Detestabile scelus Perastinorum - the psychological and social background of the murder of Pompejus de Pasqualibus, the abbot of the St George Abbey near Perast

Abstract

The St George Abbey was founded on an island near Perast by the Benedictine Monastic Order by the beginning of the 11th century. From the mid-13th century, the community of Kotor had the right of patronage over the abbey, which allowed the patriciate of Kotor to elect abbots as well as have a say in numerous monastery affairs, including propriety rights. Therefore, on November the 2nd 1530, Minor Council of Kotor named Pompejus de Pasqualibus, a nobleman from Kotor, the abbot of the St George Abbey. After the official consent from Rome and Venice, father Pompejus took over the abbey. Soon after, a gruesome crime took place on the island, a crime unseen in the history of the Kotor church. On the Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross, May 3rd 1535, a group of Perast locals, armed with sticks and daggers, broke into the abbey and killed abbot Pasqualibus at the altar as he was saying Pater Noster. Nikola Krosic, the chaplain of the St George Abbey, and a few others tried to stop the murderers, but to no avail. The killers went on to humiliate the body of the deceased by throwing it out of the church and dumping it into a nearby pit, which added to the resentment, especially among the patriciates of Kotor. Three days later, on the Feast of the Ascension, the bishop of Kotor, Luka Bizanti, publicly excommunicated the killers and their men in the cathedral, while Pope Paul III forbade all service at the church where the crime had been committed. The interdict wasn?t recalled until 1546. In the decree of excommunication, Bishop Luka Bizanti emphasized the fact that father Pompejus hadn?t said or done anything to provoke the killers. What are the reasons of such an outpour of mass anger among dozens of Perast locals? Around that time, for several decades, Perast, a village founded on St George?s fief, started to improve its economy as a result of the expansion of ship-building and trading. More and more inhabitants of Perast started to sail and take part in the trade, especially on the rye and salt market. They had the support of the Venetian authorities, which caused envy among the inhabitants of Kotor, who considered Perast a part of their district. The tendency to achieve a full emancipation from the community of Kotor included church interests as well. After a gradual weakening of church life on the island, the St George church took on the role of a parish church under the patronage of Kotor. Perast locals were evidently dissatisfied with the idea of their parish priest being a noble Pasqualibus of Kotor, whose descent and position were representative of everything they despised and fought against. The motive of the murder was a trivial one - father Pompejus refused to hold service at the St Church on the Feast of the Holy Cross, which deeply insulted the people of Perast. The exceedingly long process of turning the Benedictine abbey into a parish church and a sepulchral chapel of Perast reached its peak on November the 17th1634 with the edict of the Venetian Senate taking the right of patronage away from the community of Kotor. From then on, ius patronatus belonged to the Venetian Senate, while the choice of the abbot, the parish priest of Perast in fact, was left to the locals.