TADINO (GUALDO). - Tadinum was a Roman city on the Via Flaminia, in Umbria, completely destroyed in the 10th century; from its ruins the present-day Gualdo T. was built further north, at the foot of the mountain.
At least since the 5th century it was the seat of a bishopric. In July 599 Pope St Gregory wrote two letters, one to Gaudiosus, bishop of Gubbio, and the other to the clergy and people of T., “deprived of their own pastoral care,” so that a new bishop might be elected there (cf. Jaffé-Wattenbach, nos. 1712-13). According to tradition, St Facendinus was elected bishop at that time. However, the Legend of St Facendinus, which survives today in two different versions (the oldest in cod. Vat. lat. 7853 from the end of the 13th century, and a slightly later one, among others, in cod. Vat. lat. 3921, from which the Bollandists transcribed it for the Acta SS. Augusti, VI, Paris 1868, pp. 471 ff.), contains no chronological reference. F. Lanzoni, therefore, has advanced the hypothesis that the bishop Facendinus of T. should be identified with the Facundinus mentioned by St Athanasius (cf. PG 25, 340) among the fifteen Italian bishops who, though not attending in person, approved the Synod of Sardica in the year 342. Probably the bishop Gaudentius present at the Roman Council of 499 should also be attributed to T., since the most reliable manuscript reading has: “Gaudentius episcopus Ecclesiae Tadinensis.”
With the destruction of the city in the plain, the episcopal see also disappeared, and its territory was annexed in 1006 to the nearby see of Nocera. The principal church of Gualdo T., the abbatial church of St Benedict, was erected as a collegiate church on 26 May 1847 and made a cathedral “only in honorem” by decree of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation of 2 January 1915, with the new denomination of the diocese of Nocera Umbra (q.v.) and Gualdo T. The patron of the city is the Blessed Angelo, a Camaldolese hermit of the 14th century.