VALVA AND SULMONA, DIOCESE OF. - United sees, distinct, in the province of L'Aquila (Abruzzo), immediately subject to the Holy See, with the appellate Ordinary at Chieti.
The diocese of V. has an area of 49,500 sq km, with a population of 37,050 inhabitants, of whom 37,000 are Catholics, distributed in 27 parishes served by 42 diocesan priests and 7 regulars; it has 2 male religious communities and 9 female.
The diocese of S. has an area of 70,720 sq km, with a population of 80,250 inhabitants, of whom 80,000 are Catholics. It counts 35 parishes served by 66 diocesan priests and 34 regulars; it has a minor seminary, 5 male religious communities and 10 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 442).
The two sees were originally separate. The diocese of V. had its cathedral (St. Pelinus) near the present-day Corfinio, the medieval Pentima (whose location, however, does not coincide with ancient Corfinium), but the place name Valva or Balba used in medieval documents certainly refers (as in other cases: cf. "in Sabinis," "in Marsi") to the whole surrounding district, and probably to the territory included within the boundaries of the dioceses of V. and S. The origins seem to go back to the 5th century: it is uncertain, however, whether the Gerontius to whom two letters of Gelasius I are addressed (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 648 ff.) was actually bishop of V. The diocese of S. is traced by most back to the 6th century, since the bishop Palladius, to whom a letter of the same Gelasius I of 495-96 is addressed (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 706), is normally assigned to a Tuscan see: it does not seem possible, however, to refuse his attribution to S., since a Palladius as such subscribed to the Roman Synod of Pope Symmachus of 499 (cf. MGH, Auct. Antiquus., XII, pp. 400 and 407). It is probable therefore that the see of S. had its origin in the 5th century and is older than that of V. The time at which the union of the dioceses took place is uncertain: the presumption that St. Pamphilus, believed to be bishop of V. and buried in the cathedral of S., died in 706, has led to the belief that at least by the beginning of the 8th century the two sees were already united: but the legends both of St. Pamphilus (titular of the cathedral of S.) and of St. Pelinus (titular of the cathedral of V.) are very late (10th century?; cf. Lanzoni, I, p. 372 ff.), and Arnulf, mentioned in a letter of John VIII of Sept. 876 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 3045), turns out to be bishop of V., not of S. Only in the 11th and 12th centuries is the same person repeatedly recorded as bishop of St. Pelinus and of St. Pamphilus: the oldest document is a privilege of Leo IX for Dominic, bishop of V., of 21 Dec. 1053 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 4306), renewed by Nicholas II on 1 May 1059 (cf. Kehr [v. bibl.], p. 254, n. 4), in which he is confirmed in the sees of St. Pelinus and St. Pamphilus. The pre-eminence of V. over S. in this period seems, however, to be attested by the circumstance that the bishops, when the two cathedrals are not mentioned, appear with the title of Valvensis alone, even though they were set over both sees: unless the diocese of S. was at that time suppressed, while the church of St. Pamphilus still retained the dignity of cathedral. The successor of Dominic, and like him abbot of St. Clement at Casauria, Trasmondo, was struck with interdict by Gregory VII (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 5190) for having deserted the cathedra; Gualtiero had the boundaries of the diocese confirmed by Paschal II (cf. Kehr, p. 254, n. 7), and likewise Dodone by Innocent II (cf. Faraglia [v. bibl.], p. 43); later (1145-56). Signolfo had a dispute with the monastery of Farfa, resolved in favor of the bishop (cf. Faraglia, p. 47); there is then record of an Odorisio in various documents of Alexander III, Lucius III, Urban III and Clement III, as well as from the subscriptions of the Acts of the Third Lateran Council. With the 13th century begins the almost complete series of the bishops, who had already for some time taken up the habit of residing for long periods at S., so much so that there was a lawsuit between the canons of St. Pelinus and those of St. Pamphilus, settled in 1168 (cf. Ughelli, I, col. 1367 and Faraglia, p. 48), but rekindled in the 13th century (cf. Faraglia, p. 63) and definitively resolved only by Urban VIII in 1628: from then on the names of V. and S. appear in the titles of the bishops always united. Already from the 15th century, however, the pre-eminence of S. had established itself as the stable residence of the Ordinary. Among the bishops are still remembered Pompeo Zambeccari (1547-71), who took part in the Council of Trent, and Francesco Boccapaduli, who in 1638 erected the Seminary of S.
