URBANIA e SANT'ANGELO IN VADO, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in the province of Pesaro (Marche) with episcopal residence in U.: suffragan of Urbino.
URBANIA
The diocese of U. has an area of about 193 sq km with a population of 12,273 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, 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 U. was erected on 18 February 1635 and united aeque et principaliter to S. A. in V. The city, under the name of Castel delle Ripe, is remembered as a fief of the 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 accomandita to the commune of Città di Castello, provided that it undertake to rebuild it, after the destruction wrought upon it by the Ghibelline Urbinates. This pact aroused the wrath of Urbino and of the Feltreschi. The alliance concluded between Guido da Montefeltro and Città di Castello in 1253 was to no avail. In 1277 Galasso di Montefeltro attacked Castel delle Ripe and razed it to the ground once again. This time the pontifical rector of Romagna, Guglielmo Durante, sent to the spot by Martin IV, attended to its reconstruction, and the new castle, built no longer on the hill but on the plain of the Metauro, was called Castel Durante after its founder. Over it the Brancaleoni exercised their sovereignty, until Cardinal Albornoz reconquered it for the Church in 1359. In 1377 the Brancaleoni obtained it again as a vicariate, while they were pontifical rectors of the Massa Trabaria. They were succeeded, under Martin V, by the Montefeltro, who were invested with the county of Castel Durante and who then held it, 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, which from then on became an integral part of the Papal States.
Spiritually, the locality was, from its origin, subject to the bishop of Urbino. In 1393 Boniface IX, taking the abbey away from the Benedictines, gave it in commendam to Cardinal Bartolomeo de Uliaris, and on 8 March 1402 erected it as a nullus dioecesis, withdrawing it from the jurisdiction of the diocese of Urbino and aggregating to it the territories of Castel Durante, of S. A. in V. and of Sassoorvaro.
Among the commendatory abbots of Castel Durante, special mention is due to Cardinal Bessarion (v.), who brought about a true flowering of good and of grandiose works in the abbey and donated to it the relic of the humerus of the martyr St. Christopher; to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who ascended to the supreme pontificate under the name of Paul III; to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who labored so much for the erection of the diocese, and who saw his work crowned with success on 18 February 1635, the day on which Urban VIII conferred upon Castel Durante the honor of diocese and of city, calling it U. after his own name. To the new diocese was annexed the ancient nullus archpriesthood of Mercatello sul Metauro, while the city of S. A. in V. was likewise erected as a diocese and united aeque et principaliter to U. The first bishop of the united dioceses was Onorato Onorati of Iesi.
The city, important for its ancient production of ceramics, presents some interesting buildings: the fragmentary medieval fortress; the 13th-century church of S. Francesco; the Romanesque church of the Morti; the little church of Corpus Domini with frescoes by Raffaellino del Colle; the Palazzo dei duchi di Urbino built by the Brancaleoni in the 13th century and transformed in the 16th century. On the square situated at the northern entrance to the city stands a tall column with the statue of St. Christopher, protector of the city and of the diocese.
The monasteries of the diocese are numerous, among them that of the Capuchin nuns in Mercatello, erected in the house where on 27 December 1660 St. Veronica Giuliani was born, who, having become a Capuchin nun in Città di Castello, died there on 9 July 1727.
Bibliography4 works
SANT'ANGELO IN VADO
The diocese of S. A. in V. has an area of about 93 sq. km. with a population of 5,450 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed among 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 rises on the site of the ancient Tifernum Metaurense in trans-Apennine Umbria, an illustrious city belonging to the Crustumine tribe, seat of a Flamen, mentioned by Pliny (Hist. natur., III, c. p. 14) and by Ptolemy Claudius (Geographia, III, chap. 1) and from which, since remote times, monuments largely epigraphic and numismatic have come to light. It was an episcopal see, not to be confused with Tifernum Tiberinum (Città di Castello [v.]). In fact one of its bishops, Lucifer, subscribed to the Roman Council of 465, while a bishop Marius remains uncertain, who subscribed at the Roman Council of 499 simply as bishop "ecclesiae Tifernatis". Bishopric and city ceased during the Gothic wars (549-53). On the site S. A. in V. later arose.
To Sant'Angelo was added the specification "in Vado", that is, of a place where the river Metauro can easily be crossed by ford. 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, S. A. became its "Portus, refugium et cor", first under the government of the Brancaleoni, papal vicars, then of the Montefeltro, dukes of Urbino. Spiritually S. A. was subject to the bishop of Urbino and erected into an archpriesthood with four district curacies. When in 1403 the Brancaleoni obtained from Boniface IX the transformation into a nullus abbey of the former Benedictine monastery of S. Cristoforo in Castel Durante, S. A. too was incorporated into it and, despite the protests of the bishops of Urbino and the revocation of the measure issued by Martin V in 1417, the situation remained unchanged until 1635. Distinguished archpriests of S. A. were, at that time, the cardinals Antonio and Cristoforo Del Monte. Urban VIII, at the prayers of the citizens of Vado and after long examination, on 18 Feb. 1635, with the bull Pro excellenti praeminentia, restored to S. A. the title of city and to the church of St. Michael the Archangel its bishop. At the same time Castel Durante was erected into a diocese, called, from the name of the pope, U. and united aeque et principaliter to the diocese of Vado. Although small in territorial extent and in population, S. A. in V. has distinguished itself over the centuries for fervor of religious life, for arts and industries, such as gold filigree work, wool manufactures and leather tanning. In the numerous male and female monasteries of the city lived in holiness the bb. Girolamo Ranuzzi, Bartolo Vagnarini, Tommaso, Vittorio, Vico, Vittoria, all from S. A. in V. Also from Vado were Gianfrancesco and Prospero Fagnani, distinguished canonists, the painters Taddeo and Federico Zuccari, Francesco Nardini and Francesco Mancini; the captains of fortune Matteo and Gianpaolo Griffoni and Niccolò Braccio della Stella.
Also a native of S. A. in V. was the Ganganelli family, from which, in S. Arcangelo di Romagna, the future Clement XIV was born, most munificent toward the diocese of Vado and in whose honor a statue was raised in the communal Piazza.
BIRL.: V. Lanciarini, Tiferno Metaurense e prov. di Massa Trabaria, Rome 1912; L. Patervecchi, G. Rinaldi, A. Dini, Sinossi bibliogr. degli uomini illustri di S. A. in V., Rome 1902; Lanzoni, I, p. 482 ff., 495.
Gabriele Ferrari