VALVA AND SULMONA, DIOCESE OF. – United sees distinct in the province of L’Aquila (Abruzzo), immediately subject to the Holy See, with an appellate Ordinary at Chieti.
The diocese of V. has an area of 49,500 sq. km, with a population of 37,050, of whom 37,000 are Catholics, distributed among 27 parishes served by 42 diocesan priests and 7 religious priests; it has 2 male and 9 female religious communities.
The diocese of S. has an area of 70,720 sq. km, with a population of 80,250, of whom 80,000 are Catholics. It has 35 parishes served by 66 diocesan priests and 34 religious priests; it has a minor seminary, 5 male and 10 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 442).
The two sees were originally separate. The diocese of V. had its cathedral (S. Pelino) near present-day Corfinio, medieval Pentima (whose location does not, however, 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 entire surrounding district, and probably to the territory contained within the boundaries of the dioceses of V. S. Their origins appear to date 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. S. is generally dated by most scholars to the 6th century, since the bishop Palladius to whom a letter of Gelasius I from 495–96 is addressed (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 706) is normally assigned to a Tuscan see: it does not, however, seem possible to reject his attribution to S., since a Palladius under that title subscribed to the Roman Synod of Pope Symmachus in 499 (cf. MGH, Auct. Antiquus., XII, pp. 400 and 407). It is therefore probable that the see of S. originated in the 5th century and is older than that of V. The date of the union of the dioceses is uncertain: the assumption that St. Panfilo, believed to have been bishop of V. S., died in 706 has led to the belief that the two sees were already united at least at the beginning of the 8th century; but the legends both of St. Panfilo (titular of the cathedral of S.) and of St. Pelino (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 September 876 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 3045), appears to have been bishop of V., not of S. Only in the 11th and 12th centuries is the same person repeatedly mentioned as bishop of S. Pelino and of S. Panfilo: the oldest document is a privilege of Leo IX for Domenico, bishop of V., dated 21 December 1053 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 4306), renewed by Nicholas II on 1 May 1059 (cf. Kehr [V. BIBLICA.], p. 254, n. 4), in which he is confirmed in the sees of S. Pelino and S. Panfilo. The precedence of V. S. during this period nevertheless seems to be attested by the circumstance that, when the two cathedrals are not mentioned, the bishops appear under the sole title of Valvensis, even though they presided over both sees—unless the diocese of S. was suppressed at that time, while the church of S. Panfilo retained the dignity of a cathedral. Domenico’s successor, Trasmondo, who like him was abbot of S. Clemente at Casauria, was placed under interdict by Gregory VII (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 5190) for having abandoned his see; Gualtiero had the boundaries of the diocese confirmed by Paschal II (cf. Kehr, p. 254, n. 7), and Dodone likewise by Innocent II (cf. Faraglia [V. BIBLICA.], p. 43); later (1145–56), Signolfo had a dispute with the monastery of Farfa, which was settled in the bishop’s favor (cf. Faraglia, p. 47); there is subsequently record of an Odorisio in various documents of Alexander III, Lucius III, Urban III, and Clement III, as well as in the subscriptions to the Acts of the Third Lateran Council. With the 13th century begins the nearly complete series of bishops, who had for some time already acquired the habit of residing for long periods at S., so much so that a dispute arose between the canons of S. Pelino and those of S. Panfilo, settled in 1168 (cf. Ughelli, I, col. 1367 and Faraglia, p. 48), but revived in the 13th century (cf. Faraglia, p. 63) and definitively resolved only by Urban VIII in 1628: from then on, the names of V. S. always appear united in the titles of the bishops. As early as the 15th century, however, the precedence of S. had become established as the permanent residence of the Ordinary. Among the bishops, mention should also be made of Pompeo Zambeccari (1547–71), who took part in the Council of Trent, and Francesco Boccapaduli, who founded the Seminary of S. in 1638.
