SENIGALLIA, Diocese of. - City and diocese of the Marche. It has an area of 533 sq km, with a population of 110,000 inhabitants, of whom 109,919 are Catholics, distributed in 49 parishes, of which 45 are in the province of Ancona and 4 in that of Pesaro; it has 118 diocesan priests and 51 regulars; it has a seminary, 13 male religious communities and 43 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1952, pp. 374-75).
The diocese has its origins no later than the 4th century and was originally confined solely to the territory of the Roman municipium of Sena, the ancient metropolis of the Galli Senones, which became a Roman colony in 283 B.C. The first historical bishop is Venantius, present at the Roman Synod of the Palm at Rome in 502 together with Martinianus, bishop of the neighboring diocese of Ostra. The barbarian invasions led to the destruction of Sena and Ostra, and of the two other Roman localities contained within the present diocesan territory, Suasa and Pitulo (Piticchio). S., however, was able to rise again with the Byzantines and to extend its diocesan territory to that of the vanished Ostra. Many abbeys then contributed to the ecclesiastical organization, but they declined around the year 1000. The oldest, the abbey of St. Gaudentius, took its name from the saint, whom legend identifies with the bishop of Rimini; of it there remain ruins and the sarcophagus of the saint, a fine example of Ravenna art, kept in the Cathedral. The abbey of St. Maria in Castagnola di Chiaravalle, the only surviving abbey, near the Roman locality of Sestia, passed to the Cistercian monks in 1147. The city of S., after the year 1000, while flourishing communes were arising in its territory, declined so much that Bishop Giovanni II (1328-1349) requested and obtained the transfer of his residence to Corinaldo. Sigismondo Malatesta began the rebirth of the city, which then reached great splendor in the 16th and 17th centuries under the Della Rovere and its greatest development in the 18th century under the popes, thanks to the great fair, of European renown.
(from Marche, T.C.I., Milan 1953, fig. 167)
SENIGALLIA, DIOCESE OF - Cloister of the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, built to a design by Baccio Pontelli (1491) - Surroundings of S.
Among the best-known bishops are: the Augustinian theologian Antonio Colomella (1447-66), Card. Marco Vigerio I Della Rovere (1476-1513), president of the Fourth Lateran Council, the conventual writer Pietro Ridolfi (1591-1601), Card. Annibale Della Genga (1816-18), later Pope Leo XII. At S. were born the great patron Card. Cinzio Passeri Aldobrandini, the commander-in-chief of the Holy League against Charles V, Francesco Maria Della Rovere, duke of Urbino, Count Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, later Pope Pius IX, the poet and Dante scholar Andrea Marchetti. In the diocesan territory (Corinaldo, 1890) was born the martyr of purity, St. Maria Goretti (v.).
Among the most notable religious monuments, besides the sarcophagus of St. Gaudentius, are the ancient church of St. Gervasius, the abbey of Chiaravalle, the convent of the Grazie near S., the church of the Croce at S., the collegiate church of St. Medardus in Arcevia.
Bibliography9 works
Alberto Polverari