Terni and Narni, Diocese of

TERNI AND NARNI, DIOCESE OF. - United but distinct sees, immediately subject to the Holy See. Terni is a provincial capital city in Umbria, on the right bank of the Nera. It has an area of about 126 sq km, with a population of 62,615 inhabitants, of whom 62,553 are Catholics, distributed among 20 parishes, served by 19 diocesan priests and 33 religious; it has a minor seminary, 5 male religious communities and 16 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 421). For Narni see the relevant entry.

Terni is the ancient Interamna Nahars of the Romans, under whom it was a municipium ascribed to the Clustuminian tribe; it is situated on the Flaminian Way between Narni and Spoleto. It is held to be the birthplace of the emperor Tacitus. It received Christianity at the same time as the surrounding cities. From the suburban cemetery area, known as that of St. Valentine, came Christian inscriptions, of which the oldest dated one is from 366. The report concerning Sts. Sabina (v.) and Serapia, whose relics are said to have been transferred to Rome from Vindena near Terni, has no sure historical foundation. Venerated at Terni was the martyr Valentine (v.), of whom a local bishop was made, but whose identity is disputed with a namesake saint martyred at Rome, probably a native of Terni. Nothing is known about the origins of the bishopric; the first historically attested bishop's name is that of Praetextatus in 465, followed by a Constantine in 487 and a Felix in 501; an Homobonus is remembered in an inscription of uncertain date. Gregory I sent to Terni Constantius, bishop of Narni (593-98), and in 594 entrusted to him the government also of that Church, because there was no longer enough clergy and people to require the presence of its own bishop. In the church of St. Valentine Pope Zachary met with King Liutprand in 742. During the early Middle Ages Terni was governed by the bishop of Narni or by that of Spoleto, while the Chapter was directly subject to the Pope. Finally, on 13 January 1218, with his own bull Honorius III restored the see, and at the request of the clergy a certain Rainerius, of Terni, a man of holy life, was appointed bishop. Shortly afterwards, by an act of February 1218, the municipality of Terni endowed the episcopal mensa. Again Honorius, having gone to Terni in 1219, restored to the Chapter of Terni possession of the basilica of St. Valentine and warned off the bishop of Narni, who held the very nearby castle of Perticara above it; moreover, from the Lateran on 23 February 1219 Honorius marked out the boundaries of the diocese, much wider than at present, which extended over part of the Arnolfian lands, in the Valnerina, to Ferentillo, and as far as the borders of Norcia. The aforesaid places, as a lay jurisdiction, had been held in perpetuity as a vicariate of the cities of Terni and Spoleto: but the joint possession gave occasion for bloody struggles, until Alexander VI by a brief of 1502 gave their government to the clerics of the Camera.

In 1591 the bishop is the Cremonese Giov. Antonio Onorati, who in 1605, with a subsidy from the Commune, undertook excavations at St. Valentine and found beneath the altar the lead casket with the body of the Saint: transferred to the Cathedral, the counsel prevailed to build a basilica in honor of St. Valentine, and there the body of the Saint was afterwards brought back.

In the last war, in 1943-44, despite the 104 bombardments that tormented the city, the then bishop Msgr. Bonomini did not abandon the episcopal residence: in the harshest period preceding the German retreat, he was the only authority remaining in the city, and he organized soup kitchens and relief for the 1,500 people who would not or could not evacuate.

Terni has a Christian cemetery of the 4th-5th centuries, in the basilica of St. Valentine outside the walls, some Roman-Christian sarcophagi, and boasts a good number of predominantly Romanesque churches in which the restorations carried out after the recent war have not only led to the recovery of beautiful original forms, but also to the discovery of notable frescoes.

The Cathedral, whose structure, apart from internal traces of the facade, is by now eighteenth-century, preserves a crypt of the 7th-8th centuries; St. Salvatore is an early Christian church of the 5th century, with a circular plan, with additions of the 13th and 15th centuries, built on earlier Roman constructions but independent of them, as recent excavations have shown: an interesting building, covered with a vault, built in the characteristic local sponge stone. Other Romanesque churches: St. Lawrence with two naves, with an apse; St. Christopher with valuable frescoes of the 13th-15th centuries; St. Alb, whose restoration is about to begin. Of the 13th century, subsequently enlarged, is the Romanesque-Gothic St. Francis with a central nave covered with ribbed vaults in exposed stone, and a cycle of 15th-century frescoes with a Dantean subject (the Paradisi chapel). Between the 13th and 15th centuries arose the now restored Augustinian church of St. Peter, with a broad single nave, frescoes often superimposed ranging from Cavallini and Sienese (Lorenzetti) types and Abruzzese influences, to motifs derived from Gozzoli; St. Mary at the Monument near the cemetery, with among other things mannerist frescoes by Ottaviano Nelli of a hagiographic character (the legend of the "Golden Apples"), originates in the same period.

While the patron St. Valentine is greatly venerated in the basilica of the same name, in the Cathedral devotion to the miraculous image of the Madonna of Mercy has been very much alive since the last century. A few kilometers from Terni, toward Stroncone, are the ruins of the ancient abbey of St. Benedict.

Piero Grassini