ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses consororities' role in shaping devotion to civic patrons and compares male and female devotional commissions, placing them in political context, to explore their role in the construction of official forms of urban civic piety. After the subjection of Dalmatia in 1358, the new Hungarian Angevin rulers encountered sophisticated urban social structures in Dalmatian cities, developed mainly by the previous Venetian government. With the withdrawal of Venetian officials and installation of the new, pro-Hungarian government in Trogir, citizens' riots broke out. The first reliable evidence of organized civic veneration of the holy bishop is his insertion among the obligatory feasts in the communal statutes in 1322. This was soon followed by the crucial moment in the rise of the Tragurian civic cult, namely, the commission of a chapel in the cathedral for housing the saint's relics in 1331. The female confraternity of St John of Trogir can be traced in the sources from the year 1377.
