TARANTO, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - Metropolitan see and capital city of the province of the same name in southern Italy (Apulia). It has an area of 1,100 sq km with a population of 338,000 inhabitants, of whom 337,000 are Catholics, distributed among 44 parishes served by 153 diocesan priests and 57 religious; it has a seminary, 12 male religious communities and 33 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 416). Its suffragan dioceses are Castellaneta and Oria.
Many legends have flourished concerning the landing of the apostle Peter in this place, but there are no ancient documents on the matter.
A document of the 11th or 12th century (BHL, 1652-53), as for other cities such as Gallipoli, Pisa, Pozzuoli, etc., recounts that Peter would have arrived here in the year 45 from Antioch and that, as soon as he landed, he would have healed a sick gardener named Amasius, afterwards the first bishop of T., while the evangelist Mark, his traveling companion, would have evangelized a first nucleus of the population. Now, apart from the doubt whether that Amasius truly existed, not only is there no information to support believing him a bishop, but there is no element lending credence to the legend itself, which seems certainly much later than the events narrated. A second and later legend (the Iter Tarentinorum sanctorum Petri et Marci: BHL, 6679) changes the name of the first bishop and in place of Amasius puts a Cataldus, held without question to be doubtful by modern historians. In truth, the latter would be an Irish bishop of Rachau, who came to T. in the 7th century (according to others in the 5th or even the 8th, but no period has reliable data) either on his return from the Holy Land or about to embark for that destination and instead died suddenly and was buried in the Cathedral.
The dramatic events of the struggle against the Saracens, culminating in the bloody sack of 927, and the laborious reconstruction of the city favored the creation of the legend. In 1094, among the ruins of the ancient Cathedral, the body of the Saint was found together with a small gold cross with his name engraved on it. The fame of the Saint assumed inconceivable proportions. Miracles and legends were then born which, rapidly diffused, carried his cult even to the most distant localities of southern Italy. Thus St. Cataldus became the patron of the city and its first bishop.
Leaving aside other minor accounts and the arduous problem of the origins, it must be observed that even for the first successors who sat on the Tarantine cathedra, the Masona and the Renovatus cited in the catalogue, no document authorizes considering them to have existed. One must therefore reach the end of the 5th century to find finally an anonymous figure, documented in an epistle of Gelasius I (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 647), in which the Pope announces to the clergy and people the imminent consecration of the new prelate Peter (493), cited by others instead erroneously under the name of Innocentius. Then for another century no name is known. There is, it is true, the mention of a Cataldus II - who would always be the well-known saint - but even about him, in the absence of sources, it is disputed whether to assign him to the 6th century or later, while it still remains to be ascertained that he was truly a bishop of T. One thus arrives at 593, the year in which an Andrew appears (ibid., 1249-50) accused by Gregory the Great of an illicit life; there follow: Honorius (603; ibid., 1889) - and not the John cited in a forged diploma (ibid., 1366) - who obtains from the same Pope permission to use the baptistery he had built in the church of St. Mary; John, present at the Lateran Council of 649 held by Martin I; Gervasius (659); Germanus, who in 680 took part in the Council of Constantinople, and Caesarius who appears at the Roman Council of St. Zachary (743). From the 8th to the 10th century there is no information. The city, prey to terror of the Saracens, despite the aid of Venice and of the Eastern Emperor, follows the same fate as nearby Oria and is completely devastated. Twenty years later the Hungarians will not dare to touch that heap of ruins. With the accession to the throne of Nicephorus Phocas the reconstruction of the city begins in a safer place. And its rebirth must have been so rapid that, barely after three lustra, not only does the episcopal authority appear restored, but it is even elevated to archiepiscopal dignity. In 987 there is already news of the first archbishop, John, who succeeds in having Pandulf I and Landulf III, princes of Benevento, grant to the prelate of that city the church of St. Michael the Archangel on Monte Gargano with the adjoining castle. The great authority with which the Tarantine archbishop appears invested, certainly favored by the Byzantine monarch, has led some to think that for a certain period the Byzantine rite prevailed at T. But no source, so far as is known, offers elements on the matter; everything on the contrary seems to confirm that the prevailing rite, despite the political situation, was always the Latin one.
