TORTONA, Diocese of. - City in the province of Alessandria, in Piedmont. It has an area of 2,120 sq km with a population of 280,000 inhabitants, of whom 279,000 are Catholics distributed among 317 parishes, some of which lie in the territory of the civil provinces of Pavia and Genoa; it has 490 diocesan priests and 130 regulars: it has two seminaries, the minor one on the hills of Stazzano in the Scrivia Valley, the major one in T.; it has 23 male religious communities and 125 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 427).
The city is situated on the right bank of the Scrivia stream, at the foot of the hill that still shows scanty surviving ruins of Roman and medieval origin, and the tower of the ancient Castle. It is the ancient Dertona, considered by some a city of the Ligurians, by others, less accurately, of the Taurini. It was connected with Genoa, Piacenza, Turin and Acqui by important roads, among them the Via Postumia and a branch of the Aemilia. It was perhaps already a Roman colony (Velleius Paterculus) around 120 B.C., saw the camp of Decimus Brutus in 43 B.C., then became an Augustan colony, with the name of Italia Dertona, and was governed by duumvirs, enrolled in the Pontine tribe and included in the IX Regio. By virtue of its geographical position, at the obligatory confluence of important consular roads, it enjoyed successive prosperous developments and economic flourishing; for this reason it was a contested land, involved in the clash of peoples and in the vicissitudes of factions. With the fall of the Western Empire (494) it passed successively under the dominion of the Goths, the Greeks (553), the Lombards (624), the Franks (774). Its bishops held offices of importance at the court of the kings of Italy and of the Ottos. Bishop Otto in 1080 was at Brixen among the electors of the antipope Clement III; from the beginning of the 12th century the bishop of T. also held the authority of count. But against this adherence to the imperial party stands, during this same age, the constitution of T. as a free commune. It consequently found itself in conflict with Pavia, an imperial city, and experienced, to the point of destruction, the wrath of Barbarossa (1154). Risen again from its ruins and allied with the Guelph cities of the Lombard League, it took part in the subsequent struggles against Barbarossa, so that, after Legnano (1176), following the Treaties of Venice (1177) and of Constance (1183), it regained possessions and power. Then, as the Communes revived, with the new factions reviving the old ones of Guelphs and Ghibellines, it fell under the Visconti (1313-1447), then, for a brief interval, under France, then under the Sforza until 1530; nor did it ever rise again as a free city. It became in fact successively, by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, a possession of Spain (1535-1700) and of Austria until 1738, when it was incorporated into Piedmont and, with it, into France (1796), to return, with Piedmont, to the kings of Sardinia. Its history thus enters the Risorgimento phase. T. has for its coat of arms the rampant lion, on a red field with a white rose, with the motto: « Pro tribus donis similis Dertona leonis »; three gifts, strength, pride, generosity, make T. like a lion (« ter dona-dertona-Tortona »).
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On the first spread of Christianity in T. particular notices are lacking and it is best to refer to what is generally known regarding Piedmont (v.). The Christian inscriptions belong to the 5th-6th centuries and traces of a Christian cemetery have been found outside the ancient Porta Ticinese. An ancient tradition points to a Marziano, a local holy martyr, as the first bishop of T. Probably the « plebs » of T. was one of those included under the jurisdiction of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, and the first local bishops were St. Innocent and St. Exsuperantius, who was present at Aquileia in 381. Quintus or Quintianus was bishop in 451, an unknown bishop is mentioned by St. Gregory the Great in 599. But the series of bishops has many uncertainties and gaps (F. Savio, Gli antichi vescovi d'Italia: Il Piemonte, Turin 1899, p. 377 ff.; Lanzoni, II, pp. 820-28).
Pio Paschini
The diocese of T. underwent suppression in 1803, when it had to pass under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Casale Monferrato, of Alessandria and, to a lesser extent, of other sees. Reconstituted in 1817, it was made a suffragan of Genoa.
The city must once have been rich in monuments and abbeys; but the devastations of the barbarians and of Barbarossa, and the subsequent wars, destroyed its entire artistic heritage. What remains is far too little in comparison with its antiquity and its history: some bronzes, various objects, some marbles (among them the sarcophagus of Helius Sabinus [3rd century]), collected in the Civic Museum, together with a collection of early Christian tombstones, which is the richest in Piedmont. The ruins too are scanty, for the most part incorporated into other buildings. Among the medieval churches there remains, in the city, the Romanesque one of S. Maria dei Canali, mentioned in documents of 1154 and 1196, while the others, though bearing the titles of the ancient ones, are late. The Cathedral, in late 16th-century style, restored in 1938, dates back to 1583 and replaced the superb Innocentian cathedral of S. Lorenzo, of the 4th century, built on the Castle by Bishop St. Innocent, and used by the Spaniards as a fortress, which a thunderbolt, falling among the powder, destroyed in 1607. Interesting, in the hamlet of Rivalta Scrivia, is the Cistercian abbey with the abbey church of S. Maria Assunta, a characteristic Gothic-Romanesque construction (1180) with 16th-century frescoes by Franceschino Basilio, and with adjoining monastic buildings of various ages and styles, among them the chapter hall in early Gothic. In the city, in the parish church of S. Matteo, a 14th-century panel of the Madonna with Child by Barnaba da Modena; in the episcopal palace, a triptych by Macrino d'Alba (1499); in S. Maria dei Canali, a Nativity of the Leonardesque school. Noteworthy, outside the city, are the ancient collegiate churches of Sale (S. Maria), of Casei Gerola, of Castelnuovo Scrivia (with a Leonardesque Last Supper by Aless. Berri), all in Romanesque style; of Pontecurone (S. Maria Assunta), in Gothic-Romanesque, with frescoes only partly uncovered. The collegiate church of Broni preserves valuable ancient tapestries and a rich library with rare editions and precious incunabula. Sarezzano possesses the « Codex purpureus » of inestimable value (5th-6th century) containing the Gospel of St. John (cod. 3). From the cathedral of Voghera came the famous 16th-century Gothic ciborium in chased silver, today preserved in the Sforza Castle Museum in Milan.
Illustrious sons of T. are Fr. Michele da Carbonara, Fr. Luigi Orione (v.), the maestro Lorenzo Perosi and Fr. A. Vaccari. - See plate XXXIII.
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