TRIGARICO, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in the province of Matera in southern Italy. It has an area of over 1,315 km² with a population of 65,380 inhabitants, almost all Catholic, distributed across 26 parishes served by 58 diocesan priests and 2 regular clergy; it has a minor seminary, 1 male religious community and 15 female communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 430). It is a suffragan of Acerenza and Matera; five titular churches are attached to II.
The first record of 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 impose the Byzantine language, rite, and institutions and to establish a hierarchy dependent on the Patriarch of Constantinople. According to the historian Liutprand (Legatio ad Nicophero, in RIS, II, 1, p. 488 b), by order of Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, Patriarch Polyeuktos assigned to the Archbishop of Otranto five suffragan sees, including that of T. Consequently, it must have had Greek bishops, supported by a Greek clergy and monks who left their mark on the rites and customs. However, when the conflicts between the Lombards and the Byzantines were resolved in the 11th century with the establishment of Norman rule, Latinity regained the upper hand, and T. passed into the ecclesiastical province of Acerenza. But a document by Godano, Archbishop of Acerenza, which speaks of the transfer of T. to the Latin rite, and a bull of Alexander II (1068) concerning the establishment of the ecclesiastical province of Acerenza are of highly doubtful authenticity.
The name of the first bishop of T. appears in two documents of 1068 (Ughelli, VII, cols. 146–48), in which Robert, lord of T. and Count of Montescalpio, donates to Bishop Arnold the two castles of Armenti and Monte Murro with their dependencies. According to Ughelli, the following bishops are Librando or Locobrando (1099) and Robert (1177), who attended the Third Lateran Council in 1179; Gams includes between them a Peter (c. 1090) and an Herbert (1132). The series, however, shows no gaps. Notable among them is Lodovico of Canossa (d. 1515), favored and honored by three popes, entrusted with difficult missions, and later transferred to Bayeux.
In more recent times: G. B. Santorio (1586); P. L. Carafa (1624), created cardinal on March 6, 1645, succeeded in 1646 by his brother P. L. Carafa Jr., a Theatine; F. Crivelli in 1684; F. Pinti in 1792; the see was vacant from 1801 to 1819, when Mgr. P. P. Presicce was appointed (1819–39).
MONUMENTS. – The city, protected by its ancient castle with its tall cylindrical tower, still retains a medieval appearance. However, its major monuments preserve little of antiquity. The Cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed, which seems to have been built on an earlier structure by Robert Guiscard, has only recently regained its original form after the Baroque transformations of 1638 and 1783. The bell tower, with its 13th-century bifora windows and two bas-reliefs from the same period, is genuine; inside, the only noteworthy monument is the tomb of Bishop Diomede Carafa (1639) and a pagan sarcophagus (2nd century AD) now reused in the sacristy. More interesting is the church of St. Clare (1322, later rebuilt in the 16th century) with a fine ceiling and some decent paintings by unknown artists, one of which may be attributed to the local painter P. A. Ferri (17th century), who also frescoed with better results some scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the church of the Carmine. Also noteworthy in St. Clare are the beautiful Chapel of the Crucifix, entirely adorned with frescoes, the 16th-century Porziuncola, and the adjacent Renaissance monastery with some fine works. Still intact in its structure is the building now housing the Seminary, perhaps erected in 1383 during the vacancy caused by the death of Louis of Hungary, with a large triumphal arch adorned with Roman reliefs; the churches of St. Francis (14th century) and St. Anthony of Padua (1479)—the latter with a portal from 1491 and a cloister frescoed by Fr. Sciarra (1646), a pupil of Ferri—retain their genuine architectural schemes despite modern restorations.
Outside the town, the little church of St. Mary of the Olives preserves an excellent Deposition by an unknown 17th-century artist.