After John, the catalogue of the Church is nearly complete; a brief mention therefore suffices of the most notable personages and events. In 1040 the archbishop Alexander Faccipecora had to intervene to quell the tumult of Mottola, stirred up by the election of the archdeacon; Drogo in 1050 rebuilt the Cathedral and in 1071 was present at the consecration of the church of Montecassino performed by Alexander II. Gualtiero (1120-25), a Neapolitan, not only received concessions from Constance and Bohemond II, but from Roger, count of Sicily and by investiture of Pope Honorius duke of Apulia, was appointed political and military governor of Benevento, where he built the basilica of St. Januarius. Philip (1138), elected by the antipope Anacletus II, was deposed the following year by the Roman Council; having withdrawn as a Cistercian to Clairvaux in France and been consecrated by St. Bernard, he was greatly helped by the latter with Pope Eugene to obtain pardon, but, though living saintly, he received only the deanship. His replacement Giraldo gathered the relics of St. Cataldus in a silver casket and settled the dispute between the archbishop of Brindisi and the Benedictine nuns of that city.
In 1217, at the death of Gualtiero II elected the year before, the Chapter, evading the pontifical norms, appointed the successor, but Honorius III intervened and elected Nicholas (1219), who four years later took part in the consecration of the church of Cosenza and in 1225 granted the Cistercians of St. Mary de Ferraria of Teano permission to found two monasteries in the diocese. Brother George of Capua in 1301 was the choice of Boniface VIII who, setting aside the two appointments of the Chapter, came to heal a dangerous schism; he was a wise man and counselor first of Charles II, then of Robert and of Philip prince of T.
A confused situation arose in the diocese at the death of James of Adria (1378) assassinated by a certain Biagio Torto following - it seems - the worsening of the dissension with the Chapter. Urban VI transferred there Marino del Giudice, who however, accused of conspiracy against the Pontiff in favor of the antipope, was deposed, imprisoned and thrown into the sea near Genoa, shut in a sack. The successor is doubtful; some names are taken even from another see. In 1391 Belisario, Benedictine abbot of St. Mary de Gualdo of Benevento, is finally elected by Boniface IX. A few years later, T. found itself governed by three prelates of opposing factions: Matthew or, according to others, Cardinal Francesco De Caris (1408) on the part of Benedict XIII; Rinaldo Brancacci, also a cardinal, on the part of John XXIII, and the legitimate Ludovico Bonito, of Agrigento, elected by Innocent VII (1406). Of the first, who appears to have stripped the Tarantine Church of various fiefs, the end is not well known; the second instead, once peace returned to the Church, resigned his dignity to the pontiff Martin V and died in Naples, where he is buried in the church of St. Angelo a Nido.
Many were the cardinals who occupied the Tarantine see. It will suffice to mention Cardinal Latino Orsini of Rome (1472) and his successor Giovanni d'Aragona (1478), son of Ferdinand, King of Naples; another Orsini in 1491 and Raffaele Riario (1504?) nephew of Sixtus IV; Antonio Sanseverino (1528), Marco Antonio Colonna (1560), and, not least although he was not a cardinal, the Theatine Tommaso Caracciolo (1637), who died in the odor of sanctity. From 1703, the year in which Cardinal Francesco Pignatelli was transferred to Naples, the see remained vacant for fully ten years because of interference by the Emperor of Austria, and only in 1713, transferred from Potenza, did T. have its prelate again in the person of Giambattista Stella of Modugno. The religious Orders in the diocese were numerous, and their convents and monasteries date for the most part to the 13th and 14th centuries; but there were also older communities, such as those of the Basilians and the Benedictines, which occupied the two islands of the gulf known respectively as S. Pietro and S. Paolo.
