SENIGALLIA, DIOCESE OF. - A city and diocese in the Marches. It covers an area of 533 sq. km., with a population of 110,000, of whom 109,919 are Catholics, distributed across 49 parishes, 45 in the province of Ancona and 4 in that of Pesaro. There are 118 diocesan priests and 51 regular clergy; the diocese has a seminary, 13 male religious communities, and 43 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, pp. 374-75).
The diocese traces its origins back no later than the 4th century and was originally confined to the territory of the Roman municipality of Sena, the ancient metropolis of the Gallic Senones, which became a Roman colony in 283 BC. The first historically attested bishop is VENANZIO, who attended the Roman Palmarian Synod in 502 together with Martiniano, bishop of the neighboring diocese of Ostra. The barbarian invasions led to the destruction of Sena and Ostra, as well as the other two Roman localities within the current diocesan territory: Suasa and Pitulo (Piticchio). Senigallia, however, was able to revive under the Byzantines and extend its diocesan territory to include that of the now-vanished Ostra. At that time, many abbeys contributed to the ecclesiastical organization, though they declined around the year 1000. The oldest, the abbey of St. Gaudenzio, took its name from the saint, whom legend identifies with the bishop of Rimini; its ruins remain, along with the saint’s sarcophagus, a fine example of Ravenna-style art preserved in the cathedral. The abbey of Santa Maria in Castagnola di Chiaravalle, the only surviving abbey near the Roman site of Sestia, passed to the Cistercian monks in 1147. After the year 1000, while flourishing communes arose in the territory, the city of Senigallia declined to the point that Bishop Giovanni II (1328–1349) requested and obtained permission to transfer the episcopal residence to Corinaldo. Sigismondo Malatesta began the city’s revival, which reached great splendor in the 16th and 17th centuries under the Della Rovere family and attained its peak development in the 18th century thanks to the popes, particularly through the famous fair.
