The Diocese of Albenga–Imperia () is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church in Liguria, northern Italy; the traditional name of the Diocese of Albenga was changed by decree of the Congregation of Bishops in the Roman Curia, with the approval of Pope Paul VI, on 1 December 1973.Acta Apostolicae Sedis Vol. LXVI (Vatican City: Typis polyglottis Vaticanis 1974), pp. 27-28 (in Latin). The change was made, the decree notes, since Imperia had become the capital of a civil administrative province. It is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Genoa."Diocese of Albenga-Imperia)" Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved February 29, 2016. "Diocese of Albenga-Imperia" GCatholic.org. Gabriel Chow. Retrieved February 29, 2016.
History Legend makes Albenga the scene of the martyrdom of Calocerus of Brescia (Calogero), an officer of the court of Hadrian, between the years 121 and 125. But the Acts of his martyrdom, together with those of Faustinus and Jovita with which they are incorporated, have no historical foundation.Cappelletti, p. 531: Varie sono le opinione circa l'autenticità degli atti del suo martirio, immedesimati con quelli de' santi Faustino e Giovita. Fedele Savio, "La legende des SS. Faustin et Jovite," Francesco Lanzoni Le diocese d'Italia dalle origini al principio del secolo VII (An. 604) (Faenza: F. Lega 1927), p. 841: "e un romanzo ciclico". Nor does their martyrdom imply the existence of a bishopric or a bishop.
In 451, a signature from a bishop of Albenga named Quintus appears on the Synodal Letter of Eusebius, Bishop of Milan, to Pope Leo I, in which the condemnation of Nestorius and Eutyches was sanctioned.Catholic Encyclopedia article. Gian Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio editio novissima, Tomus sextus (Florence 1761), p. 144.
In the medieval period, the bishop of Albenga was lord of the principality of Oneille and of Pietra and its dependencies. He was therefore a feudal subject of the Emperor.Chabrol de Volvic, II, p. 137.
The Barbarossa crisis At the end of January 1159 the Emperor Frederick seized the city of Crema, which was in league with Milan, and destroyed it. The feudal lords of Albenga paid homage to the Emperor. The Emperor granted the city of Albenga its freedom, and took it under his protection.Chabrol de Volvic, II, p. 139. Rossi, p. 108. In the previous year Genoa had seized the territory of Ventimiglia, and Albenga had found itself trapped in a vise. Rossi, pp. 144-145.
With the papal election of September 1159 a period of turmoil struck the Church and the diocese of Albenga. Two factions of cardinals elected two popes. The majority chose Pope Alexander III, while the minority, supported by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, chose Victor IV. In a letter of 26 September 1159 from his refuge in Terracina, Pope Alexander wrote to Archbishop Syrus of Genoa and his suffragans his own version of what had happened. On 13 December he wrote again to bishops in northern Italy, including those of Liguria, telling them that Victor had had himself crowned pope. On 13 February 1160, Victor held a general council at Pavia, with the participation of the Emperor. The legate of Alexander III, Cardinal Iohannes de' Conti di Segni, was sent north to the Po Valley, where, on 27 February 1160, he excommunicated Ubertus of Milan. In 1161 Frederick captured and destroyed the city of Milan. In May and June 1161, Victor and the Emperor held another council, at Cremona, at which Victor deposed Ubertus, the Archbishop of Milan, Hugo of Piacenza, Raimundus of Brescia, and Gerardus of Bologna. Driven from Rome by Imperial troops immediately after his election, Alexander III sought refuge in Genoa on 21 January 1162, where he stayed until his departure for France on 25 April.Philippus Jaffe (ed. G. Loewenfeld), Regesta pontificum Romanorum altera editio Tomus II (Leipzig: Veit 1888), p. 147 no. 10584; p. 149 no. 10601; p. 420. Horace Kinder Mann, p. 54. During his stay in Genoa, Pope Alexander addressed the problem of Milan and Albenga, and a number of other dioceses in Liguria, Piedmont, and Lombardy. Milan, for a time, had ceased to exist, both civilly and ecclesiastically. Albenga had no Metropolitan.
On 25 March 1162, therefore, Pope Alexander issued the bull Superna et ineffabilis.Kehr, p. 268 no. 13. He confirmed the metropolitanate of Genoa, with its suffragan bishops of Mariana, Nebbio, and Accia (on Sardinia); Bobbio, and Brugnato, and ordered that the archbishop should be consecrated by his suffragans. He also granted the archbishop a legateship over the island of Sardinia, to be exercised every eight years in association with a Roman cardinal. The Pope then granted (concessit) to the archbishop of Genoa and his successors the monastery on the island of Gallinaria (just offshore Albenga), which had up to that point belonged directly to the Holy See.Kehr, p. 268 no. 13. This grant was cancelled before 2 April 1169, when Pope Alexander took the monastery, quod proprium est et speciale Romanae ecclesiae, under his protection; and on 28 August 1169 he granted the monastery quod nulli fuit hactenus nisi Romano pontifici subditum. Kehr, p. 361, nos. 1 and 2. He also transferred the parishes of Porto Veneris and its neighborhood (a port of the Genoese fleet) from the diocese of Luni (which was under the control of the Emperor) to the archbishop of Genoa. Then the Pope granted (concessit) the diocese of Albenga to the Archbishop of Genoa and his successors.Kehr, p. 268 no. 13: concedit insuper ei et successoribus eius Albinganen. episcopatum, ita quod a biennio, postquam pax fuerit ecclesiae restituta, eundem episcopatum perpetuo habeant. Cappelletti, pp. 544-545. Two points must be noted. The grant is conditional; it is to take effect 'within the two-year period after peace shall have been restored to the church'. Secondly, Albenga is not said to have been made a suffragan of Genoa. If the peace referred to is the end of the schism, that did not take place until 1178 or 1180.J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (Oxford 1986), pp. 179-180. Frederick Barbarossa did not die until 1190.
