The Archdiocese of Rossano–Cariati () is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church in Calabria that has existed since the 7th century. It is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Cosenza-Bisignano."Archdiocese of Rossano-Cariati" Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved February 29, 2016"Archdiocese of Rossano-Cariati" GCatholic.org. Gabriel Chow. Retrieved February 29, 2016.
History Middle Ages
Totila, King of the Goths (541–552) campaigned against the Byzantine cities of southern Italy, captured and devastated the Roman colony of Rossano.Cappelletti XXI, p. 273.
At the time of Pope Gregory I (590–604), the dioceses in Bruttium were: Reggio Calabriae, Locri, Vibo Valentia, Tempsa, Scyllaecium, Croton, Cosentia, Thurii, Tauriana, Nicotera, Carina, and Myria.Louis Duchesne, "Les évêchés de Calabre," in: Scripta Minora. Études de topographie romaine et de géographie ecclésiastique, (Rome : École Française de Rome, 1973 [originally in the Mélanges Paul Fabre, 1902]), pp. 439-454. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 13-1), pp. 1-2. In the late 6th century, the Diocese of Rossano was established, after the Diocese of Thurio had become defunct and its people enslaved or dispersed as a result of the Lombard invasions.Cappelletti XXI, p. 273. There is no evidence that the diocesan seat of Thurii was moved to Rossano, or that the diocese of Rossano was a successor of Thurii. The first known bishop of this see is Valerianus, Bishop of the "Ecclesia Rosana" in the Roman Council of 680.
Greek possession of Calabria Up to the 7th century, the bishops of Calabria and Sicily were consecrated in Rome, and attended the councils of the Popes. In the 8th and 9th century, except for the bishops of Cosenza, Bisignano, and Martorano, the bishops attended the councils of the Patriarch of Constantinople.D'Avino [Leopoldo Pagano], p. 570, col. 2.
In the Diatyposis of the Emperor Leo the Wise ( 900), the diocese of Thurii is still listed, as a suffragan bishopric of Reggio Calabriae, though the bishop's seat was then at Rossano.Louis Duchesne, "Les évêchés de Calabre," in: Scripta Minora, p. 9. The archbishop of Reggio was a Greek Metropolitan, subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople. In the Notitia Episcopatuum of Leo the Wise and Patriarch Stephanus, Rossano is one of the three bishops rescued from the occupation of the Arabs and incorporated into the Greek empire.Il rito..., pp. 30-31: "Tre sono nuove diocesi create, dopo l'occupazione bizantina, probabilmente da Leone VI e dal Patriarca Stefano successore di Fozio, nel territorio che già apparteneva ai bizantini, poi era stato occupato dagli arabi, e cacciati questi era ritornato ai bizantini stessi , ed erano: Amantea, Nicastro, e Rossano."
The Oratory of San Marco in Rossano was built in the 10th century by St. Nilus the Younger as a place of retirement for nearby eremite monks and is one of the most important testimonies to Byzantine art in Italy. In 982 Emperor Otto II captured Rossano temporarily from the Byzantines, who had made it the capital of their possessions in Southern Italy. It preserved its Greek character long after its conquest by the Normans. At the end of the 10th century, in the time of Saint Nilus, the Byzantines demanded that the city of Rossano to fit out ships for the Byzantine fleet; the populace refused, and burned the ships in the harbor.B.M. Kreutz, Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth & Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press 1991), pp. 5, 119.
Normans, Rome, and Calabria At the synod of Melfi held on 10–15 September 1089, Pope Urban II received the formal adhesion of the Greek archbishops of Rossano and Santa Severina to the Church of Rome. The Greek archbishop of Reggio Calabriae, who was elected in Constantinople, recoiled in horror at the acknowledgment of the papal primacy. He was replaced by a Latin-rite archbishop.G. A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (London-New York: Routledge 2000), pp. 225, 229-230. In 1093, on the death of the same archbishop of Rossano, Duke Robert Guiscard attempted to have a Latin rite archbishop installed, but in the uproar, his son-in-law, William de Grandmesnil seized the city of Rossano and fortified it against the duke, who (it was reported) was near death. A military expedition in 1094 dislodged William from the city proper, and he was eventually deprived of all his territories. The Latin rite bishop, who was not yet consecrated, was withdrawn, and the clergy and people of Rossano were allowed to elect their own Greek archbishop. He was perhaps Nicholas Maleinos.Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 108, 230. Geoffrey Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily, and of his brother Duke Robert Guiscard, (tr. Kenneth Baxter Wolf) (Ann Arbor: U. Michigan Press 2005), Book IV, sections 21-22, pp. 199-202.
On 3 April 1218, Pope Honorius III responded to reports from the archpriest and more than three canons of the cathedral of Rossano that the dean of the Chapter, the archdeacon, and several canons had elected Basilius, the judex of Rossano, as their new archbishop. It was alleged that the judge had had people executed, that he was married, and that his election may have been simoniacal. He had been rushed through ordinations up to the diaconate in a single day. The pope ordered the archbishop of Cosenza to investigate the matter. If the reports were true, the archbishop was to void the election, deprive his electors of the power of electing, and suspend the bishop who carried out the ordinations.Taccone-Galucci, p. 124. Eventually, Basilius was confirmed by Pope Honorius.Cappelletti XXI, p. 276.
