TRIESTE and CAPODISTRIA, DIOCESES OF. – Cities and dioceses in the Free Territory of T.
The portion of the diocese located in Italy covers an area of 730 sq. km. with 380,000 inhabitants, of whom 373,000 are Catholics, distributed across 59 parishes served by 167 diocesan priests and 69 regular clergy; it has 12 male and 49 female religious communities.
The portion located in Croatia has a population of 60,000 Catholics distributed across 60 parishes served by 44 diocesan priests and 5 regular clergy; and the portion located in Slovenia has 40,000 inhabitants in 30 parishes served by 24 diocesan priests (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 431). It is a suffragan of Gorizia. Leo XII on 30 June 1828 united «aeque principaliter» with T. Capodistria (v.).
I. HISTORY OF T
Tergeste is the ancient name of the hill-fort that became a Roman colony around 46 BC, flourishing especially in the second half of the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd. The Lombard invasion weighed heavily upon the city, as did the Frankish occupation, which introduced the first Slavs into the countryside toward the end of the 8th century. Lothair II in the mid-10th century granted the bishops of T. seigneurial powers over the city, which was then subjected, along with the bishopric itself, by Henry IV on 20 July 1081 to the feudal authority of the Patriarch of Aquileia. Gradually limiting episcopal rights, T. achieved full communal autonomy under the high lordship of the patriarchate in 1295. In 1202 T. together with Muggia paid tribute to Venice; yet this did not prevent it from entering into open conflict with Venice, supported by the patriarch, and from resisting similar attempts from 1369 to 1380, until in 1380 it joined Friuli, and then in 1382 passed under the dominion of the Duke of Austria, without however losing its communal institutions. Frequent internal strife brought T. to extreme desolation in 1469; but then the misfortunes of Venice favored the city with flourishing trade with the hinterland and the East, until Charles VI in 1717 granted it a free port and free navigation in the Adriatic, privileges later expanded by Maria Theresa. The Napoleonic upheaval was brief and made the weight of Austria felt, which from 1813 onward rendered the expression of the city’s national consciousness even more arduous. Union with Italy in 1918, while depriving it of commercial vigor, animated its shipyards with fervent activity.II. FREE TERRITORY OF T
The establishment of this Territory was arranged under Articles 21 and 22 of Section II of the peace treaty imposed on Italy by the United Nations and signed by Italy in Paris on 10 February 1947, as a compromise between opposing Allied and Soviet positions, without regard for the wishes of the populations concerned or their nationality.
The new unit thus created consists of a strip of territory along the coast of the Gulf of T. and northern Istria, from the mouth of the Timavo to that of the Quieto, measuring in all 718 sq. km. The frontier, which begins on the Italo-Yugoslav border just east of Monfalcone and ends east of Cittanova, is not based on any physical features or ethnic and economic considerations. In its northern part, the Free Territory of T. extends over typically karst terrain with sparse population, behind the large urban agglomeration of T.; in its southern part it embraces a zone of excellent agricultural land in the hinterland of the coast between T. and Pirano, and then another karst tract, consisting of a plateau averaging 200 m. in elevation, cut by river valleys, including that of the Quieto. The entire coastline south of T. gives way to a series of maritime centers of some importance (Capodistria, Isola d’Istria, Pirano, Umago, Cittanova), ethnically distinctly Italian.
The Free Territory of T. had (1951) 380,000 inhabitants, of whom 84% were Italian. The urban center of T. (277,000 inhabitants) alone absorbs almost two-thirds of this population; the overall density is very high (529 inhabitants per sq. km.), but it declines markedly in the Istrian sector (152 inhabitants per sq. km.).
The origin and structure of the Free Territory of T. preclude its being regarded as a self-contained political-economic entity, not only because of its special international status, but above all because it cannot be conceived apart from the neighboring regions, with which it forms a single body and from which it essentially draws its lifeblood. The very existence of a major urban center like T. could not be sustained by the resources of the Free Territory alone; both commerce (the port) and, even more, industry that has developed alongside it and long flourished there (metallurgy, shipbuilding, food processing, etc.) presuppose a far broader function that the borders imposed by the 1947 Treaty have not yet succeeded in negating.
The difficulties arising, so far as Italo-Yugoslav relations are concerned, from the establishment of the Free Territory were further aggravated by the division of the Territory itself into two zones, one (Zone A) occupied by Anglo-American troops, the other (Zone B) by Yugoslav troops. The first, which measures only 233 sq. km. but includes T. (with the inhabited centers of Muggia, S. Dorligo, and Duino: altogether 305,000 inhabitants, i.e. 80% of the entire population of the Territory), has in practice been returned to Italian administration, albeit under Allied control, while the second (south of Muggia; 495 sq. km. with 75,000 inhabitants, including the centers of Pirano, Capodistria, Isola d’Istria, Buie, and Umago) is now in fact incorporated into the Yugoslav state.
