SPALATO (SPLIT), DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese of Croatia (Yugoslavia). The diocese has an area of 3,668 sq. km. with a population of 306,340 inhabitants, of whom 285,400 are Catholics; it is divided into 7 deaneries comprising 146 parishes and 6 independent chaplaincies served by 153 diocesan priests and 94 regulars; it has a seminary, 14 male religious communities and 31 female (Ann. Pont. 1952, p. 385).
S. arose, as the heir of ancient Salona (v.), not far from it, and the beginnings of S. are to be sought in the municipal life that developed within the perimeter of Diocletian's Palace, which after the Emperor's death became public property and was inhabited by a population that had come in large part from nearby Salona. Within its walls lived the dethroned Emperor Julius Nepos. The fugitives of S. were partly saved by moving into the nearby
Palace, which had not suffered the fate of the Dalmatian metropolis, while others instead sought temporary refuge on some adjacent Dalmatian islands. Once the imminent danger had passed, these too returned to the mainland and became part of the population of the new city, which began to be called S., that is, with the name that had already been in use for centuries (on the basis of the precious information offered us by the famous Tabula Peutingeriana) as a toponym on this small peninsula, where a small village must have existed since the times of the Greek colonization of Dalmatia. This nucleus of the later city, which still today contains 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants of the present-day city, remained within the towered walls of the Palace until the 12th century; from then on it began to develop toward the west, where another important center of the city's medieval life later arose.
S. belonged in this period to the Byzantine theme of Dalmatia. The Byzantine city, having also a Roman, or Romanized Illyrian, population, was surrounded by the Croatian population, which in Dalmatia, over the course of two subsequent centuries, had organized a strong independent state. Soon therefore, between the population of the Byzantine city and the Slavic population of the adjacent territories, a beneficial process of assimilation began, which had as its consequence the gradual but constant change of the city's ethnic stratum. Once the Byzantine cities of Dalmatia were incorporated into Croatian territory, S. too became part of the Croatian state in the 10th and 11th centuries (with an interruption in the first half of the 11th century when Doge Pietro II Orseolo took possession of it). In this period S. enjoyed an autonomy similar to that of the cities of Roman Dalmatia, and was presided over by a prior.
With the extinction of the Trpimirović dynasty and the death of the last Croatian king Zvonimir, after bitter struggles with Hungarian invaders that ended in negotiations (the so-called Pacta conventa of 1102), the Croatian throne passed to the kings of Hungary in a personal union. S. then recognized the power of the kings of Hungary and Croatia, continuing to enjoy complete autonomy in its municipal organization, which took the form of the by then classic medieval Dalmatian communities. This is the era of the city's greatest prosperity with regard to economic life (noteworthy are the small silver coins minted at S., commonly called "spalatini"), art, building activity, etc. In 1420 S., together with another part of the Dalmatian territory, passed under Venice, and remained there until the fall of the Republic in 1797, governed by a Venetian nobleman. Many Venetian families then settled in S. and its surroundings, and to them is due the embellishment of the city, which had by now expanded beyond the Palace. An entire series of palaces in the Flamboyant Gothic style, still largely preserved today, adorned the streets and squares of the old and the new part of the city. On the basis of the Treaty of Campoformio (1797) S. was occupied by Austria; in 1806 Napoleon incorporated it first into the Kingdom of Italy (1806-1809) and then into the Illyrian Provinces (1809-13). A second Austrian occupation ended about an entire century later (1813-1918); then the city became part of the new State of the South Slavs (Yugoslavia).
The Church of S. is the heir of Salona, which before the destruction of that city was metropolitan for all Dalmatia. Organized by John of Ravenna, who was the first archbishop of S., in the course of the 7th century, it inherited and maintained the primacy among the other dioceses of Dalmatia until 1828, when, with the bull of Leo XII Locum Beati Petri, it became a simple diocese suffragan of Zara.
The Church of S. must have had a considerable part in the conversion of the Slavic population of Dalmatia, thanks to its relations with the first princes. After the two Councils held at S. (in 925 and in 928), which had on their agenda the question of primacy over Croatian territory, in competition with the Croatian bishop of Nona, the archbishop of S. secured metropolitan jurisdiction and began to call himself Primas Dalmatiae et Croatiae. The territory dependent on the archdiocese of S. gradually diminished with the creation of some new dioceses (Antivari and Ragusa, in the 11th century) and with the formation of other archdioceses (Zara), under whose jurisdiction some suffragans of the archbishop of S. passed (Veglia, Ossero and Arbe). Finally, the creation of a new diocese at Lesina (in 1147) diminished the diocese of S. itself even more, with the loss of the two Dalmatian islands, Lesina and Brazza. A further diminution took place during the Turkish incursions into Dalmatian territory; when these ceased, S. regained the lost territories.
By means of the aforementioned bull of 1828, the diocese of Traù was abolished, and its territory was for the most part annexed to the diocese of S. The diocese of Macarca, on the other hand, on the basis of the same bull, was associated with the diocese of S., so that from that time the bishop of S. is at the same time also bishop of Macarca (episcopus Spalatensis et Macarensis, olim Salonitanni).
Diocletian's mausoleum (v. SALONA), converted into a Christian church already in the 7th century, immediately after the organization of the Church of S., is today the Cathedral dedicated to the B. Virgin Assumed. The patron of the diocese and city of S. is St. Doimo, bishop and martyr, whose feast falls on 7 March. The most important churches and convents of the city of S. are: the church and convent of St. Francis at the harbor (whose foundation tradition attributes to the Saint himself), the church of the Madonna delle Grazie at Paludi, with the Franciscan convent, the church of the Madonna della Salute, with the Franciscan convent (parish church), the church of the Madonna del Carmine, with the Capuchin convent (parish church), the church of St. Dominic, with the Dominican convent, the church of the Holy Cross (parish church); other churches of high historical and artistic interest. Finally, the episcopal Seminary and the theological Seminary complete the series of ecclesiastical institutions of the city.
Among the most important and well-known archbishops of S. are remembered: John of Ravenna, organizer of the Church of S., Lorenzo the Dalmatian, friend and trusted person of the Croatian king Zvonimir (11th century), Lorenzo Zane, nephew of Pope Eugene IV and titular patriarch of Antioch, Marcantonio de Dominis, physicist, later heretic (17th century), Stefano Cupilli, whom Innocent XII defined as "another St. Francis de Sales", P. Bizza, well-known collaborator of Riceputi (Illyricum sacrum).
The most notable artists of S. are: the sculptor A. Buvina, author of the doors of the Cathedral, T. Arcidiacono, medieval chronicler, author of the Historia Salonitana (13th century), Marco Marulić (Marulo), humanist philosopher and poet. At S. many Dalmatian and foreign artists have worked, who have left very vivid traces of their activity.
S. possesses numerous monuments and works of art from various epochs and styles, besides Diocletian's Palace, the first among them all the imposing Romanesque bell tower. Split has very many scientific and cultural institutions, such as the Institute of Oceanography, the Advanced School for Secondary School Teachers, various museums (archaeological, of Croatian antiquities, ethnographic, civic, of the Navy, of natural history), and galleries (of art, of Meštrović, of the Cathedral Treasury). The Archaeological Museum, founded in 1821, is extremely important, containing the monuments and the material from the excavations of Salona. In Split in 1894 the First International Congress of Christian Archaeology was held. - See plate LXXIII.
Bibliography19 works
Vinko Brajević