A Catholic History of Naples

Naples began as Neapolis, a Greek city that kept its language well into Roman times. The Archdiocese's own history says the oldest accounts of its Church, none earlier than the ninth century, give the founding to Saint Peter. In the story he stopped here on his way from Antioch to Rome, healed an old woman later called Candida, then healed and baptized her friend Aspren and made him the first bishop. The diocese tells this plainly as tradition, and history has kept almost nothing of Aspren's life. He is still honored as the first bishop and a patron, and the Treasure Chapel keeps his silver bust.

The first hard evidence lies under the ground. In the second century Christians were burying their dead in the tufa, the soft volcanic stone, of the Capodimonte hill north of the walls. The cemetery grew around the grave of Saint Agrippinus, the sixth bishop, whom the city counts as its first patron, and it became the catacombs of San Gennaro, whose vestibule still has painted ceilings in the manner of Pompeii. Saint Paul landed at nearby Pozzuoli on his way to Rome, as the Acts of the Apostles tell, and the diocese recalled that landing when Pope Leo XIV came in 2026.