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Dr. O. Dominik Mandic - Originator of this book

Magister Vicko Rendic - Translator

Magister Jacques Perret - Co-translator

Magister Stephan Hobbs - Website Facilitator

PUBLISHER'S NOTES


This new work of Dr. Dominic Mandic, "Croats and Serbs, two old and different nations" appears as the sixth book in the series "Knjiznica Hrvatske revije", after the now already famous book of Mestrovic, "Uspomena na politicke ljude I dogadjaje" (1961). This book of Mandic’s is destined for a different kind of fame than that of Mestrovic’s book. It will become the Croatian vade mecum, a companion, an everyday handbook, a reference work and an advisor. This book of Mandic’s is a guide for Croats. Every book, as every man, has its destiny, and Mandic’s in particular because it appears at a critical moment when the myth about "unity and brotherhood" has been debunked and abandoned as a lie and an illusion. This book with its scientific approach once and for all erects a high wall between the two nations of Croats and Serbs which for over a century, from Illyrism and Yugoslavism to the Red Unitarians, people have been trying not only to associate, but to unite and even to amalgamate into one new Yugoslavian body. Both the Croats and the Serbs spilt much blood and wasted much effort in uniting what could not be united, the former in their naivete and the latter in their drive for domination. The result was tragic; two nations not only did not unite, but also did not even make a rapprochement. The rift between them has become insuperable and today we are further apart than ever before.

This book of Mandic’s appears at the right time, at a crucial moment, to confirm, corroborate and explain the what life itself has clearly, often cruelly shown and proven: that the Croats and Serbs are two different nations and that if they wish to avoid mutual tragedy they must each for themselves organize their separate national states and live in them as good neighbours, mutually respecting each other’s political sovereignty and if it is the expressed will of the free Croatian and Serbian nations, to cooperate in solving their common vital problems, but always only as neighbours, each in their own political boundaries.

When in 1923 Dr. Mandic published his doctoral thesis on the Protoreguli of the Franciscan Order in Latin and the following year a critical study of the Franciscan lawmaking from 1210 to 1221, at that time Paul Sabatier, a founder of the contemporary Franciscan historical movement, declared that Mandic was not only one of the leading Franciscan historical critics but also a leader in the field of Croatian history. His historical work, great in volume and in content monumental, laid new foundations for the science of Croatian history.

Amply endowed by nature with keen historical insight, critical judgement and love of historical research, besides being university educated and conversant in several languages, Mandic was born on December 2nd, 1889 in the village of Lisa near Siroki Brijeg, Herzegovina. In this new work of his he summarized all his scientific treatises up to the present day. Therefore it represents the essence of Mandic’s abundant historical work. This is a review of Croatian and Serbian history from the oldest times up to 1941. Mandic stopped there because, as an objective and conscientious historian, he wished to remain impartial. For the last quarter of a century is too near to us; we are participating in it and are emotionally involved. About the Croats Mandic briefly cites proof that they are Iranians and follows them from the time before Christ on the road across the plains of the Don into Great or White Croatia beyond the Carpathians, from where one part immigrated into present-day Croatian territory in 626 A.D. In contradiction to the opinion of Racki, Jagic and Sisic, three important Croatian historians, Mandic proves that the Croats came to the Adriatic already as constituted nation, under their own Croatian name, with their own army and under their own national rulers. Upon their arrival in the south in 626 A.D. the Croats settled all the lands from the Mura and the Drava to Valona in modern Albania, and from the Drina to the Adriatic. In the history of the Croats Dr. Mandic particularly stressed the democratic, parliamentary spirit of the Croatian nation.



In this work of his Mandic introduces new views also on Serbian history and reviews all surveys up to the present. Mandic expounds a completely new theory on the origin of the Serbs, based on new evidence. He cites evidence that they originate from Asia Minor and that accordingly they are not Indo-European like the Croats. In 1956 Mandic, first among native and foreign historian, cited evidence that the medieval Wallachs are descendants of the Roman military veterans of Mauretania. Mandic describes the role of the Wallachs in the ethnic and spiritual formation of the Serbs from the Middle Ages up to the present, which is the key to understanding the mentality and behaviour of the Serbian ruling class and politicians in the new times.

In this work, condensed and brief, but fundamental, Mandic expounds the whole history of the Croats and the Serbs. The ethnic and political relations of the one and the other during their thousand-year history are especially stressed. From all this one can and must conclude that the Croats and the Serbs are not one nation, not even near cousins, but two quite different nations, in their ethnic origin, history and political development, cultural formation, national and political conscience.
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PREFACE

The constitution of present-day Yugoslavia generally recognizes that Yugoslavia is a multinational state in which there are several nations: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians, as well as national minorities: Albanians, Rumanians, Hungarians, Germans and Italians. A separate republic was created in 1945 for every nation in Yugoslavia and allowed by the constitutional law to secede from the common federative state of Yugoslavia on the condition that petition be sought by due process of law.

The avowed purpose of this constitution was to correct one of the major prejudices of the intellectual elite of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who had formulated the theory that the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins and Macedonians are one nation and accordingly should form a common state.

This theory based on a false assumption gained the general approval of public opinion during the First World War and by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 the unified State of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was established. It was given the name of Yugoslavia only in 1929. Thus was born the first Yugoslavia, created on false political and historical assumptions. The nations that had been incorporated with this state summarily and against their expressed consent did not find in Yugoslavia the realization of their national aspirations. National life and cultural development became stifled. Consequences soon began to follow. Individual national groups showed continuous signs of dissatisfaction. The central authorities reacted by instating a police regime. These signs of internal strife finally culminated in the assassination of Stjepan Radic in the Belgrade parliament of 1928 and of king Alexander I in Marseilles in 1934. They broke out with renewed fury during the years 1941 to 1945 when the Serbs and the Croats indulged in fratricidal massacres.

The Second Yugoslavia theoretically recognizes the different nations within the federation of Yugoslavia and has created federative republics for its several nations. Albeit, even today in Yugoslavia there is neither peace nor contentment. The cause lies in that even with the creation of the second Yugoslavia the individual nations were not asked whether they were for a common state; nor were they asked to participate in drafting the constitution and to establish their mutual relations as federated nations. Government institutions have been centralized under the authority of the Communist Party. The Serbs who constitute an overpowering numerical majority in all party institutions effectively rule in Yugoslavia, decisively influencing the machinery of government in the accomplishment of their own national goals. This naturally provokes justified dissatisfaction and resistance on the part of the other nations and will in time forcibly bring to pass a new outbreak of internal dissension and the second collapse of Yugoslavia.

In the present Yugoslavia the Serbs severely oppress the Croats. No one now, indeed, maintains that the Slovenes and Macedonians are the same nation as the Serbs. But there are prominent thinkers and leading politicians, in Yugoslavia and abroad, who persist in the error that went into the making of the first Yugoslavia, namely that Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins constitute one nation with one common language. Many Serbian politicians today act on the captivating but illusionary premise that the passage of time will succeed in denationalizing the Croats and in converting them into Serbs. Accordingly they seek to abolish everywhere the Croatian name and cultural peculiarities. They form Serbian colonies in Croatia and accord the Serbs all privileges. They exploit Croatia with excessively heavy taxes. By manipulation of Croatia’s credit, foreign exchange and investment policies they are destroying the Croatian economy and hampering the development of Croatia’s national regions. The result is that there is widespread unemployment in Croatia, forcing the Croats there to emigrate en masse to the great detriment and peril of Croatia’s national existence.

Such treatment of the vast majority of Croats provokes deep resentment, dissatisfaction and resistance in response to the law of self-preservation. The authorities in power, however, often, succeed in masking such natural manifestations of sentiment. The Croats are the most numerous nation in Yugoslavia after the Serbs and geographically occupy central and key positions in the state, possessing almost the entire Adriatic coast. Therefore their dissatisfaction has and will continue without doubt to precipitate crises of state in Yugoslavia despite all phrases about the iron-bound "unity and brotherhood" of the Yugoslav nations.

Although the nations which are incorporated with present-day Yugoslavia altogether occupy such a small area of the earth’s surface, a peaceful and equitable solution to the problem of the mutual relations among the Yugoslav nations is of particular importance to the general world peace as well. Yugoslavia represents the link between northern and southern Europe, between the Western and Balkan states; it dominates the passage from Europe into Asia and vice versa. Because of this, a state of restlessness and civil strife could easily pass over into wider issues of more far-reaching consequences, as was the case in 1914 after the assassination at Sarajevo.

In order to diagnose and solve justly the problem of the relations between the Croats and the Serbs it is necessary to become familiar with their national characteristics, their cultural essence and their political development from the very beginning up to the present. We have dedicated our attention to these questions in this work, which deals purely with the historical aspect of the question, from remote times to the disintegration of the first Yugoslavia and with it the demise of the preconceived notion of the national unity of Croats and Serbs. It will be necessary to elaborate in a separate treatise the contemporary history form 1941 in that the present generation lives and has been involved, and which, accordingly, it cannot look upon with sufficient distance and objectivity.

At the origin of their history the Croats and Serbs lived on peaceful and amicable terms, when each had their own national territory and state. It is our wish that friendly relations between Serbs and Croats resume as soon as possible. All those to whom the peace of the world and of the individual nations is a real concern, particularly those whose mission it is to keep peace in the world and among nations, have a duty to accomplish in seeing that Serbs and Croats organize each their own sovereign national state and live again as truly friendly neighbours cooperating economically and culturally on the basis of the eternal principles of justice, equality and freedom.

O. D. Mandic

Chicago, Candlemas, February 2nd 1970
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I. THE OLDEST HISTORICAL EVIDENCE CONCERNING CROATS AND SERBS



1. The Eastern and Northern Paleo-fatherland of the Croats on the Don (Donska Hrvatska)

The Croatian name is first mentioned on two commemorative plaques on public edifices in the city of Tanais lying on the mouth of the Don on the Azov Sea. They were written in Greek at the beginning of the III century A.D. The first plaque was written during the reign of the king of Tanais, Sauromates (175-211 A.D.). On it is mentioned the name of the dignitary, the son of one Horvat (Choroathou).(1) On the other, written in 220 A.D. during the reign of king Rescuporides, son of Sauromates, the name Horvat Sandarsijev (Choroathus Sandarsion) (2) appears among four archons of Tanais. If on both inscriptions the Greek ending "-os" is dropped we have the original Croatian name Horvat in the ancient Kaikavian dialect. (3)

Now comes the oldest question: What is the origin of the Don Croats and how did they come to be there? Although this question is still not settled satisfactorily in all details, all the information we have is that the Don Croats were of Iranian stock. Indeed from the end of the I to III century A.D. in the city-state of Tanais, in the region of the Don, lived various Iranian tribes of Samatians as well as Croats who must have been Iranians. (4) Furthermore the national name "Croat" is of Iranian origin. According to the Russian Vselod Miller the name "Croat" comes from the Iranian word Hor-va (t)u meaning: the sun’s bed or path. (5) M. Vasmer derives the Croatian name from Hu-urvata meaning, "friend". (6) And the terms used to designate the high officials among the Croats, "kral, ban, zupan", are of Iranian origin. (7) The religion of the ancient Croats also bore traces of its Iranian origin: a god of light and darkness, fire-worship, cremation of the dead, and so on. (8) Even the Croatian words used to designate religious concepts are Iranian: God, religion, sacrifice, paradise, Easter; to cry out (for), to implore, to predict, and so on. (9) After the Iranian fashion the ancient Croats ascribed a specific colour to each of the four cardinal points of the compass in the territory which they inhabited. The colour white designated the west, red the south, green the east, and black the north. (10) Hence White or West Croatia, Red or South Croatia and Green or East Croatia. Ancient Croatian folk art bears eastern and Iranian traces, particularly the Croatian "troplets". The Croats also brought over from Iran their national coat of arms with its 64 red and white checkers. (11)

The Croats of the Don, then had to come in ancient times from Iran. On a stone inscription of the King Darius (522-486 B.C.) the nation of the Haruavat-is appears among the 23 subject nations. (12) The Persian sacred books of the Avesti (Vendidad) call that nation the Harahvaiti. The provinces settled by that nation encompassed in those times the southern half of modern south Afghanistan, the whole of Baluchistan and the eastern part of modern Iran. In that ancient province ought we to look for the paleo-fatherland of the modern Croats. (13)

Beyond the Carpathians: Great or White Croatia

From the III to the VII century we have no documentary sources on the Croats; but from the VII century, and particularly from the VIII to the X century, they crop up continually. The most significant of these sources is the work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, "De administrands imperio" written between 948 and 952. In its the emperor historian, on the basis of imperial archives and of the Croatian national tradition, mentions in several passages the Croats on the Adriatic and those behind the Carpathians. So in chapter 31 he writes:

"The Croats who now inhabit the Dalmatian territories are descended from non-Christian Croats, called White, who live beyond the Turkish lands, near the Frankish dominions…..Great Croatia, called also White, had to this day not yet been christianized." (14)

By the "Turkish lands" Porphyrogenitus means Hungary, because the Magyars originally came from Turkestan. By the "Frankish dominions" he means the eastern Frankish state, comprising in the IX and X century modern Germany and Austria. Accordingly Porphyrogenitus’ Great or White Croatia in the X century extended north of Hungary and east of the Germany of that time, comprising specifically the territory of modern Czechoslovakia and south Poland.

Porphyrogenitus’ accounts of Croatia beyond the Carpathians and of the Croats are confirmed both by his contemporaries and by older writers. So the Arab chronicler Ibn Rustah has this to say about the northern Croats, on basis of the Moslem chronicle "Al-Djarmi" (842-47):

"Their ruler is crowned …He dwells in the midst of the Slavs…He bears the title of "ruler of rulers" and is called sacred malik. He is more powerful than the zupan (viceroy), who is his deputy…His capital is called Drzvab where is held a fair three days of the month." (15)

Kardizi cities this same place mentioned in the "Al-Djarmi", but only notes in passing that the seat of the Croatian kingdom is called "Djarawat". (16)

Established experts such as Marquart, (17) Niederle, (18) and Hauptmann (19) find in the Arab expression Drzvab, Djarawat and Chordat the name "Horvat", i.e. Croat. The capital of Great or White Croatia was to be found on the site of present-day Cracow, known even then as a commercial centre.

The Arab chronicler Al-Mas’uni in his work "Murug attanbit" (943) enumerates the Slavic nations of central Europe: Serbs, Moravians, Croats and Czechs. (20) About Great Croatia he writes:

"The closest neighbour of this Slavic state is Al-Firag (Prague)…In the neighbourhood of this Slavic state lies the Turaki (Magyars). This people is the finest in stature, the most populous and bravest among the Slavs." (21)

Other Arab writers also mention the Croats north of the Carpathians, as well as a Persian geographer. (22) They call the capital of the northern Croats Irvab, Irvit, Chordat, i.e. Croat. (23)

The Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great (871-901) in this translation of Orisius’ "History of the World" describes thus the nations of central Europe:

"East of the Moravian land lies the land of the Vistula, and east of it the land of Dacia where the Goths used to live before. The Dalaminci are situated northeast of the Moravians, while the Croats (Horithi) are east of the Dalaminci and the Serbs (Surpe) north of the Dalaminci." (24)

The old Russian chronicle "A History of the Ancient Times", appearing at the beginning of the XII century and based ont he ancient Russian chronicles, mentions the northern Croats three times under the names "Hrvato", "Horvati" – the first time in connection with the oldest Russian history, and then in connection with the events of the year 907 and 992. (25) On the basis of the order in which the chronicle enumerates the various Slavic tribes of those years, L. Hauptmann has proven that the Russian chronicler is talking about the Croats in Little Poland around the upper Vistula. (26)

The charter of 1086 describing the contemporaneous boundaries of the bishopric of Prague mentions two branches of the northern Croats, calling one the Chrousti and the other the Chrowati. (27) Although even today there are differences of opinion among scientists as to where the Croats cited n that charter lived in 1086, no one denies that the Croats really lived then north of the Carpathians. It is our opinion that the Prague charter is talking about the Croats of Little Poland and Czechoslovakia. In the old times the Croatian national territory was uniform and unbroken. When in 625 A.D. a part of the northern Croats moved south, mainly from the central part of the Croatian territory, i.e. the present-day northern Moravia and Slovakia, the other Slavic tribes moved in to fill the space created. In this way the northern Croats were split in half and there came to be two branches of Croats: western in Bohemia and eastern on the Vistula in Poland. The great resemblance between the Croatian and Slovak languages tell us that the Croats for the most part moved south from northern Slovakia. For they are far nearer to each other in affinity than to any other Slavic language.

IN the western and Bohemian part of the former Great or White Croatia the ducal family of the Slavnik ruled in the IX and X century. (28) From this family came St. Alalbert, apostle of the Poles. (29) Also St. Ludmilla, the grandmother of St. Wenceslas of Bohemia, was as western Croat. (30) When the Czech king Boloslave I (935-967) conquered ca. 960 the western Croatian lands which up to that time had been governed by the Slavniks, little by little the Croatian names disappeared and the Croats of those areas were assimilated with the Czechs, Moravians and Slovaks. (31)

The eastern Croats of the former Great Croatia around the upper Vistula in 999 fell under the rule of the Polish king Boleslav the Brave (992-1025). (32) From that time slowly began those territories the polonization of the old Croats of the Vistula. However there the Croatian name and national consciousness survived a long time. The Italian cartographer Allodi in his atlas of 1730 drew in on the map of Europe the Kingdom of the Croats and on the Adriatic (Regno di Croazia) and the White Croats (Belocroati) beyond the Carpathians among the Moravians and Romanians. (33) The immigrants from the surrounding areas of Cracow were still registered by American authorities at the beginning of the XX century as White Croats "Bielochrovats" (Crocovinians)". (34)

Connection between the Carpathian and Don Croats

That the White Croats beyond the Carpathians are of the same stock as the Don Croats their national names bears evidence. The Croatian name is not derived from a general notion such that it might arise independently in several places, but is a specific proper noun with a definite significance. Because of this wherever Croats are mentioned, whether on the Don or beyond the Carpathians, whether on the Adriatic or elsewhere, they are members of the same Croatian nation that we find on the Don at the outset of the III century A.D. That the Croats beyond the Carpathians came from the Don territory, their appellation White or Western Croats bears evidence. They were White or Western Croats relative to the Red or Southern Croats on the Don.

Although we lack resources from which to draw convincing proof it is quite evident to us that a part of the Don Croats was pushed westward during the invasion of the Huns into Europe in 375 A.D. and arrived north of the Carpathians. Here the Iranian Croats mingled with the numerous local Slavic tribes and adopted the Slavic language from them. Meanwhile after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire the Croats organized the local Slavs into a state and gave them their national name. Before the invasion of the Avars ca. 560 the White or Western Croats created along with the Antea a great state extending north of the Carpathians from the upper Elbe to the upper Dniester. (35) R. Heinzel is of the opinion that the Carpathians of the old Germanic Hervarsaga took their name from the Croats who called them the Harvate mountains i.e. Croatian mountains. (36)





2. The Eastern and Western Paleo-fatherland of the Serbs

The Serbs of the Caucasus and Asia Minor

The historical sources of the II and following centuries mention the Roman colony of Servitium not far from the modern Bosnian city of Gradiska on the Sava. (37) Safarik and L. Nierderle are of the opinion that this place took its name from the Serbs and that accordingly the Serbs already lived on the Sava by the beginning of the II century A.D. (38) It would be the oldest mention of the Serbs in history. Yet this can not be true. In the Roman sources there is no mention anywhere at all that in the Roman Empire from the I to IV century A.D. lived any branch of Serbs or Slavs from whom the aforesaid place might have taken the name Servitium. The verb "servire" and all its derivatives (servus, servitus, servitium) is a pure Latin word and we must not look for a Slavic origin in the case of names arising from that word. The Latin term "servitium" signifies service, supplies, payment and even the place of service. The Roman city in the neighbourhood of the modern Bosnian Gradiska took the name Servitium because in Roman times it was the naval base of the Roman fleet on the Sava where the ships on that river were supplied with all that they needed to function. (39)

Pliny the Elder (ca. 23 – 73 A.D.) in his History mentions the tribe of the Serbi (40) and in the middle of the II century Ptolemely mentions the Serboi. (41) The Slovenian ethnologist N. Zupanic first pointed out that in those names lies the key to the genealogy of the modern Serbs. He places those old Serbs on the northern slopes of the Caucasus southeast of the southern part of the Azov Sea. According to Zupanic the Serbs in the Caucasus were an aboriginal Alarodian nation and not of Indo-European stock. (42)

Although textually with regard to the manuscripts Pliny’s and Ptolemey’s appellation is not above reproach in every way, we may not reject what they attest. Therefore the oldest mention that we have the Serbs dates from the middle of the II century, more precisely from the last quarter of the I century A.D.

From these two instances it is clear that the Serbs mentioned therein were not Slavs. Indeed the Slaves did not reach the Azov Sea and the Caucasus until the II century A.D. However we cannot concur with Zupanic that the Serbs were originally native to the Caucasus. In Epiphanius’ register of the bishoprics of the Byzantine Empire which first appeared at the outset of the dynasty of Heraclius (610 – 717) the bishopric of Gordoserboi in Bithynia is mentioned. (43) This appellation cannot possibly refer to the Serbs in Thessaly because they, in all probability, had not yet arrived in Thessalian Srbiste when Epiphnius’ register of bishoprics was written. (44) In spite of this it is not certain that the emperor Justinian II relocated to Asia Minor the Serbs for Srbiste on the river Bistrica when in 688 he resettled in Bithynia the Slavs from the vicinity of Salonica. (45) The Serbs of Thessaly were so few in number that they did not even have their own bishopric before 869, (46) and it is wholly probable that in 688 they were transferred in such numbers to Asia Minor that a VII century bishopric in Bithynia would have taken its name from them. In any case Epiphanius’ register first appeared before the Third Constantinopolitan Synod in 680-81, and the bishopric of Gordoserboi could not be called after the name of the Serbs whom Justinian II resettled in Asia Minor only in 688.

The appellation Gordoserboi itself tells us that the Serbs mentioned in that bishopric did not originate from the Balkans but from the city of Gordium and its vicinity. Gordium was the capital of Phrygia and was situated on the right bank of the river Sangarios not far from the ancient city of Sardis. (47) We are of the opinion that this is where one should look for the paleo-fatherland of the Serbs who came subsequently to the Caucasus and from there to central Europe. Accordingly one should look for the name "Serb" which has not been yet elucidated in the ancient Sardian language or in the modern languages of the remnants of the native populations of Phrygia. (Kurds, etc.) (48)

Pliny the Elder does not consider the Caucasian Serbs to be Iranian Sarmatians. (49) This to us indicates that we must look for the origin of the race elsewhere.

