Porga was one of the first dukes or princes of Littoral Croatia.

When the Croats

Croats

Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...

 arrived in what was Roman Dalmatia

Dalmatia (Roman province)

Dalmatia was an ancient Roman province. Its name is probably derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Dalmatae which lived in the area of the eastern Adriatic coast in Classical antiquity....

, today Croatia, they practiced Slavic

Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation.The religion possesses many common traits with other religions descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion....

 paganism. Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus says that Porga, duke of the Dalmatian Croats, who had been invited into Dalmatia by Byzantium

Byzantium

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...

 Emperor Heraclius, sent to Heraclius for Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 teachers. At the request of Byzantium

Byzantium

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...

 Emperor Heraclius, Pope John IV

Pope John IV

Pope John IV was elected Pope of the Catholic Church, after a four-month sede vacante, December 24, 640.Pope John was a native of Dalmatia . He was the son of the scholasticus Venantius. At the time of his election he was archdeacon of the Roman Church, an important role in governing the see...

 (640–642) sent Christian teachers and missionaries to the Croatian Provinces. These missionaries had converted Porga, and also a great many of the clan that was under his immediate authority, to the Catholic faith in 640. This had induced Pope John IV to renew the old archdiocese of Salona

Salona

Salona was an ancient Illyrian Delmati city in the first millennium BC. The Greeks had set up an emporion there. After the conquest by the Romans, Salona became the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia...

 and transfer its see to the nearby city of Split

Split (city)

Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...

 then Spalatum. Extension of Christian faith was furthered in the time of Porga's successor Višeslav

Višeslav of Croatia

Višeslav was one of the first princes or dukes of Littoral Croatia.He ruled with the support of the Pope and Byzantium. The Croats warred against the Franks during his rule and avoided defeat until 803 - a year after his death...

.

Porga ruled in what is today Dalmatia, and his region consisted of 11 counties (županije) which were: Hlebiana, Tzenzena, Emota, Pleba, Pesenta, Parathalassia, Brebere, Nona, Tnena, Sidraga, Nina.

Sources

• Constantine Porphyrogenitus
  Constantine VII
  Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or Porphyrogenitus, "the Purple-born" was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 913 to 959...
  
  , De Administrando Imperio, ed. Gy. Moravcsik, trans. R.J.H. Jenkins, rev. ed., Washington, Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967.