TERMOLI, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Campobasso in Molise.
It has an area of 800 sq km with a population of 65,000 inhabitants, of whom 64,000 are Catholics, distributed in 21 parishes served by 40 diocesan priests; it has a minor seminary (the theology course is completed at the regional Seminary of Benevento); it also has 12 communities of women religious (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 Msgr. R. Caliandro (14 March 1924), his successor Msgr. O. Bernacchia, bishop of Larino, united the see of T. ad personam (AAS, 16 [1924], pp. 430, 502).
The Cathedral is inspired by that of Foggia; parts with horseshoe arches date back to the time of Frederick II; both the central apse and the upper part of the facade were redone in the mid-13th century; it suffered a bombardment in the 16th century from the Turkish fleet; it was damaged by earthquakes and by a fire; the interior was covered with stuccoes; on the facade, beneath the statues, one can make out an inscription commemorating the donor Grimaldo, judge of T., a native of Ravello (E. Bertaux, L'art dans l'Italie mérid., Paris 1897, pp. 645-47, 702). In the Cathedral is preserved a reliquary of the first half of the 13th century approx. with the skull of St. Timothy. On 9 January 1947, in the conferences of the Society of Students of Christian Archaeology, Fr. F. Antonelli reported that on 11 May 1945 there was found beneath the presbytery of the Cathedral a wooden casket covered by a marble slab with an inscription of the year 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 it to be the work of some participant in the Fourth Crusade, and in 1204 in the sack of Constantinople, where the relics had been translated from Ephesus (cf. Riv. di Arch. Cristiana, 25 [1949], pp. 197-98).
Pope Pius XII, with 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 there remains the great square tower flanked by four round turrets, and there the name of Frederick II could be read (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), Città del Vaticano 1936, pp. 315-16; for Guardaliera, ibid., p. 329.