The Serbs on the Elbe

From the II to the VII century A.D. we have no authoritative historical sources at all on the Serbs. The Frankish chronicler Fredigar was the first to mention the Serbs in 631. The Serbs were already Slavicized and lived on the east bank of the middle Elbe. On the subject of the war waged by the Frankish king Dagobert in 631 against Samo, king of the Slavic Wends, Fredegar writes:

"The Wends invade Thuringia and other dominions of the Frankish kingdom and plunder Dervan as well, duke of the Serbs, of Slavic race and previously a vassal of the Frankish king has gone over with all his men to the king of the Wends." (50)

Fredegar’s account of the Wends living on the boundaries of Thuringia in 632 and 641 refers to the Serbs as well. (51) The northern Serbs remained independent of the Franks right up to the first years of Charlemagne’s reign (768 – 814). The Frankish chronicler Einhard writes about them in 782:

"The Slavic Serbs living in the areas between the Elbe and the Saale have overrun the Thuringian and Saxon dominions in order to plunder them." (52)

The Arab writers (53) and the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred (54) mention the northern Serbs in the IX century. Constantine Porphyrogenitus writes in his "De administrando imperio":

"These Serbs come from the non-Christianized Serbs, called the White, living beyond the Turks (Hungary) in the area which they call Bojki (Bohemia). The Franks and Great Croats i.e. non-Christianized Croats, also called White, are their neighbours. There, then, have these Serbs lived from olden times." (55)

Porpyrogenetus’ expression "ap’arches" means "from the beginning". This would mean that the paleo-fatherland of the Serbs on the Elbe in modern Bohemia. Meanwhile the name "Serb" is a specific national name and wherever Serbs are mentioned they must be of the same national origin as the Serbs in the Caucasus or in Asia Minor. The Serbs must have come to the Elbe from those territories. It was so long ago that among the Serbs of the X century there no longer existed any tradition to record that they had originally come from the East. Only in the appellation White i.e. Western, as the Polabian Serbs called themselves, had the fortuitous tradition survived that they came from the East or South. The Polabian Serbs were the western because they were other Serbs, eastern or southern.

The Frankish chronicler Fredeger writes in 631 that the Polabian Serbs are of Slavic origin. (56) This means that the Serbs were slavicized already before 631 and spoke the language of the Western Slavs. Thus at least one century must have passed since the arrival of the Serbs on the Elbe hwich one ought to date at the latest by the second half of the V century A.D. The Roman writer of that time, Vibius Sequenter (ed. Oberlin, Strasbourg, 1778:5) writes: "The Elbe separates the Suevi for the Servitu" (Parisian Codex). L. Niederle is of the opinion that Vibius is talking abut the Serbs and we concur. (57) In all probability, the invasion of the Huns in 375 drove the Serbs of the Caucasus to the Elbe. The modern Lusatian Sorbs are the actual remants of the former Polabian Serbs.



EASTERN AND NORTHERN PALEO-FATHERLANDS OF THE CROATS AND THE SERBS



EASTERN AND NORTHERN PALEO-FATHERLANDS OF THE CROATS AND THE SERBS
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II. FIRST MIGRATIONS OF THE SLAVS INTO THE DANUBIAN LANDS AND THE BALKANS


Origin and paleo-fatherland of the Slavs

An old Slavic tradition recorded by the Russian chronicler Nestor at the beginning of the XII century confirms that there was a very ancient, original cradle of the Slavs around the middle Danube and its tributaries the Drava and the Sava. (1) The historians of the XIX century have proven that one must look for the original homeland of the Slavs in the marshy and wooded areas of the Upper Pripet basin. (2) Meanwhile more recently Polish and Czech savants have confirmed on basis of archeological excavations that there is an original homeland of the Slavs located between the Oder and the Bug, particularly on the upper Vistula. Those Slavs would have been the disseminators of the Lusatian culture, form where they broadened out in other directions, particularly east and south. (3)

Two Slavic migrations into the Danubian lands and the Balkans

The contemporary Byzantine writers called Sklavoi or Sklavenoi and the Latin historians Sclaci or Sclaveni the migrant nations that penetrated the Danubian provinces for the end of the IV to the beginning of the VII century. (4) Pseudo-Caesarius at the outset of the V century mentions this name for the first time, apropos of the Slavs on the middle Danube. (5) Under the general name of Slavs they occupied from the outset the VII century Central Europe from the Danube to the Bavarian Alps, including the whole of the Balkans except for Byzantium and some strongholds on the Aegean and Adriatic littorals. However the national names of the Croats and Serbs in the south are mentioned in the sources only by the IX century. (6)

Now comes the question whether the Croats and the Serbs arrived in the south from the north, in the land where we find them in the IX century, as constituted nations, i.e. – under their own name, with their own rulers and military power, such as the Bulgars in 681 and the Magyars in 896; or were they constituted as tribes out of the amorphous Slavic hordes such as were the Slovenes?

The historians in the past were all the of the same opinion, that the Croats and the Serbs came south as a constituted people, but in the middle of the last century under the influence of the Austrian historian E. Dümmler (7), and particularly of the Croatian scholar and historian F. Racki (8) and of the linguist V. Jagic (9) the contrary opinion has prevailed. Dümmler, Racki and Jagic stated, in fact, that all the South Slavs crossed the Danube near its mouth as one nation with one common language which had ramified into three dialects and belonged to the Eastern branch of Slavic languages. Sometime during the VII or beginning of the VIII century two distinct nuclei of peoples began to form in that uniform but amorphous mass of Slavs: the Croats in Dalmatia between the rivers Cetina and Zrmanja, and the Serbs in Rasa. Those nuclei with their particular vitality and militancy gathered the neighbouring Slavic tribes around themselves and in that way created two distinct rates: Croatia and Rasa. (10)

Out of respect for the scholarly reputation of Dümmler, Racki and Jagic, until recently historians generally accepted their explanation concerning the origin of the Croats and the Serbs. (11) Meanwhile more recently with investigations probing deeper into the ancient sources on the arrival of the several Slavic groups into the Danubian lands and the Balkans, the opinion has gradually prevailed that in the history of the South Slavs one must differentiate between two separate migrations: the first from the end of the IV to the beginning of the VII century, when an amorphous Slavic horde crossed over to the right bank of the Danube; and the second in the VII century when the Croats came south first, then the Serbs and finally the Bulgars, as constituted nations which with the passing of time assimilated with the Slavs of the first migrations and constituted the national states of the Croats, Serbs and the Bulgars. (12) Only that part of the South Slavs of the first migration remaining in the very northwest corner outside the actual Croatian state, under the tutelage of the Franks and later the Germans, waited many long centuries before becoming the particular nation that the Slovenes are.

The Carpathian Foothills: Slavs of the Kaikavian Dialect

Still before the collapse of the Lusatian culture ca. 500 B.C. a part of the Slavs beyond the Carpathians must have reached the left bank of the Danube across the western slopes of the Carpathians between the rivers Morava and Vag, looking for suitable agricultural land to settle. Only a long residence in the Danubian lands in which they were cut off from the other Slavs by the high Carpathian ridges can explain how the Kaikavian dialect, which shows no affinity with any other Slavic language, arose.

When the Huns overran Central Europe in 375 A.D. they set off a major migration of nations toward the Roman territories seeking shelter and more suitable living conditions in the rich Roman provinces. Then centuries old Roman ‘limes’ on the Danube was breached and various nations overran the Pannonian and Norican provinces. St. Jerome writes in 409: "Since the Danubian ‘limes’ has been reached these past 30 years there has been fighting in the heart of the Roman empire from the Black Sea to the Julian Alps." (13)

The first barbarian nation to cross over to the right bank of the middle Danube were the Germanic Goths along with the subjects the Slavs of the Kaikavian dialect. At the outset they settled in the Roman provinces of Valeria and Upper Pannonia and plundered the other provinces. When the Huns crossed over to the right bank of the Danube in the winter of 394/95 the Goths and their subject the Slavs, already settled there, recognized the Huns as their overlords. Then Attila in 441 occupied Lower Pannonia, Savia and Noricum, and the their Slavic subjects also followed them and settled there, but in far fewer numbers than in Valeria and Upper Pannonia. Indeed, in the latter provinces Roman administration remained better organized and as a result the old Roman and Romanized Illyrian population was better able to absorb the shock of the invasions. The migrations of the Kaikavian-speaking Slavs continued into Savia and Noricum even after the collapse of the Hunnish State, under the Gothic administration of these provinces from 489 to 555. For these Slavs recognized the overlordship of the Goths and collaborated with them. But the largest and final migration of the Slavs of the Carpathian hinterland took place in the second half of the VI century. Indeed during his wars with the Goths, the emperor Justinian I in 546 allowed the Germanic Lombards to settle in Pannonia and Noricum as his allies. Since that time the Gepids occupied Lower Pannonia east of the Mursian Lake they came into open conflict with the Lombards who, unable to vanquish the Gepids, called the Turanian Avars to their aid. The Avars then lived along the Black Sea on the left bank of the Danube. They responded to their call for aid and completely routed out the Gepids in 567, taking over their land from the rivers Olt to Maros in Romania as far as the Mursian Lake near modern Osijek. Feeling ill at ease with their new neighbours and allies the Lombards in 568 left their erstwhile domains and crossed over to northern Italy, conceding by agreement Pannonia and Noricum to the Avars. (14) Seeing that the Avars were few in number, only 20,000 according to Menandor who died in 602, (15) they had to occupy the strongholds of whatever country they wished to rule as masters. The settlement of the depopulated provinces of Upper Pannonia, Savia and Noricum the Avars left to these Slavs of the Carpathian hinterland: to those who had already crossed over to the right bank of the Danube and to those who still then remained on the left bank. But recognizing the overlordship of the Avars, the Slavs collaborated with them in their military undertakings. At that time these Carpathian Slavs completely abandoned the left bank of the Danube leaving it to their northwestern Slavic neighbours who were akin to the racial and linguistic forebears of the modern Slovaks.

After the Lombards vacated Upper Pannonia and Noricum the Kaikavian-speaking Slavs soon spread out to the frontiers of Bavaria and to the southern slopes of the Friulian Alps. By 595/96 they had already begun to wage war with the Barvarian duke Tasilo (16) and three years later penetrated into Istria where they were checked by Callinicus, the exarch of Ravenna. (17) In 600 Pope Gregory the Great complained to Maximus bishop of Salona of the danger which these Pannonian Slavs presented to Italy by their penetration of Istria. (18) In 602 the Slavs again with the Avars and Lombards ravaged Istria terribly and the following year helped the Lombards conquer the cities of present-day Lombardy and Veneto. (19) By the beginning of the VII century the migrations of these Carpathian Slavs into Upper Pannonia, Savia and Noricum form the Danube to Bavaria and into the plain of Lombardy had been completed. Their descendants even today speak the Kaikavian dialect in northwestern Croatia, Slovenia, southeastern Austria and southwestern Hungary (Vindisi). (20)

The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans: the Stokavian-Ikavian Dialect

Around 165 to 180 A.D. the Germanic Goths arrive on the Black Sea by way of the Slavic regions beyond the Carpathians. They established there a power state to which were subject different tribes of the Eastern Slavs. (21) By the beginning of the III century at the latest the Slavs coming from southern Ukraine reached the left bank of the Danube under the leadership of the Goths. They spoke the same Stokavian-Ikavian dialect, as did their Ukrainian kinsmen from whom they separated in order to follow their overlords, the Goths. They exerted such a great pressure upon the boundaries of the Roman province of Dacia north of the Danube that the emperor Aurelian (270 – 275 A.D.) was forced to relocate the Roman legions and the population on the right bank of the Danube and fortify the Roman ‘limes’ on that river. (21) Not long after the Goths and their kinsmen the Gepids retreated westward along the left bank of the Danube, either voluntarily or under pressure from the Eastern Slavs and other nations who refused to recognize the overlordship of the Goths. So the Goths settled the areas from the river Maros to theVag, and the Gepids from the Maros to the Olt, occupying present-day Backa south of the line running from the mouth of the Maros over the hills above Subotica on the Dnaube. In their new homeland the Goths found Carpathian Slavs speaking the Kaikavian dialect and subjugated them. However the Slavs of the Stokavian-Ikavian dialect who were the first, with the Goths, to reach the left bank of the Danube remained with the Gepids. They spread out over the Gepid dominions, turning to agriculture and collaborating with their masters in their military undertakings. (22)
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When ca. 378 A.D. the Huns subjugated the Goths and the Gepids in the valley of the Danube, the Slavs between the Olt and the Maros, speaking the Stokavian-Ikavian dialect, who until then had been subject to the Gepids, fell subject to the Huns. Around 441 A.D. Attila occupied Srijem with its capital of Sirmium and the Slavs of the Stokavian-Ikavian dialect crossed the Danube and begun to settle in Lower Pannonia east of the Mursian Lake which extends south from Osijek through Vinkovci to the confluence of the Bosut and the Sava. After the death of Attila the Gepids and their former subjects the Slavs, along with other nations, revolted in 454 and forced the Huns to retreat in to the southeastern Russian steppes around the Don. (23) The Gepids reconquered their former lands from the Maros to the Olt, even integrating Lower Pannonia up to the Mursian Lake. During the Gepid rule in Srijem, lasting with some interruptions over a century (454 – 567) their subjects the Slavs of the Stokavian-Ikavian dialect crossed the in huge numbers over to the right bank of the Danube and settled Srijem to full capacity eastward from the Mursian Lake. The contemporary writer Jordanes writes in 551 that the Slavs were occupying every available tract of land from the Mursian Lake to Noviodunum on the mouth of the Danube. (24) Since in Roman times Lower Pannonia comprised the Bosnian territory on the Sava, eastward from the watershed fo the rivers Ukrina and Usors, including Macva up to the river Kolubara the Slavs of the Stokavian-Ikavian dialect under the Gepids settled in those territories at the same time as in Srijem i.e. between the storming of Sirmium by the Huns in 441 and the fall of the Gepids in 567. Slavs settled in Byzantine Dalmatia from the Drina to the Istra when they occupied these territories while in the service of the Avars during the reign of emperor Phoca (602 - 10) and the first years of the rule of Heraclius I (610- 641). (25) The political boundaries between Dalmatia on the one side and Savia and Noricum on the other, divided these Slavs from those speaking the Kaikavian dialect, and the Drina separated the Slavs of the Ikavian dialect on the west from those of the Stokavian-Evakian dialect on the east. The old Slavs either had to agree among themselves to draw up those boundaries or else their contemporary masters had drawn them up in this way.

The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans: The Stokavian-Ekavian Dialect

When at the end of the III or the beginning of the IV century A.D. the Goths and their kinsmen the Gepids with the Slavs of the Ikavian dialect left the former Roman province of Dacia north of the Danube and moved west from the Olt, the Eastern Slavs settled in the territories vacated by them. These Slavs originally came from the area around the Dnieper and spoke the Stokavian dialect of the Ekavian speech, as had their kinfolk in the old territories around the Dneiper and eastward. These Slavs live free and independent for many centuries on the left bank of the Danube, without recognizing any foreign overlordship whether Goth or Avar, and in all probability not even Hun. On the subject of the different ethnic groups in the first half of the IV century, the contemporary writer Procopius (d. 562) writes about the Slavs: "The Slavs and the Antal…occupy the greater part of the other (left) bank of the Danube." (26)

The Easter Slavs of the Ekavian speech began to penetrate across the Danube into the Byzantine state in the first years of the reign of the emperor Justin I (518 – 527 A.D.) They made great inroads into the empire during the reign of Justinian I from 533 to 545. In 547 these Slavs reached as far as Dyrrhachium. The purpose of these inroads at the outset was to plunder, but already by 550 these Eastern Slavs began in earnest to settle in the Balkans. In 589 they established an independent Slavic state in the Peloponnese which lasted until 806 under the name of Sklavinia. A particularly numerous influx of those Eastern Slavs south of the Danube occurred during the domestic power struggles and palace intrigues of the Byzantine empire in the reign of the unworthy emperor Phocas (602 – 610) and in the first years of Heraclius’ rule (610 – 641). At that time these Eastern Slavs settled all the territories of the prefecture of Illyricum up to the Drina (27), except for the littoral in the provinces of Praevalis and Novus Epirus, which had been previously settled by the Avars and their subjects the Slavs of the Stokavian-Ikavian dialect. (28)
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III. THE ARRIVAL OF THE CROATS AND THE SERBS IN THE SOUTH



A. Arrival of the Croats on the Adriatic

The following evidence indicates that the Croats between the Drava and the Adriatic came from the Croats beyond the Carpathians:

1. The southern Croats bear the same national name as the northern. We have already stressed that the name "Croat" is a specific name with a particular significance that designates a particular nation originating from a common stock wherever the bearers of the name are found. (1)
2. The same reasons that point to the Iranian origin of the eastern and northern Croats hold good for those on the Adriatic also. In point of fact the southern as well as the northern Croats designated the cardinal points of the compass, or their national territory wherever they established their state, by colours like the Iranians. So we have on the Adriatic White Croats and White Croatia, Red Croats and Red Croatia like those Croats beyond the Carpathians and the Don. (1) Several names of rivers and places in the south Croatian lands are identical with the names found in the north such as Odre, Cetina, Sana, Bistrica, Ilava, Rakitnica, Lisa etc. The northern Croats must have taken these names with them when they went south. (3)
3. The organization of the state among the southern Croats with the king, bans and zupans at its head similar to that of the northern Croats; in addition the religion, national customs, dress and arts of the southern Croats bear Iranian traces, just like the Croats in the north. (4)
4. Constantine Porphyrogenitus in this work ‘De administrando imperio’ written on the basis of materials in the imperial archives in Byzantium, mentions three times, using three different sources, that the Croats arrived in the south from northern or White Croatia where in the time of the emperor lived non-Christian White Croats. (5)
5. The old Croatian chronicle ‘The Kingdom of the Croats’ and the ‘Chronicle of Pop Dukljanin’, based on Croatian national tradition and on the ancient records, states that the Croats whom they misnamed the Goths arrived for the north through Pannonia and Templana (6) in Dalmatia, which they conquered and settled. (7)
6. Archdeacon Thomas of Split (1201 – 1268) in his monumental work ‘Historia Salonitana’ records that the Croatian tradition concerning their arrival on the Adriatic from the north i.e. Poland and Bohemia. His account is clearer and closer to Croatian tradition as found in the time of emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus than the accoundt of the ‘Kingdom of the Croats’ and the ‘Chronicle of Pop Dukljanin’. Because the archdeacon Thomas was not acquainted with Porphyrogenitus’ work, he had to rely on some written sources from Dalmatian archives, which has subsequently been lost. Thomas thus describes the arrival of the Croats on the Adriatic:

"From the Polish territories called Lingonia seven or eight tribal clans arrived under Totilo. When they saw that the Croatian land would be suitable for habitation because in it there were few Roman colonies, they sought and obtained for their duke…The people called Croats…Many call them Goths, and likewise Slavs, according to the particular name of those who arrived from Poland and Bohemia." (8)



When did the Croats arrive on the Adriatic?

In chapters 29 and 30 of ‘De administrando imperio’ Porphyrogenitus writes that the Avars occupied Salona, the Dalmatian capita, while the Croats still lived in the north beyond the Carpathians. Some time later the Croats arrived in Dalmatia and fighting broke out between them and the Avars who were driven out of Dalmatia. Whereupon the Croats settled there. (9) Salona was certainly free in 612 because inscriptions from that year of the abbess Johanna have been found in the cemetery of Salona. (10) According to the investigations of F. Bulic, the Avars occupied Salona in years 614 – 615. (11) Since the Avars, after their occupation of Salona, governed Dalmatia for some time one must therefore conclude in all probability the Croats did not reach the Adriatic before 620.

Furthermore in chapter 30 Porphyrogenitus mentions that the Croats conquered the Avars and drove them out of Dalmatia, which they then settled themselves during the reign of Heraclius I (610 – 641). According to him the fighting between the Croats and the Avars lasted several years. (12) Therefore one has to conclude that in any case the Croats reached the Adriatic before 635.

Porphyrogenitus in chapter 31 of the "De administrando imperio’ (13) and archdeacon Thomas of Split in chapter 11 of his work ‘Historia Salonitana’ (14) both note that in the reign of Heraclius I (d. Feb. 11, 641) and in the time of pope John IV (d. Oct. 12, 642) a certain number of Croats were Christianized and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Dalmatia was established. The ‘Historia Salonitana’ was written quite independently of Porphyrogenitus’ work, for the archdeacon Thomas did not know of its existence. It was during the reign of the Croatian Porga, succeeding his father on the throne, that the Croats were brought to the Adriatic and led into the fight against the Avars. On must allow for an interval of 10 to 15 years during which the Croats were vanquishing the Avars and being converted to Christianity and the church hierarchy was being introduced in Dalmatia. This indicates to us that the Croats reached the Adriatic between 625 and 630.

The uncontestable evidence of the ‘Liber pontificalis’ and ‘Historia Longobardorum’ of Paul the Deacon bring to us this same conclusion. I the biography of pope John IV, born in Dalmatia, one finds that this pope sent the abbot Martin with a large amount of money to redeem Christian slaves in Istria and Dalmatia from the pagans and to gather the bones of martyrs and transfer them to Rome. (15) Paul the Deacon has recorded that the Slavs, i.e. the Croats in 641/42 crossed into Italy by Siponta to help the Byzantines liberate central Italy form the Lombards. (16) From these sources we must conclude that already from some time before 641 the Avars had been driven out of Dalmatia and that the Croats had settled permanently, establishing order and security in their land. This must have taken them at least ten years or more, including the fighting with the Avars.

In order to determine more precisely the time when the Croats reached the Adriatic we have two authentic attestations: the Avar siege of Byzantium in 626 and the account of St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) in 627.

Porphyrogenitus has recorded on the basis of the data in the imperial archives that the Croats came to the south and began to fight with the Avars in accordance with particular written agreements issued in the form of a ‘prostaxis’ or imperial ordinance. (17) In that official document the Byzantines bound themselves to secure for the Croats great priviledges, especially to concede to them all the lands that they should liberate from the Avars. Only with extraordinary promises could the Croats be persuaded to leave their homeland and move into unknown country to fight with such a strong enemy. Only great danger from the Avar side could compel the Byzantines to make such great promises to the Croats. For the Avars had concluded an alliance with the Bulgars and Persians and were preparing to occupy the imperial city and to destroy the Byzantine empire.

The Avar army before Byzantium numbered 80,000 men – Avars, Bulgars and Slavs. (18) The first part of the army reached the Long Wall on June 29th , 626. The assault itself on Byzantium began on July 31 and raged for five days with utmost fury. The Avars assaulted the city with the help of a great number of siege devices, mobile testudos and ladders that they brought with them. They erected 12 high siege towers but did not succeed in penetrating the city. With 1,000 dugouts the Slavs tired to transport the Persians onto the European side of Byzantium but the Byzantine fleet prevented them and destroyed the Slavic boats. Whereupon the Khagan of the Avars on the night of the 4th and 5th of August set fire to his camp and suddenly returned home (19), although the Persians on the east remained for a while longer in a state of war with the Byzantines.(20)

One cannot explain the fact that the Avars who were still in full force suddenly abandoned the siege of Byzantium alone and of their own accord, otherwise than by the fact that they happened to know that dangerous foes were invading their own land. These had to be the Croats who were coming down by the way of western Hungary along the old Roman roads toward present-day western Croatia and the Adriatic in accordance with their agreement with the Byzantines.

