TROPEA, DIOCESE OF. - A city and diocese in the province of Catanzaro, united since 1818 *aeque principaliter* with the diocese of Nicotera (see there for statistical data).
Located in the territory of the Bruzi, now Calabria, Tropea has yielded in the last century numerous Christian inscriptions from the 4th–5th centuries found in the locality of Torre Lunga and elsewhere, featuring characteristic local elements; mention is made of a priest Morasis and an Irene “condutrix m(assae) Trapeianae” (cf. *Bullett. Archeol. crist.*, 3rd ser., 2 [1877], pp. 85 and 148; G. B. De Rossi, *Roma sotterr.*, III, Rome 1877, p. 406; *Nuovo Bullett. di Archeol. crist.*, 6 [1900], pp. 271ff.), who, together with the Nicoteran *massa*, certainly formed part of the patrimony of the Bruzi. When the Christian hierarchy was introduced there is unknown. A bishop named Laurence known in 499 as present at the Roman Council is to be assigned to Treba, not to Tropea. It is instead supposed that the see of Maria or Myria, already “desolate” in the time of St Gregory I, was transferred to Tropea. In 591 this Pope indeed speaks of a “Monasterium sancti Arcangeli quod Tropcis est constitutum” (*Reg.*, 11, 3, ed. P. Ewald, in *MGH, Epp.*, I, 1, p. 102). Bishop John subscribed to the Roman Council of 649 and Theodore to the synodal letter of Pope Agatho in 679. A second Theodore subscribed to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787; and at least by this time the Greek element was prevalent and the see was already a suffragan of the metropolis of Reggio, like the others in Calabria. During the 9th century the Saracens settled there and were driven out by Nicephorus Phocas in 885, but in the following century the Byzantines could not prevent their further returns; until the Normans established themselves. In November 1066 a Calochirius is recorded as bishop, successor to a Peter—evidently a Greek—but in 1094 a Justinus reopens the series of Latin bishops. In December of that year Roger the Norman united with Tropea the see of Amantea. This place, a Byzantine stronghold at the end of the 7th century, had passed under the dukes of Benevento, to whom the Saracens had ceded it after making it the capital of an emirate. Nicephorus Phocas’s expedition in 885 had placed it under Byzantine rule, and the Byzantines had established there a bishopric subject to the metropolis of Reggio. Its bishops and history are unknown, yet by the late 1400s an attempt was made at least to restore its memory, though without result. Even in this region, with the Norman domination, Latinity regained the upper hand despite the influence of Basilian monasteries, gradually supplanted by Cistercians, especially of the Florense Congregation. Breaking free from the dominion of Catanzaro in 1255, Tropea began to govern itself as a commune. Among its bishops, the Pisan Pietro Balbo (from 27 December 1455 to 9 September 1479) stands out for his knowledge of Greek, from which he published several translations noted in early Roman editions.
The cathedral church (once of S. Maria dei Latini and today of the Madonna di Romania) is the city’s principal monument. It stands on a cemetery area near the sea gate. It results from an extension of a centrally planned church of the 6th century that assumed nearly its present form in the 11th–12th centuries, except for the transept omitted in the restorations of 1026–29. It contains artistic fragments from the early Middle Ages. Adjoining the Duomo and built against it is the ancient bailiwick of the Knights of St John, with an airy Gothic portico of the mid-1200s above which was the hall for the general assemblies of nobles and commoners.
At Tropea, on 6 July, the relics of St Domenica (see) the virgin are venerated; she is said to have been martyred there, and she is to be identified with St Ciriaca (χυρταχή), a martyr venerated in the East on the same day or the following. This is certainly a cult introduced by the Byzantines. The bishop of Locri was called after St Ciriaca in 787, when the see was transferred to Gerace (see). At Gerace, instead, St Venera (Lanzoni, p. 339) was venerated, as at Acireale and Lecce; in the East she was venerated under the name of St Parasece. In Rome she was once venerated as a Roman martyr. This is again a case of an Oriental cult.
Memory is preserved in Tropea of the Accademia degli Affaticati, which arose in the Renaissance and died out only with the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy. Among its members was the philosopher Pasquale Galluppi, a native of the place (1770) who died in Naples in 1846. Various notable sacred monuments adorn the city, as do numerous small palaces of noble families from the 16th and 18th centuries.