The permanent Statute of the Free Territory of T. stipulates that the independence and integrity of the Territory itself, demilitarized and declared neutral, are guaranteed by the United Nations Security Council. However, the existence of the Territory as a political unit is limited by the understanding that it must revert to Italian sovereignty, in accordance with the proposal made by the governments of the U.S.A., Great Britain, and France to the U.S.S.R. in March 1948. On 8 October 1953 the governments of the U.S.A. and Britain decided to withdraw from Zone A, handing over its military and civil administration to Italy, without prejudice to Italy’s recognized rights over Zone B.
### III. Diocese
The circumstances of the introduction of Christianity to T. are unknown; it must have arrived from Aquileia. The first known bishop is Frugiferus, around 549, but the diocese must be older, originally part of the metropolitan jurisdiction of Aquileia and later of Grado. Severus, probably Frugiferus’s successor, played a notable role in the Schism of the Three Chapters, later abjured by his successor Firmus in 602. With the Frankish occupation of Istria, T. was removed from the metropolitan see of Grado and placed under that of Aquileia. Around 1177, Alexander III decided to make C. (q.v.) and its territory a separate diocese, which was implemented on July 5, 1186, until it passed under the new archbishop of Gorizia in 1751 (from which it was absorbed in 1788–89). It had jurisdiction over the ancient territory of the Roman colony; in 1790, the territory of Pèdena, a small but ancient diocese in the interior of Istria, was added to II. Leo XII, on June 30, 1828, also united the territory of the suppressed diocese of Cittanova, while that of C. was united with the principal see. At present, political conditions and Yugoslav pressure restrict the diocese’s direct activity to Zone A of the so-called Free Territory.
Among the prelates of T. to be remembered are E. S. Piccolomini, later Pius II, who defended the city from destruction; P. Ponomo (1924–46), a skilled diplomat; and A. Rapicio (1567–73), an elegant humanist. The diocese, which had a seminary in C., suppressed by the Yugoslav occupiers, now has a modern seminary in T., established in 1950 through the efforts of Bishop A. Santin. Reflective of some aspects of the population of this commercial city is the presence, in addition to a synagogue, of a Greek Orthodox church, one of the Serbian Illyrian rite, a Lutheran, an Anglican, an Adventist, and a Waldensian church. T. has a militant Catholic weekly: *Vita Nuova*.
### IV. Art
Of the Roman city, with its streets crossing even on the slope of a hill, a well-preserved gate remains, the Augustan Arch of Riccardo. Also visible are the forum and the basilica (very ruined, Trajanic period), and nearby a propylaeum (Domitianic period), which stood before the Capitol and was partly incorporated into the early Christian basilica. Also Trajanic is the theater, outside the walls, near the sea.
The cathedral, S. Giusto, the symbol of the city, preserves traces of the great early Christian episcopal basilica, rectangular, tripartite (late 5th century), with an apse added by Bishop Frugiferus (mid-6th century). Also from the 5th century may be the basilica discovered in 1825 in Via Madonna del Mare (near the open-air cemetery). A paleo-Christian seat under S. Silvestro, a rectangular basilica of the 11th century, now Waldensian, is not confirmed. From this period dates the reconstruction of the Cathedral (Assumption) in smaller dimensions, flanked by a square chapel with a cross inscribed in a dome, in which the body of the patron saint, S. Giusto, was preserved (a unique example in northern Italy). At the end of the 1300s, the two buildings were merged into the present cathedral, with its beautiful rose window in the gabled façade.
Testimonies of contemporary civil architecture from the 1300s and 1400s are lost. In painting, of high
Rom. 16:12 as women “who labored for the Lord,” perhaps as deaconesses (R. Cornely). According to the *Martyrologium Romanum* (Nov. 10), which depends on the Acts of Paul and Thecla, they were two sisters converted by Paul, along with Thecla, at Iconium.
In the columbaria of the house of Caesar in Rome, these names were found: cf. CIL VI, 486 (Tryphosa), 5035, 5343 (Tryphanea). In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, mention is made of a Queen Tryphena, who protected St. Thecla at Antioch in Pisidia. This Tryphena is probably to be identified with the homonymous daughter of Pelomenes I, king of part of Lycaonia and Cilicia, wife of Cotys, king of Thrace, and mother of Pelomenes II, king of Pontus. She was a descendant of Mark Antony and a distant relative of the emperor Claudius. Her brother Pelomenes embraced Judaism.