MONASTERI. — 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 serium distributa..., Venice 1733, pp. 319–21), have completely disappeared. Of others, once very famous, only scant remains survive: 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, and united to S. Maria di Collomaggio of Aquila in 1448; S. Pietro ad Oratorium, a Benedictine monastery near Capestrano, subject to S. Vincenzo al Volturno, whose origins have been fancifully distorted by a series of false documents: it preserves the magnificent church of the twelfth century; S. Maria and S. Pellegrino in Bominaco (a hamlet of Caporciano, currently within the territory of the diocese of L'Aquila), ancient churches subject to the abbey of Farfa, to which in 1001 Oderisio, count of V., assigned several Benedictine monks under the governance 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 Aquila, and in 1405 Innocent VII from the bishop of Valva; but the same Pope, in that same year, revoked the exemption; held in commendam from the fifteenth century, it was suppressed in 1762: today the two churches remain. Still displaying the full grandeur of its monumental complex is the ancient abbey of S. Spirita at the foot of Mount Morrone, formerly the seat of the supreme abbot of the Congregation of the Celestines: the convent originated with the hermit St. Pietro Angeleri, later Pope Celestine V, who founded the monastery near the ancient chapel of S. Maria del Morrone. The conventual building was rebuilt by Carlo II d'Angiò at the end of the thirteenth century, embellished in the sixteenth century, and restored in the eighteenth after an earthquake: Baroque and eighteenth-century elements blend, both in the structures and in the decoration, with others preserved from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since 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 Valva basilica, or that of S. Pelino, a Romanesque church (11th–12th centuries), built on the ruins of an earlier one destroyed by the raids 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, noteworthy is a pulpit dating from 1168, the work of a certain Idolerico. The oratory of S. Alessandro I, pope, is joined to it; it houses a museum of frontier antiquities.
At S. the Cathedral, dedicated to s. Panfilo since the 9th century, stands on the site of a pagan temple, later transformed and consecrated to Our Lady: it underwent various restorations (11th–12th centuries, 13th century, 15th–16th centuries, 19th–20th centuries) and displays a mixture of elements that are not always well integrated; noteworthy are the crypt, from the 11th century, and the Treasury. Other interesting monuments of S. are the churches of S. Francesco della Scarpa, of uncertain origin and repeatedly remodelled, but preserving on one side of the apse a grandiose Romanesque portal, and of S. Maria della Tomba, already mentioned in 1241, also variously disfigured, but admired for its ogival portal and the rich rose window of 1400;
the hermitage of S. Onofrio, on the slopes of the Morrone, a small 13th-century church and retreat of s. Celestino V, with interesting frescoes by Gentile da S. The most valuable monument of S., however, is the building of the Annunziata, whose origins (1320) lie in the confraternity of the same name, devoted to caring for plague victims. It consists of the Palazzo, with a façade in which elements of highly diverse styles—from Romanesque to Renaissance to Baroque (years 1415, 1483, 1522, 1706)—are harmoniously fused into a remarkable whole, and the church, rebuilt at the beginning of the 16th century and again in 1710.
SANTUARI. - S. Maria della Libera, a Pratola Peligna (festa la prima domenica di maggio); S. Domenico di Foligno a Cocullo (festa il primo giovedì di maggio; per la processione, di grande interesse folkloristico, V. Abruzzo); S. Gemma di Goriano Sicoli (festa il 12 maggio); S. Venanzio, tra Raiano e Vittorito (festa il 18 maggio; la chiesetta, già esistente nel sec. XII, deve la sua origine alla leggenda che il Santo dalmata avrebbe sostato in questo luogo muovendo da Camerino verso Roma). - Vedi tav. XC.
BIBL.: E. de Matteis, Mem. stor. de' Peligni, ecc., ms. del sec. XVII presso la famiglia Tabassi a S.; L. Antinori, Mem. stor. delle tre prov. degli Abruzzi, Napoli 1781; I. Di Pietro, Mem. stor. della S. Chiesa di Solmona, ecc., ms. del sec. XIX in., presso la Bibliot. G. Pansa a S.; Cappelletti, XXI, p. 441 s.; N. F. Faraglia, Codice diplom. sulmonese, Lanciano 1888; V. BELLINI, Monum. stor. ed artist. degli Abruzzi, Napoli 1889, pp. 278 sgs.; P. Piccirilli, L'Abruzzo monumentale, in Rass. abruzzese di storia ed arte, 3 (1899), p. 15 sgs.; P. Fr. Kehr, Italia Pont., IV, Berlino 1909, pp. 251-63; G. Celidonio, La dioc. di V. S., I-III, Casabordino 1909-11, IV, Solmona 1912; I. C. Gavini, Stor. dell'architettura in Abruzzo, I, Milano 1926, pp. 35 sgs., 100 sgs.; 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), Città del Vaticano 1936, V. indice. Alessandro Pratesi