CATTARO (KOTOR), DIOCESE of. — In Dalmatia. Founded in the 10th century. Area: 6,367 sq km. Catholics: 13,000; members of other confessions, overwhelmingly dissidents, 21,000. The diocese comprises 4 deaneries, 107 churches, 29 parishes, 27 diocesan priests, and 6 religious (Observant Franciscans and Tertiaries), as well as 23 Sisters of the Holy Cross and the Sisters of the Child Jesus in 3 houses.
Nothing is known about the beginnings of the diocese of C. (Ascrutium, Δεκατέρα, Catharum), which may date back to the early Christian period, since it is known that Risano (Ρέξαν, Risan, the residence of the Illyrian kings in the 3rd century B.C.) had a bishop named Sebastian in the 6th century A.D., who was in correspondence with Gregory the Great. In 80 the head of St. Tryphon the martyr was transferred to C., then a Byzantine city, and a few years later a church was built in his honour (the present Cathedral, restored in the Romanesque style in the 12th century after an earthquake). The Council
of Spalato divided the Cattaro-Ragusa diocese into two dioceses in 925, during the reign of the Croatian king Tomislao: C. and Ragusa. When in 1022 the bishop of Ragusa received the archiepiscopal pallium, the bishops of C. repeatedly refused to become his suffragans, expressing the desire to remain under the metropolitan see of Spalato. This was not permitted them, and they sought the protection of the archbishop of Bari (1178), remaining his suffragans until the ecclesiastical reorganization of Dalmatia (1828), when they came under the metropolitan see of Zara.
The oldest bishops of C. of whom there is information are Grimaldo (1090) and Orszio (1124); the names of almost all their successors have come down to us (as many as 67 are known).
The territory of the diocese was very small (perhaps only 200 sq km), since in the area of the political district of C. there were 3 Latin dioceses: C., Risano (Rhysoniensis, entrusted to the bishop of C. from 1540 onward, until it was annexed to C. in 1688), and finally Budua (Buduensis); the latter existed at least from the 12th century, but from 1575 it had been administered by other bishops, especially those of Antivari (Bar) and C.; in 1828 it was abolished and its territory annexed to that of C.
The diocese of C. reached its greatest splendour in the 13th and 14th centuries, when all the Catholics of the Serbian State were subject to II. Unfortunately, the Catholics were unable to maintain themselves there entirely, so that a considerable number of them joined the dissident Serbs during Turkish rule, especially in the vicinity of Budua and Risano.
There are several rich churches (C., Perasto, Perzagno [Prčanj]). The shrine of Our Lady of Scarpello near Perasto is famous. The diocese has given the Church a Eucharistic saint, Blessed Grazia da Molo (d. 1508), whose relics are preserved in the church of his native village, and the penitential virgin Blessed Osanna da C. (d. 1567), who rests in the collegiate church of C.
It has also produced men of great renown: admirals and painters, such as, for example, Giovanni Kokoljić (1661–1713) of Perasto, where the great archbishop of Zara, Vincenzo Zmajević (1713–45), and the archbishop of Antivari, Andrea Zmajević, were also born.
BIB.: D. Farlati, Illyricum sacrum, VI, Venezia 1800, pp. 410-518 (C. e Risano); VII, ivi 1877, pp. 209-25 (Budua); Thaloczy-Suška-Jireček, Acta et diplomata res Albaniae mediae aetatis illustrantia; S. Draganović, Opći tematizam Katol. crkve u Jugoslaviji, pp. 227-34. Stefano Draganović