SIRMIUM, Diocese of. — In Bosnia. It has an area of 10,078 sq. km. with a population of 400,000, of whom 380,978 are Catholics, distributed in 4 archdioceses, 6 deaneries, 111 parishes served by 135 diocesan priests and 27 regulars; it has a seminary with 9 male and 48 female religious communities. The see is at Đakovo (Ann. Pont. 1932, p. 382).
S. (now Hrvatska Mitrovica), a city famous as the residence of emperors and praetorian prefects, was the capital of the province of Pannonia Secunda. Christianity spread very early in this region, as evidenced by many glorious martyrs such as the "Four Crowned Martyrs" (v.), anonymous stonecutters of Fruška Gora, St. Polion, a distinguished lector of the church of Cibalae, and St. Irenaeus, a voconian hero of S. (d. 304). However, the ancient tradition, also upheld by Farlati, which attributes apostolic origins to the Church of S., is now refuted. In the 4th century, S. was the ecclesiastical metropolis of western Illyricum and later of Pannonia alone, with the suffragan bishops of Mursa (Osijek), Cibalae (Vinkovci), and Bassianae (Petrovci). In the Christological disputes, the bishops of S., Photinus and the Arianizing Germinius, acquired the sad fame of heresiarchs, while S. became known at the time of the semi-Arian councils held there for the famous "formulae of S." S. was destroyed by the Avars in 582. After a long time, a new city arose around the eastern monastery of St. Demetrius, from which it took the name of Dimitrovica, today Mitrovica, while S. (in Croatian: Srijem) remained the name of the entire region between the Sava and Danube rivers. Adrian II attempted in 869 to restore the diocese of S. with extensive jurisdiction over the central Danube area, but the far-sighted plan of the Holy See could not be realized due to political intrigues. S. was restored only in 1229 by Gregory IX as an ordinary diocese, albeit within rather narrow limits. Its see was established at the former Benedictine monastery of Banostor on the Danube, later transferred to Mitrovica. The diocese suffered greatly from heretical movements (the so-called Bosnian heresy first, then the Usites, and later, during Turkish rule, Calvinism, not to mention conversions to schism and Islam, and numerous migrations). But with the liberation of this region from the Turks (1687-1735), all groups disappeared except for the "Orthodox."
The city of Đakovo, with extensive estates in Slovenia, most of which then belonged to the diocese of Pečuh (Pécs, Quinqueecclesiae), was donated by Duke Coloman in 1239 to the bishop of Bosnia. However, it was not long before the bishop, threatened by the Patarenes, withdrew from Bosnia to Đakovo and remained there. Clement XIV unified in 1773 the dioceses of Bosnia (in true Bosnia there was the apostolic vicariate of Ottoman Bosnia) and of S., and the new diocese with its see at Đakovo retained the double historical name. It was initially dependent on the archdiocese of Kalocsa and later (from 1852) on that of Zagreb.
Among the notable bishops of Đakovo are Giorgio Palizna, killed by the Turks at the Battle of Mohács in 1526; Nicola Ogarnic, O.F.M., assassinated by Orthodox bandits (1701); Antonio Mandić (1806-1915), founder of the Seminary of Đakovo; and finally Josip Juraj Strossmayer (1850-1905), renowned orator at the First Vatican Council, known promoter of Church unity, national tribune, Croatian patron, founder of the Croatian University of Zagreb, and builder of the cathedral in Đakovo, where Romanesque and Byzantine styles are happily blended.
Hab. The woman received the fugitive, but when he had fallen asleep, she killed him by driving a tent peg into his skull with a hammer (Judg. 4:31). The shameful death of the defeated enemy is the subject of much of the epic-lyric celebration known as the "Song of Deborah" (Judg. 5).
2. One of the Natineans (v.) who returned from exile with Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:53).