RAGUSA (DUBROVNIK), Diocese of. - City and diocese in Dalmatia that extends entirely over the territory of the defunct Republic of Ragusa (including the islands). Until 1828 Ragusa was one of the four metropolises of Dalmatia.
Over an area of 1,315 sq. km., it has 74,000 inhabitants, of whom 72,000 are Catholics; it has 59 parishes served by 46 diocesan priests and 40 regulars; in the diocese there are 12 male and 18 female religious communities (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 333).
The city was founded in the 7th century by fugitives from ancient Epidaurus (v. EPIDAURUS). Ragusium, the new city, was part of the Byzantine theme of Dalmatia. In the 13th century a suburb of it, Dubrovnik, inhabited by Slavs, was annexed to Ragusa. The city, encircled by fine walls, was from then on designated by the two names (Ragusa and Dubrovnik). The Slavic element infiltrated the city little by little, so that by the 13th century some patrician families were already of Slavic origin.
History makes mention of Ragusa only around the year 850. Byzantine sovereignty, interrupted in the 11th century by that of the Normans, was for a brief period replaced by the protection of Venice, under which it passed again in 1205 and remained until 1358. Beginning in the 12th century, thanks to its trade with the countries of the West and the East, Ragusa became an important commercial center in the Adriatic. In the 13th-14th centuries the limits of the Ragusan territory were fixed, which, including the islands of Meleda (Croatian Mljet) and Lagosta (Croatian Lastovo) and the peninsula of Sabbioncello (Croatian Pelješac) with Stagno (Croatian Ston), extended from the mouth of the Narenta to the Bocche di Cattaro. Its aristocratic constitution had its legislative bodies in the Consilium Maius of 100 members and in the Consilium Rogatorum or of the Pregadi (30 members), with an executive body, the Consilium Minus, of 12 members, including the count.
The sovereignty of the kings of Hungary, in fact merely nominal, consisted in the payment of a tribute. The count, previously always a Venetian nobleman, was replaced by the Council of Three, and later by a single rector. Enriched by trade with many countries of Europe, the city beautified itself little by little and then took on its definitive physiognomy, both urbanistic and artistic. On the other hand, R. was engaged in this era in numerous struggles to protect its possessions and its new territorial acquisitions. With the death of the last king of Hungary, Louis (at Mohács, in 1526), R. found a way to place itself under the sovereignty and protection of the Sultan, paying him a heavy annual tribute; thus the Republic of R., maintaining its traditional autonomy, little different from true independence, and its neutrality in the struggles between Venice and the Porte, succeeded in preserving its old markets in the Balkan territory (Bosnia, Serbia, etc.) and in deepening commercial relations with other countries of Europe and the Mediterranean, preserving the monopoly of trade with the hinterland, which was under the sovereignty of the Sultan. This, however, gradually diminished when the discovery of new lands gave world trade quite different directions. On the other hand, even in the Ottoman Empire, symptoms of decline became more pronounced in the 17th century from political and economic point of view became more pronounced in the 17th century. In 1806 the French troops dealt the final blow to the Republic of Ragusa, which then at the Congress of Vienna (1815) was united with Austrian Dalmatia; after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1918) Ragusa became part of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia).
Ragusa, the so-called "Athens of Croatia," was the homeland of many illustrious men, among whom the playwright Marin Držić and the celebrated poet Ivan Gundulić (Gondola) excel. Ragusa also produced the famous mathematician and astronomer Ruggero Boščković, a Jesuit ([v.] 18th century). The painter Niccolò da Ragusa (N. Božidarević) is also known. Its historical and artistic monuments are considerable, foremost the walls with their towers, the magnificent palace of the rectors, the customs palace ("Divona"), the cloisters of the Franciscans and Dominicans, the churches of St. Saviour and St. Blaise (Sv. Vlaho, patron of the city). The cathedral dedicated to the Most Holy Virgin and the two beautiful fountains attributed to the Neapolitan architect Onofrio de la Cava. In the churches of Ragusa there are paintings by Titian (or at least by his school), by Del Sarto, by Pordenone and by Palma the Elder. Among its very ancient institutions mention must be made of the pharmacy at the Franciscans, founded in 1317, and an orphanage for illegitimate children (1432).
The diocese of Ragusa seems to have been created at the same time as the creation of the new city, in the 7th century. And indeed the bishops of Ragusa always considered themselves successors of those of Epidaurus. But the first explicit mention we have is in the acts of the provincial Synods of Spalato, in 925 and 928; as a suffragan of Spalato, the new diocese of Cattaro (Croatian Kotor) was then also created. In 1022, by concession of Benedict VIII, Ragusa became a metropolitan see, but because of the protests of the metropolitan of Spalato in 1060 Ragusa was again a suffragan of Spalato, and it was not definitively a metropolis until 1120, under Pope Callistus II, when it had subject to it, along with Antivari, 10 suffragans, including Bosnia. The protests and struggles continued, until under Innocent III the metropolis of Antivari was reconstituted, and thus there were four archbishoprics in Dalmatia: Spalato, Ragusa, Zara and Antivari. In 1828 Leo XII created the single metropolis of Zara but united to Ragusa the ancient dioceses of Stagno (Croatian Ston) and of Curzola (Croatian Korčula). In 1932 the island of Lagosta (Croatian Lastovo) was subjected to the archbishop of Zara.
Of the best-known and most deserving archbishops of Ragusa, mention must be made of Giovanni Dominici (1408-19), Gianangelo Medici (1545-49, later Pope Pius IV) and the well-known scholar and pontifical diplomat Lodovico Beccadelli (1555-64).
At present the diocese of Ragusa is entirely contained within the Croatian federal Republic. In the see city are the Episcopal
Seminary and two philosophical-theological schools, Franciscan and Dominican. - See plate XX.
Bibliography14 works
Atanasio Matanić.-