TERMOLI, DIOCESI di. – City and diocese in the province of Campobasso in Molise.
It has an area of 800 sq. km. and a population of 65,000 inhabitants, of whom 64,000 are Catholics, distributed among 21 parishes served by 40 diocesan priests; it has a minor seminary (the theological course is completed at the Regional Seminary of Benevento); in addition, it has 12 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 421). The diocese has been a suffragan of Benevento since its foundation in the 11th century.
Among its bishops are remembered: Jacopo Cini O. P. (1379); D. Girada, Servite (1381); F. Merzio (1602), collaborator of Cesare Baronio. In 1818 Pius VII, with the bull De utilitori, suppressed the diocese of Guardia Alferia, situated near Cerrato, founded in the second half of the 11th century, and united it in perpetuity to T. After the death of Bishop R. Caliandro (14 March 1924), his successor, Bishop O. Bernacchia, bishop of Larino, united the see of T. ad personam (AAS, 16 [1924], pp. 430, 502).
The Cathedral is modeled on that of Foggia; sections with horseshoe arches date from the time of Frederick II; both the central apse and the upper part of the façade were rebuilt in the middle of the 13th century; in the 16th century it suffered bombardment by the Turkish fleet; it was damaged by earthquakes and by a fire; the interior was covered with stucco; on the façade, beneath the statues, an inscription can be discerned commemorating the donor Grimaldo, judge of T., originally from Ravello (E. Bertaux, L'art dans l'Italie mérid., Paris 1897, pp. 645–47, 702). The Cathedral preserves a reliquary from approximately the first half of the 13th century containing the skull of St. Timothy. On 9 January 1947, at the conferences of the Society of Scholars of Christian Archaeology, Fr. F. Antonelli reported that on 11 May 1945 a wooden box covered by a marble slab was discovered beneath the presbytery of the Cathedral, bearing an inscription dated 1239 indicating that it contained the body of St. Timothy,
disciple of St. Paul. It is not known how these relics came to T. between 1200 and 1239. Fr. F. Antonelli believes that they were brought by one of the participants in the Fourth Crusade, who in 1204 took part in the sack of Constantinople, where the relics had been transferred from Ephesus (cf. Riv. di Arch. Cristiana, 25 [1949], pp. 197–98).
Pope Pius XII, by an apostolic letter of 25 March 1947, declared St. Timothy, bishop and martyr, patron, together with Bishop St. Bassus, of the diocese of T. (AAS, 41 [1949], pp. 539–41).
Between the sea and the Cathedral, Frederick II had the citadel built, of which the great square tower flanked by four round turrets remains; the name of Frederick II could be read there (E. Bertaux, Les arts de l'Orient musulman dans l'Italie méridionale, in Mél. d'arch. et d'hist., 15 [1895], pp. 433–34).
IBID.: Eubel, I, pp. 383–84; II, p. 247; III, p. 312; IV, p. 336; V, p. 376; P. Sella, Ration. decimarum Ital., Aprutium Molisium. Le decime dei secc. XIII-XIV (Studi e testi, 69), Vatican City 1936, pp. 315–16; for Guardaliera, ibid., p. 329.