Venosa, Diocese of

VENOSA, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the province of Potenza; it has an area of 587 sq km with a population of 50,200 inhabitants, of whom 50,000 are Catholics, distributed in 10 parishes, served by 28 diocesan priests and 11 regulars; it has a seminary; 3 male religious communities and 6 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 444).

I. HISTORY

An Apulian rather than a Lucanian city, V. acquired importance after the Samnite dominion. Rome established there a populous colony of Latin right (291 B.C.) and always took care that the city should be militarily impregnable, on account of its strategic position on the Appian Way and among the neighbouring peoples. Although loyal to Rome during the Punic Wars and an operational stronghold after the defeat of Cannae, V. did not hesitate to side against Roman hegemony in the Social War. It was the birthplace of Q. Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.).

The introduction of Christianity must have been favoured both by the military and civil pre-eminence of the city and, after the fall of Jerusalem, by the formation of a flourishing colony of Jews, who had here a stable dwelling attested by the existence of their own burial area. The presence of this Jewish group suggests that a Christian community was formed in good time, but nothing is known of its size and still less about the period in which it was erected into a diocese. On the historicity of the first commonly known bishop, by the name of Felix, a Passio manipulated in five different recensions (BHL, 2894, 2895 and 2895 b; Anal. Boll., 1921, pp. 246, 252-59 and 270-79) offers scant grounds for credence. The martyr Felix in reality belongs to the city of Thibieuca (Proconsular Africa), while the Venosan of the same name may be either a saint of another Italian city or the same African bishop or - a less acceptable hypothesis - an unknown local martyr, whose burial place, however, would not even be known. The second name in the catalogue, Philip, consecrated, according to Ughelli (VII, p. 168), by Pope Fabian in 238, is legendary, no less than the next, John, whom Ughelli places under Leo I (440-61), attributing to him, in imitation of that pontiff's exploit, the merit of having halted Attila threatening V. Lanzoni (I, p. 299) instead places him in the 16th century, considering him a corruption of Bongiovanni. Asterius (or Austerius) too, placed by a Vita et translationi s. Sabini of Canosa (chap. II, BHL, 7443) among the prelates who took part in the blessing of the church of S. Andrea at Barletta by Gelasius I, is without foundation, because at the time of Gelasius the bishop of V. was Stephen (492-502; Jaffé-Wattenbach, 653-660, 689), who proves to be the first historically known bishop of the Venosan catalogue; he took part in the Roman Councils (501-504) of Pope Symmachus.

After Felix, the vicissitudes of the city and its inevitable decline through the barbarian invasions left no record of prelates until 1014, the period in which there is news of Peter, present at the consecration of the so-called Madonna della Foresta at Lavello. Occupied by the Ostrogoths (493-553), placed under the dependence of the gastaldato of Acerenza by the Lombards, V. during those centuries passed several times from the hands of the Byzantines to those of the Saracens, who razed it to the ground. The rebirth began only with the Normans: Drogo, brother of Guiscard, while Giaquinto (or Giacinto; 1053) was bishop, donated to Abbot Gaufridus the celebrated abbey of the Most Holy Trinity, which was to gather the remains of most of the Hautevilles. Although the struggles for the succession sometimes violently affected the city, V. continued to flourish, so much so that under Frederick II it was the temporary seat of the empire. The advent of the Angevins marked the beginning of the definitive decline and of that succession of lordships, from the Sanseverino to the Aragonese and the Bourbons, which weighed upon the city. The series of bishops, after Giaquinto, is almost complete. Those remembered are: Constantine (or Constantius), who in 1071 took part in the consecration of the church of Montecassino performed by Alexander II and received various donations for the Most Holy Trinity from Duke Robert; Peter, present at the Lateran Council of 1179 and mentioned for numerous concessions to the Benedictine abbey of S. Maria di Monte Albo near V.; and Bongiovanni (1501), formerly personal physician of Alexander VI and a generous helper in a terrible plague, for the cessation of which the church of Sts. Roch and Sebastian was erected, given to the Capuchins.

The diocese, which included Forenza, Spinazzola and minor centres, from 1818 extended its jurisdiction also over that of Lavello, suppressed by Pius VII with the bull De utiliori Dominicae.

MONUMENTS

Just outside the built-up area, in 1853, a Jewish hypogeum of the 3rd-4th century A.D. came to light, dug into the volcanic tufa: it consists of a main gallery, from which branch off on each side small corridors and minor side-passages. There were found 47 inscriptions painted in red on a whitewash of lime or scratched on the closure of the loculi and of the numerous tomb forms. Written in Greek, Hebrew or Latin, not without vernacular terms, they offer invocations to peace and Jewish symbols, such as the seven-and nine-branched candelabrum. Recently, near the catacomb, a smaller hypogeum has been discovered, rich in marbles, with a Roman column at the entrance serving as an architrave; from an epigraph a certain "Markellus," head of the city, has become known.

Also outside the urban circuit is the monumental complex of the Most Holy Trinity, which comprises two churches and the remains of the Benedictine monastery. The smaller, older church, a true royal chapel of the Norman county, is said to have been built on a temple sacred to the god Hymenaeus in the 4th century, but from the little that remains of the ancient structure it is impossible to establish its origin exactly. The building, of modest proportions, is connected with the monastery, once powerful, by means of a square room, the so-called guest-house, which from its forms would seem to have been transformed into a fortress when the abbey passed into the ownership of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (1292; cf. Ughelli, VII, p. 176). The entrance, at the end of the guest-house, with its fine ogival portal, leads into a room with three naves divided by pillars and closed by a semicircular apse. The original construction of Drogo, consecrated by Nicholas II in 1059, was much altered during the restoration works of the Hospitallers; there remain a Norman capital used as a holy-water stoup, the so-called column of friendship, and the tomb of Alberada, first wife of Robert Guiscard, the only survivor of the Norman tombs that received the remains of the Hautevilles. It consists of a cipollino sarcophagus with, at the sides, two small columns with long capitals supporting a classical entablature; similar examples, certainly inspired by V., are the tomb of Bohemond at Canosa, the funerary monuments in the cathedral of Palermo and the tomb of Alfano in S. Maria in Cosmedin in Rome. Finally, mention should be made of the few remains of 14th-century wall frescoes, among them a Pietà attributed to R. Oderisi. The second church, larger but unfinished, was begun in the first decades of the 12th century, just beyond the apse of the smaller one. It was to be a great basilica with a Latin plan of 69 × 22.50 m., with three naves divided by columns, with a broad crossing, a deep presbytery, an ambulatory and a triapsidal outer curve. The construction, made with material taken from the Roman buildings of V., is inspired by certain Italian and Burgundian monumental examples, but perhaps with greater harmony. Admirable are the columns and the polystyle columns of the right-hand part and the grandeur of the choir, as well as the side door, also unfinished.

Of the other churches of Venosa (S. Maria della Scala, S. Biagio, S. Martino, S. Domenico and the Purgatory with modest works by various authors) only the cathedral retains some interest. After the demolition of the old building, also dedicated to St. Andrew, the new church arose, through the work of Pirro del Balzo, consecrated in 1531. It has a fine portal by Cola di Conza (1512), the bell tower with Roman marbles and inscriptions, a rich chapel of the Sacrament with a powerful marble arch (1520) and minor works. Finally, mention should be made of the medieval convent of St. Francis, whose church has almost nothing left of the original.

Pasquale Testini