In 1548, the monastery was surrounded by walls to protect it from enemy attacks. Monks of holy life flourished there, such as the igumen Irinarch (1613–26) and the hermit Eleazar, who lived on Anzer Island (mid-17th century). For a time, Nikon, later Patriarch of Moscow, also resided there. At the beginning of the Old Believers' schism, S. rebelled against Nikon’s “innovations.” It was only captured in 1676 after a seven-year siege. From that time onward, it became an increasingly frequent destination for numerous pilgrimages during the summer.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, S. lost all its possessions, and the island was transformed into a concentration camp where many Catholic priests were deported to perform forced labor in those forests. The monastery, however, was not officially suppressed; it is possible that some monks still resided there as of 1953.
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SOLSONA, DIOCESE OF. — A city and diocese in Spain. It extends across the civil provinces of Lleida and Barcelona, covering an area of 4,000 km²; it has 200,000 inhabitants, all Catholic, and comprises 186 parishes and 426 churches. The diocesan clergy consists of 264 members, while the religious clergy numbers 110. There are 12 male religious houses with 370 members and 41 female houses with 417 religious. The bishop is Vincenzo Enrique y Tarancon, consecrated in 1946. The diocese is a suffragan of Tarragona.
Originally, the diocese of S. was part of the Diocese of Urgell. However, the region of S., situated in a rugged and difficult terrain, was not easily accessible or manageable for the bishops of Urgell. To prevent the infiltration of Lutheran heresy, King Philip II obtained from Pope Clement VIII the establishment of a new diocese, with its episcopal see in the city of S. The ancient and renowned canonry of Santa Maria, founded in the 10th century and recently secularized by the same Pope, was chosen as the cathedral of the new chapter. The diocese was erected on July 19, 1593, and on August 4, its first bishop, the canon of Barcelona Luigi Sanz, was preconized.
Twenty-two bishops governed the diocese until 1838, when, following the death of Bishop Tejada and amid the revolutions of that era, it first became vacant and then, under the Concordat of 1851, was suppressed and united with the Diocese of Vic. Among the bishops of S., worthy of special mention are Fr. Giovanni de S. Maria Alonso y Valencia, O.F.M. (1694–99), who earned great distinctions from Popes Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, and Innocent XII and participated in the negotiations for the Peace of Ryswick; Giuseppe de Mezquia y Dias (1746–42), a promoter of extensive pastoral activities; and Raffaello Lasala y Locela, O.S.A. (1773–93), of outstanding holiness and charity. During his time, the rich archive of the ancient canonry was organized. The diocese was restored in 1891, initially under the apostolic administration of the Bishop of Vic, and in 1895 it had its own administrator. In 1933, it regained the title of a diocese. Among the apostolic administrators, Francisco Vidal y Barraquer (1913–19), later Cardinal-Archbishop of Tarragona, is remembered as the founder of the *Museum Archaeologicum Diocesanum*, which houses interesting collections of regional prehistory and medieval art.
In addition to the Cathedral, whose Gothic construction preserves the apses from the 12th century, notable structures include the Church of San Vicente de Cardona (11th century); the small circular church of San Pedro el Gros in Cervera (11th century); the Abbey of San Pedro de Ager, whose church, now in ruins, dates to the 11th century; the Monastery of San Pedro de la Portella (11th century); and Santa Maria de Serrateix (11th–12th century).
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SOCOTRA — Part of the Sultanate of Mara or Qishn, within the Eastern Aden Protectorate.
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II. CIVIL HISTORY
The history of S. before the spread of Islam is shrouded in obscurity. The hypothesis advanced by some scholars that the so-called Land of Punt, mentioned in inscriptions of ancient Pharaonic Egypt, might be identified with the northern regions of S. lacks solid evidence.More reliable are the accounts relating to the Muslim expansion, which appears to have begun from the nearby Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, when followers of Muhammad, coming from Yemen, established a sultanate on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Aden, centered in Zeila, in what is now British S. Three centuries later, it seems another wave of Arabs set foot in Italian S. for the first time and founded the cities of Mogadishu and Brava. Mogadishu soon became the most important center of the region and, by the mid-12th century, the seat of a hereditary sultanate. At the dawn of the modern age, vague accounts exist of a Kingdom of Adel, extending along the coasts of English S. and including the ports of Zeila and Berbera. This kingdom expanded as far as Harrar during the 16th century but was later destroyed by invasions of Galla peoples. After a brief and merely nominal Portuguese occupation of Mogadishu and Brava in 1503 and 1507 respectively—undertaken by Tristão da Cunha, whose very possibility testified to the decline of Arab rule—there was a revival of the indigenous population, which, perhaps in the 17th century, destroyed Mogadishu. Around the same period, the Kingdom of Adel collapsed, giving way to various independent emirates and sultanates. Fleeting, like the earlier Portuguese occupation of the early 16th century, was the occupation of southern Somali coastal centers by an envoy of the Emirate of Oman, which in reality aimed only to assert nominal sovereignty over those lands. These rights later passed, as heirs of the Sultans of Oman, to those of Zanzibar.
The first European power to take an interest in S. was Britain. In an effort to secure the route to India by acquiring a port for ships, England concluded agreements in 1840 with the Sultans of Tajura and Zeila.
Soon after, Napoleonic France extended its dominion over the Gulf of Aden region, concluding in 1862 a Convention with the Sultan of Tajura by which, upon payment of 1,000 thalers, it acquired Obock and a neighboring coastal strip of about 300 km along the Gulf of Tajura. However, the British and French occupation of these territories only took on a lasting and political character toward the end of the century. It was the Mahdist uprising in Sudan that prompted the two powers to expand their sovereignty over the hinterland of the Somali ports, to prevent the hordes of that fanatic from seizing them suddenly. In 1884, the French Third Republic concluded conventions with the Sultans of Tajura and Gobad, by which
Somalia — 1) Colony boundaries; 2) ecclesiastical circumscription boundaries; 3) railways.
It took possession of the entire Gulf of Tagiura and extended its dominion along the coast as far as beyond Djibouti. The following year, the protectorate over the Issa Sultanate secured for France influence over the hinterland to a depth of about 200 km. In the same year, 1884, England occupied the ports of Zeila, Bulhar, and Berbera, and conventions concluded in subsequent years with local sultans helped to consolidate these bridgeheads. Italy asserted its protectorate over the remaining coasts not yet subject to European influence. The first sultanate to request Italian protection was that of Obbia (February 1889), followed a few weeks later, in April, by that of the Migiurtini. In 1891, the spheres of influence of England and Italy were delimited, and the entire region east of the Juba River, including the territories of Merca, Brava, and Mogadishu, was assigned to Italy. The borders with British Somaliland were instead fixed in 1894. The year after the delimitation of the spheres of influence, in 1892, Italy also came into possession of the coastal region situated between the mouth of the Juba and the protectorate of Obbia through a convention with the Sultan of Zanzibar, who exercised sovereignty over those lands, in exchange for an annual payment; however, it was only thirteen years later, in 1905, that Italy acquired full sovereignty over that region and exercised direct rule there. With the promulgation in 1908 of the law on the administrative organization of the colony, headed by a civilian governor, Italian Somaliland also had its borders with Ethiopia definitively established following a treaty concluded with Negus Menelik. In the decades that followed, efforts were made to normalize and pacify the colony.