We have a contemporary account of this event recorded in 627 by the famous bishop of Seville St. Isidore in the second edition of this ‘Great Chronicle’ (Chronica maior). He writes:

"Heraclius’ reign was in its sixteenth year, at the outset of which the Slavs took Greece for the Romans, while the Persians took Syria, Egypt and the other provinces." (21)

In his ‘Etymologies’ Isidore of Seville thus describes the Greece he knew: "Greece has seven provinces, Dalmatia being the first on the western side, then Epirus, Hellas, Thessaly, Macedonia and finally Achaea and the two provinces of the sea, Crete and the Cyclades." (22)

Here Isidore of Seville is not talking about a minor event such as the Slavic campaigns like the one in 623 when they conducted a raid on Crete from the Peloponnese. Neither is he talking about the assault on Byzantium by the Avars and the Slavs in 626, because the rumor of the defeat of the Avars and the Slavic subjects in their army spread quickly all around the contemporary Byzantine Empire that included Spain. It is not known from historical sources whether any Slavic nations from 625 to 630 made war and conquered the land of so-called Greece except the Croats. Accordingly the account of Isidore of Seville in the second edition of his ‘Chronica maior’ can only refer to the Croats, and must be considered as the oldest contemporary historical account to record the arrival of the Croats on the Adriatic.

From the aforementioned account of Isidore of Seville in connection with the writings of Porphyrogenitus one must conclude that the Byzantines made an agreement with the Croats guaranteed by a ‘prostaxis’ or imperial ordinance at the outset of the sixteenth year of Heraclius’ reign, i.e. at the end of the autumn of 625. Soon afterward one part of the Croats had to cross over the frozen Danube onto the right bank somewhere around the confluence of the Vag and had to occupy the larger region of Upper Pannonia in order to secure a peaceful and undisturbed crossing for the main body of Croats about to go south. While making preparations against Byzantium the Avars miscalculated the importance of crossing the Danube by the Croats over to the right bank. They considered it to be but a minor recrudescence of Samo’s rebellion against them began as early as 623. (23) However when the main body of the Croats at the outset of July 626, having availed themselves by the summer harvest, crossed the Danube and began to penetrate south, the Avars saw the danger that threatened them. For this reason, according to our opinion, the Khagan of the Avars cut short the siege of Byzantium and returned home.

In the meantime before the Khagan could reach the Danubian lands, the Croats must have already crossed the Pannonian plains along the old Roman roads and reached far into Dalmatia of that time. As it appears to us, it was the wish of the Byzantine imperial envoys that the Croats drive the Avars out the Greek provinces on the Adriatic littoral: Dalmatia, Praevalis, Novus and Vetus Epirus. It took the Croats more than one year to rid those regions of the Avars, as is recorded in the margin of the Codex Sorianus of Isidore of Seville’s ‘Chronica maior’ dating from the year 743. In it is written: "In the eighteenth year of Heraclius’ reign i.e. 627/8, at the outset of which the Slavs took Greece from the Romans…" (24) Although the Croats made war as allies of the Byzantines, they occupied the lands for themselves in accordance with the agreement concluded with them and did not deliver the land directly over to Byzantine control. Isidore of Seville was right in noting that the Slavs – Croats took the ‘Greek’ provinces form the Romans, i.e. Byzantines, from 626 to 628.

The Frankish chronicler writes that after receiving one another’s emissaries the emperor Heraclius I and the Frankish king Dagobert concluded an alliance in 629 against their common foe the Avars. (25) This indicates that in 629 the Avars were still a power to be reckoned with and accordingly that the Croats were still fighting with them.

The contemporary Byzantine writer George of Pisidia records the events of the year 629: "Avars are killing Slavs, and in retaliation Slavs are killing Avars; and so weakened by a series of bloody feuds, they can no longer continue the common fight against the Byzantines." (26) This indicates that the Slavs of the Kaikavian and Stokavian-Ikavian dialects, formerly subjects of the Avars in Pannonia and Dalmatia, were induced by the Croatian wars to rebel and go over to the Croats to join the fight against their former masters the Avars.

The last battles between the Croats and the Avars took place in Srijem circa 635. In that time Srijem was an island surrounded on the northeast by the Danube and on the west by the Mursian Lake that was formed by the overflow of the Vuk and Bosut rivers in eastern Slavonia. (27) In 574 Justin II (565 – 578) abandoned half the island of Srijem to the Avars who between 580 and 582 conquered the other half together with Sirmium. From the outset when they gained a part of the island the Avars began to colonize it with their Roman captives from the Roman territories of the Balkans, especially from the Greek provinces, in order to cultivate the fertile plain of Srijem and thereby to secure the food supply while they waged wars without relent. The Salonican author of the work ‘Miracles of St. Demetrius’ records: "Because it has been more than 60 years since the barbarians took their forefathers prisoner they have come to be a whole new nation there." The author continues by saying that the Avars circa 635 appointed a certain Kuver to be over the Greek people on the island of Srijem and that this Kuver rebelled against the Avars, provoking strife with their Khagan five or six times with the aid of these Greek descendants and of "other nations". After twice routing them completely he forced theKagan to retreat with his Avars deep into Avar territory north of the Danube. Whereupon Kuver with the descendants of the Greek captives crossed the Danube and passing through present-day Serbia, settled in the vicinity of Salonica. (28)

The author of the ‘Miracle of St. Demetrius’ has woven the victory over the Avars around Kuver, the chief hero of the whole affair, who later on came almost to the brink of destroying Salonica. But even the author himself knew that Kuver with his Srijem peasantry unaccustomed to waging war, was no match for the trained soldiers of the Avars. So he associated the "other nations" with Kuver who with their aid led many times the fight against the Avars and after twice routing them completely finally forced them to withdraw into the interior of the Carpathian hinterland.

In point of fact we have here the last recorded battles that the Croats waged against the Avars between the Sava and the Danube with the aid of the Slavs of the first migration who had rebelled. During the fighting Kuver also rebelled with the descendants of the Greek captives. After the Croats completely routed the Avars in two clashes in which the Slavs of the first migration took part as well as the Roman remnants from the Bosnian mountains and Kuver with his Greeks, the Avars were forced to retreat north of the Danube beyond the river Tisza. Whereupon Kuver left Srijem and went on his way south towards Salonica. (29)

Around 635 the fighting between the Croats and Avars was for all purposes over. The Croats then settled the territory that they occupied up to that time and the emperor Heraclius I confirmed the policy by an imperial decree called ‘Keleusia’ (order). (30)

The lands settled by the Croats upon their arrival in the south

On the basis of imperial archives and materials which he obtained from the Croats themselves, Porphyrogenitus in chapter 30 of his work ‘De administrando imperio’ has this to say concerning the Croats on their arrival on the Adriatic:

"And so the Croats at that time lived beyond Barvaria where the White Croats are today. One of their clans under the leadership of five brothers: Klukas, Lobelos, Kosences, Muhle, Hrobatos and two sister Tuga and Buga, separated from the rest and arrived together with their people in Dalmatia where they found the Avars in possession of the land. They fought for some time among each other and the Croats finally won. They massacred some of the Avars and the rest they subjected. Henceforth the Croats were masters in that province…Of the Croats who arrived in Dalmatia, on part separated and conquered Illyricum and Pannonia." (31)

Porphyrogenitus clearly distinguishes and mentions by name the three former Roman provinces settled by the Croats upon their arrival in the south: Dalmatia, Illyricum and Pannonia.

"Dalmatia from ancient times" says Porphyrogenitus, "begins at Dyrrhachium, more precisely at Bar, continues up to the Istrian mountains and then cuts across over to the Danube." (32) According to Porphyrogenitus, then Dalmatia had the same boundary on the Adriatic as the one defined by the emperor Diocletian in 297 A.D. That Dalmatia extended in breath up to the Bosnian territory along the Sava, more precisely up to a line running from Mount Snyesnik in Istria along the Kupa river to Mount Petrov, from where it cut across to Mount Grmec in Bosnia and then across Mounts Manjaca, Tisovac and Borje and over to Mount Krivaja long the Little Drina up to its confluence with the Drina. Porphyrogenitus moves the northern boundary of Dalmatia up to the Danube because the Byzantines in the VII century had no organized administrative system in the Pannonian provinces and so included in the province of Dalmatia all the territories of those former provinces that they had always considered their own.

Porphyrogenitus mentions Pannonia several times in his works. In chapter 25 of ‘De administrado imperio’ he writes that the Goths occupied and held Pannonia (33) and in chapter 27 that the Lombards lived there for some time. (34) In his work ‘De tematibus’, chapter 9, he mentions the ecclesiastical diocese of Pannonia in Srijem between the Sava and the Danube. (35) So when he mentions that the Croats inhabited Pannonia he is thinking of the Roman provinces established by the emperor Diocletian in 297. Of these provinces Pannonia Prima (or Upper) and Pannonia Valeria spread north of the Drava. Within the area from the Drava and the Danube to the Bosnian mountains Savia Pannonia lay on the west and Pannonia Secunda (or Lower) on the east. (36)

The cradle of the small tribe of the Illyri between the rivers Vojusa and Mathis in modern Albania was originally Illyricum. This was the first tribe that the Greeks came in contact with and they called all the kindred tribes after it. When the Romans occupied the eastern starboard of the Adriatic they called this great province extending from the Mathis to the Inn above Vienna the province of Illyricum. With the administrative division of the Roman state in 297 Diocletian assigned to Illyricum the territory from the Drina to Mount Rhodope and made it one of the four prefectures of the empire. The lands west from the Drina to the central Alps he integrated into one lesser administrative unit which he called the diocese of Pannonia. This was usually called Western Illyricum.

When the barbarians, particularly the Avars and Slavs in the VI and at the outset of the VII century toppled the Roman administrative structure in the Balkans the Byzantines abandoned the name of Illyricum to designate the former prefecture of that name and the diocese of Western Illyricum. From then on the names Hellada, Achaea, Macedonia, Dardanis, Moesia, Pannonia and Dalmatia prevailed. The name Illyricum reverted to its original designation and applied to the lands between the Vojus and Mathis rivers including the coastal towns of the former province of Praevalis. Byzantium at the outset to the IX century integrated those regions into a single administrative unit called the province of Dyrrhachium after its capital. For then on the Byzantines designated Illyricum the territory from the mountains of Himara, south of modern Valona, to the Budva below Kotor. (37) To prove this we will bring forward the following attestations:

From Ravenna the author of a cosmography writes in the middle of the VII century: "In Illyricum itself on the other side of the Adriatic the following cities are to be found – Valona, Absura, Dyrrhachium, Plistum and Lissum." (38) Also according to Stephanus Byzantius Illyricum is situated on the littoral of Epirus and Praevalis with its capital Dyrrhachium. (39) In 787 at the Second Nicene Council the metropolitan of Dyrrhachium Nicephorus identified the province of Dyrrhachium with the "territory of Illyricum"(40) and pope Nicholas I in 860 connected Illyricum with Novus Epirus of which it is only a part. (41) Nicephorus Bryennius (circa 1080 – 1137) writes: "Dyrrhachium is the capital of Illyricum." (42) Anna Comnena in 1148 also calls Dyrrhachium the capital of Illyricum. (43)

Even Porphyrogenitus understands Illyricum in this sense. In his work ‘De tematibus’, chapter 1, he states that Illyricum is situated next to the province of Macedonia. (44) In chapter 9 of the same work he relates that the emperor Constantine the Great gave all these lands to his son Constantine, beginning from Dyrrhachium: Illyricum, Hellada, the surrounding islands and the Cyclades. (45) In the same chapter, basing himself on Stephanus Byzantius, he says that Dyrrhachium is the capital of Illyricum. (46) In chapter 32 of ‘De administrando imperio’ he writes that the remnants of the "Romans live in Dalmatia and Dyrrhachium." (47) along the Adriatic and in chapter 30 notes that Bar, in present-day Montenegro, is the last fortified city form the north in the province of Dyrrhachium. (48) According to Porphyrogenitus, then as with the other Byzantine and Latin authors for the VII to the XII century, Illyricum is throughout identical to the province of Dyrrhachium which stretched along the east coast of the Adriatic comprising the old Roman provinces of Praevalis, Novus and Vetus Epirus from Budva to the mountains of Himara below Valona in modern Albania.

The following sources confirm Porphyrogenitus’ accounts of the settlement of Pannonia, Dalmatia and Illyricum by the Croats upon their arrival in the south.

The contemporary chronicler St. Isidore of Seville records that in 627 the Slavs, i.e. the Croats took from the Romans, i.e. the Byzantines Greece, i.e. Dalmatia, Praevalia, Epirus and the other Byzantine provinces. (49)

The pristine Croatian work ‘Methodos’ containing the resolutions of the Croatian diet on the plain of the Duvno in 753 came about as a direct result of that diet. The ‘Methodos’ has this to say about the territorial extent and partition of the contemporaneous Croatian state:

"Accordingly the diet partitioned the littoral into two regions – from the locality of Dalma where at that time the king resided and held the diet to Vinodol it was called White Croatia or Lower Dalmatia…Likewise from Dalma to the town of Bambalona, now called Dyrrhachium, it was called Red Croatia or Upper Dalmatia." (51)

In the work ‘Kingdom of the Croats’ it is expressed in this way: "From Dalmatia to Valdemina (Vinodol) the people are called the White Croats, meaning the Lower Dalmatians. Moreover from the locality of Dalma to the town of Bandalona, called also Dyrrhachium, the region is called Upper Dalmatia." (52)

Professor P. Skok has established that the names Bambalona and Bandalona are the distortions of the copyist for the name of the city of Valona with the Romance article "La" (54). In the same manner the Arab writer Ibn Idrus calls Valona in 1154. (54) The author of the work ‘Kingdom of the Croats’ at the end of the XI century and Pop Dukljanin in the middle of the XII century, when the southern-most boundary of the Croatian state had already been forgotten and the distorted name of the city of Valona was for them incomprehensible, reasoned that it must refer to Dyrrhachium because in their time the South Croatian state extended to the region of Dyrrhachium. It must have been stated in the ‘Methodus’ that Red Croatia at the diet of Duvno in 753 was extended as far as Valona in present-day Albania.

In the old Croatian chronicle which the authors of the ‘Kingdom of the Croats’ and Pop Dukljanin used the territorial extent of the incipient Croatian state is recorded as follows:

"In that time Stroil, his brother, with his army took the kingdom of Illyria i.e. the whole country on this side of Valdemina right to Polonia…Sviolad, son of Stroil…And Bosnia was his kingdom, as well as Valdemina right to Polonia; both the coast and the hinterland was his kingdom." (55)

Pop Dukljanin expresses it so: "The boundaries of his kingdom stretched from Vinodol to Polonia, including as much the regions of the cost as of the hinterland." (56)

Professors P. Skok, (57) F. Sisic (58) and others established that by the name of Polonia one must understand the old city of Apollonia which the medieval Slavs usually called Polonia and the modern Albaniana Polani.

The aforementioned old Croatian sources, then attests to the fact that the former Croatian state reached as far as the old Roman city of Apollonia near modern Valona which lies at the south end of Porphyrogenitus’ Illyricum.
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ROMAN - BYZANTINE PROVINCES BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF THE CROATS


Previous inhabitants of the territory settled by the Croats in 626

The first traces of man in the Croatian lands originate form the middle period of the paleolithic age. Between 1899 and 1905 D. Gorjanovic-Kramberger discovered near Krapina the remains of about ten human skulls, pieces of tools and bones of various animals on which these people fed. Krapina man lived in caves and knew the use of fire, fashioned tools of flint and lived by hunting and gathering fruits. (59)

More recently in Bosnian Posavina around the mouth of the Usora, the middle Ukrina and the lower Bosnian rivers more settlements of Krapina man’s contemporaries were discovered. They lived like Krapina man except that their dwellings were on the hillsides, indicating that they lived in tents covered with animal skins. (60) Krapina man and his contemporaries lived in Bosnia around 10,000 B.C.

Sometime ca. 5,000 B.C. in Europe a temperate climate set in making it possible for man to begin in agriculture and raising of livestock. Man still used tools of flint, but already knew how to bake clay and make earthware. He built houses of stone and adobe. This age is called the neolithic.

As the archeological excavations testify many human cultures came into existence, flourished and vanished in present-day Croatia during the long prehistoric ages. (61) This indicates that our lands in prehistoric times were overrun several times by alien invaders who destroyed the cultures that they found upon their arrival, introduced new cultural features and developed them further. Meanwhile the old population that the conquerors found upon their arrival was never totally destroyed, but always managed to survive in part, in mountains and in the forests. They would in time assimilate with the new conquerors into the culture of a new name. In the Croatian lands especially traces of these prehistoric folk survived: Dinaric and Mediterranean man, and the Illyrians and also traces of the historical conquerors, the Romans.

The paleo-fatherland of Dinaric man was in Armenia, from which some of them penetrated by way of Asia Minor into the Balkans sometime ca. 4,000 B.C. They established themselves in present-day Croatia from Lake Skutari to the Slovenian Alps. One branch of Dinaric man penetrated into Silesia by way of Moravia and into the Ukraine via the Carpathians. Dinaric man was distinguished by his tall stature. (62)

Around 3,000 B.C. Mediterranean man arrived from North Africa via Sicily and southern Italy on the islands and the Adriatic littoral. He was of slighter build than Dinaric man, but his head was larger. Rich finds on the islands of Hvar and Korcula, at Danilov in Dalmatia, in the Green Cave and at Lisicici in Herzogovina are of Mediterranean origin. (63)

At the outset of the II millennium B.C. the Greeks by way of the Mediterranean and the Thracians via the Bosphorus both reached the Balkans from Asia. The former occupied present-day Greece and the latter the eastern and central Balkans. Around 1,200 B.C. various kindred Indo-European tribes penetrated from the north, later to be called the Illyrians. (64) The occupied the territory from the Inn near Vienna to Greece and from the Alps to the rivers Ibar and Vardar as well as the islands in the Adriatic. A part of them even crossed over to the Apennines. The Illyrians found in Croatia numerous remnants of the old folk, especially the Dinaric and Mediterranean, assimilating with them in time under the Illyrian name in such a way that in present-day Dinaric regions of Croatia the Dinaric type, as on the Adriatic the Mediterranean type, has prevailed. The Glasinac culture (ca. 1,200 to 250 B.C.) must be attributed to the Illyrians. (65)

From the IV to the II century B.C. the Greeks established numerous colonies on the islands and on the Adriatic littoral. Especially of note were the following: Pharos (Starigrad on Hvar), Tragurion (Trogir), Issa (Vis), Epidauros (Cavtat near Dubrovnik), Naron (Vid near Metlovic) and Saristeron near Mostar. (66)

In 390 B.C. the Celts invaded Rome. A little later they penetrated via northern Italy into the Illyrian regions on the Adriatic. Strabo mentions them as being there in 335 B.C. (67) According to him the Iapyges inhabiting Lika and northwestern Bosnia were an amalgamation of Celts and Illyrians. (68) Archeological excavations of Iapydian settlement near Jezerina and Ribic near Bihac, where urns containing the ashes of cremated bodies and graves with entire skeletons have been found in the same cemetery, confirm the mixing of peoples. (69)

The Romans came into conflict with the Illyrians in 229 B.C. The Roman consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica in 155 B.C. penetrated into the interior from Naron and conquered Delminium, the chief city of Illyrian Dalmatae at Hlib, not far from modern Duvno. In 118 / 117 B.C. the Romans occupied Salona, a coastal city of Dalmatia. In 80/79 B.C. the Roman dictator Sulla established the province of Illyricum as part of a general reorganization of the Roman state, but this province id not extend far into the interior. Only after continuous and heavy fighting for 50 B.C. to 9 A.D. did the Romans succeed in subjugating the freedom-loving Illyrians. In order to keep in submission the emperor Augustus in 10 A.D. introduced a powerful military organization in Illyricum. To facilitate the administration Illyricum was divided into two parts: Lower Illyricum or Pannonia and Upper Illyricum or Dalmatia. The first province encompassed the plain country from the Bosnian mountains to the Inn near Vienna, and the second the mountainous regions from Mounts Petrov and Borje in Bosnia to the Adriatic. Augustus and his successors set up a dense network of good roads throughout and founded a great number of Roman military camps (castra) and city settlements. The emperor Diocletian in 297 A.D. divided Pannonia into four provinces: First or Upper Pannonia, Valeria, Savia and Second or Lower Pannonia. Upper Illyricum was divided into two: the territory of Dalmatia he defined as stretching from Istria to the Drina and to the Budva in Boka Kotoroka; and to the eastern part from the Drina to the Ibar river, Mount Sar and the river Dim in modern Albania he gave the name Praevalis. At the final partition of the Roman empire Dalmatia and the Pannonian provinces were assigned to the Western Roman Empire and Praevalis to the Eastern Roman Empire. With that the Drina, as the boundary between Dalmatia and Praevalis, became the dividing line between the two cultures and the two worlds of West and East.

During several centuries of military and cultural activity and due to a superior standard of living the Romans succeeded in civilizing the Illyrians to such a degree that they adopted the Latin language and began to call themselves Romans. (70)



Old national remnants in the new homeland of the Croats

During the folk migrations, particularly during the devastation of the Avars at the end of the VI and the outset of the VII century, the apparatus of the Byzantine state was totally destroyed in Pannonia and in the interior of Dalmatia. All the Roman settlements and cities in the plains and in the open country were ruined. Those whose fortunes allowed them as well as the more rebellious offered resistance to the barbarian invaders and when their resources were exhausted they fled to the Adriatic littoral and from there to the islands and to Italy. Meanwhile the populace, descendants of the pre-Roman populations, particularly the Romanized Illyrians, did not leave their ancient possessions, but attempted as best they could to save and defend themselves on the spot. Some retreated into the Roman strongholds and others fled into the forests, hills and mountains where access was difficult. In Pannonia and Dalmatia there were many strongholds dating from ancient times. The emperor Justinian I (527 – 565) restored the majority of them and built quite a few from the foundations wherever it was suitable and practical. In his work ‘De aedificus’ Procopius mentions more than 200 strongholds built or restored by Justinian in Dalmatia alone. (71)

During the invasions of the Huns and Avars the Pannonian strongholds were totally destroyed, but in Dalmatia they tended to be spared, especially on the littoral. In the original Marini paper No. 78 we have proof that many "strongholds found beyond Salona" were preserved with their old Christian population right up to the second half of the VII century. (72) Archdeacon Thomas of Split notes that the church in Duvno was still in excellent condition even in his time. Germanus, bishop of Capus on his way to Byzantium, had consecrated it in 518. (73) This indicates that the old Illyro-Roman Christians used and took care of that church until such time as the Croats were Christianized and took over the care of that church themselves. The name Romania designating the area between Miljecka and Prac in eastern Bosnia indicates that in this plateau region the remnants of the Romans lived for a long time in considerable isolation.

