Osor is a village and a small port on the Cresisland in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County in western Croatia, population 60. Osor lies at a narrow channel that separates islands Cres and Lošinj. The channel was built in Roman times to make sailing possible. Now the islands are connected with a rotating bridge. Originally Cres and Lošinj were one island, Osor, before the channel was cut.
History
The first settlements of the area date in the prehistoric times. In Roman times, Osor, then called Apsoros, also used to refer to the whole island of Lošinj, was an important center of trade on the route to the ports of Northern Adriatic. After the fall of Roman Empire, Osor became a part of Byzantine Empire and was a seat of diocese since the 6th century. In 840 it was burned down by Saracens, in the 10th century, it came under Croatian rule. In the 14th century it was under the rule of the Republic of Venice. From the 15th century on, Osor lost its strategic and commercial importance. Due to malaria, it was ultimately abandoned as the administrative center of the island in favor of the town of Cres. In the 19th century the island was under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and after First World War part of the Kingdom of Italy. After World War II Osor-Ossero was a part of the Republic of Yugoslavia. Today, Osor is a tourist-oriented town in the Republic of Croatia, with sculptures of Ivan Meštrović and others scattered around the center. Several camping sites are located in the surroundings.
Ecclesiastical history
Residential Bishopric
The bishopric of what was called in Latin Absorus was founded circa 600, maybe as early as the 6th century, as a suffragan of the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Late Roman province Dalmatia Inferior's capital Salona, but the first bishop of the see whose name is known was Dominicus in the last third of the 9th century. It has also bee called Absor and Lusin. The diocese was from 1146 a suffragan of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Zadar/Zara. Its cathedral, the :it:Cattedrale dell'Assunzione di Maria |Church of the Assumption, was built in 1463–1497. The area was taken by the Ottoman Empire in 1621 and held for a short time, during which its Christians travelled to Šibenik to fulfil their Easter duty of Confession and Communion. Absorus ceased in 1828 to be a residential see, when its territory was added to that of the Croatian diocese of Krk. ;Suffragan Bishops of Osor
Simon, Bishop of Ossero was an auditor in the case of John Myssenden Vicar of Leatherhead against the Priory of Leeds near Maidstone in 1446. The Register of Letters to England Scotland and Ireland reports the case.
Francesco Pietro Raccamarich, previously Bishop of Kotor
Titular see
It is today listed by the Catholic Church as a since 1933, when the diocese was nominally restored as a titular bishopric Osor, also named Absorus in Latin and Ossore in Curiate Italian. It has had the following incumbents of the fitting episcopal rank :
