TRIVENTO, DIOCESE of. — City and diocese in the province of Campobasso. It has an area of 1,500 sq. km. and a population of 98,300 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, distributed among 61 parishes, served by 35 diocesan priests and 27 religious priests; it has a seminary, 1 male and 7 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 432).
The bishop of T. certainly appears in the conflicts between the Lombards and Byzantines during the 10th century, which led to the creation of the metropolitan see of Benevento. In fact, in 947 Pope Agapetus II summoned to Rome Leone, who had had himself elected bishop at T., as Benedetto had at Termoli, in violation of the rights of the metropolitan of Benevento (Jaffé-Wattenbach, no. 3636). In a bull of John XIV from 983 (ibid., no. 3822), on the occasion of the granting of the pallium to Alone of Benevento, T. is listed among the 13 dioceses subject to that metropolitan see, as it is also in another bull of Gregory V from 998, on the occasion of the pallium granted to Archbishop Alfano (ibid., no. 3884). The late account concerning a St. Castus of Trivento (Acta SS. Novembris, III, Brussels 1910, p. 341) has no historical basis: he was probably one of those African martyrs whose cult spread widely in the cities of southern Italy. And it is highly doubtful that the Dominicus Trive or Trivensis who attended the Roman Council of 861 under Nicholas I (Jaffé-Wattenbach, I, p. 343) and that of Ravenna in 877 (ibid., p. 394) can be assigned to T. A sound hypothesis (Lanzoni, I, p. 378) makes the bishopric of T. the successor to that of Aufidena, mentioned in the letters of Gelasius I at the end of the 5th century, which was included within its territory.
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