In 1165 Albenga was allied with Pisa, the principal naval supporters of the Emperor Frederick and the principal enemy of Genoa. But in that year, seeing the opportunity to harm Genoa, Pisa attempted to seize Albenga.Cappelletti, p. 544. Semeria, II, p. 370. On 22 August the Pisan navy attacked with 31 galleys, and the city was captured. It was put to the torch and destroyed. Semeria, II, p. 370.
Bishop Lanterius (Lauterius) is still listed as belonging to the ecclesiastical province of Milan at the III Lateran Council in March 1179.J.D. Mansi (ed.), Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, editio novissima, Tomus vigesimus secundus (Venice: A. Zatta 1778), p. 216. Gaetano Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica, Vol. 1 (Venice 1840), p. 194, states that Albenga was made suffragan to Genoa in 1159 by Pope Alexander III, which was approved by Clement III and Celestine III, but never implemented, until Innocent III in 1213. This is contradicted by Giuseppe Cappelletti, Le chiese d'Italia, XIII (Venice 1857), p. 532, who states that Albenga was a suffragan of Milan until 1180, but that it was a bull of Pope Innocent III in 1213 that gave effect to the transfer. Paul Fridolin Kehr, p. 359, places Pope Alexander's bull in 1162 (p. 268 no. 13), but mentions all the other popes and adds Honorius III (1216–1227) as well, without their bulls taking effect.
Innocent III and Albenga In 1208 scandal enveloped the diocese of Albenga.Semeria, II, pp. 373-375. Complaints to the papacy were of sufficient gravity that Pope Innocent III appointed a committee of Apostolic Visitors.The Visitors were the Cistercian Bishop Peter of Ivrea (who was appointed Patriarch of Antioch on 5 March 1209); Archbishop Lotharius Rosario of Vercelli (who was appointed Archbishop of Pisa in April 1208); and the Cistercian Abbot of Tileto Gerardus Sessa (who was named Bishop of Novara in 1209). J.P. Migne (ed.) Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, Patrologiae Latinae Tomus CCXIV (Paris 1891), pp. 320-322. Bishop Oberto of Albenga was accused of employing the use of the red-hot iron as a method of purging an accused person of the guilt of his crime, and over the strong objections of the people. Oberto was suspended from episcopal authority by the Visitors, and ordered to present himself at the Papal Court to explain his conduct, which he never did. In fact, when the Archbishop of Vercelli appeared and explained the whole matter to the Pope, Bishop Oberto disappeared, and a diligent search was unable to locate him. Pope Innocent then took counsel with his advisors, and Oberto was judged unworthy of the ministry of the altar (ministerio altaris indignum). Then the Pope wrote a letter to Bisho-elect Sessa, ordering him and the Archbishop of Vercelli to use the powers granted to them when they were named Apostolic Visitors to depose Bishop Oberto. They were also ordered to see to it that a suitable person be found to be canonically elected in his place. Bishop Oberto, however, returned to the Papal Court, and engaged in a series of delaying tactics, offering one excuse after another, which were contrary to the information in the committee report, and promising that he would prove his statements at an appropriate time (opportuno tempore). In a letter of 1 October 1210,Semeria wrongly dates the letter to 1211. Cf. August Potthast, I (Berlin 1874), p. 353 no. 4095. Pope Innocent ordered Sessa to investigate Oberto's new excuses, and if they were proved to be true, to absolve him and restore him to office; if they were false, he was to proceed as previously directed by the Pope and arrange for a new election.
In the summer of 1213, Pope Innocent decided to deal with the fifty-year-long scandal of the defiance of papal bulls by the bishops of Albenga, with regard to the assignment of Albenga to the ecclesiastical province of Genoa. The moment may have been chosen because a new bishop had just been elected, and was awaiting confirmation by the Pope. The See of Milan was also vacant.An archbishop had been elected, but his institution was being resisted by the Milanese, and continued to be resisted as late as 2018. Eubel, I, p. 332 with note 4. On 8 July 1213, Innocent addressed a mandate to the Abbot of Tileto, to warn the Albengans and to get them, by ecclesiastical censures without right of appeal, to render obedience and reverence to the Archbishop of Genoa as their Metropolitan.Semeria, p. 376.
On 19 December 1213, Archbishop Otto of Genoa took formal possession of the diocese of Albenga, and on 24 December he was honorably received by the clergy and people of the diocese.
Cathedral and Chapter The original cathedral of Albenga had once been a Roman temple; it was octagonal in form and dedicated to S. John the Evangelist. It was replaced by the second cathedral, after 1128;In 1128, Bishop Otto (Ottone) signed a document Sancti Joannis sacrae Albinganensis ecclesiae episcopus. Cappelletti, p. 532. it was dedicated to S. Michael the Archangel. Bishop Luca Fieschi (1582–1610) carried out major repairs on the cathedral, and rebuilt the adjacent episcopal palace.Rossi, pp. 255-273.