The old Croatian chronicles contain especially precious information on the numerous remnants of the Roman Christian population in the interior. The ‘Kingdom of the Croats’ in chapter 9 quotes a passage from the oldest know Croatian work ‘Methodus’ dating back from the year 753:

"Then the Christians…began to build strongholds on the mountains and mountaintops, in order to protect themselves." (74)

All the old inhabitants remained in the strongholds and mountain fastnesses as long as the Croats were not Christianized as a whole. On the subject of the diet of Duvno in 753 the ‘Kingdom of the Croats’ has this to say:

"And in that time there was great merriment among the Christians, and all those who had remained concealed in their strongholds and mountaintops, without acknowledging their Christian faith, came to the fore and left their fears behind." (75)

Many of the old Illyro-Romans populace survived, especially in the Dalmatian coastal cities and islands. Until the arrival of the Croats these populations lived exclusively on the islands in the Adriatic. The original Marini paper No. 78 attests to the fact that a numerous Roman Christian population, possessing many churches, lived on the island of Miljet in the second half of the VII century. (76) On the basis of materials in the imperial archives Porphyrogenitus notes that the Roman populace on the mainland lived by agriculture on the islands. The emperor-author stresses particularly that the old Roman population survived in the cities of Kotor, Dubrovnik, Split, Trogir, Zadar and in the Quarnerian islands of Rab, Krk and Osor (the joint name for Cres and Losinj). (77)



Genesis of the Croatian types: Dinaric, Mediterranean and Pannonian

The Croats considered the Slavs of the first migration, whom they found in their new homeland to be their brothers. They straightaway joined the Croats in their struggle against the Avars. (78) Consequently the Croats respected the right of the remnants of the old Romanized populations, as former Byzantine subjects, to live in their realm. Therefore these people helped the Croats in the fight against the Avars who were also their old enemies. With both the Slavs of the first migration and the old Illyro-Roman remnants the Croats were from the outset on friendly terms and intermarried with them. (79) These affinities let to the creation of three basic types of Croats according to their physical features: Dinaric, Mediterranean and Pannonian.

Dinaric Croats

In the central mountainous regions settled by the Croats upon their arrival on the Adriatic the Dinaric type of Croat developed. This type is quite remote from the general Slavic type. The Dinaric Croats are tall in stature (ca. 1.8 metres), long-headed but with a skull of short circumference (cephalic index of 80 – 85). They have dark hair and eyes and are of swarthy complexion. The Dinaric Croats of the middle ages lived in Lika, the Dalmatian hinterland, western and central Bosnia, Herzegovina and Montenegro (medieval Croatian Duklja). The Dinaric Croats in part brought features which they acquired from the north, where they inherited them from the Slavs who lived in the Dinaric regions beyond the Carpathians. (80) The second part of their features they inherited from the prehistoric Dinaric people whose remnants were still to be found among the Illyro-Roman population whom the Croats encountered in their new homeland. (81) The third part of features the Dinaric type developed on the spot, by living in healthy mountainous regions, by subsisting on dairy and vegetable produce and by bring up his children in the countryside. (82) The relative importance of each of these factors is difficult to access. Nevertheless one has to say that the contribution of the local Romanized remnants of the prehistoric Dinaric folk, hardly amounted to more than 20% to 30% in forming the Dinaric Croat. In the Dinaric Croatian territory, indeed, the Latin-speaking population is last mentioned at the diet of Duvno in 753. (83) From the letters of pope John X and the records of the church council of Split in 925 we know that already prior to this date the Catholic population of the whole Croatian state had adopted the old Slavonic ritual. (84) This tells us that in the Croatia of that time there were no longer any people who spoke Latin or wished the religious services to be conducted in Latin. If the old Roman remnants nowhere preserved their own language but already before the beginning of the X century had assimilated the Croatian language, one must conclude that they were already from the outset far fewer in number than the Croats. In the ceaseless struggle for existence in the craggy hills the Dinaric Croats acquired quite a few positive traits, among the following are distinguishable: diligence, vigour and physical endurance. Yet they also have shortcomings, especially an extreme obstinacy and an extraordinary resistance to discipline and co-operation. Likewise they tend to leave their native region quite freely, looking elsewhere for a better and more suitable life.

Mediterranean Croats

The Mediterranean type of Croat lives on the Dalmatian littoral, the Adriatic islands and in Istria. The Mediterranean Croats are intermediary stature, a little smaller than the Dinaric type. They have quite oval skulls, dark hair and eyes and an olive complexion. The Mediterranean type came into being as a result of the assimilation of the newly arrived Croats with the old Mediterranean inhabitants of Illyro-Roman stock. This assimilation took place immediately upon the arrival of the Croats. (85) In the Roman coastal cities under Byzantine and Venetian administration the process of assimilation went on during the whole of the middle ages. Along the Croatian littoral, as well as on the islands, the Mediterranean type of Croat was already formed before the end of the IX century. The Arab writer Ibn Al-Fagih notes ca. 903 that the Slavs (Croats) near the sea differed from the other Slavs by their dark and olive complexion. (86)

In the genesis of the Mediterranean type of Croat the Slavs of the first migration had no part. Until the arrival of the Croats on the Adriatic in 626 the old Illyro-Roman population lived exclusively on the islands with the refugees from Roman Dalmatia and Pannonia. This population with its swift ships prevented the Avars and Slavs of the first migration from cultivating the land and settling on the littoral south of Velebit, Dinara and Mosor. (87)

The Adriatic with its winds and waves brings to the fore old Croatian traits in the Mediterranean type: bravery and dauntlessness. They are clever and resourceful, adroit and possessed or a mercantile spirit. Of all Croats they are the most ready to leave their fatherland and to seek in the outside world better opportunities for living.

Pannonian Croats

In the Pannonian plains during the folk migrations the old Illyro-Roman population was for the most part destroyed or fled to the sea. When the Lombards had gone to Italy and the Avars had retreated north of the Danube sometime after 626, the Kaikavian Slavs remained in Pannonia as the only pure Slavic population. When the Croats conquered Lower Pannonia and Savia they at one began to assimilate with the Kaikavian Slavs of those areas. Out of that came the third type of Croat, the Pannonian, of intermediate stature, blond hair, ruddy complexion and of a rather sizeable cephalic index. In the Pannonian regions the Croats as a minority accepted the Kaikavian speech to which they added many characteristics of the Cakavian dialect. Although during the fighting with the Turks from the end of the XV to the outset of the XVIII century many Dinaric and Mediterranean Croats came to these regions, a conspicuous type of Pannonian Croat was preserved up until this day. They of all the Croats are the closest to the general Slavic type in their physical and psychological make-up. (88) They are peaceful and mild natured but persistent I the defense of their homes and rights. A peculiar patriotism and a marked ability to assimilate foreigners distinguish them.





B. Arrival of the Serbs in the Balkans

When did the Serbs reach the Balkans?

Porphyrogenitus in chapter 31 of ‘De administrando imperio’ writes that the Serbs reached the Balkans sometime after the Croats. (89) In chapter 32 he relates that the emperor Heraclius I assigned the province of Thessaly to the Serbs on their arrival in the Byzantine territory and settled them in the area called ‘Srbiate’. Seeing that one part of these Serbs after some time decided to return to their old homeland, the emperor gave them his permission. However once they had reached the Danube they had second thoughts and asked the emperor, by the intercession of the military commander in Belgrade, to give them another land in which to settle. So the emperor settled these Serbs south of Belgrade in present-day Serbia. (90)

Neither Porphyrogenitus nor any other source mentions that the Serbs participated in the fighting with the Avars resulting in the evacuation of the Avars over the Danube. The Serbs must have come south just when the Croats had driven the Avars out beyond the Danube and facilitated the way for the Serbs to advance to Thessaly without fighting. It had to take place after 629 because the contemporaneous writer George of Pisidia records that in that year fighting was still going on between the Avars and their subjects the Slavs who had passed over to the Croats in order to fight against the Avars. (91) Meanwhile, one or two years after their arrival in Thessaly when a part of the Serbs were on their way back to their old homeland on the Elbe, the Byzantine military commander governed in Belgrade. He could only have come there just when the Croats had liberated Srijem with the support of the Greek settlers and the rebel Slavs from the Avars in 635 and had driven them north of the Danube. (92) From all the aforesaid sources one ought to conclude that the Serbs reached the Balkans by 635 or 636 and that they tired to return to the Elbe in 637 or 638.

In all probability the Byzantines invited the Serbs to aid them in 625 simultaneously with the Croats to fight the Avars. However at that time the Polabian Serbs of the Elbe recognized the overlordship of the Frankish king Dagobert I (623 – 639) and the Moravians and the Czechs under king Samo who were hostile to the Franks stood in the way of their passage to the south. It was just in 631 when Dervan, the ruler of the Polabian Serbs, recognized the overlordship of Samo (93) that the road to Byzantium was open to the Serbs. Indeed the Serbs really reached the Balkans no earlier than 635 or 636 when the Croats had driven the Avars over the Danube and opened the way to Thessaly for the Serbs.

Which lands did the Serbs settle upon their arrival in the Balkans?

As Porphyrogenitus records it the emperor Heraclius I assigned Thessaly to the Serbs upon their arrival in the south and settled them in the area which they called Srbiste situated in the valley of the Bistrica west of Salonica. When as lesser part of the Serbs, (94), not satisfied with their new home, wished to return to the old homeland on the Elbe, the military commander in Belgrade assigned to them a new homeland in his administrative province south of Belgrade. (95)

The Thessalian Serbs lived for many centuries under their own name and had their own Serbian bishopric. However with the passing of time they assimilated with the Macedonian Slavs and in more recent times became Greek. The Serbian name and nationality was preserved by the descendants of those Serbs who wished to return to the Elbe and were finally settled in the central Balkans.

On the subject of the oldest account of the Croats and the Serbs, Porphyrogenitus recognizes and describes two Serbias. The first Serbia he mentions, tracing its boundaries, in chapter 30 of ‘De administrando imperio’ is based on an older source:

"Duklja extends almost to the strongholds of the province of Dyrrhachium i.e. Ljes, Ulcinj and Bar, going as far as Kotor and reaching over to the mountains to Serbia. From the city of Kotor the prefecture of Travunjaa begins and reaches as far as Dubrovnik and is fined by Serbia in the mountains in the east. The prefecture of Zahumlje starts from Dubrovnik and goes as far as the river Neretva, on the side of the sea it is confined by Pagania (Neretva region), in the mountains to the north by the White Croats and in the mountains facing east by Serbia. Pagania (Neretva) starts from the river Neretva and goes as far as the river Cetina. It includes three districts: Rastok, Makar and Dolje." (96)

According to this description Serbia was situated north of the divide of the river Moraca and Drina and east of Mounts Durmitor and Pivska. Those boundaries coincided with the original Rasa. Porphyrogenitus has this same Serbia in mind – enlarged by the district of Sol – when in chapter 32 he writes: "In Christian Serbia the cities of Destinik, Cernavuskej, Meguretus, Dresneik, Lesnik and Salines are inhabited. " (97)

Porphyrogenitus mentions another Serbia with a larger territory and boundaries when he writes at the end of chapter 30: "The land of Croatia…on the Cetina and at Hlivno is limited by the land of Serbia." (98) He even designates that territory as Serbian when in chapters 32 to 36 he states that the Serbs originally settled in Travunja, Zahumlja and Neretva. (99) The territory of this second Serbia of Porphyrogenitus’ extended 150 km. West of this first Serbia and was twice as large. The first Serbia did not include Travunja, Zahumlja and Neretva. Those three provinces were originally settled by Croats and belonged to Red or South Croatia. (100) In 948 when in Croatia the assassination of the king Miroslav brought a time of great troubles the great Serbian prince Caslav occupied Bosnia, Travunjaa, Zahumlja and Neretva, thus extending the Serbian state up to the Cetina and Hlivno. Porphyrogenitus was obsessed with the idea which he emphasizes several times that the Croatian and Serbian states belonged to Byzantium and that these nations recognized the overlordship of the Byzantine emperors. Under the influence of that idea Porphyrogenitus declares the people of Neretva, Zahumlja and Travunja, who in his time were Serbs politically i.e. subjects of the Serbian ruler, to be Serbs also ethnically. (101)

The following considerations attest to the fact that the Serbs did not originally settle Travunja, Zahumlja and Neretva and that consequently the original ethnic Serbia did not extend to the Cetina and Hlivno, but that it had the boundaries described by Porphyrogenitus in chapter 30 of his account of the first Serbia.

1. Porphyrogenitus himself states on the basis of some old source which he transcribed that the Croats upon their arrival settled in Dalmatia, Illyricum and Pannonia. (102) The regions later called Travunja, Zahumlja and Neretva included the main part of southeastern Dalmatia. Common sense itself tells us that the Croats would not have gone to settle Illyricum in present-day Montenegro and on the Albanian littoral as far as Valona unless they had previously settled southeastern Dalmatia and consequently the confines of the future Neretva, Zahumlja and Travunja, thereby assuring the extension of their national and political boundaries. When the Croats in 626 and 627 liberated Dalmatia and Illyricum from the Avar, settling those regions themselves, they could not have been intending to leave to the Serbs the regions of future Nerevta, Zahumlja and Travunja because at that time they did not know whether the Serbs would come at all to the south. Neither did Byzantium have in mind the same policy, for they straightaway dispatched the Serbs upon their arrival on the Danube through present-day Serbia to Thessaly. (103)
2. Porphyrogenitus records that the emperor Heraclius I allotted Srbiste in Thessaly to all the Serbs who arrived in the Balkans. (104) His expression ‘ho topos’ can mean a place, a camp or a region. If we take Srbiste to mean a region and say that the Serbs were initially settled in the whole valley of the Bistrica, no more than 7,000 to 8,000 people could settle and live there, keeping in mind the fact that agriculture was of the extensive type. Less than half of these Serbs (105), 3,000 to 4,000 at the utmost, returned to the Danube and were settled in the central Balkans. Such a small number of Serbs could not occupy the broad confines from Kosovo to the Cetina and Hlivno, including Rasa, Travunja, Zahumlja and Neretva.
3. The fact that Porphyrogenitus nowhere affirms the Serbs settled Duklja which in his time did not belong to the Serbian state tells us that the political circumstances of his time let him to assert by ethnical inference that the Serbs initially settled in Travunja, Zahumlja and Neretva. During the reign of Heraclius I the Byzantines still had a firm concept of the provinces that constituted their empire. Besides, communication between localities in the same province, that with a dense network of roads, was more efficient than between localities of different provinces. Therefore when the Byzantine representative settled the Serbs in the northern part of the province of Praevalis he would have given them also the southern part of that province, the future Duklja, had he wished to give them the littoral, and would not have sent them to the other province, Dalmatia, settled by the Croats. However Porphyrogenitus nowhere states that the Serbs settled or lived in Duklja.
4. Old reliable sources from both the Croatian and Serbian side confirm that the Serbs originally settled only the first Serbia of Porphyrogenitus’, later called Rasa. The old Croatian work ‘Methodus’, from the year 753, mentions that Red or South Croatia extended from the Duvno and the Cetina to Valona in Albania and was divided into four parts, later to become Neretva, Zahumlja, Travunja ad Duklja. (106) The ‘Methodus’ thus traces the boundaries of the old Serbia "from the same river Drina eastward to Lipljan and Lab, called Rasa." (107) The old Serbian rulers distinguished the original, ethnic Serbia or Rasa from alien lands subsequently annexed. Ethnic Serbia or Rasa was their fatherland comprising all the Serbian lands and Duklja (Zeta), Travunja, Zahumlja and Dalmatia (Neretva) were foreign provinces subsequently conquered and annexed to the original ethnic Serbia. Stefan Nemanja, the ancestor of the Serbian royal family, declared in his donation to the monastery of Hilander between 1189 and 1199: "I have raise up my prostrated fatherland and have taken over Zeta with its cities from the littoral, Pilot from Albania and Lab, including Lipljan from the Greeks…"(108) His son Stefan the First-Crowned, king of Serbia, in 1220 boasts of this title: "I am the first crowned king of all Serbian lands, of Dioclitia, Travunja, Dalmatia and Zahumlja." (109)



The creation of the medieval Serbian type



The original Serbian type from Asia Minor was quite modified by the time he lived on the Elbe, where the Serbs assimilated with numerous native Slavs and adopted from them the western Slavic language. From those Slavs who had assimilated with the remnants of the older native Nordic population the Polabian Serbs inherited certain characteristics of the Nordic race. (110)

In the new homeland in the central Balkans the Serbs found Slavs of the first migration speaking the Stokavian-Ekavian dialect. (111) The Serbs gave them national name and political organization, but like the Bulgars were submerged by the much more numerous Slavs: they lost their western Slavic speech and adopted the Stokavian-Ekavian dialect. To those Slavs the Serb newcomers owed in large measure their physical traits. In the formation of the national type of medieval Serb the remnants of the old Thracian and Macedonian population played a part as well as the Greeks who immigrated into Rasa during the long Byzantine domination. (112) In Rasa and the surrounding mountains, up until the arrival of the Serbs, there remained an especially large number of the old Mauretanian army veterans, but the medieval Serbs did not intermarry with them, as we shall see later, because the much darker traits of these Wallachs were still very much in evidence. (113)
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IV. SUMMARY OF CROATIAN HISTORY IN THE MIDDLE AGES


I. Croatia under its own rulers

Christianity and the Croats and the Establishment of the Metropolitan of Split

The Croats were the first of all the Slavic nations to adopt Christianity. They live as pagan in their old homeland north of the Carpathians (1), but began to be Christianised immediately upon their arrival on the Adriatic in 626, at first individually under the influence of the Christian remnants of the old Roman population and then officially by the bishops and priests. The first person known by name who dedicated himself to the christianise the Croats was John of Ravenna. The newly elected pope John IV (640 – 42), himself of Dalmatian birth, sent John of Ravenna to Dalmatia at the instance of Isaac, exarch of Ravenna and Viceroy of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius I (610 – 641). John of Ravenna succeeded in a few months in converting to Christianity Porga, the supreme ruler of the Croats as well as part of the nobility and the people living between the Cetina and the Zrmanja where the first Croatian tribes settled, directly under Porga’s control. At the outset of the year 641 pope John IV consecrated John of Ravenna as archbishop of the new metropolitan see of Split to which the pope transferred the jurisdiction of the old see of nearby Salona.

The circumstances in which the Christians of that time in the territory of the old metropolitanate found themselves required the establishment of a metropolitanate in Salona. Indeed, until the arrival of the Croats in 626 the Christianity on the islands and in several coastal cities remained unchanged. The bishoprics in Zadar, Krk, Rab and Osor survived the devastation of Dalmatia and the ravage of Salona by the Avars. (2) According to universal church organisation of that time, it was necessary to create a new metropolitan see for these bishoprics without delay. Furthermore the systematic Christianization of the newly arrived Croats, a project dear to the heart of imperial and papal interests alike, necessitated the organisation of the ecclesiastical order in Dalmatia and the institution of a new metropolitanate. Here follows some reliable sources which tells us about the establishment of the metropolitanate in Split.

Porphyrogenitus writes on the basis of materials in the imperial archive: "The emperor Heraclius, having sent emissaries, brought back from Rome certain evangelists. Out of their number he created an archbishop, a bishop, priests and deacons, in order to christianize the Croats, over whom Porga ruled at that time." (3)

The archdeacon Thomas of Split, who was not acquainted with the work of Porphyrogenitus, writes on the basis of materials in the archives of the metropolitanate of Split: "Meanwhile the supreme pontiff (the pope) sent a certain envoy by the name of John, born in Ravenna, to admonish the Christians for the sake of their salvation in his travels through Dalmatia and Croatia. No priest had been consecrated in the church of Salona since the fall of that city. At that time, when the clergy convened as usual, they all unanimously elected the aforesaid John. And he, having been consecrated by the pope, like a good shepherd, returned to his congregation. The Apostolic See empowered him to grant to the church in Split all the privileges and honour that Salona had in the old times." (4)

In the ‘Historia Salonitana Maior’ it was explicitly mentioned that the pope John IV consecrated John of Ravenna as metropolitan of Split. (5)

In the original and still preserved Marini paper no. 142 dating from the second half of the VII century the "notary of the holy church of Salona" is explicitly mentioned. (6) If at that time the church of Salona-Split had a notary, it also had its own metropolitan archbishop and other church officials.

In 1958 at the official examination of the bones of St. Domnius in the cathedral in Split a small marble sarcophagus containing a lead chest from the IV century with the bones of St. Domnius was discovered in an old Christian sarcophagus with a relief of the good shepherd on it. A Latin inscription was engraved o the lid of the small inner sarcophagus saying: "Here lies the body of blessed Domnius, archpresbyter of Salona, pupil of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, transferred from Salona to Split by John, the archpresbyter of the see." (7)

John of Ravenna himself with his clergy and with the aid of the old aforesaid bishoprics and of the newly created ones in Dubrovnik and Kotor continued the work of Christianising the Croats. The bishops in Zadar, Rab, Osor and Krk worked to christianise the Croats in the western part of White Croats from the Zrmanja to the Rasa in Istria. The presbyters of the numerous bishoprics of Istria which had all survived the cataclysm of the folk migrations in that time began early to work on the Christianization of the Istrian Croats, who lived outside the Croatian state.

In present-day northwestern Bosnia, Duvno, Hlivno, Glamoc and the valley of Vrbas, Christianity gained an early foothold since these regions fell directly under the administration of the Croatian ruler Porga who had his royal domains there.

The archbishop of Split, John of Ravenna, worked on the Christianization of Croatia in South or Red Croatia with his clergy from Split. The bishops of the newly created bishoprics in Dubrovnik and Kotor did likewise. The early establishment of the bishopric of Ston in Zahumlja bears witness to the success of their early work. Porphyrogenitus also bears witness to their success when he say that at the outset the people of Neretva were converted to Christianity, but that later on the majority returned to paganism.

In Pannonian Croatia between the Iron Alps and the Drava Christianity must have been diffused early as long as the Croats of these regions lived in a state of political and ecclesiastical unity with the Adriatic Croats who were christianised ca. 640. Seeing that the Pannonian Croats by the end of the century had become subject to the Avars who had recovered from their defeat at the hands of the Croatian newcomers, the progress of Christianity in Slavonia was heavily hampered. Nevertheless, Christianity partially held its ground there in the VII and IX centuries. (8)



The Croats and Byzantium in the VII and VIII centuries

As we see from the work of Porphyrogenitus the Byzantines were obstinate in their opinion that all the lands formerly under Roman rule and more recently under Byzantine rule, were under their dominion. On the basis of this they persisted in the notion that the Croats and the Serbs had to be subservient and had always been so. In connection with the war against the Bulgarian Khan Boris Mihailo (852 – 889), Porphyrogenitus writes: "The Croatian ruler from the outset i.e. from the reign of the emperor Heraclius, was an obedient subject of the Roman emperor and was never subservient to the Bulgarian ruler." (9) He makes the same statement about the Serbs in exactly the same words on the subject of the war waged in Serbia by Simeon the Great. (10) This same notion is expressed in Porphyrogenitus’ work ‘De caerimoniis’ where he writes that his directives as well as those of his son and of the co-ruler Romanus (949 – 959) must be sent to the Croatian ruler, the Serbian ruler, the ruler of Zahumlje, etc. with the heading: "Order from the most Christian rulers to that and that ruler of that and that region." (11)

However the Croats neither from the outset nor later on ever considered their relation to Byzantium to be that of subjects, but rather that of friends and allies. The land that the Croats liberated from the Avars they did not hand over to Byzantine control, but settled them themselves and ruled over them independently according to their national common law. The Croats never paid tribute to the Byzantine officially nor fulfilled any subservient obligations.

