KOTOR (CATTARO), DIOCESE OF. - In Dalmatia. Founded in the 10th century. Area 6,367 sq km. Catholics 13,000; belonging to other confessions, overwhelmingly dissenters, 21,000. The diocese has 4 deaneries, 107 churches, 29 parishes, 27 diocesan priests and 6 religious (Observant Franciscans and Tertiaries), besides 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 go back to early Christian times, since of Risano (Ρέξαν, Risan, residence of the Illyrian kings in the 3rd century B.C.) it is known that in the 6th century A.D. it had a bishop named Sebastian, who was in epistolary contact with Gregory the Great. In 80 the head of St. Tryphon martyr was brought to C., then a Byzantine city, and a few years later a church was built in his honor (the present Cathedral, restored in Romanesque style in the 12th century, after an earthquake). The provincial
Council of Spalato divided in 925, during the reign of the Croatian king Tomislav, the Cattaro-Ragusa diocese into two dioceses: 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 metropolis of Spalato. This was not granted them, and they asked for the protection of the archbishop of Bari (1178), remaining his suffragans until the ecclesiastical reorganization of Dalmatia (1828), when they passed under the metropolis of Zara.
The most ancient bishops of C. of whom there is record are Grimaldo (1090) and Orszio (1124); the names of their successors have come down to us almost all (as many as 67 are known).
The territory of the diocese was quite small (perhaps only 200 sq km), since in the area of the political district of C. there existed 3 Latin dioceses: C., Risano (Rhysoniensis, entrusted since 1540 to the bishop of C., 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 by those of Antivari (Bar) and of C.; in 1828 it was abolished and its territory annexed to that of C.
The diocese of C. reached its greatest splendor in the 13th and 14th centuries, when all the Catholics of the Serbian State were subject to it. Unfortunately the Catholics did not manage to maintain themselves there entirely, so that a notable number of them passed, during the Turkish domination, to the dissident Serbs, especially in the surroundings of Budua and Risano.
There were several rich churches (C., Perasto, Perzagno [Prčanj]). Famous is the sanctuary of the Madonna dello Scarpello near Perasto. The diocese has given the Church a Eucharistic saint, the blessed Grazia da Molo (d. 1508), whose relics are preserved in the church of his native town, and the penitent virgin blessed Osanna da C. (d. 1567), who rests in the collegiate church of C.
Furthermore it has given men of great fame: admirals, painters, such as, for example, Giovanni Kokoljić (1661-1713) of Perasto, where also were born the great archbishop of Zara, Vincenzo Zmajević (1713-45), and that of Antivari, Andrea Zmajević.
Bibliography4 works
Stefano Draganović