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Roman Catholic Diocese of Guastalla

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ5278889 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Diocese of Guastalla (Dioecesis Guastallensis) was a Catholic suffragan bishopric in the province of Reggio Emilia, Italy, from 1828 to 1986. It began as a small chapel, ordered by a Holy Roman Emperor in 865; it was promoted into being a parish; it then became a territorial abbey; and finally, after the Napoleonic occupation of Italy, it was made a diocese at the request of his second wife. The diocese followed the Roman rite.

History

Guastalla began as a chapel, built on order of the Emperor Louis II dated 2 November 865, on territory given to his wife Engelberga. Ecclesiastically, the chapel was part of the diocese of Reggio; the bishop subinfeudated the chapel into the hands of Boniface, Count of Toscana.

The parish

The chapel of S. Peter was promoted into being a parish church (plebes, piave) c. 996–999 by Pope Gregory V. In 1101 Countess Matilda of Tuscany bestowed liberty upon the church of Guastalla.

On 21 October 1106, Pope Paschal II held a council in Guastalla of bishops from France, Germany and Italy. He declared that, since the See of Ravenna had so frequently opposed the leadership of the Church of Rome, the dioceses of Parma, Reggio, Modena, and Bologna should never thereafter be subject to Ravenna as their metropolitan.

By 1145 the Church of S. Peter at Guastalla was presided over by an Archpriest, as Pope Eugene III noted in his bull which took the Church of Guastalla under the protection of the Holy See.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Roman Catholic Diocese of Guastalla” as open-knowledge reference entry. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1828, 1986, 1101, 1106—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Roman, Catholic and Diocese can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as open-knowledge reference entry. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5278889. The first chronological checks are 1828, 1986, 1101 and 1106.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Roman Catholic Diocese of Guastalla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.