UGENTO, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Lecce. It has an area of 350 sq km with a population of 87,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed in 33 parishes, served by 72 diocesan priests and 13 regulars; it has a seminary, 4 male religious communities and 18 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 438).
An ancient Messapian center at the extreme tip of Salento, it preserves monuments of that primitive civilization; it felt the influence of Hellenic culture, but lost all importance under Roman rule because of the constant predominance of Otranto and Taranto. It shared the fortunes of these cities, when the dominations of the Lombards, the Byzantines, and then the Normans successively prevailed, interspersed with Muslim invasions that were repeated even in the 16th century. As for its Christian origins, no particulars survive; the Latin element that prevailed at the beginning was followed, from the 8th century, by a period of Byzantine predominance with numerous Greek monasteries which later, under Norman rule, gradually disappeared. As a diocese it is first mentioned in a bull of Innocent III of 23 June 1198 as a suffragan of Otranto, together with Leuca and Lecce; but the list of its bishops begins only with a Lando in 1254. The origins of the bishopric of Leuca are likewise unknown. The anonymous bishop of Leuca, whom Liutprand of Cremona recalls so unfavorably in 968, probably belongs to Byzantine Leucade (S. Maura), certainly not to Leuca (PL 136, 935 ff.). In the 14th century at least the bishop of the place moved to reside at Alessano in the interior of the peninsula, perhaps for greater safety, and the first certain bishop of the episcopatus Leucadiensis et Alexanensis is the Dominican Riccardo, elected on 6 September 1333; the series closes in November 1804, and after a long vacancy the diocese was united to that of U. in 1818, following the Bourbon Concordat with the Holy See. U. continued always to be a suffragan of Otranto; the see remained vacant from 1863 to 1873.
MONUMENTS
The ancient flourishing Uxentum, which had its own mint and army, preserves from the past only a few ruins of megalithic walls. The Cathedral is dedicated to St. Vincent, deacon of Saragossa, patron of the diocese. An interesting building is the 14th-century church of the Madonna del Casale, outside the built-up area, a remnant of an ancient monastic complex now destroyed. The few monuments scattered throughout the diocese are of little importance. At Leuca, near the promontory (the Roman Japygium promontorium), on which stands the Corinthian column commissioned by Filibert of Aragon (1694) as a memorial of the supposed landing and preaching of St. Peter, rises the greatly venerated sanctuary of S. Maria or "De finibus terrae", a Baroque reconstruction (1720) of an older building erected on a temple of Minerva, whose altar is still preserved in the interior. Taurisano preserves a small 14th-century church dedicated to S. Maria della Strada, with a cusped baldachin, a rose window and corbel arches. Presicce, besides the Baroque parish church (1778-81), possesses the church of the Angels, the work of its fellow citizen F. Cito (1596), with a large wooden Crucifix by fra' Pasquale da S. Cesario, and the adjoining convent of the Reformed. At Tricase stands out the spacious mother church (1770) with a rich Baroque choir, and the church of the Dominicans, also Baroque, with two 18th-century canvases.
Of great interest, on the other hand, are the surviving Basilian hermitic crypts, numerous throughout the Salento. The most important to mention is the so-called crypt of the Crucifix near U., trapezoidal and supported by columns, with 14th-century frescoes still well preserved: the Annunciation, two Madonnas with the Child, St. Nicholas, and a fine Christ Blessing that has figurative foreshortenings with strong echoes of Sicilian and Venetian models. Other minor laure are found near Castrignano and Ruffano (crypt of the Carmine with 15th-century frescoes).
Bibliography17 works
Pasquale Testini