Veroli, Diocese of

VEROLI, Diocese of. - In Lazio, in the province of Frosinone, it measures an area of 451 sq km, comprised between the dioceses of Ferentino, Alatri, Aquino, Sora and Pontecorvo. The population of 98,700 inhabitants is divided into 45 parishes, with 82 secular priests and 84 regular priests, with 11 male congregations and 25 female ones. It has its major seminary at Anagni, shared with the other dioceses of lower Lazio, and its minor seminary in V. It is immediately subject to the Holy See, with the court of appeal at the vicariate of Rome (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 445).

V. is the Hernican Verulae of the Romans, built on the back of a height that dominates the plain below as far as the Lepini Mountains. It was a Roman municipium, later devastated by the barbarians, until Pope Zachary annexed it to the incipient Papal State.

The Christian religion at V., particularly by writers of local history, down to the 19th century, was held to have been preached in the apostolic age by the Prince of the Apostles, who would have ordained as bishop there a certain Maurus. To this was added the presence of St. Mary Salome, along with that of the supposed martyrs Blaise and Demetrius under Nero. Nothing could be more fanciful. The letters MISV on the stone that covered the relics of the aforementioned supposed martyrs were explained as: «Mariam Iacobi Salomem videbis». Regarding the relics found at V. in the last years of the 12th century, F. Lanzoni has a well-founded suspicion that they may belong to the famous martyrs Blaise of Sebaste and Demetrius of Thessalonica. The oldest Christian inscription found in the diocese of V., at Fabriteria Nova (La Civita, near S. Giovanni in Carico), is from 392 (CIL, X, II, 5646). With this, however, one does not wish to deny the possibility of an evangelical preaching at V. in the pre-Constantinian age, especially if one takes into account the consular road that crosses the diocese. Likewise, since no bishop is known in the see of V. before 743, when Martin subscribed to the Roman Synod convened by Zachary, one does not wish to exclude an earlier existence of the see. Rightly, therefore, L. Duchesne judged it to be prior to the Lombard invasion. Another inscription found in the cathedral of V. itself, perhaps earlier than the 6th century, commemorates a «Marturius presbyter» (CIL, X, II, 5799), and yet another, more recently discovered, bears the date 405. Gelasius I, moreover, in a letter of his from 494-95, delegates the bishops Rufinus and Justus to handle a case between the «honorati et primari Verulanae civitatis» and Agnellus, their insulter. The Pope does not specify the sees of the two bishops, who very probably must have been from Lazio, and it is not to be excluded that one of them had been bishop of V. Just as it would not be to be excluded that «Marturius presbyter» and «Agnellus diaconus» were of the diocese of V.

The cathedral of V. goes back to the 8th century but preserves the structure of the 11th-12th century, behind an 18th-century facade. It has an interesting Treasury and an Archive with over 1200 parchments from the 9th century onward. Romanesque too is the church of S. Erasmo which, together with the adjoining monastery, first belonged to the Benedictines and then passed to the Canons, who established their collegiate church there. It also has a fine Treasury and parchments of the 11th century. Alexander III in 1170 founded in V. a hospital for lepers with the adjoining church of S. Maria Maddalena, which in 1423 passed into the ownership of the church of S. Erasmo. Documents coming from V. and its diocese are also found at the Vallicelliana in Rome. In the diocese of V. there is still the famous abbey of Casamari (v.). F. Ughelli, M. De Matthias, G. Cappelletti claimed that the city of Frosinone (since 1927 the provincial capital) had once also been an episcopal see, thus lending support to a constant and persistent tradition of Frosinone which, however, did not have the merit of antiquity. Monuments and documents do not in the least favor their assertion. On the contrary, from the privileges of the episcopal see of V. it is clearly deduced that the city of Frosinone was the seat of the apostolic delegate for the Campagna. The small town of Ceprano, at the extreme south of the diocese of V., very often mentioned in medieval history, was considered as the closing gate of the Patrimony of St. Peter, which extended from Acquapendente to Ceprano.

Benedetto Pesci