Review article
New contributions to the history of the former parish of Kotor
Slavko Matejčić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4571-6841
Abstract
In this article the author deals with some new information about the history of the settlement of Kotor, which is located in the hinterland of Crikvenica, and presents the thesis that the title “Kotor” is neither of Croatian nor Latin but in fact of Illyrian origin. Kotor is a settlement on the same named hill in the hinterland of Crikvenica, abandoned for several decades, and the author of the article proves that the leaving of its people was not only the consequence of the famous great fire of 1776, but that contra to popular thought, the depopulation took place gradually. At that the decision about the moving of the centre of the parish church in 1783 from the Kotor Church of Saints Simon and Jude Thaddeus into the Church of St Anthony on Gorica in Crikvenica had a crucial influence.
The author shows that the mentioned fire did not happen in 1776, as previously thought, but in 1779. This claim is corroborated by data from the visitation reports of the Senj-Modruš bishops in the period from 1732 to 1768 and from the registry books of the Kotor-Crikvenica parish, which were kept from 1735 to 1793. Beside this, he proves that this fire was no way near as disastrous to cause the mass exodus from the place and the movement of the population of Kotor to the coastal settlements of Crikvenica. He proves that the movement from Kotor occurred gradually, and that the coastal settlements were populated earlier, before the 1770s, thanks to better living conditions.
The second part of the article contains descriptions of preserved church fittings and documents that originate from Kotor’s Parish Church of Saints Simon and Jude Thaddeus, which include: the registry book of the Kotor-Crikvenica parish, a painting of St Simon, a wooden candlestick, the work of the Pauline woodcarver’s workshop, a stone baptism font and a wooden relief of the Holy Trinity.
Keywords
Kotor; Church of Saints Simon and Jude Thaddeus; fire
Hrčak ID:
170769
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2015.
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