In the following century it became a free commune with authority over a wide territory including numerous castles. The inner struggles within Tuscania led to a loss of prestige, in favour of the nearby Viterbo, which was made a diocese in 1192, formally on split-off territory, but virtually achieved a transfer by immediate, constant personal union under Viterbo's bishops until the 1896 former merger of the Tuscania bishopric (as it had been renamed in 1911) into the Viterbo diocese. In 1222 St. Francis of Assisi sojourned in the city.