URBANIA and SANT'ANGELO IN VADO, DIOCESE OF. – Cities and diocese in the province of Pesaro (Marche) with the episcopal see in URBANIA; suffraganeates of Urbino.
URBANIA. – The diocese of URBANIA has an area of about 193 sq. km. with a population of 12,275 inhabitants, almost all Catholic, distributed in 42 parishes, served by 40 diocesan priests and 6 regulars; it has a seminary, 2 male religious communities and 8 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 438).
The diocese of URBANIA was erected on 18 February 1635 and united *aeque et principaliter* with SANT'ANGELO IN VADO. The city, under the name of CASTEL DELLE RIPE, is remembered as a feudal Benedictine abbey of S. CRISTOFORO DEL PONTE (on the Metauro) since the 13th century. In 1225, in fact, the abbot of S. CRISTOFORO granted CASTEL DELLE RIPE in enfiteusis to the commune of Città di Castello, on condition that it rebuild it after its destruction by the Ghibelline Urbanians. This pact aroused the anger of Urbino and the Feltraschi. The alliance concluded in 1253 between Guido da Montefeltro and Città di Castello was of no avail. In 1277 Galasso da Montefeltro attacked CASTEL DELLE RIPE and razed it to the ground again. The papal rector of Romagna, Guglielmo Durante, sent by Martin IV, took charge of its reconstruction and the new castle, built not on the hill but on the plain of the Metauro, was named CASTEL DURANTE after its founder. The Brancaleoni exercised sovereignty over it until Cardinal Albornoz reconquered it for the Church in 1359. In 1377 the Brancaleoni obtained it again as a vicariate, while they were papal rectors of the Massa Trabaria. They were succeeded, under Martin V, by the Montefeltro, who were invested with the county of CASTEL DURANTE and held it thereafter as Dukes of Urbino until 1631, the year of the death of the last duke, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, which occurred in CASTEL DURANTE; from then on it became an integral part of the Papal State.
Spiritually, the locality was, from its origins, subject to the bishop of Urbino. In 1393 Boniface IX, removing the abbey from the Benedictines, gave it in commendam to Cardinal Bartolomeo de Ulariis and on 8 March 1402 he governed it as a *nullius dioecesis*, withdrawing it from the jurisdiction of the diocese of Urbino and aggregating to it the territories of CASTEL DURANTE, SANT'ANGELO IN VADO and SASSOCORVARO.
Among the commendatories of CASTEL DURANTE, special mention must be made of Cardinal Bessarion (v.), who fostered a true flourishing of good works and grand enterprises in the abbey and donated to it the relic of the humerus of St. Christopher the Martyr; Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who ascended the supreme pontificate under the name of Paul III; Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who worked so hard for the erection of the diocese and saw his work crowned with success on 18 February 1635, the day on which Urban VIII conferred upon CASTEL DURANTE the honour of a diocese and city, naming it URBANIA after himself. To the new diocese was annexed the nearby *nullius* archpriestry of Mercatello sul Metauro, while the city of SANT'ANGELO IN VADO was also erected into a diocese and united *aeque et principaliter* with URBANIA. The first bishop of the united dioceses was Onorato Onorati of Jesi.
The city, important for its ancient production of ceramics, has some interesting buildings: the fragmentary medieval fortress; the 13th-century church of S. Francesco; the Romanesque church of the Dead; the church of the Corpus Domini with frescoes by Raffaellino del Colle; the Palace of the Dukes of Urbino, built by the Brancaleoni in the 13th century and transformed in the 16th. On the square situated at the entrance to the city towards the north stands a high column with the statue of St. Christopher, patron of the city and the diocese.
There are numerous monasteries in the diocese, among which that of the Capuchin nuns in Mercatello, erected in the house where St. Veronica Giuliani was born on 27 December 1660; she became a Capuchin nun in Città di Castello and died there on 9 July 1727.
SANT'ANGELO IN VADO. – The diocese of SANT'ANGELO IN VADO has an area of about 93 sq. km. with a population of 5,450 inhabitants, all Catholic, distributed in 19 parishes, served by 17 diocesan priests and 3 regulars; it has a seminary, 2 male religious communities and 8 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 438).
It stands on the site of ancient TIFERNUM METAUENSE in trans-Apennine Umbria, a famous city belonging to the Crustuminian tribe, seat of a *Flamen*, mentioned by Pliny (*Hist. natur.*, III, ch. 14) and by Ptolemy Claudius (*Geographia*, III, ch. 1), of which, from ancient times, many monuments, mostly epigraphic and numismatic, have come to light. It was a bishopric, not to be confused with TIFERNUM TIBERINUM (Città di Castello [v.]). In fact, a bishop of it, Lucifero, subscribed to the Roman Council of 465, while the existence of a bishop Mario who subscribed to the Roman Council of 499 simply as bishop of the “ecclesia Tifernatis” remains uncertain. The bishopric and city ceased to exist during the Gothic wars (540-53). On the site there arose later SANT'ANGELO IN VADO.
The specification “in Vado” was added to SANT'ANGELO, meaning a place where the Metauro river can easily be forded. When the province of Massa Trabaria was erected by Otto IV in 1209 as a domain of the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, SANT'ANGELO IN VADO became its “portus, refugium et cor”, first under the government of the Brancaleoni, papal vicars, then of the Montefeltro, Dukes of Urbino. Spiritually, SANT'ANGELO IN VADO was subject to the bishop of Urbino and erected into an archpriestry with four rural curacies. When in 1403 the Brancaleoni obtained from Boniface IX the transformation of the former Benedictine monastery of S. CRISTOFORO in CASTEL DURANTE into an *abbatia nullius*, SANT'ANGELO IN VADO was also incorporated into it and, despite the protests of the Urbanian bishops and the revocation of the measure ordered by Martin V in 1417, the situation remained unchanged until 1635. Notable archpriests of SANT'ANGELO IN VADO at that time were Cardinals Antonio and Cristoforo Del Monte. Urban VIII, at the request of the citizens of Vado and after long examination, on 18 February 1635, with the bull *Pro excellenti praeminentia*, restored to SANT'ANGELO IN VADO the title of city and to the church of S. Michele Arcangelo its bishop. At the same time CASTEL DURANTE was erected into a diocese, named URBANIA after the pope and united *aeque et principaliter* with the diocese of Vado. Although small in territorial extent and population, SANT'ANGELO IN VADO has over the centuries distinguished itself for its fervour of religious life, for the arts and industries, such as gold filigree work, woollen manufactures and tanning. In the numerous male and female monasteries of the city lived in holiness the blessed Girolamo Ranuzzi, Bartolo Vagnarini, Tommaso, Vittorio, Vico, Vittoria, all from SANT'ANGELO IN VADO. Vadesi were also Gianfrancesco and Prospero Fagnani, distinguished canonists; the painters Taddeo and Federico Zuccari, Francesco Nardini and Francesco Mancini; the condottieri Matteo and Gianpaolo Griffoni and Niccolò Braccio della Stella.
Also from SANT'ANGELO IN VADO was the Ganganelli family, from which, in S. Arcangelo di Romagna, was born the future Clement XIV, who was most munificent towards the diocese of Vado and in whose honour a statue was erected in the communal square.