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Between Two Catastrophes: the Restoration of the Cathedral of Pula during the 18th Century

In the early modern period, Istria – including the Diocese of Pula – suffered numerous adversities. The greatest contributing factors to the economic decline and subsequent depopulation of the peninsula were diseases such as malaria and the plague, as well as the fact that the border between The Habsburg Empire and the Venetian Republic passed in the middle of the peninsula, so the conflicts between these two forces left long- lasting and devastating consequences. These circumstances are perhaps best described in a report by Capitano di Raspo, Pietro Bondumier: “On the last day of October 1611 in Pula, I truly lament the miserable state of the town, where you can see many churches, houses and famous buildings of its dignified past. The town is now practically uninhabited, provoking pity and, so to say, daily sinking lower and lower. The cause of such misfortune is attributed to the bad air in the town and its surroundings.” At the end of the 17th, and especially during the 18th century, a series of energetic bishops resided in Pula, leading the city’s revival. The most enterprising bishop of the 18th century, Giuseppe Maria Bottari (1695—1729) restored the presbytery of Pula Cathedral, its sacristy and the bishop’s palace. He acquired liturgical paraphernalia and he commissioned a marble altar in honour of St Anthony of Padua in the Church of St Francis in Pula. Moreover, as a symbolic renewal of the town’s pride, he ordered the reconstruction of the bell tower, the bells of which were found in the mud near the cathedral. The State Archives of Rijeka (HR-DARI-395: Churches and monasteries of Pula and Poreč 1244./1903.) hold documentation which completes the known facts about the bell tower’s reconstruction. The same archival fund also holds a 1775 contract, between the canon Antonio Bogovich and the stuccoworker Antonio Negri, for the chapel which was to house the baptistery. The Pula Cathedral was damaged again during the first half of the 20th century, first by fire in 1923, and then by the Allied bombing in 1944. Thus, the bell tower and the chapel with the baptistery represent significant and rare remains of the 18th-century restoration of the diocesan complex in Pula.

Giuseppe Maria Bottari, Cathedral of Pula, 18th Century

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