Tropea, Diocese of

TROPEA, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Catanzaro, united from 1818 aeque principaliter to the diocese of Nicotera (v. there for the statistical data).

Situated in the territory of the Bruttii, now Calabria, T. has yielded in the last century numerous Christian tombstones of the 4th-5th centuries found in the locality of Torre Lunga and elsewhere, with elements characteristic of the place; there are recorded there a priest Morasis and an Irene "condutrix m(assae) Trapeianae" (cf. Bullett. Archeol. crist., 3rd series, 2 [1877], pp. 85 and 148; G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterr., III, Rome 1877, p. 406; Nuovo Bullett. di Archeol. crist., 6 [1900], p. 271 ff.) who together with the massa Nicoterana certainly formed part of the patrimony of the Bruttii. When the Christian hierarchy was introduced there is unknown. A bishop Lawrence, known in 499 as present at the Roman Council, must be assigned to Treba, not to T. It is supposed instead that the see of Meria or Myria, already "desolate" at the time of St. Gregory I, was transferred to T. This Pontiff in 591 indeed makes mention of a "Monasterium sancti Arcangeli quod Tropeis est constitutum" (Reg., II, 3, ed. P. Ewald, in MGH. Epp., I, 1, p. 102). Bishop John subscribes to the Roman Council of 649 and Theodore to the synodical letter of Pope Agatho of 679. A second Theodore subscribes to the Second Council of Nicaea of 787; and at least at this moment the Greek element is predominant and the see is by now a suffragan of the metropolises of Reggio, like the others of Calabria. During the 9th century the Saracens settled there, and in 885 they were dislodged by Nicephorus Phocas, but in the following century the Byzantines could not prevent further returns; until the Normans settled there. In Nov. 1066 a Calochirius is recorded as bishop, as successor of a Peter, evidently a Greek, but in 1094 a Justin reopens the series of Latin bishops. In Dec. of this year Roger the Norman united with T. the see of Amantea. This place, a Byzantine stronghold at the end of the 7th century, had passed under the dukes of Benevento, from whom it had been taken by the Muslims, who had made it the capital of an emir. The expedition of Nicephorus Phocas in 885 had placed it under the dominion of the Byzantines, and these had established there a bishopric subject to the metropolis of Reggio. Its bishops and vicissitudes are not known, however at the end of the 1400s it was thought to revive at least the memory of it, but without result. In this region too, with the Norman domination, Latinity regained the upper hand, notwithstanding the influence of the Basilian monasteries, gradually supplanted by Cistercians, especially of the Florense Congregation. Withdrawing from the dominion of Catanzaro, T. in 1255 began to govern itself as a commune. Among its bishops, from 27 Dec. 1455 to 9 Sept. 1479, the Pisan Pietro Balbo stands out, a good connoisseur of Greek, from which he published some translations, known through the early Roman printings.

The cathedral church (formerly of S. Maria dei Latini and today of the Madonna di Romania) constitutes the city's greatest monument. It rises on a cemetery area near the sea gate. It results from a lengthening of a church with a central plan of the 6th century which assumed in the 11th-12th century almost its present forms, except for the transept, which was omitted in the restorations of 1926-29. Artistic fragments of the early Middle Ages are collected there. Beside the Duomo and leaning against it rises the ancient bailiwick of the Knights of St. John with an airy Gothic portico of the mid-1200s, above which was the hall of the general assemblies of the patricians and commoners.

At T., on 6 July, the relics are venerated of a St. Domenica (v.) virgin who is believed to have been martyred there, one who must be considered the same person as St. Cyriaca (χυριακή) martyr venerated in the East on the same day or the following. It is certainly a cult introduced by the Byzantines. The bishop of Locri was called of St. Cyriaca in 787, when the see was transferred to Gerace (v.). At Gerace instead was venerated, as happened at Acireale and at Lecce, St. Venera (Lanzoni, p. 339) who in the East was venerated under the name of St. Parasceve. At Rome she was at one time made a Roman martyr. In this case too it is a question of an Eastern cult.

Memory is preserved in T. of the Accademia degli Affaticati, which arose in the Renaissance and became extinct only with the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy. The philosopher Pasquale Galluppi, a native of the place (1770) and died at Naples in 1846, was a member of it. Various distinguished sacred monuments adorn the city, as do also numerous small palaces of patrician families of the 16th and 18th centuries.

Pasquale Toraldo