MONASTERIES
The Benedictine monasteries of S. Clemente, mentioned by Alexander II in 1073 (PL 146, 1401), and of S. Maria in Cartiniano, near Bussi (cf. E. Gattula, Historia abbatiae Cassinensis per saeculorum seriem distributa..., Venice 1733, pp. 319-21), have completely disappeared. Of others, once very famous, only scanty remains are left: S. Benedetto in Perillis, between Popoli and Acciano, a Benedictine priory founded by Trasmondo, bishop of V., subject to the diocese in 1156, held in commendam from 1443, united with S. Maria di Collomaggio of L'Aquila in 1448; S. Pietro ad Oratorium, a Benedictine monastery near Capestrano, subject to S. Vincenzo al Volturno, whose origins are fantastically altered by a series of forged documents: it preserves the magnificent 12th-century church; S. Maria and S. Pellegrino in Bominaco (a hamlet of Caporciano, currently in the territory of the diocese of L'Aquila), ancient churches subject to the abbey of Farfa, to which in 1001 Oderisio, count of V., appointed some Benedictine monks under the government of a single abbot, and which in 1093 passed under the jurisdiction of the bishop of V.: in 1222 Honorius III took the monastery of S. Maria under the protection of the Holy See, in 1352 Clement VI declared it exempt from the bishop of L'Aquila, in 1405 Innocent VII from the bishop of Valva; but the same Pope, in the same year, revoked the exemption; held in commendam from the 15th century, it was suppressed in 1762: the two churches remain today. Still in all the impressiveness of its monumental complex stands the ancient abbey of S. Spirito at the foot of Monte Morrone, once the seat of the supreme abbot of the Congregation of the Celestines: the convent originates from the hermit St. Peter Angeleri, later Pope Celestine V, who founded the monastery near the ancient chapel of S. Maria del Morrone. The conventual building was rebuilt by Charles II of Anjou at the end of the 13th century, embellished in the 16th century, restored in the 18th after an earthquake: Baroque and 18th-century elements blend, both in the structures and in the decoration, with other preserved ones of the 15th and 16th centuries. From 1807, when the Congregation of the Celestines was suppressed, the monumental building has been put to various uses and currently houses a penitentiary. The Archive is at the abbey of Montecassino.
RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS
The Valvense basilica, or basilica of St. Pelinus, a Romanesque church (11th-12th centuries), built on the ruins of an older one destroyed by the sackings of the Saracens (9th century) and the Hungarians (10th century), was restored in 1280 after a fire and transformed inside in the Baroque style between the 17th and 18th centuries; among its monuments, notable is a pulpit of 1168, the work of a certain Idolericus. Grafted onto it is the oratory of St. Alexander I, pope, in which a museum of antiquities from the borderlands is housed.
In S. the Cathedral, dedicated since the 9th century to St. Pamphilus, rises on the site of a pagan temple, later transformed and consecrated to the Madonna: it underwent various restorations (11th-12th centuries, 13th century, 15th-16th centuries, 19th-20th centuries) and presents a mixture of elements not always well blended; notable are the crypt, of the 11th century, and the Treasury. Other interesting monuments of S. are: the churches of St. Francis of the Scarpa, of uncertain origin, remodeled several times, but which preserves on one side of the apse a grand Romanesque portal, and of St. Mary of the Tomb, already mentioned in 1241, likewise variously disfigured, but which is admired for its ogival portal and rich rose window of 1400; the hermitage of St. Onuphrius, on the slopes of the Morrone, a small church of the 13th century, a place of retreat of St. Celestine V, with interesting frescoes by Gentile da S. The most valuable monument of S., however, is the building of the Annunziata, which owes its origins (1320) to the Confraternity of the same name, devoted to the care of plague victims. It consists of the Palazzo, with a facade in which elements of very different styles, from Romanesque to Renaissance to Baroque (years 1415, 1483, 1522, 1706), are harmoniously fused into a marvelous whole, and of the church, rebuilt at the beginning of the 16th century and then again in 1710.
SANCTUARIES
St. Maria della Libera, at Pratola Peligna (feast on the first Sunday of May); St. Dominic of Foligno at Cocullo (feast on the first Thursday of May; for the procession, of great folkloristic interest, v. Abruzzo); St. Gemma of Goriano Sicoli (feast on 12 May); St. Venantius, between Raiano and Vittorito (feast on 18 May; the little church, already existing in the 12th century, owes its origin to the legend that the Dalmatian Saint had stopped in this place while traveling from Camerino to Rome). - See plate XC.
BIBL.: E. de Matteis, Mem. stor. de' Peligni, etc., 17th-century ms. in the possession of the Tabassi family at S.; L. Antinori, Mem. stor. delle tre prov. degli Abruzzi, Naples 1781; I. Di Pietro, Mem. stor. della S. Chiesa di Solmona, etc., early 19th-century ms., at the G. Pansa Library in S.; Cappelletti, XXI, p. 441 ff.; N. F. Faraglia, Codice diplom. sulmonese, Lanciano 1888; V. Bindi, Monum. stor. ed artist. degli Abruzzi, Naples 1889, pp. 278 ff.; P. Piccirilli, L'Abruzzo monumentale, in Rass. abruzzese di storia ed arte, 3 (1899), p. 15 ff.; P. Fr. Kehr, Italia Pont., IV, Berlin 1909, pp. 251-63; G. Celidonio, La dioc. di V. e S., I-III, Casabordino 1909-11, IV, Solmona 1912; I. C. Gavini, Stor. dell'architettura in Abruzzo, I, Milan 1926, pp. 35 ff., 100 ff.; Eubel, I, pp. 513-14; II, p. 262; III, p. 326; IV, p. 358; V, p. 404; P. Sella, Rationes decimarum Italiae. Aprutium, Molinium (Studi e testi, 69), Vatican City 1936, v. index.
Alessandro Pratesi