The Diet of Duvno of 753

Among the Slavs it was an old custom to discuss their public affairs at community gatherings. (12) The Croats brought that custom from the north and whenever it was necessary to decide on a more weighty matter, a general national diet was convoked and attended by all the adult members of the nation. Among the Croats who were divided into tribes and autonomous tribal states these diets were one of the most effective means of maintaining national and political unity. Since they had become Christians various questions concerning the church were discussed at the national diets such as how the church councils would work together on public and national matters.

One of the most import Croatian diets of the early times was the one held in Duvno in 753. To that diet pope Stephan II (752 – 757) sent cardinal Honorius and two bishops. The Byzantine emperor Constantine V (741 – 775) sent his emissaries Ivan Sutnik (Silentarius) and Leo, his confidant. These were the emperor’s experts in Western Europe affairs in the middle of the VIII century. (13)

The diet of Duvno lasted twelve days. At first diverse ecclesiastical questions were discussed, particularly the restriction of the old and the establishment of new bishoprics. Next they put in order the affairs of the state. The state was divided into three great provinces and its administration, judiciary and taxation system was organised. Until this time the Croatian state was governed according to old Croatian common law. Again, at that diet many progressive regulations of Roman-Byzantine legislation were adopted in matters of administration and of the judiciary.

On the basis of the pristine Croatian work ‘Methodus’ which was still extant during his life time, Pop Dukljanin describes in brief the partition of the Croatian state as it took place at the diet of Duvno: "And so according to the content of the characters read before the nation (King Budimir) draws up characters and divides the districts and regions of this kingdom, with their boundaries, along the courses of rivers which run down from the mountains and empty into the sea to the south. This territory is called the littoral. The territory following the rivers running down from the mountains northward and flowing into the great river Danube, is called Serbia. Then he divides the littoral into two districts. The territory from the locality of Duvno, where the king resided at that time and the diet was held, up to Vinodol was called White Croatia or Lower Croatia…Likewise the territory from that same Duvno to the city of Bambalona, now called Drac, was called Red Croatia or Upper Croatia…And Serbia, called Zagorje, he divides into two districts: one from the major river Drina westward t Mount Borov i.e. the territory of Bosnia and the other from the same river Drina eastward to the Lipanj and the Lab, i.e. the territory of Rasa." (14)

In this description of the Croatian state Pannonian Croatia is not mentioned because in the middle of the VIII century it was constituted as a separate state under the overlordship of the Avars.

The partition of the Croatian littoral into White (Western) and Red (South) Croatia did not follow the old conventional Roman boundaries, but rather the more recent Byzantine boundaries as they were laid down in Upper and Lower Dalmatia in the VI and VII centuries when the whole region was under the jurisdiction of the exarchate of Ravenna. (15)

Some time before the diet of Duvno the Serbs were incorporated into the Croatian state, in all probability out of fear of external foes, whether Avar or Bulgar. This was the reason for which at the diet a new Croatian political unit was created. This state was to be strong enough to defend itself in case of necessity. In it were included the hinterland regions of Croatia, called Bosnia, and the Serbian lands, called Rasa. This new Croatian political unit was given the common name of Serbia, because the Serbs constituted the main part of that unit and the defense of the Serbs against external foes was the main consideration leading to their incorporation. This was the only occasion in their history up to 1918 when the Croats and the Serbs ever lived together in the same state.


CROATIAN LANDS DURING THE DIET OF DUVNO 753 A.D.


CROATIAN LANDS DURING THE DIET OF DUVNO 753 A.D.
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The Croats fight for the Adriatic

The Adriatic islands form a geopolitical unity with the eastern seaboard of the Adriatic. They serve both to fill in and to close off the geographic features of this seaboard.

The geological features of the soil on the Adriatic islands are the same as those of the Dalmatian Karst, but different from the soil features on the western shore of Italy, divided from the Adriatic islands by a wide expanse of sea. The inhabitants of Italy, accustomed to different soil features, were never willing nor even knew how to cultivate the karst of these islands successfully. Those geopolitical factors are the reason for which even in prehistoric times the same ethnic population lived and worked on both the islands and on the Dalmatian Karst. (16)

From a strategic point of view the Adriatic islands form a line of defense for the Dalmatian seaboard and provide a window to the world for the inhabitants of the mainland.

Seeing that the Croats arrived in Dalmatia in 626 as friends and allies of the Byzantines they did not cross over to the islands which were then under Byzantine control. So the Croatian settlement of Dalmatia remained unfinished and the Croatian state was left without firm and controlled boundaries on the side of the sea. The Croatian settlement of the Adriatic islands was carried on by the Narentians from the second half of the VII until the outset of the IX century.

The Narentians were an autonomous Croatian tribe that in 626 settled down on the Adriatic littoral between the Nerevta and the Cetina. This region was barren and unproductive. Under pressure of an ever-increasing population, this tribe began to encroach on the Roman population of the Adriatic islands and to turn to piracy in order to survive the depredations of hunger. When the church authorities began to apply sanctions against them this tribe apostatised and reverted to paganism. This must have happened in the VII century. The redoubled their aggression against the islands when the exarchate of Ravenna ceased to exist which up until that time had protected the Roman population on the islands. Finally the Narentians drove out or destroyed the old Roman population on the islands. During the fighting between the Byzantines and the Croats from 806 to 817 they settled on the islands opposite the coastline running from the Nerevta to the Cetina. During this period their political centre and the majority of their population gravitated from the mainland to the islands. In 830 the official representative of the Narentians from the "island of Neretva" (18) arrived in Venice and in 839 the doge of Venice, Peter Tradonicus came to the "Narentian islands" to conclude a peace treaty with Drzak, the local prince. (19) On the basis of imperial documentation from the imperial archives Porphyrogenitus briefly describes the settlement of the islands by the Narentians: "The Roman cities, then, were cultivating the soil of the islands and living off it. Seeing, then, that the pagans were enslaving and killing them every day, they abandoned the islands…" (20)

The Narentians invaded and plundered not only these islands, which they settled themselves, but even those at the north of the Adriatic. They either destroyed the Roman population of these islands or forced them to regroup and seek shelter in fortified cities. The Croatian peasants from the neighbouring mainland settled on the vacated islands. By 879, on the advice of Basil I, the cities of Osor, Krk and Rab began to pay tribute to the Croats in order to enjoy the usufruct of the land around their cities. (21) This tells us that the Croats had already been permanently settled on the Quarnerian islands long before 879 and considered all the arable land to be theirs and that the Roman population of the cities had to pay them tribute in order to hold the land in fief. The fact that the peasantry native to the Quarnerian islands was already Croatian by the end of the IX century is shown in that already before 924 the Old Slavonic church ritual had been generally introduced in the bishoprics of Osor (Cres and Losinj), Krk and Rab. (22) From that time these regions became the centres of the Glagolitic service. There Glagolitic literature reached its highest development and the oldest Glagolitic inscriptions in the Croatian language can be found there still preserved to this day. (23)

During the IX century the Croatians completed the colonization of the Adriatic islands. The political unification of these islands with the Croatian mother country would involve many years of struggle with all the vicissitudes of fortune, but no one could ever change the ethnic boundaries on the Adriatic as they had been created from the VII to the IX centuries.

The Croats acknowledge Charlemagne’s suzerainty

On Christmas Day 800 pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor in Rome, thereby restoring the Western Roman Empire. This act made a deep impression on all the European countries as well as on Croatia. The Croats in 799 were still fighting the Franks who were expanding into Croatia and even put to death near the town of Trsat Erik, the duke of Friuli (24) However when the pope had restored the Western Roman Empire in the territory where the Croats were living as Christians of the Western and Catholic confession, the Croats decided to recognize the suzerainty of Charlemagne as the new Western emperor. They brought about this decision under the influence of the Dalmatian bishops who approved of and acclaimed the pope’s action, as one can see from the delegation of Byzantine Dalmatia, led by the duke Paul and Donatus, bishop of Zadar, which came to swear fealty. (25) The new Croatian ruler Borna (ca. 802 – 821) facilitated this decision of the Croats in his accession to the throne.

According to our opinion the Croats acknowledged Charlemagne’s suzerainty in 803. The contemporaneous Frankish chronicler Einhard writes that in August 803 the Frankish national diet in Regensburg was attended by Zodan, prince of Pannonia and many Slavs and Huns who all acknowledged the suzerainty of Charlemagne. (26) The Croats from the eastern shore of the Adriatic must have been the most important Slavic contingent. Einhard in his biography of Charlemagne writes that the emperor extended Frankish power to Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia except for the coastal cities which he left to the Byzantine emperor for the sake of good relations and in accordance with a peace treaty concluded in 810 and ratified in 812. (27) Byzantium with a strong fleet restored in 806 its supremacy in the Adriatic (28). Had the Croats acknowledged the Frankish suzerainty already before 805 they could not have been justified in forswearing their allegiance to the Byzantines sometime between 806 and 810. For in those years the Byzantines proved that their fleet was quite vigorous and had a considerable striking force.

Byzantium with its newfound power on the Adriatic threatened to subjugate the extensive Croatian territories on the islands and the littoral. Thus they forced the Croats of the Adriatic to rely still more heavily on the Franks, who respected their national autonomy and did not interfere in Croatia’s internal affairs. Indeed in 817 when the Franks concluded an alliance with the Byzantine emperor Leo V the Armenian, the emperor Louis the Pious did not wish to fortify the boundaries in Dalmatia without the prior knowledge and approval of the Croats. As Einhard and the author of Louis’ biography recorded it, at that time there was a bitter contest for the boundaries "between the Dalmatians, Romans and Slavs." (29) By the Dalmatians is meant the Latinized inhabitants of the Roman cities from Istria to Boka Kotorska, by the Romans is meant the Byzantines and by the Slavs is meant the Croats. They finally agreed, in all probability by some means or the other, to maintain the status quo. Therefore a new boundary between Byzantines and Croats was created along the river Drim in modern Albania which would remain for a long time the dividing line between the Croatian Duklja and the Byzantine province of Dyrrhachium.

In the years 810, 812 and 817 by a series of international agreements between the Western and Eastern empires, Byzantium renounced its sovereignty over the territories of Adriatic Croatia.

The great political and national advantages which the Croats of the Adriatic acquired from the Frankish suzerainty induced Borna (ca. 802 – 812), ruler of Adriatic Croatia, to pass over to the Frankish side in their fight against Ljudevit Posavski (810 – 823), ruler of Pannonian Croatia, which at that time was independent of Adriatic Croatia (30). One had to reckon Ljudevit Posavski among the great and meritorious Croatian rulers. He rose up against the powerful Frankish empire in defense of his Croatian people. Ljudevit’s resistance, continued by other native rulers later on even with the assistance of the ruler of Adriatic Croatia, put an end to the progressive Germanization on the western boundary of Pannonian Croatia.

The rise to the complete independence of Croatia

Borna was succeeded by his nephew Vladislav (ca. 821 – 830) and Mislav (ca. 830 – 845). They both ruled Croatia as quite autonomous rulers, especially Mislav because the Frankish power had declined on account of internal discord and dynastic struggles. (31) One can use that influence of the Franks in Adriatic Croatia had declined at that time from the fact that Lothar, the Frankish king of Italy concluded an agreement with Venice in 840 for their mutual defense from the inroads of "the Croatian tribes" under their duke Mislav. (32)

Trpimir (ca. 845 – 863) the son of Vladislav, succeeded Mislav by the law of seniority. He was an intelligent and powerful ruler. In 847 he waged a successful war on "the Greek peoples and their patricians" i.e. against the Roman population of Dalmatia subject to the Byzantine emperors, at the head of which stood the Byzantine viceroy with the official title of patrician. (33) Around 845 the Bulgarian ruler Boris Mihailo (852 – 889) attacked Trpimir on the Drina in Bosnia. At that time Trpimir was on the boundary between Croatia and the Bulgarian provinces of Macva and Srijem.

Porphyrogenitus writes about the above mentioned event on the basis of some source older than the year 927: "Boris Mihailo, ruler of Bulgaria, set out to make war on them (Adriatic Croats) but powerless to accomplish anything, concluded peace with them so that both sides departed after an exchange of gifts. (34)

In the first years of his reign Trpimir erected the Benedictine monastery in Riznice on the stream Rupotino hot far from the royal court below Klis. (35) With this act Trpimir established the Benedictines in Croatia. In the Middle Ages they were the disseminators of culture and knowledge all around Europe, including Croatia. In connection with this monastery Trpimir on March 4th, 852 issued a declaration to the metropolitan bishopric of Split, the text of which is preserved up to the present day. In it for the first time in original Croatian sources the name of the Croatian state and of the Croatian nation is mentioned: "Trpimir, duke of the Croats…throughout the entire state of Croatia." (36)

In this character Trpimir affirms that the metropolitan diocese of Split "extends all the way to the Danube, including almost the whole Croatian state." (37) As has already been mentioned elsewhere, from the VI century up to the foundation of the metropolitan diocese of Dubrovnik (997 – 98) and of the diocese of Zagreb (1094), the metropolitan diocese of Split extended from Istrian Rasa to the Drava and Danube on the north and to the Drina and Budva on the east. (38) The fact that in 852 the Croatian state was larger than the metropolitan of Split indicates to us that at that time Duklja was part of the Croatian state, but did not belong to the metropolitan diocese of Split.

According to the Croatian law of seniority Domagoj, son of Trpimir’s uncle and predecessor Mislav, succeeded Trpimir. He was old than Petar, Zdelslav and Mutimir, the sons of Trpimir. However Trpimir’s sons following the practice common to the Frankish ruling dynasties, wished to succeed their father as rulers (law of primogeniture). This provoked serious struggles within the Croatian ruling dynasty. I the end a Croatian diet had to be summoned to solve such an important question. It was decided that Domagoj (863 – 878) as the oldest member of the Croatian ruling family, had the right to succession to the throne. (39)

It the struggles for the succession Domagoj liquidated most of his opponents, among them it seems Petar, Trpimir’s eldest son. In 874 or at the outset of 875 pope John VIII wrote to duke Domagoj, instructing him not to kill those who might be his potential foes, but to banish them from the state. (40)

The doge of Venice, Orso Particiaco, profited by the internal discord in the Croatian state and with e a strong fleet attacked Croatia in 865. Surprised and unprepared, Domagoj pleaded for a cessation of hostilities. This the doge accepted, but took hostages before returning to Venice. Later Domagoj firmly established the sovereignty of Croatia in the Adriatic. With the dauntlessness and heroism he gave the Venetians so much trouble in all their encounters that John the Deacon called Domagoj "the most terrible Croatian duke." (41)

At the outset of the reign of Domagoj in 863 there was a schism between the Eastern and Western churches. The metropolitan of Split together with his suffragan Roman bishops, all subjects of the Byzantine empire, joined forces with Photius of Constantinople. The Croatian nation did not follow their bishops, but wished still to remain within the pale of the Western church as they had done up until this time. During the lifetime of pope Nicholas I (d. 867) a "Croatian bishop" stood at the head of the newly created bishopric of Nin established for the Croats. (42)

After the death of Domagoj the power passed to his sons under the supreme authority of the eldest son Iljko (876 – 878). (43) In the meantime Zdeslav, the second son of Trpimir, returned from Byzantium. He was older than Iljko and according to Croatian common law had the right to rule in Croatia. Byzantium and the Dalmatian bishops sided with Zdeslav, but it took the Croatian national diet, summoned for the occasion, to recognize him as ruler. Zdeslav (878 – 879) then banished the sons of Domagoj. (44)

Zdeslav as a Byzantine protégé, broke off all connections with the Frankish state. With the ended the 75 year suzerainty of the Frankish emperors over Croatia.

When the bishop of Nin died Zdeslav did not allow a new bishop to be elected. All the regions in Croatia fell once more under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the metropolitan of Split and his suffragan bishops. With this act the Croats were forced in to a schism with Rome. It provoked great discontent and restlessness throughout Croatia. The disaffected recalled the banished sons of Domagoj, headed by Branimir who slew Zdeslav in the ensuing struggle. Whereupon the Croatian diet acknowledged Branimir as duke of Croatia. (45) Branimir at once severed all connections with Byzantium, but did not for all that engage himself in a political alliance with the Western church. With this Croatia became an autonomous state independent of any foreign power.

Branimir (879 – 892) immediately after his accession to the throne severed all ecclesiastical relations with the schismatic Dalmatian bishops and saw to it that the priest Theodosius was elected as the new bishop of Nin. Both Branimir and Theodosius informed pope John VIII (872 – 882) by letter of the new state of affairs in their church. The pope was pleased and on Ascension Day, 21 May 879 while celebrating the holy mass over the grave of St. Peter, he lifted up his hands to the sky and blessed duke Branimir, the whole Croatian nation and all its lands. (46)

Porphyrogenitus has this to say on the subject of the reconciliation between the Croats and Byzantine Dalmatia: "The Roman population was cultivating the islands and living off the produce; but seeing that the pagans (Narentians) were taking them prisoner and killing them every day, they left the islands, wishing to go to the mainland to cultivate the soil. But the Croats were giving them difficulty because they did not receive the tribute from them, such as they do at the present, rather it was the Byzantine military commander who received their tribute…The illustrious emperor Basil ordered the entire tribute to be given to the Slavs (Croats), rather than to the military commander, so that the Romans might live in peace with them…From that time all those cities became tributary to the Slavs (Croats) and paid them the following tribute: Split - 200 gold coins; Trogir - 100 gold coins; Zadar - 110 gold coins; the cities of Osor, Rab and Krk - 100 gold coins each; 710 coins in all, including wine and various other things of greater value overall than all the gold coins together." (47)

This ordinance the emperor Basil I must have issued when the Croats no longer acknowledged the Byzantine overlordship and the emperor was no longer in a position to protect his Roman subjects by force alone. This could only have been after 879 when Branimir was ruler in Croatia and the emperor Basil was involved in the hard struggle with the Saracens.

During Branimir’s reign the Croats, especially the autonomous Narentians, waged a long and successful war on the Venetians over the question of who was to have sovereignty on the Adriatic. The success of the outcome prompted the Venetians to conclude in 880 and 888 agreements with the Frankish emperors for their mutual defense against "the Slavic (Croatian) nation, our common foe." (48) In all probability ca. 880 the Venetians, following the example of the Dalmatian cities, began to pay annual tribute to the Narentians in order to navigate the Adriatic without hindrance. (49)

In the last years of the reign of duke Branimir, after the banishment of the disciples of St. Methodius from Moravia in 885, the Old Slavonic (Glagolitic) service appeared in Croatia. During the next centuries it would play a paramount role in the religious, cultural and national life of the Croats. (50)

Mutimir (892 – ca. 910), the third son of duke Trpimir, succeeded Branimir according to the law of seniority. From his predecessor he inherited a strong and quite independent Croatian state. In the charter of September, 23rd 892, by which the donation of this father Trpimir to the metropolitan diocese of Split was confirmed at a national diet, Mutimir declared that he was "by God’s grace duke of Croatia". He introduced into his court the officialdom of the Frankish emperors. This consisted of the count palatine, the royal mace bearers, the marshal, the chamberlain, the wine cellarer, the comes curial and his tow assistants, the royal shield bearers, the majordomos in Hlivno and Klis, the two counts attendant on the duchess, the heads of the Benedictine monasteries and other dignitaries. (51)

In the last years of the reign of duke Branimir and the first years of the reign of Mutimir, Prince Branslav ruled Pannonian Croatia (ca. 880 – 900). He acknowledged the suzerainty of the Frankish emperors and thereby severed all ties with Adriatic Croatia. The emperor Arnulf gave him in fief all Pannonia north of the Drava with the town on Lake Balaton in 896 in return for which he was to defend these regions against the Magyars who in that years were migrating into the Carpathian foothills on the left bank of the Danube. Braslav perished in the fighting and the Pannonian Croats, under the threat of the Magyars, sought to renew their political ties with the Adriatic Croats. (52)



Genesis of the Croatian Culture of Western Orientation

The Croats, although they arrived in the south at the invitation of the Byzantines, settled west of the Drina in the lands of the Western Roman empire and its Western culture. (53) Several Roman cities on the Dalmatian littoral preserved their way of life and nurtured the old Roman culture during the entire middle ages. (54) The Croats in the vicinity of these cities developed their national culture under their influence and therefore with a Western orientation.

In the development of the cultural and spiritual characteristics of every nation, and of the Croats as well, religion played the most important role. The Croats took their Christianity from Rome. The bishops and priests of the Roman patriarchate worked among them from the outset with a view to educate them in the mould of the Western culture. (55) Religious instruction could be given to the general Croatian population only in Croatian, the national language. What pope Stephen V wrote in 885 to the Moravian prince Svatopluk held good also for the Croats in these ancient times: "As far as the instruction of the common masses ignorant of Latin is concerned, we both allow and urge those who know the vernacular to expound the Gospels and Epistles to them and recommend that this be carried out as often as possible." (56)

Accordingly the Western clergy evangelized among the Croats were forced from the outset to learn Croatian, to work out Christian and spiritual concepts in Croatian, to translate individual passages, to compose Croatian sermons and otherwise to formulate the catechism in Croatian. With this they laid the foundations of the Croatian church language and at the same time of Croatian literature in general. Some Croatian priest who was more intelligent and enterprising than the average, at the latest by the outset of the IX century put together and issued every Sunday a polished version of the Epistles and Gospels in a collected form which was used by saints Cyril and Methodius in their translation. (57) The edition of the Croatian gospels is the first written work in Croatian and in any Slavic language in general. From the end of the IX century when the Croats adopted the Old Slavonic liturgy, the Croatian priesthood developed a rich Croatian Glagolitic literature based on the Vulgate, the Roman liturgy and the hagiography and literature of the Western church. (58)

Latin was the diplomatic language of the Croats. They used it as such from their arrival on the Adriatic until 1847. Except those written in Croatian itself, the Croatian rulers and public officials drafted all their characters in Latin. (59) The Croats soon improved upon their own common law with institutions and statutes from Roman law. The spirit of justice, which today is highly developed among the Croats, is the heritage of Roman law and Western Christian culture.

Both the social and political life of Croatia developed under the influence of the West, particularly of the Frankish ruling dynasties and of Frankish feudalism. The Benedictines arrived in Croatia with the Frankish overlordship. They contributed the most to the preservation and development of Roman Western culture among the Croats as among all Western nations. The development of craftsmanship in Croatia came from the West that conducted a lively import-export trade with Croatia.

Byzantine priests and monks never carried out any work among the Croats who had no knowledge of the Greek language and were not really familiar with the heritage of Byzantine culture. The Croats had only superficial contact with Byzantium through their rulers and some dukes of the provinces. The general mass of the people never felt the influence of Byzantine culture any more than this.