MONUMENTS
Goths, Byzantines and Saracens passed over the city, and repeatedly the occupier and the plunderer vented their fury upon its monuments; hence one can speak only of vestiges. Such is the Cathedral that rises in the heart of the old city. Its origins are wrapped in legend, and the dates that from time to time it has been believed possible to determine are likewise conjectures. It is known that the primitive church was dedicated to St. Mary del Popolo and that the Saracen sack brought about its almost total ruin.
After the city rose again, Archbishop Drogo, the Norman kinsman of Guiscard, began the reconstruction of the temple and, following the discovery of the relics of St. Cataldus (1071), dedicated the new church to the Saint. Today the primitive line is altered by the various restorations undergone in 1569, 1657, 1713 and 1871-73. Romanesque is the iconographic structure of the whole building: three naves with a high transept and dome; Lombard-indigenous is the dome supported by the great drum adorned with slender little columns and hanging arches (manners and forms that flourished elsewhere: Bari, Trani, Bitonto, Ruvo, etc.); original, besides the apse, are the portal formerly on the north side, now at the foot of the stairway descending to the crypt; the sixteen marble columns of the interior, remains of pagan monuments; two lions of classical model, scanty fragments now buried of a floor mosaic in "vermiculatum," and the fourteen columns of the crypt, discovered in 1901, which support ogival arches interesting for the period to which they belong. The cathedral of T. is linked, without doubt, to the beautiful churches that Apulian art has left us in the Terra di Bari and in the Salento, sensitive to Lombard forms, but still in possession of certain Byzantine elements visible in the arch of the crossing destroyed during the recent restorations and above all in the capitals, differing in form and dimensions, in which one perceives that particular manner that distinguishes certain examples of other basilicas north and south of the Adriatic coast. The other parts of the Basilica, with the exception of the truncated bell tower, of 1413, bear the modern imprint. Baroque works are: the facade, the ceiling and the baldachin of the high altar, the latter redone in 1652 in place of the previous one (1571), now on the baptismal font. A gem of the church is the chapel of St. Cataldus to the right of the apse: begun in 1657, it was completed only in the early years of the 19th century. It has rich ornaments and frescoes celebrating the life of the Saint (works of P. De Matteis and G. Pagano, 1713-1804); the altar, with the silver bust of the Patron portrayed by V. Catello in 1892, preserves the relics within the splendid marble inlays. In the Treasury of the Cathedral are kept two ivory crucifixes, a parchment evangeliary, several reliquaries and the pectoral cross of the Saint, perhaps of the 7th-8th century. A plaque, now walled up near the door of the bell tower, recalls that once in the Cathedral there existed tombs with the remains of illustrious personages, such as Philip II of Anjou and Elizabeth of Hungary his wife, Raimondello Orsini, etc., before they were destroyed during the various restoration works.
Of the other churches of T., that of St. Dominic deserves to be remembered, founded by Frederick II and donated to the Benedictines, titled to St. Peter Imperiale before passing to the Dominicans. It preserves intact only the facade with the rose window and the beautiful portal, while the interior was transformed during the 16th-17th centuries.
Under the same Swabian Emperor there also arose in the surroundings of T. the abbey of St. Mary della Giustizia, mentioned in a bull of Paschal II of 1113. The church flanked by a tower is now in ruins and of the ancient structure preserves only the single-cusped facade and two 13th-century portals slightly ogival, but adorned with oriental motifs. Still in the vicinity of the city, in the village of Solito, there remains a Basilian crypt called St. Mary di Murivetere with surviving frescoes, among which stand out the Savior and the figures of the Virgin and the Baptist; another cenobitic sanctuary is in the locality "Le Petrose," and a third crypt, called St. Onuphrius, with numerous fragments of frescoes near the Todisco farm. Other numerous hermitic caves are found scattered throughout the province. - See pl. CXXIV.
Bibliography23 works
Pasquale Testini