Chapter and cathedral
The Cattedrale di Maria Santissima Achiropita is the seat of the Archbishop of Rossano-Cariati. Built in the 11th century, it houses an ancient image of the Madonna Acheropita, an image of the Madonna and Child dated to somewhere between about 580 and the first half of the 8th century.Cappelletti XXI, pp. 273-274. Caterina Maria Marra, "La Madonna Achiropìta della Cattedrale di Rossano", Academia.edu. In May 1193, King Tancred of Sicily donated part of the income of the dye works at Rossano to provide oil for a vigil light before the image.Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (2007), p. 510.
The cathedral was served and administered by an ecclesiastical corporation called the Chapter, which was composed of six dignities (the Archdeacon, the Deacon, the Archpriest, the Cantor, the Treasurer, and the Sub-cantor) and eighteen canons.Cappelletti XXI, p. 274.
The famous Codex Rossanensis, an illuminated volume of texts from the New Testament, was discovered in 1879 in the Rossano cathedral sacristy.
Archbishop Lancillotto Lancellotti (1573–1580) held a diocesan synod on 1 June 1574, and published the diocesan statutes.Constitutiones editae in synodo dioecesana rossanensi quam reverendissimus P. D. Lancilotus archiepiscopus habuit anno Domini MDLXXIIII cal. iunii. Addita sunt quaedam decreta Tridentini Concilii et constitutiones summorum Pontificum quarum agnitio necessaria erat. Bomae, apud haeredes Antonii Bladii, 1579.
The archdiocese had two seminaries (high schools), one in Rossano for students of the Latin rite, and the other at S. Demetrio called the seminary of the Italo-Greeks. The Latin seminary was the work of Archbishop Lucio Sanseverino (1592–1612) in 1594, while the Greek was founded in 1733, at the instigation of Pope Clement XII with the active support of Stefano and Felice Radota of the Albanian community of S. Benedetto Ullano.D'Avino, p. 584.
Modern period
In 1460, the diocese was elevated to the rank of an archdiocese.
On 27 June 1818, with the bull De utiliori of Pope Pius VII, the dioceses of Cerenzia, Strongoli and Umbriatico were suppressed and their territories incorporated into the Diocese of Cariati.Papal bull De utiliori, in Bullarii romani continuatio, Vol. XV, Rome 1853, p. 58
On 13 February 1919, the diocese had territory transferred to create the Eparchy of Lungro for the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church. On April 4, 1979, the Archdiocese was merged with the Diocese of Cariati to become the Archdiocese of Rossano e Cariati. The former cathedral of the Archangel Michael, located in Cariati, was designated a co-cathedral.
Diocesan reorganization The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), in order to ensure that all Catholics received proper spiritual attention, decreed the reorganization of the diocesan structure of Italy and the consolidation of small and struggling dioceses. It also recommended the abolition of anomalous units such as exempt territorial prelatures.In its decree Christus Dominus, section 22, it stated: "Concerning diocesan boundaries, therefore, this sacred synod decrees that, to the extent required by the good of souls, a fitting revision of diocesan boundaries be undertaken prudently and as soon as possible. This can be done by dividing dismembering or uniting them, or by changing their boundaries, or by determining a better place for the episcopal see or, finally, especially in the case of dioceses having larger cities, by providing them with a new internal organization.... At the same time the natural population units of people, together with the civil jurisdictions and social institutions that compose their organic structure, should be preserved as far as possible as units. For this reason, obviously, the territory of each diocese should be continuous."
On 4 April 1979, Pope John Paul II carried out a major reorganization of the ecclesiastical provinces of Campania and Calabria. The diocese of Cariati was permanently united aeque principaliterThere would be one and the same bishop for each of the two dioceses. to the archdiocese of Rossano, as Rossano e Cariati.Acta Apostolicae Sedis 71 (Città del Vaticano 1979), pp. 560-561: "item dioecesim Cariatensem, distractis territoriis quae supra diximus, archidioecesi Rossanensi aeque principaliter in perpetuum unimus. Consentinus igitur Archiepiscopus, Bisinianensis etiam Episcopus appellabitur, Rossanensis etiam Cariatensis."
A metropolitan
On 30 September 1986, Pope John Paul II ordered that the dioceses of Rossano e Cariati be merged into one diocese with one bishop, with the Latin title Archidioecesis Rossanensis-Cariatensis (Rossano-Cariati). The seat of the diocese was to be in Rossano, and the cathedral of Rossano was to serve as the cathedral of the merged dioceses. The cathedral in Cariati was to become a co-cathedral, and the cathedral Chapter was to be a Capitulum Concathedralis. There was to be only one diocesan Tribunal, in Rossano, and likewise one seminary, one College of Consultors, and one Priests' Council. The territory of the new diocese was to include the territory of the former dioceses of Rossano and Cariati. However, the united diocese was now made a suffragan of the metropolitan archdiocese of Reggio-Bova.Acta Apostolicae Sedis 79 (Città del Vaticano 1987), pp. 775-777: "Dioecesis nova hac structura praedita sedem habebit in urbe vulgo nuncupata «Rossano Calabro», ubi hodierna Ecclesia Cathedralis proprium hunc titulum servat, et suffraganea erit Ecclesiae Metropolitanae Rheginensis-Bovensis."
A different metropolitan