[1] The earliest surviving evidence of the bishops in Matera dates from 968, according to Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, when the Patriarch of Constantinople, at the command of the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, ordered the diocese of Matera, with several other dioceses of the region, to be subordinated to the Archdiocese of Otranto and to conduct the liturgy exclusively according to the Byzantine Rite.

[2] On 13 April 1068, Pope Alexander II issued a bull, granted the pallium to Archbishop Arnaldus of Acerenza and confirming him in the archbishopric of Acerenza, including all of the parishes and towns belonging to it, including Tricarico, Montepiloso, Gravina, and Materia.

On 2 July 1954, Pope Pius XII issued the bull Acheronta et Matera, in which he revived the diocese of Matera as a metropolitan archbishopric, separate from the metropolitan archdiocese of Acerenza, with its own ecclesiastical province including the dioceses of Anglona-Turso and Tricarico as its suffragans.

[6] Pope Paul VI ordered a reorganization of the ecclesiastical provinces in southern Italy by the bull Quo aptius of 21 August 1976.

The decree "Eo quod spirituales" of 12 September 1976 created a new episcopal conference in the region called "Basilicata", to which were assigned all of the dioceses that belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Potenza, including Materana and Mons Pelusii; they had formerly belonged to the episcopal conference of "Apulia".

The changes were embodied in a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops in the Roman Curia, promulgated on 30 September 1986.