TRICARICO, DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the province of Matera in southern Italy. It has an area of more than 1,315 sq. km., with a population of 65,380 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, distributed among 26 parishes served by 58 diocesan priests and 2 religious priests; it has a minor seminary, 1 male religious community and 15 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 430). It is suffragan to Acerenza and Matera; its patron is St. Potito.
The first information concerning the Church of T. is connected with the efforts of the Byzantine emperors in the 10th century, during the period of Byzantine rule in Apulia, to establish there the Byzantine language, rite, and institutions, and to create a hierarchy dependent on the patriarch of Constantinople. According to the historian Liutprand (Legatio ad Nicephor., in RIS, II, 1, p. 488 b), by order of the emperor Nicephorus Phocas, the patriarch Policetus gave the archbishop of Otranto five suffragan sees, among them that of T. Consequently, it must at that time have had Greek bishops, supported by Greek clergy and monks, who did not fail to leave traces in the rites and customs. However, when, amid the conflicts between the Lombards and Byzantines, Norman rule prevailed during the 11th century, Latinity regained the upper hand and T. became part of the ecclesiastical province of Acerenza. But a document of Godano, archbishop of Acerenza, which speaks of the transfer of T. to the Latin rite, and a bull of Alexander II (1068) concerning the constitution of the ecclesiastical province of Acerenza, are of highly doubtful authenticity.
The name of the first bishop of T. occurs in two documents of 1068 (Ughelli, VII, cols. 146–48), by which Roberto, lord of T. and count of Montescaglioso, donated to Bishop Arnoldo the two castles of Armenti and Monte Murro, together with their appurtenances. According to Ughelli, there followed Librando or Leobando (1099) and Roberto (1177), who was present at the Lateran Council of 1179; Gams inserts between them a Pietro (ca. 1090) and an Erberto (1132). The series, in any case, contains no gaps. Particularly noteworthy among them is Lodovico di Canossa (Sv.) 1515, favored and honored by three Pontiffs, entrusted with difficult missions, and later transferred to Bayeux.
In more recent times there were G. B. Santorio (1586); P. L. Carafa (1624), made a cardinal on 6 March 1645, succeeded in 1646 by his brother P. L. Carafa jr., a Theatine; F. Crivelli in 1684; F. Pinti in 1792; the see remained vacant from 1801 to 1819, when Msgr. P. P. Presicce was appointed (1819–39).
MONUMENTS. - The appearance of the city, protected by the ancient castle with its high cylindrical tower, is still medieval today. But its principal monuments preserve very little that is ancient. The Cathedral, dedicated to the B. V. ASSENZA, which seems to have arisen on an earlier building through the work of Roberto il Guiscardo, has only recently regained its original forms, after the Baroque transformations of 1638 and 1783. The bell tower, with its thirteenth-century bifora and two reliefs from the period, is genuine; inside, on the other hand, the only monument of interest is the tomb of the bishop Diomede Carafa (1639) and a pagan sarcophagus (2nd century A.D.), now reused in the sacristy. More interesting is the church of S. Chiara (1322, subsequently rebuilt in the 1500s), with a fine ceiling and some respectable paintings by unknown artists, one of which seems attributable to the local painter P. A. Ferri (17th century), who frescoed, with greater success, several scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the Carmine church. Also in S. Chiara, noteworthy are the beautiful chapel of the Concifisso, entirely decorated with frescoes, the sixteenth-century Porziuncola, and the adjoining Renaissance monastery with some good works. Still intact in its structure is the building that now houses the Seminary, erected perhaps in 1383 for the arrival of Lodovico di Ungheria, with a great triumphal arch adorned with Roman reliefs; genuine in their basic design, despite modern alterations, are the churches of S. Francesco (14th century) and S. Antonio da Padova (1479), the latter with a portal dated 1491 and a cloister frescoed by Fr. Sciarra (1646), a pupil of Ferri.
Outside the town, the small church of S. Maria degli Ulivi preserves an excellent Deposizione by an unknown seventeenth-century painter.