To sum up, the Croats upon their arrival in the south entered into the sphere of the Western Christian nations. They developed their national and political life and their own culture under the influence of the Western Christian church and the Western nations. Accordingly the Croats are a distinctly Western nation in spirit and by their upbringing. (60)



Croatia becomes a kingdom in 923

Mutimir, duke of Croatia was succeeded by his son Tomislav (ca. 910 – 929). He was a capable, far-seeing and courageous ruler. Indeed Tomislav inherited from his predecessor a well-ordered and strong Croatian state. But external circumstances imposed upon him various difficult tasks that he resolved every time in a way that was favourable to the Croatian nation. On the north the newly arrived Magyars invaded and plundered Pannonian Croatia quite often. Tomislav heroically resisted the invaders several times, routing them and fortifying the Croatian boundary with the Magyars on the Drava and Danube. (61) On the east the Bulgarian Khan Simeon the Great led a long and hard struggle against the Byzantine empire. He wished to subjugate Serbia, Croatia’s first neighbour to the east. Although the Croats had been on friendly terms with the Bulgarians for a long time, (62) Tomislav protected the Serbs every time, receiving them as his friends whenever they fled to Croatia to seek asylum from Simeon the Great. (63) Tomislav took special care to guarantee the power of Croatia on the Adriatic. To achieve this he made use of an opportunity that presented itself to him without using coercion or committing injustice. I the autumn of 992 the Bulgarian ruler Simeon invaded Byzantium for the second time and decided to occupy it. At this critical moment, to prevent the Croats from joining the Bulgarians, the Byzantine emperor Roman Lekapenus decided to invest the Croatian duke Tomislav with the royal insignia and to commit to him the administration of the theme of Dalmatia. (64) Tomislav gladly accepted this distinction at the hands of the emperor because thereby Croatia became internationally recognised as a quite autonomous and sovereign state. In the autumn of 923 Tomislav was crowned king of Croatia with a crown sent from Byzantium at the Croatian national diet that in all probability was held on the plain of Duvno in the heart of his state. (65)

In order to associate Byzantine Dalmatia with Croatia and to establish a unity of faith with regard to Rome throughout his administrative jurisdiction, king Tomislav, in accordance with the wishes of John, archbishop of Split, decided to summon a church council in Split. At the insistence of both, pope John X sent to the council his envoys, John, bishop of Subiaco and Leo, bishop of Palestrina. The pope wrote a letter to Tomislav and addressed it thus: "To our dear son Tomislav, king of Croatia, and Michael, the exalted Duke of Hum, to all the counts, all priests and to all the whole people of Croatia and Dalmatia." (66) This was the first time that an official dignitary of supranational authority called the Croatian ruler "king of Croatia", thereby recognising that Croatia at that time was in the eyes of the world quite an independent sovereign state. In this letter the pope instructed that the main agenda of the church council be the introduction of the Latin language into the religious services among the Croats.

In his letter to the archbishop John and his suffragan bishops the pope wonders that they have severed all ties with the universal Roman church for so many years. He remonstrates tem for their silence and negligence with regard to the "doctrine of Methodius" i.e. the Old Slavonic liturgy, allowing it to spread throughout the Croatian dominions. He requested that Latin, the language of the Roman church, be reintroduced everywhere. (67) At that time Rome considered Latin to be the symbol and guarantee of the church’s unity and endeavoured as far as possible to curb the use of the vernacular in the church services. Tomislav had to take into account Rome’s position if he wished the Croats to remain a Western Christian nation still in connection with the Roman Christian church as they had been from their Christianization up to that time.

At the diet the decisions was reached (article 10) that in the future the bishops would not ordain priests in the Slavonic language nor allow them to perform the liturgy in Slavonic. However, at the insistence of king Tomislav and the Croatian bishop Gregory, a clause was added stipulating that each individual bishop who was deprived of the services of al Latin priesthood, would with the pope’s approval permit Slavonic priests to perform the liturgy. (68) Thus the actual situation in those times was indirectly acknowledged since the bishops did not customarily have a Latin priesthood to replace the Slavonic or Glagolitic priesthood in the numerous parishes and churches throughout the Croatian territory.

As we understand from the twelfth resolution, king Tomislav and the Croatian nobility requested that the Croatian bishop Gregory of Nin remain in office as head of all the Croatian bishops in the Croatian territories as he had been before the council. (69) Naturally what was uppermost on their mind was that the bishop continue to ordain and to administer the Glagolitic priests as he had don up to that time.

At the second church council of Split in 928 to which bishop Madalbert, the papal legate, came on his return from Bulgaria, no one mentions the use of the Slavonic language. Rather it was decided that the bishopric of Nin be abolished and that Gregory should elect to be assigned to one of the vacant bishoprics of Skradin, Duvno or Sisak. Madalbert carried out the unification of the Bulgarian church with Rome, although Bulgaria was used to the Slavonic language exclusively in the liturgy. In all probability, Madalbert in the name of the pope omitted from the agenda of the council the question of the liturgical language and king Tomislav consented to the abolishment of the bishopric of Nin. During the three years after the last church council Tomislav became convinced that the bishopric of Nin whose jurisdiction extended over all the Croatian territories, hindered the unity of the church in his state and that bishop Gregory was not able to conduct his office throughout the whole of Croatia. For this office had previously been the responsibility of eleven bishops. Confirming the resolutions of the second council of Split, pope Leo VI instructed Gregory, bishop of Nin, to assume as his jurisdiction only the bishopric of Skradin. (70)

While Simeon the Great was preparing to be crowned as emperor of the Bulgars and the Greeks by the papal legate Madalbert, he decided to invade Croatia and to subjugate it so that on the occasion of his coronation his state might extend from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. Simeon was displeased with Tomislav’s protection of the Serbs who had fled before him to Croatia and was afraid lest the Croatian king come to the aid of the Byzantine emperor in the final assault of the Bulgarians on Byzantium. In the early spring of 927 Simeon sent against the Croats a strong force under the command of his general Alogobotur. Waiting for him in the eastern Bosnian mountains, king Tomislav led him astray into the mountain ravines and so completely routed him that the whole Bulgarian army was cut to pieces. (71) This occurred on May 27th, 927. (72) When Simeon heard of the disaster he had a heart attack. Whereupon the papal legate crowned Simeon’s son, Peter as the emperor of the Bulgars (927 – 969) and mediated in the peace treaty with the Croats. (73)

Having vanquished the Bulgars and concluded a favourable peace with them Croatia reached the pinnacle of its strength and power under the rule of its first king Tomislav. At that time it was the most powerful state in all of southeastern Europe.
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CROATIA DURING THE TIME OF THE KING TOMISLAV




The first successors of king Tomislav

Tomislav was succeeded by his younger brother Trpimir II (ca. 929 – 935) who in turn was followed by his son Kresimir I (ca. 935 – 944). The latter left behind him two sons, Miroslav and Kresmir II. According to Croatian common law the king’s sons had to divide the kingdom and to rule it with the oldest brother acting as regent. In the meantime Miroslav (944 – 948) assumed all the power in the land and allowed his brother Kresimir II no share in the rule. Ban Pribina, the foremost official after the Croatian king, rose to the defense of the cadet. In the discord that ensured Pribina slew king Miroslav. As a result, as Porphyrogenitus records, "there came about in the land much quarreling and great discord." (74) Caslav, grand prince of Serbia, took advantage of this and occupied Travinja, Zahumlje, Nerevta, Bosnia and the three northeastern districts of White Croatia, probably at the invitation of the disaffected. (75)

As the Porphyrogenitus records it, the military strength of Croatia during the reign of king Kresimir I consisted of 100,000 infantry, 60,000 cavalry, 80 large and over 100 small ships. (76) Such numbers can only be explained by the fact that in Croatia every healthy adult male was obliged to enter the military service for the defense of his homeland. The Croatian fleet which in 870 duke Domagoj brought to bear against the Saracens in Bari in southern Italy, must have been quite strong enough in order to effect the blockade of the Saracens and force the city to surrender. (77) The fact that the Croats throughout the IX and the X centuries ruled the Adriatic and forced the Venetians to pay them tribute tells us that the Croatian fleet in that time was considerable.

Around 960 when the Serbian prince Caslav was killed in the fighting with the Magyars, the Croatian king Kresimir II (948 – 969) liberated the districts of White Croatia and "all of Bosnia" from the Serbs and Predimir, the autonomous ruler of Duklja, liberated "all of Red Croatia", i.e. Travunja, Zahumlje and Nerevta. (78)



Croatia in the vortex of the struggle between Byzantines and Bulgarians in the Balkans

Kresimir II was succeeded by his son Stjepan Drzislav (969 – 995). During his reign there arose a severe struggle between the Bulgarian emperor Samuel (976 – 1014) and Byzantium. After his victory in 986 by the gates of Trajan Samuel occupied the whole of the central and eastern Balkans up to Thrace. (79) In this crisis the Byzantine emperors Basil II (976 – 1025) and his brother Constantine VIII (976 – 1028), in order to secure the friendship of the Croats, ceded Byzantine Dalmatia to the control of the Croatian king Stjepan Drzislav and dispatched to him the royal insignia for his coronation as king of Croatia and Dalmatia. This time the Byzantine emperors ceded Dalmatia completely to the Croats and Stjepan Drzislav from the on bore the title of "king of Croatia and Dalmatia" i.e. he was not the sovereign ruler not only of Croatia, but also of Dalmatia. (80)

In 989 the Bulgarian emperor Samuel conquered the Byzantine provinces of Dyrrhachium with its capital of the same name. Samuel was displeased that the Croats had entered into friendly relations with the Byzantines and in 990 or 991 he advanced against Vladimir, the autonomous ruler of Red Croatia, vanquishing him and taking him prisoner. However he soon married him to his daughter Theodora Kosara and handed Red Croatia over to his control, but under Bulgarian suzerainty. (81) Then Samuel penetrated into Western Croatia all the way up to Zadar i.e. as far as the city of Nin where the seat of the Croatian king Stjepan Drzislav was situated. But he could not occupy it. When Samuel returned to Macedonia through Bosnia and Rasa Stjepan Drzislav reestablished Croatian power in the whole of White Croatia.

Stjepan Drzislav left three sons behind: Svetoslav Suronja, Kresimir III and Gojislav. Because Svetoslav took all the power into his hands, contrary to Croatian common law, there arose a period of discord and struggle within the state, during which his two younger brothers with the help of the Croatian nobility, banished Svetoslav and ruled the state. (83) The Venetian doge Peter II Orseolo took advantage of these troubles and in 996 abrogated the payment of the customary tribute to the Croats in return for free access to the Adriatic. In 998 he compelled the Quarantine islands and the coastal cities in Dalmatia as far as Split to acknowledge his suzerainty as representative of the Byzantine emperors. (84)

In the meantime the Byzantine emperor Basil II conquered the Bulgarians and occupied all the territory formerly held by them, among which was Bosnia and the provinces of Red Croatia. (85) On the river Cetina, the boundary of Western or White Croatia, Kresimir III (ca. 997 – 1030) and his brother Gojislav awaited the emperor to present him with gifts and to receive gifts and imperial honours in turn. (86) In 1024 when there were uprisings in Venice against the Byzantine proteges of the Orseolo family, Basil II took over direct control of the former Byzantine province of Dalmatia.

Kresimir III was succeeded by his son Stephen I (1030 – ca. 1056). During his reign in 1036, Dobroslav, whom Byzantine sources call Stjepan Vojislav, descendent of the old Croatian ruling family in Duklja, fomented a revolt in Duklja and Serbia. After an initial failure, in the second revolt of 1040 – 42 he drove the Byzantines out of the country. (87) The Croatian king Stephen I must have helped Dobroslav in the fighting because Dobroslav acknowledged the suzerainty of the Croatian king after the victory as his parents and forefathers had done. In connection with this the diocese of Duklja came once more under the jurisdiction of the Croatian metropolitan of Split and between 1040 and 1050 the metropolitan of Dubrovnik ceased to exist. (88)

In the time of the second revolt of duke Dobroslav, the Byzantine emperor Michael IV Paphlagonius (1034 – 1041) was forced to cede Byzantine Dalmatia to the Croatian king Stephen I. The contemporaneous writer St. Peter Damian attests to the fact that the diocese of Osor on Cres and Losinj was "part of the Croatian kingdom" before 1042. (89) The Venetian sources mention that in those years "Zadar surrendered to the king of Croatia." (90) However in 1050 the Venetian doge Dominic Contarino succeeded in winning back Zadar. (91)

During the reign of Stephen I the bishopric of Nin was reestablished and its incumbent bore the title of "Bishop of Croatia". He was also the head of the royal chancery. (92)



The last Croatian national kings

Stephen I was succeeded by his son Peter Kresimir IV (ca. 1056 – 1074). With all his intelligence and diplomatic skill and without waging war he extended the Croatian state and restored the boundaries which it had during the reign of its first and greatest king Tomislav. Immediately upon his accession to the throne the weak Byzantine emperors, either Theodora (1056 – 57) or Michael VI Stratioticus (1056 – 57) ceded Byzantine Dalmatia to his control. With this act Kresimir came into possession of Zadar and the other regions, which the Venetians had taken from his father Stephen I. Therefore Peter Kresimir in the oldest charters of his that are preserved from the year 1060, calls himself "King of the Croats and Dalmatians." Pope Alexander II in 1063 calls him "King of the two Dalmatias" i.e. of Lower and Upper Dalmatia as was then called the land from the Rasa in Istria to the Drim in modern Albania. (94)

Peter Kresimir was a good and pious man. He took special care to bolster the religious and moral life of his people. He established the bishoprics of Biograd on the sea before 1060, Vrhbosna around 1060 and Trogir in 1063. (95) He erected several monasteries and richly endowed those that were already built. Seeing that he did not have any children and that his cousin Stephen suffered from a grave and incurable illness, Peter Kresimir in 1067 or 1068 made an agreement with Zvonimir, the autonomous ban of Slavonia or Pannonian Croatia and a collateral descendant of Trpimir’s dynasty. Zvonimir became a vassal of the kingdom of Croatia and Peter Kresimir took him in as his court advisor. (96)

In his donation to the monastery of St. Krsevan in Zadar in 1069 Kresimir emphasizes with some satisfaction that "God omnipotent has extended our kingdom over the land and the sea" and calls the Adriatic "our Dalmatian sea". Kresimir at that time surrounded himself with his "counts, princes, bans, and chaplains." (97) These were the bans of Croatia, Bosnia, Slavonia and Duklja.

During his reign Peter Kresimir held in Croatia three church councils, in the spring and autumn of 1060 and in the autumn of 1063. (98) The first was held in Split where several resolutions were carried out in the spirit of the church reforms undertaken by the popes of that time. According to Deacon Thomas, at the council in the autumn of 1060 when the legate Tseudo proclaimed the pope’s approval of the resolutions of Split concerning the Glagolitic liturgy, all the churches administered by Glagolitic priests were closed and much against their will, they ceased to conduct the religious services throughout Croatia. (99) Lj. Hauptmann (100) and F. Sisic (101), relying wholly on Thomas’ account, accuse Peter Kresimir of espousing the cause of the Roman party and of the adoption of anti-Croatian policies. However we know from the record of the council of Split in 925 that the Croatian king and nobility did not agree with some of the council’s resolutions, but could not prevent the bishops and papal legates from carrying resolutions unfavourable to them. (102) This must have been the case with Peter Kresimir in 1060.

Thomas’ account could be true for the Dalmatian Roman cities and the surroundings where there were Latin priests to replace the Glagolitic priesthood. But in the purely Croatian regions where there were no Latin priests to replace the Glagolitic priests, no conscientious man, let alone a bishop or the pope, would close all the churches and forbid the Glagolitic priests to conduct services since they would thereby abolish the public worship in the whole of the nation.

Pope Alexander II himself, who writes that according to the council of Split it is forbidden in the future to ordain priests who do not learn Latin, refutes the statement of Archdeacon Thomas concerning the general interdict on the Slavonic Glagolitic liturgy. (103) Furthermore, in the resolutions of the council there was no mention that those priests who had already been ordained before the council took place were forbidden to conduct the liturgy.

One ought not to accuse Peter Kresimir and king Zvonimir on account of their anti-Croatian policies in the question of the Glagolitic liturgy. In the first place the facts tell us the following. There exists not one document to confirm that these rulers used political forces to eradicate the Glagolitic tradition. Secondly, in 1077 at the outset of his reign, king Zvonimir came to Krk to donate his royal domains there to the Benedictine Glagolitic monastery of St. Lucia in Baska. The abbot Drziha commemorated this in the Glagolitic script on a plaque in the church (plaque of Baska). (104) These Benedictines carried on the tradition lawfully and without disturbance not only during king Zvonimir’s visit but even just before, during the reign of Peter Kresimir. When pope Clement III established the metropolitan diocese of Bar in 1089 he included with its jurisdiction "all the Dalmatian (Latin), Greek (using the Byzantine liturgy) and Slavic (Old Slavonic) monasteries." (105) Glagolitic monasteries there had not been founded only recently, but existed and even lawfully conducted the liturgy in Old Slavonic in more recent times when Red Croatia was subject to the Croatian king Peter Kresimir IV.

We have a great dearth of official sources, both Croatian and Roman, from this time concerning the use of Glagolitic in the liturgy. Nonetheless, everything indicates that as early as the reign of Peter Kresimir and more recently in that of Dmitar Zvonimir, the resolution of the council of Split ratified by pope Alexander II in 1063 was rescinded or considerably mitigated.

At the end of 1073 or the outset of 1074 Peter Kresimir died without an offspring. Before his death he conferred the title of "Duke of Croatia" (106) on his distant cousin Zvonimir and thereby explicitly designated him as his successor. However at the national electoral diet the majority of those present were opposed to Zvonimir since he did not originate from the heart of the Croatian kingdom, i.e. from Adriatic Croatia, but from northern Slavonia and was not considered to be one of theirs. Slavac, the powerful duke of Nerevta, was elected king and was crowned at the end of 1074. The general mass of the people and the lower clergy who were against the church reforms and the introduction of Latin in the liturgy supported him. The Roman cities were not satisfied with his election, nor was the western part of Adriatic Croatia. They called in to help them the Norman duke Amico from Amalfi. He took possession of all the Roman and Croatian towns from Zadar to Split in the spring of 1075. Amico attacked and by treachery or by deception took prisoner the Croatian king Slavac. (107)

Michael, ban of Duklja, was not satisfied with the election of Slavac. He seceded from the Croatian state and proclaimed himself the autonomous ruler of South Croatia. (108)

The Venetians were also disturbed by Amico’s campaign in Dalmatia. For they foresaw the great danger to their free trade if the Normans from southern Italy were to hold strongpoints on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Therefore from the beginning of February 1076 when most of the Normans had gone back to southern Italy to spend the winter, the Venetian doge Dominic Silvic sailed out at the head of a strong Venetian fleet. He compelled the priors and bishops of the Roman and Croatian cities from Zadar to Split to swear allegiance to him and under pain of the most severe punishment never to invite the Normans or other foreigners to Dalmatia in the future. The priors and distinguished citizens of Split, Trogir, Zadar and Biograd on the Sea subscribed to this oath of allegiance. The agreement was approved and confirmed by Lovro, the archbishop of Split, Firmin, the bishop of Nin, John, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Bartholomew and Prestantius, bishop of Biograd on the Sea. (109) Archbishop Lovro was a great friend of king Peter Kresimir and duke Zvonimir. All the other church dignitaries were from purely Croatian cities and localities. This tell us that the leaders of Croatia, both secular and ecclesiastical, from the region between the rivers Krka and Zrmanja, who were dissatisfied with the election of Slavac as king of Croatia were among those chiefly responsible for the coup that brought the Normans into Dalmatia in 1075.

Even the new pope Gregory VII interfered in the dynastic struggles in Croatia. He based his action on his interpretation of the secular authority of the Apostolic See, to whom Christ was suppose to have entrusted his care over secular kingdoms for the salvation of Christendom. The pope sent to Croatia his legate Gerhard, archbishop of Sipanto, who in November 1075 held a church council in Split. In the charter, which Gerhard granted at the council to the Benedictine monastery of St. Krsevan in Zadar, the legate mentioned that it was "in the time of troubles, when duke Amico took prisoner the Croatian king. (110) Of course Gerhard must have also engaged in discussion with the bishops and the Croatian nobility about the new Croatian king, since ecclesiastical reforms in the context of those times could not have been introduced without the collaboration of the secular authorities.

After long negotiations the pope at the beginning of autumn of 1076 sent to Croatia his legate, the abbot Gepison and the bishop Fulcoin. They, on the solemnity of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, October 9th, 1076, on the plain of Salona near Split, in connection with the general Croatian diet held the previous day on the feast day of St. Demetrius, patron saint of the new king, solemnly crowned the Croatian duke Dmitar Zvonimir (1076 – 1089) as "king of the Croats and the Dalmatians, by the unanimous assent of all the clergy and the people." (111) As we can see from Dmitar’s donation to the archdiocese of Split which he granted on the day of his coronation, the following bishops were present at this coronation and swore an oath of allegiance to him: Lovro, archbishop of Split, Stephen, bishop of Zadar, the Croatian bishop Peter, Gregory, bishop of Rab, Prestantius, bishop of Biograd, Basil, bishop of Csor, Firmin, bishop of Nin, John, bishop of Trogir, and Dabro, abbot of St. Stephen in Split. (112)

This tells us that pope Gregory between February 8th and October 9th, 1076 compelled the Venetians without conflict to return to Croatia the Quarantine Islands and those cities on the eastern shore of the Adriatic which they still occupied at the beginning of February 1076. Indeed, only the pope could absolve the citizenry and the bishops of Dalmatia of their oath of allegiance sworn to the Venetian doge and empower them to swear an oath of fealty to the Croatian king Dmitar Zvonimir. (113)

During the whole reign of Zvonimir Croatia possessed in peace the Quarantine Islands and the whole eastern shore of the Adriatic. In 1077 Zvonimir personally visited the island of Krk and endowed the Benedictine monastery of St. Lucia in Baska. (1140) At the end of 1081 or the outset of 1082 in the Benedictine monastery of Osor a formulary of praises was composed in which the Croatian king Zvonimir was glorified along with the pope and the emperor. (115) In 1076 pope Gregory VII backed the authority of Zvonimir in the present-day Croatian littoral against Vecelinus, duke of Istria. (116)

In the Poljica addendum to the chronicle "Kingdom of the Croats" the times of king Zvonimir are described thus: "During the reign of good king Zvonimir the whole land was merry because it was full to overflowing with good things and the cities were full of silver and gold…and the ornaments on the women, young men and even the horses were of more value then the whole property of anyone today." (117)

According to the old sources king Zvonimir died of a natural death. The Poljica addendum to the "Kingdom of the Croats" which appeared at the end of the XIII or the beginning of the XIV century state that the Croats killed their king because he requested them to go on a crusade in accordance with the pope’s wish. (118)

After Zvonimir’s death the Croatian national diet elected as king Stephen II (1089 – 90), the sickly cousin of king Peter Kresimir IV. He passed away after a short reign. (119) With him the old Croatian national dynasty which had ruled Croatia for a full 460 years was extinguished.



