Original scientific paper
A Seventeenth-Century Zaratin Captain – Dominic Katić from Ulcinj
Lovorka Čoralić
Abstract
During the long period of its inclusion in the Venetian Republic (1409-1797) the city of Zadar was the metropolis, the capital, and the administrative, economic, military and cultural centre of the Venetian dominions on the Croatian coast of the Adriatic. During the wars against the Ottomans, which had started as early as the second half of the fifteenth century, Zadar was an immigration destination, particularly because of professional reasons: numerous military officers came from the area of Venetian Albania and were then entrusted with the defence of the city walls and Zadar’s mainland district. The topic of this article is the life and work of such an Albanian, Captain Dominic Katić (Katiqi) from Ulcinj, an officer in Venetian military service in Zadar in the period prior to the early 1640s. Based on the sources kept in the State Archive of Zadar (a series of Zaratin notaries, wills and contracts) Katić’s family life, his business partners and friends, and his material status and economic potential are presented. The analysis of the documents clearly shows that his case was that of an officer who, in spite of his origin in distant Ulcinj, fully adapted to the new surroundings, founded his family there, and amassed by extensive business activity, considerable real estate in the city and on the nearby isle of Pašman (houses, terrain and landed estates). In the period between the 1620s until his death in 1641, Katić conducted business relationships with numerous Zaratins, with patricians and respectable citizens, but also with commoners, artisans and agricultural workers living in the city or its surroundings. His numerous and well-documented connections to Zaratin ecclesiastical institutions, frequently mentioned in and donated to by Katić’s testamentary bequests, are also discussed. The article concludes that Dominic Katić, in spite of the fact that he cannot be numbered among the most famous and meritorious actors of Zaratin and Dalmatian history, belongs to that series of persons still important and worthy of the attention of researchers. In the appendix are published transcriptions of two wills of Dominic Katić from 1631 and 1639, which are now kept in the aforementioned series of the State Archive of Zadar.
Keywords
Dalmatia; Zadar; Venetian Albania; Ulcinj; Albanians; military history; Early Modern Age; anti-Ottoman wars
Hrčak ID:
7785
URI
Publication date:
1.2.2005.
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