Vasto, Diocese of

VASTO, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Chieti. The diocese is under the perpetual administration of the archbishop of Chieti ([v.] there the relevant statistical data).

HISTORY

It was the ancient Historium, one of the major cities of the Frentani, already a Roman municipium destroyed by Sulla, fortified anew by Theodoric. The origin of the diocese is disputed, because not all scholars, among them Kehr (op. cit. in bibl., p. 268 ff.) admit a bishopric before the 19th century. Lanzoni, on the other hand (I, pp. 318 and 377), mentioning the disputed epistle of Gelasius I (492-96; Jaffé-Wattenbach, 677), holds that at that time the see was vacant. In that letter the Pontiff orders a certain Celestinus, bishop of an unknown see, to choose and appoint, as visitor and not as "cardinalis pontificis," the deacon Julian in the "ecclesia beat Eleutherii, quae in Stoniensium civitatis parochia probatur esse constructa." Jaffé too seems to give to "Stoniensium" the precise meaning of "Histoniensium" and to "parochia" the value of diocese. However, once the existence of the diocese from the 5th century is admitted, it is very strange that down to the present day not even a name or an event has been preserved that directly or indirectly suggests the historical reality of the Histoniense diocese. Over the city passed the Franks of Pepin (802), who erased even its name (V. is a corruption of "gastaldato," which was governed by Aymone, captain of Pepin), repeatedly the Saracens (842, 851 and in the following centuries), the Hungarians (937), besides the various feudal lords (Caldora, Guevara, D'Avalos, etc.); furthermore cataclysms of every kind; yet never was the silence of sources more complete. As for the Eleutherius venerated in the city from the 5th century, he is the well-known bishop and martyr disputed among several places, whom Lanzoni (I, p. 268 ff.) would identify with the well-known martyr Liberalis.

In 1853 Pius IX, urged by Ferdinand II of Bourbon, with the bull Adeo late dioecesanum Teatini elevated V. to a diocese suffragan of Chieti, of whose archdiocese it had always formed part, and assigned its jurisdiction to the metropolitan of Chieti, who from then on also assumed the title of bishop of V.

MONUMENTS

Because of the repeated disasters that devastated the city, everything that still survives is almost everywhere hidden by the Baroque and modern superstructures that bear witness to the last remodelings undergone by the sacred buildings. The Cathedral, once dedicated to St. Margaret, then to St. Augustine and from 1808 to St. Joseph, was perhaps built before the year 1000, but rebuilt in the 13th century and again destroyed by the Saracens (1566), it was restored in 1668. The facade, largely preserved, has the fine portal by Ruggiero De Fragenis (1293) with Gothicizing forms; the interior, on the other hand, was badly redone in 1890. To the same period belongs the church of S. Pietro, built on the remains of a temple of Ceres and completely rebuilt in 1754. Here too the main portal and the side portal are preserved, works by the same De Fragenis (1293), to whom the portal of the small church of S. Antonio, now Baroque, also seems to be attributable. In the lunette were carved a Madonna and Child and a Crucifixion. The interior, Neoclassical, preserves a 16th-century Madonna del Rosario, a painting by the eighty-year-old Fil. Palizzi (Ecce Agnus Dei) and another by Fr. Paolo Palizzi (The Blind Man of Jericho, 1853). Another Romanesque church was S. Maria Maggiore (11th century), which after the remodeling and enlargement of the 18th century has lost every reminiscence of its origins, with the exception of the 14th-century base of the bell tower. The interior is interesting for the chapel of the Spina, donated in the 16th century by the D'Avalos, which inspired a painting existing there, attributed to Titian; for a 15th-century canvas of the Madonna del Gonfalone, a Marriage of St. Catherine by Paolo Veronese (?) and a gilt-copper ostensory from the school of Nicola da Guardiagrele. Finally, noteworthy is the collection preserved in the Museo civico, in which, among prehistoric and pre-Roman objects, are remains of destroyed medieval sacred buildings and good modern works.

Pasquale Testini