province of Salerno.
The diocese was established by Pope Giovanni XV in 987 as a suffragan of Amalfi. Its first bishop was Sergio; notable bishops were Alessandro I, in 1118; Orso, in 1144; Alessandro II, in 1171; Celestino III, who in 1191 fixed its boundaries with the bull In Apostolicae; Costantino in 1207 and Matteo in 1227, both of the d’Affitto family; in 1328 the Dominican Guglielmo Lombardo; in 1343 Giacomo Sersale of the same Order, as was Pietro de’ Penni, who reduced the parishes of the diocese from 30 to 18; in 1418 Natale d’Affitto; in 1465 Matteo De Dote; in 1500 Giacomo Pisanello; in 1511 the Spaniard Ferdinando Di Castro, who resigned that same year and was replaced by the Spaniard B. Del Rio, later governor of Rome in 1530; in 1541 Lodovico Vannini Teodoli, later bishop of Bertinoro; in 1552 the Augustinian Costantino Veltrano, later bishop of Cortona; in 1577 the Dominican Feliciano Niguarda; in 1583 Francesco D’Affitto; in 1598 Francesco Benni, who on 3 July 1603 also became bishop of Ravello, since on that date Pope Clement VIII united the diocese of S. with that of Ravello, while retaining it as a suffragan of Amalfi. In 1818 Pius VII suppressed the two dioceses, uniting them with Amalfi. At S., s. Alfonso de’ Liguori opened the first house of his Congregation (1732).
The ancient Cathedral, dedicated to s. Lorenzo, was rebuilt in the fifteenth century and completed in 1598; it has three naves with three terminal apses disfigured in the seventeenth century, and a crypt from the twelfth century; the pulpit, decorated with columns, marble, and mosaics, is artistic. The portal is Romanesque. In the Treasury one may admire a thirteenth-century mitre, a fourteenth-century chalice, and precious reliquaries.