Tolentino, Diocese of

TOLENTINO, Diocese of. - In the province of Macerata, at 217 m. above sea level, on the left bank of the Chienti.

Over an area of more than 105 sq. km. it has a population of 17,350 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, distributed in 15 parishes, served by 27 diocesan priests and 23 regulars; it has a seminary, 2 male religious communities and 7 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 277). The diocese is a suffragan of Fermo and has as its patron St. Catervus.

According to the humanist Filelfo, a native of Tolentino, the city would have been founded by Greek peoples, deriving its name from Θόλος (?) which can mean round, and indicate the shape of the primitive city. The locality was inhabited since prehistoric times, but T. is very probably of Picene origin; it was a Roman colony and municipium; its importance asserted itself locally in the 11th-12th centuries, with the acquisition and subjection of the neighboring castles. Constituted as a commune, it adhered to the provisions of Card. d'Albornoz, who brought the lands of the Marches back to obedience to the Church; afterward, after various vicissitudes and lordships (the Varano, Fr. Sforza), it passed definitively to the Church, whose fortunes it followed.

The first bishop of whom there is record is Basilius, who is found among the subscribers of the Council in the time of Felix III (a. 487), then of the Council of Gelasius (a. 495), of Symmachus (aa. 499 and 502). Some historians consider Probianus as bishop of T. at the end of the 4th century, remembered in one of the inscriptions of the sarcophagus of Catervus (end of the 4th century), as the one who would have baptized Catervus, his wife Settimia Severina and her brother, Bassus. After Basilius no other bishops of T. are known, it having passed under the dependence of those of Camerino, until Sixtus V, who, with the bull Super universas of 10 Dec. 1586, raised « oppidum Tolentini in civitatem et collegiatam ecclesiam S. Mariae in cathedralem », with the castrum Colmurani and the villas Paterno, S. Angelo, S. Andrea, uniting the renewed diocese with that of Macerata (v.), decreeing « that the bishop pro tempore of Macerata be bishop of the two united churches, and although he be called bishop of Macerata, nevertheless in letters and dispatches relating to the city and diocese of T. he must ordinarily sign himself bishop of Macerata and T. ».

The present cathedral of T., dedicated to the Assumption and to St. Catervus, dates back to the 8th century, rebuilt in the 13th century (portal, bell tower), completely renovated in the 19th century; united to it is the oratory of St. Catervus (15th-century frescoes) in which is the famous sarcophagus with the bodies mentioned above, carved on its four faces, with the original lid, ordered by « Septimia Severina C. F. Marito dulcissimo ac sibi Sarcofagum Et Panteum Cum Tricoro disposuit Et Perfecit ». The mausoleum with three apses and the sarcophagus were executed in forty-three days. On the front of the sarcophagus: the Good Shepherd and the Princes of the Apostles; in the antefixes of the lid, the busts of Catervus and of Settimia; on the right face, the Magi and Herod; on the left the Epiphany; on the rear face, the busts of the two spouses, with hands joined; monograms, doves, and other symbols adorn the sarcophagus, on which various inscriptions in prose and verse are engraved.

Much venerated in T. is St. Nicholas (v.). The basilica of the Saint dates back to the 13th century; renovated in the Baroque style, it presents on the exterior the characteristic portal by Nanni di Bartolo, a Florentine (15th century); in the interior the « Cappellone », in which is a cycle of frescoes with episodes from the life of Jesus Christ and of St. Nicholas, of the Giottesque-Riminese school, which is attributed to G. Baronzio of Rimini (14th century) and his school. There too is a marble ark of 1474; below, a modern crypt in Gothic style, where the body of St. Nicholas is preserved. The adjacent cloister is notable for the variety of the arches of the columns and the supporting pillars (13th century).

To the history of T. are linked the Treaty concluded there in 1797 between Pope Pius VI and the Directory of the French Republic, with Napoleon; and the battle known as that of the Rancia (from the name of the castle, 12th-14th centuries), of 1815 between the Austrians and G. Murat.

Carlo Carletti

THE TREATY OF TOLENTINO

Stipulated between the Holy See and the French Republic on 19 February 1797. Having defeated the Austro-Sardinians in the spring of 1796 and laid siege to Mantua, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the papal Legations with his troops as well, forcing Pope Pius VI into the honorable armistice of Bologna of 23 June, by which the Pontiff — in addition to the payment of twenty million and the surrender of one hundred works of art — had to consent to the occupation of Bologna, Ferrara and the city of Ancona by the French. During the summer Napoleon urged the stipulation of a regular peace treaty, sending to Rome the archbishop of Ferrara, Cardinal Alessandro Mattei, but the papal government trusted in the Austrian recovery through the announced descent of Marshal Würmser's army. Both Würmser and later Alvinzi were defeated and Mantua forced to surrender on 2 February 1797: on the same date the French resumed hostilities against the Papal State, scattering at Castel Bolognese, after an honorable resistance on the Senio, the scanty papal troops placed under the orders of Gen. Colli-Marchini. Pius VI was then obliged to seek a new suspension of arms and sent to T. an embassy, of which Cardinal Mattei, the duke Braschi-Onesti, the marquis Camillo Massimo and Mons. Luigi Caleppi were members. The pontifical representatives were furnished with the prescribed powers for the signing of a treaty; not so the French ones, who were Napoleon himself and Cacault. Against the opinion of his collaborators, Mattei was induced to sign the instrument of peace. By it, not only did the Apostolic See undertake to pay a further indemnity of thirty million and to consent to the French occupation of Ancona, but it ceded to France the legations of Bologna, Ferrara and Romagna, to be annexed to the Cisalpine Republic, as well as Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, which became an integral part of the French Republic.

In the Venetian Conclave of 1800, the Sacred College declared the Treaty of T. null and void because it had been extorted by violence. - See plate XXIV.

Renzo U. Montini