II. Croatia under Foreign Kings

Small men in great times

After the extinction of the national dynasty the Croatian national diet had the right and obligation to elect a new king who would establish the new Croatian national dynasty. However in those great and momentous times the Croats did not have at their head great and far-seeing individuals. Instead of agreeing among themselves and uniting, most of the Croatian leaders of that time selfishly and stubbornly sough to become kings. The national diet and the country itself became the scene of bitter party strife with opposing parties bitterly persecuting and destroying each other. Describing the political circumstances in the Croatian kingdom after the death of king Zvonimir and the short reign of Stephen II, Archdeacon Thomas of Split writes on the basis of old sources: "Great discord broke out among all the leaders of the kingdom. As now one, now another usurped the sovereign power to himself. Extortion, robbery, murder and every kind of crime became the order of the day. Indeed ever day each persecuted, assailed and killed the other." (1)

Helen, the widow of the deceased king Zvonimir, led one of the stronger and larger parties. It was joined by the nobility of Slavonia (Pannonian Croatia) north of the Iron Alps and in all probability also by those from Western Adriatic Croatia who already during the reign of Slavac were for Zvonimir and his family. (2) They wished Ladislaus I, brother of Helen, to be king of Croatia. Accordingly, on invitation of his sister, Ladislaus went to Croatia in the middle of the year 1091 allegedly because "it belonged to him as his inheritance according to his dynastic right." (3) The Pannonian Croats received him amicably. He came as far as to certain ports on the Adriatic Sea north of the river Krka. From there he sent a delegation to pope Urban II in all probability seeking papal approval for his claim to the throne of Croatia and Dalmatia. This legation brought a letter from the king to the abbot Oderisi of Monte Cassino, in which Ladislaus wrote that now they were neighbours because "he had acquired almost all of Slavonia." (4) From this we can conclude that Ladislaus reached the Adriatic (5) and thereby adjoined the Italian states and that also Slavonia accepted him willingly as king so that he did not have to conquer it by force.

In the autumn of 1090 Tseudo, legate of pope Urban II, arrived in Hungary. (6) After his visit Ladislaus I passed of to the side of the anti-pope Clement III. This tells us that pope Urban II did not approve Ladislaus’ claim to be king of Croatia and Dalmatia.

Ladislaus renounced the idea of becoming king of the reduced kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia, but appointed his nephew Almos (1091 – 95) as king in Slavonia between the Sava and the Drava as an indication that he did not plan to annex to Hungary the Croatian lands which he had acquired. (7) So that the lands beyond the Sava would be no longer within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Croatian littoral, Ladislaus in 1094 established a bishopric in Zagreb that he subordinated to the archbishopric of Esztergom. (8)

In connection with Ladislaus’ venture into Adriatic Croatia the population of the former Byzantine theme called in the Venetians. With the approval of Byzantium the doge Vital Falier (1084 – 96) occupied the Roman cities of Dalmatia in 1092. (9)

During all these troubles one part of the Croatian nobility convened at a rump parliament and elected as king of Croatia a certain Peter, who in all probability can be identified with Peter Snacic, king Zvonimir’s ban. (10) Whereupon, after the death of Ladislaus in Hungary, the throne was occupied by the energetic king Koloman (1095 – 1116). At the invitation of his adherents Koloman went to Adriatic Croatia in the spring of 1097. On the northern slopes of the Iron Alps the Croatian king Peter waited for him with an insufficient force of disunited Croats. In the battle king Peter perished and Koloman reached the sea without further resistance. (11)



The Pacta conventa: Associated kingdoms

Koloman returned to Hungary in order to defend his northern possessions, but in 1099 was routed by the Cumans and the Russians. This encouraged the Croats who mustered and marched in arms to the Drava. Koloman was forced to negotiate with them.

At the end of the Trogir manuscript of the "Historia Salonitana" by Archdeacon Thomas a text is found in medieval script written thus: "How and by what agreement the Croats accepted as theirs the king of Hungary." (12) Historians are still discussing among themselves whether this text is authentic and even whether the Croats concluded an agreement with Koloman before his coronation in 1102 at Biograd on the Sea.

This text does not have the form of an official document of that time and there can be no question that it is a verbatim transcript of the original agreement. As can be seen from the transcript itself that it is a short summation, an account of how it came about and by what agreement the Croats had concluded an agreement with Koloman as their king. This text is an authentic extract of the official document issued after the Croats had concluded an agreement with Koloman in 1102. The extract was written in the Trogir manuscript only in the XIV century. (13)

The following indications tell us that the Croats indeed concluded a written agreement with Koloman.

1. In the first place there is the text in the Trogir manuscript against whose validity no one has stated serious objections.
2. Archdeacon Thomas mentions that king Koloman concluded a written agreement with all the Roman cities in Dalmatia (1105) before those cities acknowledged him as king. In these agreements Koloman guaranteed to all of them local autonomy, granting them immunity from royal taxes. (14) If Koloman concluded written agreements with each city and granted them various exceptional liberties, he must have been more inclined in 1102 to conclude a written agreement with the representatives of a kingdom that he wished to obtain.
3. In the agreement that Koloman concluded on May 25th, 1107 with the city of Trogir against whose authority there is no justifiable objection, we have incontestable evidence that he made a constitutional agreement with the Croats before his coronation in 1102. (15) In this agreement Koloman bound himself not to take up quarters for himself and his retinue at the expense of the people of Trogir "when I come to you to be crowned or to discuss with you the affairs of the kingdom." (16) Koloman was crowned king of Croatia already in 1102. (17) Both in the Trogir charter of 1107 and in those granted to Split and Zadar, the king mentions that he is coming to be crowned. This tell us that the above mentioned manuscript has been copied directly from the Pacta Conventa that Koloman concluded with the Croats prior to his coronation in 1102. Likewise the mention of the king’s arrival at the national diet to discuss the affairs of the kingdom makes sense completely only in view of the negotiations for an agreement with the Croats.

As can be seen from the foresaid text in the Trogir agreement, the main points of the Pacta Conventa made by king Koloman with the Croats in 1102 are:

1. Koloman will not unite the kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia with the kingdom of Hungary, but these will remain separate, independent kingdoms, each with its own crown that Koloman will assume separately. Koloman’s mention in 1107 that he is coming to be crowned tells us that in 1102 he guaranteed that his successors would come to Croatia to be crowned there with the Croatian crown, thereby signifying Croatia’s independence from the kingdom of Hungary. As evidence that Croatia together with Dalmatia is a separate kingdom, different from and equal to Hungary, the king would in the future bear the title "King of Hungary, Croatia and Dalmatia." (18)
2. Koloman guaranteed that he and his successors would from time to time come to Croatia and to the Croatian national diets to decide on the affairs of state. In Croatia from the earliest times the national diet was the chief legislative body that decided on the principal affairs of state. (19) Indeed, the Croatian kings were constitutional rulers and not autocrats, as in Byzantium and Hungary up to this time. Koloman bound himself in the future to rule constitutionally in Croatia in accordance with the Croatian national diet.


3. Furthermore Koloman assured the representatives of the twelve old Croatian tribes that constituted the body politic at that time that they would enjoy in peace their old tribal patrimony and that neither they nor their people would pay any tax to the king. (20)
4. According to old Croatian common law each healthy adult Croat was obliged to go to war in the defense of his homeland. In 1102 the representative of the Croatian tribes guaranteed that each tribe, in the event of a defensive war or of one waged in the other royal domains, would send in aid to the king at least ten armed horsemen who would go on Croatian soil as far as the Drava at their own expense and beyond the Drava at the king’s expense. (21) Both at home and abroad the Croatian troops would fight under the Croatian standard and be distinct from the main body of the king’s army. In the original donation of Bella III in 1193, still preserved today, the prince of Krk, Bartul II, guaranteed that he would send ten horsemen to the king’s aid in case of war within the Croatian state and four horsemen in case of war outside its boundaries each time that "the king shall levy the Croatian army in preparation for war." (22)


5. In the Pacta Conventa of 1102 the boundaries of the Croatian state are laid down from the Adriatic to the Drava. The Croats requested Koloman to assume as part of his title the phrase "king of Croatia and Dalmatia" in order to stress thereby Croatia’s right to the former Byzantine province of Dalmatia, at that time held by the Venetians. This region the Croats considered an integral part of the united Croatian kingdom as can be seen from the agreements concluded with the Roman cities in Dalmatia between 1105 and 1107 where there is talk of only one kingdom and one Croatian diet. (23) As can be seen from what has been said in point four, Pannonian Croatia or Slavonia was included in the untied Croatian state. The Croatian boundaries on the Drava and the Danube from now on would often be mentioned in later political documents. (24) This is emphasized even in the royal title where by Dalmatia is understood the lands of the former Byzantine Dalmatia and by Croatia all the rest of the Croatian lands from the Adriatic to the Drava and Danube.

In the Pacta Conventa of 1102 Croatia preserved all the privileges of an independent and sovereign state: its own national territory, its own crown, its own legislative diet, its own army and its own finances. With the Hungarian kingdom Croatia kid not enter into any political relations, except for the king himself, who in any case had to be crowned separately as king of Croatia. According to the Pacta Conventa of 1102 Croatia and Hungary became two associated nations. Although the Croatian nobility of that time with its rivalries and discord was to blame for the fact that Croatia no longer had any king of Croatian origin, it nonetheless preserved the sovereignty of the Croatian state and its unity from the Adriatic to the Drava and Danube.

The Pacta Conventa was a genuine international agreement between two independent and sovereign states: Hungary, represented by Koloman and Croatia, represented by the twelve Croatian tribes.

The major flaw in the Pacta Conventa was that the Croats did not explicitly retain the right of the Croatian diet to elect the Croatian ban and royal deputies in Croatia. Due to the fact that no proviso was made for this, the Arpad dynasty soon began to appoint Hungarians as bans in Croatia. This was detrimental to Croatia’s national autonomy and independence.



The Croatian Diets: Guarantors and Preservers of Croatian Statehood

Besides the autonomous organization of the Croatian state into tribes and provinces, from the earliest times the Croatian national and political unity reached its fullest expression in the national diets. When the Croats in 1102 began to grant the Croatian crown to foreign rulers the Croatian diets became the guarantors and preservers of Croatian statehood in relation to those kings and their nations. From that time on the Croatian diets’ statutes and enactments were legislated concerning the administration of the state and its defense against external foes. Also final resolutions were passed on matters of property, law and judicature. The diet took particular care to preserve Croatia’s constitutional laws.

According to old Croatian custom the supreme ruler of Croatia presided over the Croatian diets. This custom was respected in the Pacta Conventa of 1102 and Koloman, who came several times to Croatia, held a national diet on each occasion. (25) However his successors of the Arpad dynasty soon began to leave it up to their deputies, whether members of the royal house or bans of Croatia, to summon and preside over the Croatian diets. As late as the XVI century statutes enacted in the Croatian national diets at once assumed full legislative force without the additional approval of the king. (26) At the general diet of the whole of the Slavonia in Zagreb, the minutes of which are preserved to the present day, Matej, ban of Croatia, who presided over the diet, confirmed the resolutions of the diet with this seal of approval. (27)

Community life in the tribal provinces, districts and clans among the Croats from early times found its fullest expression in assemblies that met to discuss the community affairs. Members and representatives of the lesser political units went to the meetings of the larger units and finally to the Croatian national diet. (28)

During the reign of Peter Kresimir IV and of Zvonimir the Croatian cities of Biograd on the Sea and of Sibenik became free and royal cities, no longer under control of the local counts. After the devastation of the Tartars in 1241/42 more free cities arose, thanks to royal charters, in the interior of the country, especially between the Sava and the Drava. These cities were governed by their won bylaws and sent their own representatives to the Croatian national diets. (29)

In the XIII century, if not earlier, autonomous units began to be formed in Adriatic Croatia even among the peasantry. Since the members of these communities knew no other language than Croatian, the legal codes of these communities were set down in Croatian. This was the case with the code of Vinodol from the year 1288 and also with the codes of Poljica, Krk, Kastav and others. (30) The old Croatian common law was preserved in these codes in the form of corporate law, property law and jurisprudence. (31) These codes form the oldest body of law in any Slavic language.

From the Croats the Hungarians adopted the custom of holding national diets in order to limit the king’s power. The Golden Bull of Andrew II in 1222 legalized the holding of these diets among the Hungarians. (32)



The Croatian Kings of the Arpad Dynasty (1102 – 1301)

The hopes which the Croats placed in Koloman I when they elected and crowned him king in 1102 were not misguided. He restored peace and order in the land. In 1105 he delivered the islands and coastal cities of the former Byzantine Dalmatia from Venetian control and once more made them part of the Croatian kingdom. (33) What the Croats appreciated most was that Koloman and his first successors respected Croatian tribal organization and autonomy. They ruled over the Croatian state without reference to Hungary through Croatian bans and royal deputies, in accordance with the resolutions of, and by agreement with the Croatian diets which met often. Still during his lifetime Koloman had his son Stephen II (1116 – 1131) crowned with the crown of Croatia. (34) His successors of the Arpad dynasty were also crowned with the Croatian crown up to the Tartar invasion of 1241. (36)

The love and devotion, which the Croats had for the Arpad dynasty grew when its members tired, together with the Croats, to defend the whole Croatian state from its external foes. This occurred first when the Venetians who in 1115 began to reconquer the islands and coastal cities of Dalmatia (36) and then when the Byzantines who during the wars of succession in Hungary occupied various Croatian regions. In 1164/65 the emperor Emmanuel Commenus (1143 – 80) occupied all of Adriatic Croatia from the Iron Alps, including Bosnia, and submitted it to Byzantine rule. He called the regions from the Iron Alps to the Nerevta the "duchy of Dalmatia and Croatia" and from the Nerevta to the Drim the "duchy of Dalmatia and Dioclia." (37) As soon as the emperor Emmanuel died the Croats cast off the Byzantine yoke and incorporated the whole land from the Nerevta to the Crava with the Croatian state. In 1198 the Croatian duke Andrew (1197 – 1204) restored to Croatia Zahumlje from the Nerevta to Dubrovnik. (38)

Bela III (1172 – 1196) began to introduce Western feudalism into Croatia and by the practice of granting fiefs, honours and privileges he obtained the loyalty and fealty of certain Croats. This practice continued by his successors who ruled over Croatia until the fall of the Hapsburgs in 1918.

The Byzantine overlordship in Adriatic Croatia from 1165 to 1180 had unfavourable consequences for the political unity of the Croatian state because during this occupation the Croatian ban governed only the lands from the Iron Alps to the Drava and summoned the Croatian diets only for this territory. When Adriatic Croatia was liberated a separate ban was appointed for the Croatian littoral who summoned separate diets for this territory. This state of affairs continued for a long time and served to weaken the unity of the Croatian state. (39) Since that time the regions between the Iron Alps and the Drava, which in the time of the Croatian duke Koloman (1226 – 41) began to be called "kingdom of Slavonia", were once more called by the old name of Slovinje (duchy of Slavonia). (40)



Croatia during the reign of the Angevins and of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1301 – 1437)

During the reign of the last weak member of the Arpad dynasty, Ladislaus IV the Cumanian (1272 – 90) and Andrew the Venetian (1290 – 1301) the able and venerable ban of the Croatian littoral Pavao I Subic succeed in making Adriatic Croatia almost completely independent. In 1292 the king of Naples Charles II, on behalf of his son Charles Martel who was considered the lawful heir of the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom, granted Subic all of Croatia from Modrus to Hum as his hereditary right. (41) In 1293 Andrew the Venetian granted to him and to his descendants the banate of Croatia and Dalmatia and the dignity of ban as a hereditary right. (42) In 1299 Pavao became "Lord of Bosnia." (43) Whereupon the Subic princes of Bribir assumed complete control of the Croatian lands from Dubrovnik to the Iron Alps and from Modrus to the Drina, a territory larger than the Croatian state during the reign of some of the Croatian kings.

Ban Pavao, although governing as an independent ruler, did not consider it possible for him to proclaim himself king of Croatia. This the Croats would generally not have accepted because at that time already had quite a strong sense of justice and of the proper procedure to observe in regard to the succession to the throne. This would have also resulted in the complete secession of Slavonia where the Babonic formed a powerful and almost independent dynastic family. Therefore when a rebellion broke out against Andrew the Venetian, ban Pavao sent to Naples his brother Juraj who in August 1300 brought back to Croatia the young dauphin Charles Robert, grandson of Maria, the daughter of the Hungarian-Croatian king Stephen V. In a lengthy struggle in which the Hungarian nobility crowned various kings, Charles I Robert achieved final success with the help of the Croats, being generally acknowledged and crowned at last in 1310. (44)

Ban Pavao Subic belongs among the greatest Croats during the reign of the foreign kings. He died in 1312 and left his state to his eldest son and successor Mladen II (1312 – 22). He was an educated man, full of valour, but rash and vehement. His conduct fanned dissatisfaction in the country and king Charles I profited by it in order to strengthen royal power in Croatia. Mladen’s younger brother, Pavao II, joined the insurgents and the king sent to their aid the ban of Slavonia, Ivan Babonic. Mladen was vanquished near Blizna, not far from Klio. Whereupon Charles I brought Mladen back to Hungary as a prisoner. (45) Then the king unified all the Croatian lands and entrusted them to the administration of ban Ivan Babonic. (46)

Charles I (1301 – 42) and his son Louis I (1342 – 82) endeavoured to consolidate their royal power in Hungary and Croatia and to centralize their administration following the pattern set by the French and the Neapolitan kingdoms. In Croatia they tried to carry this out through the agency of the Croatian diets which were often summoned, sometimes for the whole of the Croatian lands, sometimes separately for the littoral and Slavonian regions. However in Croatia they could never eliminate the tendency towards autonomy and independence. After the fall of Mladen Subic the ducal family of the Nelipic ruled almost independently over the Croatian littoral. When in 1345 Louis I broke the power of the Nelipic family mostly with the help of the Bosnian ban Stephen II Kotromanic, the standard of Croatian autonomy was raised by the Palizna family, the Horvat brothers and especially the Bosnian ban and later king Tvrtko I (1353 – 91) who supported all the Croatian dissidents and strove to unite the Croatian lands under Bosnian hegemony. (47)

It was the great merit of Louis I with regards to Croatia that in a two-year war he defeated Venice and forced it to sue for peace in Zadar (February 18th, 1358). The Venetians returned to Croatia all of the islands and cities "from the middlemost Quarnerian islands to the boundaries of the city of Dyrrhachium." (48) The doge also renounced the title "duke of Dalmatia and Croatia." With this the kingdom of Croatia was restored from Istria to Kotor and from the Adriatic to the Drava and Danube.

Queen Maria (1328 – 95), daughter of king Louis I, and her husband Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387 – 1437) continued this centralistic policy in Hungary and Croatia. When after his defeat at Nicopolis in 1396 king Sigismund disappeared without a trace, the Croatian nobility proclaimed as king the Angevin Ladislaus, son of Charles II of Durasso (Dyrrhachium). Although Sigismund returned to his kingdom via Byzantium and Dubrovnik, the Croatian dissidents with the great duke Hrvoje Hrvatinic (49) at their head invited Ladislaus to Dalmatia. Some of the Hungarian dissidents joined them there and in 1403 crowned Ladislaus king in Zadar. After three months Ladislaus returned to Naples and handed over administration of Croatia and Dalmatia to duke Hrvoje as his deputy. When Hrvoje was reconciled with Sigismund, Ladislaus in 1409 shamefully sold to the Venetians for 100,000 ducats Zadar with Vrana and the island of Pag as well as his rights to Dalmatia. (50) With this act the Venetian republic after 400 years of fighting settled permanently in Adriatic Croatia, where is was to enlarge its possessions and maintain them right up to its fall in 1797. (51)



Croatia under various dynasties (1437 – 1562)

With the defeat of the Serbs in Kossovo in 1389 a new and grave danger threatened the freedom and unity of the Croatian lands, namely Turkish power. Sigismund’s attempt to check the advance of the Turks failed on account of the defeat of the Serbs at Nicopolis in 1396. (52) During the remaining period of his long reign Sigismund was occupied with his duties as emperor in the West and with his struggles against the Bosnian kings and the Croatian and Hungarian nobility, who opposed the centralist tendencies of royal power. His successor Albert of Hapsburg (1438 – 39), husband of Sigismund’s daughter Elizabeth, soon died of the plague in a war against the Turks. His successor Vladislav I Jagellon (1440 – 44) perished I a defeat at the hands of the Turks at Varna. (53) His successor was Ladislaus V (1445 – 57), the son of Albert of Hapsburg, still a minor. During his minority Janko Hunyadi, who did much for the defense of the kingdom against the Turks, ruled in Hungary and Croatia. The Croatian bans of the Frankopan and Talovac families came to the fore in Croatia at that time. Thanks to the merits of his father the Hungarian and Croatian diets elected as their king Matthias Corvinus (1458 – 90), the son of Janko Hunyadi. At his coronation king Matthias swore an oath that he would guard the constitutional organization, rights and liberties of the kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia. (54) Matthias restored the tarnished reputation of the king and took great pains to improve the lot of the lower gentry and the peasantry. He made an incorrigible error in that he did not come in time to the aid of Bosnia, which fell under Turkish dominion in 1463. His military campaign at the end of that year had only partial success: the liberation of Bosnian Posavina and the establishment of the banates of Jajce and Srebrnica. (55) In occupied Bosnia the Bogomils were converted en masse to Islam and so with the passage of time the majority of Catholic Croats. These Croatian converts to Islam became zealous disseminators of the new religion and since that time, with characteristic Croatian courage and persistence, they fought with all their might to conquer all the Croatian territory, to convert it to Islam and to unite it all under the Bosnian sanjak or pashadom. (56)

At the Croatian diet of Zdenci in 1478 the first statute in sixteen articles was promulgated, authorizing a general levy in the defense of Croatia against the Turks. Therein was defined how and in what manner a general levy was to be carried out at the ban’s order. Also defined is the "captain of the kingdom", who was to have special car of the defense of the home territory and along with the ban, to take charge of the Croatian army as well as act as the ban’s right hand man. (57) King Matthias personally attended the Croatian diet of 1481 on the plain before the city of Zagreb.

Croatian culture progressed considerably during the reign of king Matthias and under the influence of humanism and Renaissance. Among other things in 1482 in Kosinj in the province of Lika the first printing house among the South Slavs was established. There in 1483 the missal was printed in Croatian using the Glagolitic script.

