TEMPSA (TEMPSA). — Ancient diocese in Calabria. It was a colony of Magna Graecia, founded at the northern extremity of the Gulf of S. Eufemia, near Lampetia or Clampetia.
Since Pausanias recalls it as a maritime city, the thesis of Barrio and others, who identify it with Malveto, cannot be accepted; but its location near Niceto, now S. Lucido, a little south of Paola, may be regarded as better founded. In order not to fall into the hands of the Bruttii, who were pressing from the Sila hinterland, in the 4th century it accepted the protectorate of Sybaris, and then that of Croton, which in 460 was succeeded by that of Locri. Around the middle of the 4th century it fell into the power of the Bruttii, from whom it was taken by the Romans, who established one of their colonies there in 194.
As a maritime city, it must have been among the first to embrace the Christian faith and to have an episcopal see. L. Duchesne, along with others, advances the idea that Maiorico, mentioned in a Decretal of Pope Gelasius (492–96), was
titular of T. Shortly thereafter a Hilary « Tempsanus » took part in the Roman Synods of 501 and 504. In 599 St. Gregory the Great entrusted its bishop Stephen with the visitation of the Church of Thurii, and in 603 he appealed to the same bishop to facilitate the transport of timber from the Sila for the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome. At the Roman Synod of 649, Sergius, bishop of T., delivered a speech immediately after Pope St. Martin, and his signature was affixed to the acts immediately after that of the Pontiff. This suggests either that the see was important or that the bishop was one of the most venerable of those who took part in that Council. Bishop Abbondantius, who signed Pope Agatho’s Synodical Letter in 679, was chosen as the Pope’s legate, together with John of Reggio, to the Sixth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. In all the sessions he signed himself « Abundantius humilis episcopus Tempsanae Ecclesiae, provinciae Bruttorum », while in the acts he was recalled as bishop of Paternus. For this reason some have thought that Abbondantius had transferred his see to Paternus, that is, Cremisa, now Cirò, in order to escape the incursions of the barbarians.
In reality, this is merely a variant of T., introduced by the Council’s notaries and carried over into the Latin translation. After 681 there is no further information about the bishopric of T.; John, « Episcopus Tampsi », who appears at the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 and was assigned to T. by De Meo, in fact belonged to Tampsi, a city of Phrygia. T. must have been destroyed by the Lombards or the Saracens in the 8th century. The episcopal see could not have been transferred to Malvito, as some think, because it was too far from it; rather, it was transferred to Amantea, as is more natural, since this city appears as a suffragan of Reggio in the Diatiposi of Leo VI the Philosopher.
#### TEMPUS LUGENDI: V. VEDOVANZA.