Dagnum

A diocese of Dagno was established here around the year 1000, without a direct precursor, in territory of the former Roman province of Dalmatia Superior that had lain under the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Doclea. Between 1081 and 1116 the town belonged to the kingdom of Duklja. On 25 March 1326 the Ragusan-Serbian peace treaty was signed at Dagnum, attended by the vojvoda Mladen and the čelnik Đuraš Ilijić.

Until 1395 Dagnum and neighbouring Sati, whose castellan was Koja Zaharia, formed part of a fief held by Kostadin Balšić within the Lordship of Zeta under Đurađ II Balšić. In 1395 Balšić ceded Sati and Dagnum, together with Scutari and Drivast, to the Venetian Republic, to set a buffer zone between what remained of his Zeta and the Ottoman Empire. Zaharia refused to let the Venetians take control of Sati, and after capturing Dagnum in 1396 he made the place the seat of his domain and styled himself dominus Sabatensis et Dagnensis, Lord of Sati and Dagnum.

In 1429 Stefan Maramonte, backed by the Ottomans and by the forces of Gojčin Crnojević and Little Tanush, plundered the country around Scutari and Ulcinj and attacked Drivast, which he failed to take. While the Venetian forces were occupied repelling him, Ottoman troops captured Dagnum and the territory of the Dukagjini and entrusted its government to the voivode Ismail.

False news that Sultan Murad II had died brought Gjergj Arianiti out in a large rebellion against the Ottomans in 1432. Nikollë Dukagjini used the rising to take back his family's former lands, accepted Venetian suzerainty and yielded Dagnum to Venice. Venice soon learned that Murad was alive; fearing it was provoking the Ottomans, it broke off all relations with Dukagjini and transferred Dagnum into Turkish hands by 1435.

Lekë Zaharia, lord of Dagnum, and Nikollë Dukagjini both sat in the Albanian League of Lezhë, and both wanted Irene Dushmani, the only child of Lekë Dushmani, prince of Zadrima. The Albanian princes were invited in 1445 to the wedding of Skanderbeg's younger sister Mamica to Muzaka Thopia. Irene entered and hostilities began soon after: Dukagjini asked her to marry him, a drunken Zaharia saw it and assaulted him, and the nobles who tried to end the fight only drew more men in, with many deaths before peace was restored. Neither antagonist was physically hurt, but Dukagjini had been morally humiliated, and in an act of revenge he ambushed and killed Zaharia in 1447.

The killing turned the town against the Albanian League. Venice quickly sent a force into Dagnum and the local population gave it their support, Zaharia's mother among them; with her agreement Venice went on to take the rest of Zaharia's holdings, Sati, Gladri and Dushmani. Skanderbeg ordered these towns and Drivast returned to Albanian hands, and Venice refused. The League sent envoys north to the Principality of Zeta under Stefan Crnojević and the Despotate of Serbia under Đurađ Branković; Branković was willing to help against Venice, but made clear he would not act against the Ottoman enemy the two sides had in common.

Skanderbeg ordered the invasion of Dagnum in 1447. Venice held the city to be more important than its own war against the Ottomans: it offered a reward to anyone who could assassinate Skanderbeg, and sent envoys to the Ottomans to attack Albania once more. Hearing that Venice had sent out a force to protect Dagnum, Skanderbeg left a small force to continue the siege and marched from the town to meet the Venetian army at the Drin. At what became known as the Battle of the Drin, in 1448, the League of Lezhë defeated the Venetians. Venetian presence was reduced to small garrisons inside several walled cities, Dagnum among them, and peace was signed between the two sides' representatives at Alessio on 4 October 1448: Venice would pay 1,400 ducats a year to Skanderbeg and his male heirs, and Dagnum with all the land around it would be relinquished to Venice.

Lekë Dukagjini fought the Venetians for control of Dagnum from 1456, capturing the city in that year. Venetian forces led by Andrea Venier, supported by Skanderbeg, retook it by August 1457. Dukagjini made peace with Venice in 1459. In 1474 the Ottomans directed an attack against Crnojević Zeta and Venetian Zeta around Lake Scutari, and that war led directly to the Ottoman conquest of the city from Venetian hands. The Ottomans had no intention of retaining it and were content to demolish its fortifications.

Two suffragan bishops of Dagno are recorded by name: the Carmelite Godefroid Greveray, appointed on 15 March 1456, and the bishop-elect Matthias Michaelis de Posegavan, consecrated on 10 September 1481. The see was suppressed around 1550. In 1933 it was nominally restored as the titular bishopric of Dagnum, and the title has since been carried by bishops serving far from the Drin: Bernhard Stein, auxiliary bishop of Trier from 1944 until he succeeded to that see in 1967; Stefan Siczek, auxiliary bishop of Radom from 1992 until his death in 2012; and Américo Aguiar, auxiliary bishop of the Patriarchate of Lisbon from March 2019 to September 2023. The site of the fortress lies in the municipality of Vau i Dejës, in Shkodër County.