Trapani, Diocese of

TRAPANI, Diocese of. - Diocese and provincial capital city in western Sicily. It has an area of about 1090 sq. km., with a population of 196,158 inhabitants, of whom 195,180 are Catholics, distributed in 47 parishes served by 109 diocesan priests and 53 regulars; it has a seminary, 13 male religious communities and 49 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 429). The diocese is a suffragan of Palermo. The Cathedral is dedicated to St. Lawrence.

The city rises at the foot of Monte Erice, facing the Egadi Islands, and was called Drepana because of the sickle shape of its harbor. It was the maritime emporium of Erix (today Monte S. Giuliano). To this extreme edge of Sicily is linked the Trojan legend which, in its later reworking (particularly Virgilian), has Anchises die there and attributes to Aeneas the founding of the temple of Venus Erycina, on whose ruins the present sanctuary of the Assumption (15th century) was rebuilt. T. was fortified by the Carthaginian Hamilcar; its waters witnessed the defeat of the Roman consul P. Claudius Pulcher. After the battle of the Egadi (241 B.C.) it fell into the power of the Romans, who made it a consular city. It was subsequently subject to the Vandals of Genseric, from whom it was taken by Belisarius. Occupied in 844 by the Arabs, it later experienced Norman, Swabian, Angevin and Spanish domination. At T. landed in 1283 Peter III of Aragon, called by the Sicilians to the crown of the island after the revolt of the Vespers; in 1535 Charles V stayed there after the victorious enterprise of Tunis. From the Aragonese onward the city followed the historical vicissitudes of the rest of Sicily.

The date of the erection of the diocese is not known; from the moment, however, when it passed under Constantinople (9th century) there is no further record of T. as an episcopal see. It was re-established by Gregory XVI with the bull Ut animarum pastores of 31 May 1844, detaching it from the diocese of Mazzara (v.). A native of T. was Cardinal Enrico Beccatelli (12th century).

Enzo Navarra

ART

Architecture. - Suggestive ruins of Phoenician architecture are found at Motya, a small island a little south of the city. The oldest construction, however, is the Colombara, a fortress guarding the port, already existing in the time of the Elymians and continually rebuilt; the main framework of what remains of it is from the Norman period. Clearer evidence exists of Chiaramonte architecture: the basilica of the Annunziata with the appearance of a stronghold on its north side, the church of S. Agostino and the fountain of Saturn (1342). To the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century belongs the cappella dei Pescatori of the Annunziata, in the Catalan taste. One also notices here and there in the streets particular "fan-shaped" round arches on low pillars (the arch of the Palazzo del Banco di Sicilia). To the second half of the fifteenth century belong the cappella dei Marini of the Annunziata, the Palazzo Cismbra (Giudecca) and casa Pilati. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are amply represented by the churches of the Collegio dei Gesuiti (Francesco Pinna), of the Badia Nuova, of the Purgatorio, of S. Lorenzo (G. B. Amico) and by the Palazzi Cavaretta, at the end of the Corso, Xirinda and the convent of the Carmelites, now the Museo Pepoli.

Sculpture. - The oldest and most notable work existing in the city is the Madonna di T., from the school of Nino Pisano (fourteenth century). Works of the early years of the sixteenth century, on the other hand, are: the portal of the cappella della Madonna della Annunziata, the baldachin of the Carmine, that of S. Maria di Gesù and a triptych now in the Museum, all works of Antonello Gagini.

Pietro Orlandini, a notable wood sculptor of the seventeenth century, left a cabinet in the sacristy of the College and another now in the Museum, as well as a Crucifix in the church there are also the canvases of Andrea Carreca, a local painter. A beautiful canvas of the Flemish school is found at the Badia Nuova. The minor arts were particularly developed in T. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: jewelry, engraving of ivories and corals and ceramics. Worth remembering are the very rich presepe and the coral Crucifix of the Museum; numerous antependia, lamps, sacred furnishings, cameos, presepe figurines, works of Tipa, of Laudicina and of Matera, the majolicas existing in the Museum and in some private collections. - See pl. XLIV.

Maria Pia Cosentino