VIBONA. – The ancient diocese of V., called by the Latins “Hipponium,” at the southernmost point of the Gulf of Sant’Eufemia, was destroyed by the Saracens in the second half of the tenth century. In its place arose Monteleone di Calabria, which has recently resumed the ancient name of Vibo Valentia.
It was first a Greek colony and then a Roman municipality; it was enclosed by mighty walls, of which eloquent remains still exist. Christianity took root there early, and a bishop’s see was established, one of the oldest in Calabria, whose existence is certain for the fifth century. However, it does not seem possible to assign to it that Roman “Bubonensis episcopus” who attended the Council of Chalcedon in 451. It is far more probable, instead, that John, bishop of V., is one of the three bishops of Bruttium to whom Pope Gelasius addressed a decretal in 496. Indeed, in 499 a John, bishop of V., took part in the Roman synod of Pope Symmachus. St Gregory the Great mentions two bishops of V.: Rufinus, who died in 599, and Venerius, last recorded in 603. Other prelates follow: Papinius at the synod of Martin I in 649; Crescens at the synod of St Agatho in 679; and Stephen at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. After this, absolute silence ensues. Throughout the ninth and tenth centuries it appears in the Greek Diatiposi as a suffragan of Reggio, but no titular bishop is recorded. The frequent Saracen raids of the tenth century ended by destroying it, forcing the few surviving inhabitants to take refuge in a safer place inland, where they founded the settlement of Monteleone, which was later fortified by Emperor Frederick II and became one of the most important centres in Calabria. The Normans, however, found only desolation there, and for this reason, around 1080, they created the diocese of Miletus from the territories of the two ancient and neighbouring sees of V. and Tauriana.