The Croatian diet refused for two years to recognize as king Vladislav II Jagellon (1490 – 1516) because the Hungarians had included in the coronation charter the phrase "The Hungarian kingdom with its other subject kingdoms and provinces." The Croats recognized Vladislav only after he revised the coronation charter in 1492 and inserted: "The Hungarian kingdom with the other kingdoms, namely Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, the regions of Transylvania and its (namely Hungary’s) subject provinces." (59)

In 1493 the Bosnian sanjak-bey Jakub-pasha invaded Croatia and Carniola with a powerful army of Bosnian Croats of the Islamic faith, supported by the troops of the Pasha of Rumelia. On his return the Croats waited for him on the plain of Krbava below the city of the same name (modern Udbina). On September 9th, 1493 in a bitter battle lasting all day with equal courage and determination, the sons of the same Croatian nation fought, divided by religion and political boundaries. Through the fault of the inexperience of the ban Emerik Derencin (60), the army of Christian Croatia was completely routed. More than 9,000 Catholic warriors lay dead on the field. (61) A younger contemporary and Croatian chronicler, brother Ivan Tomasic, writes that this was the "the beginning of the end of the Croatian kingdom, in which perished the flower of the whole Croatian nobility." (62)





III. Autonomous Croatian States

A. Red or South Croatia

As Porphyrogenitus records it, the Croats on their arrival in the south tin 626 settled in Dalmatia, Pannonia and Illyricum, occupying the whole territory along the Adriatic from Istria to Valona in modern Albania. (1) These regions divided at the diet of Duvno in 753 into tow autonomous states: White or Western Croatia from the Rasa in Istria to the Cetina in modern Dalmatia and Red or South Croatia from the Cetina to Valona and the Himara mountains in modern Albania. (2)

Red Croatia was divided at the diet of Duvno into autonomous provinces: Neretva, Zahumlje, Travunja, Duklja and Illyricum. (3) Henceforth these provinces formed a political amalgamation more or less interconnected and all recognizing the overlordship of a sovereign Croatian duke, and later of a king, in White Croatia. According to the ability of the provincial rulers and the influence of external factors, some of the provinces came to the fore and exercised their autonomy more assertively. At the end of the VIII century Nerevta developed into a strong maritime power which during the IX and X centuries fought naval battles with Venice several times on its own account and forced it to pay tribute in order to have free access to the Adriatic. (4) In the war with Byzantium from 806 – 17 Croatia lost Illyricum whereupon the extreme south boundary of Croatia was established on the river Drim in modern Albania. (5) Zahumlje developed especially in the first quarter of the X century. Its duke Michael Vusevukcic, next to king Tomislav, was the most prominent Croatian magnate. At the outset of the second half of the X century Duklja assumed the hegemony in Red Croatia. It was situated along the sear from Kotor to the Drim. There a provincial dynasty was in the making, whose head was officially called ban or duke, but the people called him king according to the ancient Croatian custom. (7) Vladimir, a member of that native dynasty of Duklja, ruled over Red Croatia at the outset of the last quarter of the X century. Seeing that Stjepan Drzislav, the supreme ruler of Croatia, had concluded a treaty of friendship with the Byzantine empire, the Bulgarian emperor Samuel invaded Red Croatia in 990 or 991 and took duke Vladimir prisoner. Soon he had him marry his daughter Theodora Kosara and entrusted him with the rule of Red Croatia, although under Bulgarian suzerainty. (8)

When Basil II broke the power of the Bulgarians in 1018, the Byzantines ruled over all the lands held up to that time by the Bulgarians i.e. all of Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Red Croatia up to the Cetina. (9) Following the death of the Byzantine emperor Roman III Argyros on April 11th, 1034, Dobroslav, the son of prince Dragimir, the uncle of St. Vladimir, ruler of Duklja, fomented a rebellion of the Croats in Red Croatia and of the Serbs in Rasa against the Byzantines. After initial failure Dobroslav, whom Byzantine sources call Stjepan Vojislav, in the second revolt of 1040 – 42 drove out the Byzantines and ruled himself over the land. (10)

Dobroslav was succeeded by his son Mihala (ca. 1046 – 81) whom Byzantine sources call "ruler of those who call themselves Croats." (11) He recognized the suzerainty of the Croatian kings Stephen I and Peter Kresimir IV, as his father had done, but in 1074 he refused to acknowledge the election of Slavac to the Croatian throne and so Duklja seceded from Croatia, becoming an autonomous state. In 1077 Mihala obtained the royal title and crown from the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Byrennius. (12) With this act he established a new Croatian kingdom in Red or South Croatia. Seeing that there were dissenters in his state who did not approve of the fragmentation of the Croatian kingdom, Mihala gave the order to write the chronicle "Kingdom of the Croats". There the chronicler set out to prove that original seat of the old Croatian state was in Duklja and that accordingly Mihala was only reasserting an ancient and law prerogative. (13)

In order to consolidate his state and make it ecclesiastically independent, Mihala turned to pope Gregory VII and asked him to send to him the standard of St. Peter. As for the bishop in Bar, Mihala asked that he be given a metropolitan’s chasuble. In a letter dated January 8th, 1078 the pope calls Mihala "king of the Slavs", but answers him that he will "recognize the honour of your kingdom" by giving him the standard and permitting him to use the metropolitan’s chasuble only when he will have heard from all the parties interested and investigated the matter according to canon law. (14) We do not know how the matter turned out, but only that Gregory VII did not comply with the king’s request. Only king Bodin (1081 – 1101), son and successor of king Mihala, succeeded in obtaining from the anti-pope Clement III the metropolitan’s chasuble for the archbishop of Bar and the pope’s recognition of the kingdom of Duklja. (15)

In the first years of his reign Bodin liberated Rasa from Byzantine rule. His two palatines, Vukan and Marko, both Croats from Duklja, originally from Ribnica near modern Titograd, ruled in his name and bore the title of grand princes. (16) This had crucial consequences for the future of Croatian Duklja. Indeed when, after the death of Bodin, struggles within the royal dynasty considerably reduced Duklja’s fortunes, the princes of Rasa interfered in Duklja’s affairs. For they considered it to be their original homeland. Finally Stefan Nemanja, great-grandson of grand prince Marko, completely dispensed with the royal family in 1189 and rules over this ancient Croatian land himself. (17)

The Croatian population of Red Croatia was from early times Roman Catholic. The language of its liturgy was a mixture of Latin and Glagolitic. Stefan Nemanja and his brothers Stracimir and Miroslav, when they became rulers in Red Croatia, acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome. On November 25th, 1189 pope Clement III recommended Bernard, the new archbishop of Dubrovnik, to Nemanja and to his brothers as Catholics. (18) The Gospel of Miroslav was written in the closing decade of the XII century by Gregory, deacon of Zahumlje, according to the regulations of the Roman liturgy. It is dedicated to "the most illustrious prince Miroslav, son of Zavida." This gospel book was written in Croatian Cyrillic (Bosanchista) when this script, still in infancy, was influenced by the recension of Old Slavonic Glagolitic books taking place in Croatia. (19) Nemanja’s eldest son, Vukan, and his son Djuro, kings of Croatia, were Catholics. (20) The archbishop Sava, youngest son of Stefan Nemanja, began to introduce the Greek rite in Red Croatia, when in 1219 he founded the Orthodox bishopric in Ston for Zahumlje and Travunja, and in Prevlaka (Boka Kotorska) for Duklja. (21) Seeing that the population of Red Croatia persisted in the original Roman rite, the Serbian kings, especially Uros I (1242 – 76) and his son Uros II (1282 – 1321), used force to convert the Catholic population to Orthodoxy. They expelled from office the Catholic bishops or forbade them to be ordained. They took over the parishes and monasteries from the Catholics and in their place put Orthodox priests and monks. In 1345 pope Clement (1342 – 52) asked king Stefan Dusan to return the "monasteries, churches, islands and villages which certain kings of Rasa, your predecessors, seized in their time and which you now possess." (22) This persecution of Catholics stopped when after Dukan’s death the native Croatian family of the Balsic liberated Duklja from Serbian overlordship and reestablished its independence. The Balsic (1360 – 1421) then returned to the pale of the Catholic church. (23) The Crnojevic (1439 – 96) who ruled in Zeta, the mountainous part of erstwhile Duklja were Orthodox, but they were tolerant towards Catholics. They maintained relations with Rome and Venice. (24) When the Turks occupied Herzegovina in 1482 and Zeta in 1496 the Catholics were numerous in all regions of present-day Montenegro, particularly on the littoral from Budva to Bojana, in the region of Niksic and between the rivers Zeta and Moraca. In 1610 the ancient Catholic chief tribes of Duklja still existed: the Bijelopavlovic, Piper, Bratonozic and half of the Kuca. (25) During the XVII century because of the lack of Catholic priests and the enmity of the Turks who at that time were engaged ferocious wars against the Catholic West, Catholicism in Montenegro almost disappeared. One part went over to Islam, but the majority turned to Orthodoxy. (26) The old Croatian Catholics around Bar and in the regions of the littoral went over to Islam completely after the failure of the uprising of 1648. (27)

After the death of the last Crnojevic, Skender-beg, who ruled over Montenegro from 1513 – 29 as the Turkish sanjak-bey, a national theocentric state was created in Montenegrin Brda with the bishop of Cetinje at its head. Up to 1696 the bishops of Cetinje from various tribes and from 1696 to 1851 from the clan (bratstvo) Petrovic Njegos ruled over it. (28)

On Christmas Eve in 1709, on the instigation of bishop Danilo I (1696 – 1737), the Orthodox Montenegrins cleared Brda of all Moslems. Some of them were killed and some escaped by fleeing to the sanjaks fo Herzegovina, Bosnia and Scutari. (29)

In 1851 under Danilo II it became an independent state and no longer under the authority of the church. Danilo II established as hereditary rulers the princely family of the Petrovic Njegos who proclaimed Montenegro a kingdom in 1910. (30) After World War I Montenegro was incorporated into the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Despite all the political and religious vicissitudes of Montenegro, as medieval Croatian Duklja was called from the middle of the XV century, (31) Croatian tradition was never lost nor did the people forget their Croatian origin. With minor exceptions, foreign people never migrated to the stony hills of Montenegro. The descendants of the Dinaric Croats of the former Duklja, who even today speak the Ijekavian dialect with a strong mixture of Cakavian and with a Cakavian accent, have always lived there. (32)

Both the division of Montenegro into tribes and the tribal organization itself is of Croatian origin. In place names, national customs and traditions the memory of Red Croatia and the Croats is preserved. (33) When the Turkish chronicler Evlia Chelebia came to the region of Piva in present-day Montenegro among the Orthodox Montenegrins in 1664 he noted that "pure, original Croats" lived there. (34)

When during the massacres of 1709 and the enlargement of Montenegro in the XIX century the Montenegrin Moslems fled to Bosnia and Sanjak they took with them the Croatian name and gave it to their families and settlements. So we have the Hrvat, Hrvic, Hrve, Hrvacic, Arvat, Arvatovic families and the settlements of Hrvati, Hrvatsko Brdo and so on. (35)

In Istanbul the Montenegrin representative was called "Hrvat-basha". A Montenegrin woman in Istanbul said once to the writer Adolf Weber in 1885 "Here all, whether Wallachs or Catholics, are called Croats and this is their name from old times." (37) The Russian historian M.M. Filipov confirms this fact. (38) In an official document issued in Istanbul in 1863 mention is made of a certain "Dmitri Vickovic, head of the Croats in Zupci (Montenegro)." (39)

The elimination of the Croatian name and the Serbianization of Montenegro began in the XVII century through the agency of the Orthodox church. But there was to be no further success until the middle of the XIX century. The Orthodox bishop Peter II Njegos (1830 – 51) was the true apostle of Serbianism in Montenegro. Under the overriding influence of the Serbian propaganda of Ilya Garasanin and Vuk Stefanovic, Nejegos composed his great poetical work "Mountain Garland" (Gorski Vijenac). (40) This work, the glorification of Serbian orthodoxy, contributed to the Serbianization of the Montenegrin intelligentsia. However the general mass of people were subconsciously aware of their origin and knew that they were not Serbs. This fact forced the creators of the second Yugoslavia to create a Montenegrin republic and in the federal constitution to recognize Montenegro as a nation different from the rest of the Yugoslav nations.



B. Bosnia: Banate and Kingdom

Bosnia took its name from the river Bosna, called Basan in prehistoric times and Basanius in Roman times. (1) According to the division of the empire by Diocletian in 297 Bosnian Posavina was included in the Roman province of Pannonia, and the mountainous parts of Bosnia from Mounts Borja to Konjuh in the south, including all of Herzegovina belonged to the province of Dalmatia. (2)



The Croats settle in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 626

Porphyrogenitus, on the basis of ancient sources in Byzantine imperial archives, records that the Croats upon their arrival in the south settled the Roman and Byzantine provinces of Dalmatia, Pannonia and Illyricum. (3) Modern Bosnia and Herzegovina occupy that area and the Croats settled there when they arrived in 626.

This is confirmed by an old Croatian chronicle used between 1074 and 1081 by the author of the chronicle "Kingdom of the Croats." This work is an account of the first Croatian ruler: "…he took the kingdom of Illyricum, that is, all the land lying on the side of Valdemija (Vinodol) right to Polonija (Albanian Apollina)…It reaches as far as Bosnia and includes Dalmatia…both the seaboard and the hinterland…Bosnia and all the land from Valdemin right to Polonija is his kingdom, including as much the littoral as the hinterland…" (4)

The political organization of Bosnia tells us that the Croats settled in immediately upon their arrival in the south. Bosnia was a banate from the earliest times. Bans ruled over it without interruption until 1377 when the Bosnian ban Tvrtko I proclaimed himself king. (5)

The dignity of ban is a purely Croatian institution. It is known neither to the Serbs nor to the Bulgarians, nor to any other medieval European people. Therefore every region ruled by a ban must have been inhabited by Croats because only they could have given the ruler of their land the pure Croatian title of ban. Accordingly the dignity of ban indicates to us that the Croats lived in Bosnia during the whole of the middle ages from the earliest times.

The social organization of medieval Bosnia was also Croatian. For in that time it was closely connected with the Croatian lands. Even today archaeological remains of churches, of the courts of kings and magnates and numerous tombstones, the so-called "stecci", confirm this. They all bear the stamp of Western and Croatian civilization. (7)



History of Bosnia up to the XII century

The old Croatian work "Methodus" recording the proceedings of the diet of Duvno in 753 mentions for the first time Bosnia by name. At that time Bosnia was an autonomous province of the Croatian state. (8) However Bosnia still remained a part of the Croatian state which in the IX and X centuries bordered on Bulgaria on the Drina. In eastern Bosnia between the Mounts Konjuh and Romanija the Croatian duke Trpimir ca. 852 and the Croatian king Tomislav in 927 vanquished the armies of the Bulgarian rulers Boris Mihailo and Simeon the Great respectively. (9)

During the wars of succession in Croatia in 948 – 49 Caslav, grand prince of Serbia, occupied Bosnia and other Croatian lands east of the Vrbas and Cetina. For that reason the contemporaneous writer Porphyrogenitus includes a brief account of the "little land of Bosnia" in his work "De administrando imperio" at the end of chapter 32 in which he gives an account of the Serbs. (10) However ca. 960 the Croatian king Kresimir regained Bosnia for Croatia. (11) Since then and up until 1918 Bosnia was no longer part of the Serbian state or under Serbian suzerainty.

When the Bulgarian emperor Samuel occupied Red Croatia in 990 – 91, Bosnia also fell subject to him. (12) In 1018 the Byzantine emperor Basil II destroyed the Bulgarian empire and occupied all the lands formerly held by the Bulgarians, including Bosnia. (13) During the uprising in Bosnia from 1036 – 42 the Croatian king Stephen I liberated Bosnia from the Byzantines and united it with the Croatian state. (14) Around 1060 the Croatian king Peter Kresimir IV founded a Catholic bishopric in Bosnia. (15) The anti-pope Clement III made it a suffragan bishopric of the new metropolitanate of Bar in 1089. (16) This tells us that Bosnia had been associated for some time with the Croatian kingdom of Red or South Croatia. (17) Bosnia remained part of that state as an autonomous unit until 1138 when it became part of the associate kingdom of Hungary and Croatia. In view of this the Hungarian king Bela II appointed his son Ladislav "duke of Bosnia in 1139. (18)

The first Bosnian ban known by name was called Boric. He zealously aided the Hungarian king Geza II (1141 – 61) in his struggles with the Byzantine emperor Emmanuel I Comnenus (1143 – 80). (19) John Cinnamos, secretary and chronicler of t
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The first Bosnian ban known by name was called Boric. He zealously aided the Hungarian king Geza II (1141 – 61) in his struggles with the Byzantine emperor Emmanuel I Comnenus (1143 – 80). (19) John Cinnamos, secretary and chronicler of the emperor Emmanuel, describes the return of ban Boric to Bosnia after the war in 1155. "When he approached the Sava he veered off to another river called the Drina which flows in another direction, dividing Bosnia from Serbia. Bosnia was not subject to the grand prince of Serbia, but is autonomous, it is a different nation, living according to its own customs and self-governing." (20)

Cinnamos, who personally accompanied the emperor Emmanuel into Rasa and sae with his own eyes how the people lived there and in Bosnia, here states incontestably that Serbs do not live in Bosnia, but only Croats because then as now there were only two nations living in the central Balkans: Serbs and Croats.

In 1164 – 65 the Byzantine army under the command of John Dukas occupied all of Croatia up to the Iron Alps, including Bosnia. (21) In the last years of the reign of Emmanuel, in all probability from 1163, ban Kulin, a near cousin of ban Boric, governed Bosnia. As soon as the defeat of Emmanuel in Asia Minor in 1176, and soon after that, his death, became known, Kulin drove the Byzantines out of Bosnia and occupied Donje Kraje around the upper Vrbas and the districts of Usora and Soli, then held by the Byzantines. (22)
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Bogomilism in Bosnia

Ban Kulin was a good and pious Catholic his whole life, yet due to his ignorance in religious matters he actually helped the spread of Bogomilism in Bosnia. (25) Its founder was the Bulgarian priest Bogomil, who lived in the time of the Bulgarian emperor Peter (927 – 69). Bogomilism was actually a new form of the old Manichean dualism (Manes, d. 277). (26)

The Bogomils thought that there existed two principles: a good god and evil god. The first created all that was spiritual and the second, called Satan or the Devil, the visible world. According to this doctrine man’s soul, a spark of the good god, is kept a prisoner in the body created by Satan. The human soul must be freed from the body and return to its maker, the good god. Once a man is baptised as a Bogomil he devotes himself to a life of penitence, renouncing the procreative act and abstaining from any substance connected with animal life. Accordingly the Bogomils renounced marriage, did not consume meat or dairy products, but fed themselves on cereals and vegetable produce. Only the "perfect Christians", the genuine Bogomils led such a life, and of those there were never more than a few hundred in Bosnia. The simple believers lived an ordinary life, but had to promise that before their death they would renounce the world and be baptized as Bogomils by the laying on of the hands and the imposition of the Gospel of St. John upon their heads. (27)

The perfect "Bosnian Christians", as they alone called themselves, lived in communal dwellings presided over by elders. The supreme head of the Bogomil hierarchy in Bosnia was called "Patriarch of the Bosnian Church" and was considered by the Bogomils as Christ’s vicar, the true successor of St. Peter and their pope. The patriarch and his two chief assistants, the Grand Guest and the Grand Elder, in Bogomil belief received their authority by ordination from apostolic times, i.e. apostolic succession. The patriarch, his tow chief assistants and the ten deacon apostles made up the Bogomil hierarchy. The Bogomils did not recognize the Christian church, neither Eastern nor Western, as a divine institution. They rejected the Christian sacraments, especially baptism by water as well as the Eucharist. They had no churches, but performed the services and conducted their prayers in the dining halls of monasteries, in private homes and sheltered spots. They considered marriage a sin, but permitted it to simple believers as a necessary evil. (28)

At a historical meeting at Bilina near Zenica in 1203 the Bosnian Christians in the presence of ban Kulin and John de Casamare, legate of pope Innocent III acknowledged the control of the Catholic church and were proclaimed as true Catholics. (29) Under this pretext the Bogomils freely entered the homes of the Bosnian nobility and intermingled with all classes without restrictions. They won over to their side the majority of the uneducated Catholic Glagolitic priests, not to mention the Catholic Glagolitic bishops of Bosnia. The Bosnian bans Stephen (1204 - 21) and Ninoslav (1221 – 54) were of the Bogomil faith. (30) From that time up to the Turkish occupation of Bosnia in 1463 Bogomilism was one of the main political factors in the land.

When pope Honorius III realized that the Bosnian Christians were still preaching and holding to their ancient errors, he ordered his legate Acontius on December 3rd, 1221 to organize a crusade and to extirpate Bogomilism from Bosnia by force. The warlike Ugrin, archbishop of Kalocsa (1219 – 41) led the crusade. After initial success the crusade failed because then as later the Hungarians led the crusades mainly for political purposes, namely to subjugate Bosnia to Hungary. (31) In the fighting the Bogomils came forth as the defenders of Bosnia’s freedom and therefore the patriotic Bosnian nobility admired them and fell under their influence.

After the failure of the first crusade Gregory IX (1227 – 41) sent the Dominicans to Bosnia to convert the Bogomils by their missionary work. They succeeded in converting to Catholicism the ban Ninoslav and his near cousin Prijezda the Great. (32) Since that time the rulers of Bosnia, bans and kings, were always Catholics. (33) Due to the fact that the majority of the Bosnian population, especially the nobility, followed the Bogomil creed, Bosnia became the first European state in which full religious tolerance existed and where the rulers did not force the citizenry to follow their creed but allowed members of different faiths to live in peace and to perform their services for the state as long as they were loyal Bosnians.



The Kotromanic dynasty in Bosnia

The same dynasty ruled in Bosnia from early times, in any case from 1138 when the country became part of the Hungarian-Croatian state. Ban Tvrtko I writes in 1336 that the grandfather of his uncle Stephen II was Prijezda the Great, (34) the near cousin of ban Ninoslav, (35) who wrote to pope Gregory IX that before him his grandparents ruled Bosnia, (36) which takes us back three generations or approximately to 1138. According to old Croatian common law the principle of seniority governed the accession to the throne in Bosnia. (37) From the middle of the XIII century the Bosnian bans and kings called themselves the Kotromanic, in all probability after Prijezda the Great who was the maternal grandson of the Croatian magnate Kotroman. (38)

The greatest Bosnian rulers were Stephen II Kotromanic (1312 – 53) and his nephew and successor Tvrtko (1353 – 91). Stephen II contributed in 1322 to the fall of Mladen II, the successor of Pavao Subic, ban of Croatia and lord of Bosnia. In connection with this that same year Stephen extended his power to Zahumlje and the following year toTropolje (Duvno, Hlivno and Glamoc) and Krajina between the Nerevta and the Cetina. (39)



The Franciscans convert the Bogomils to Catholicism

It is especially to the credit of ban Stephen II that the Franciscan order in 1340 established the vicariate of Bosnia, a missionary organization for the conversion of the Bogomils to the Catholic faith through evangelical preaching. Henceforth generations of talented Franciscan missionaries from all over Europe would assemble in Bosnia: from Croatian Catholic regions, Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany, Hungary and Poland. (40) The Franciscan vicariate of Bosnia would be called the province of Bosnia Srebrenicka until 1517 and become a very important and influential factor in the later history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (41)

Stephen II Kotromanic erected the first Franciscan monastery next to his court in Sutjeska and Mili by Visoko, where he built a crypt for himself and his family in the monastery church. (42) Already by 1376 the Bosnian vicariate numbered 35 monasteries with some 400 missionaries. (43) By their activity approximately 500,000 Bogomils were converted to Catholicism by 1400. (44)



Bosnia becomes a kingdom

The young and enterprising ban Tvrtko I consolidated his banate that he inherited from his uncle Stephen II, in his struggles with the Bogomil dissenters of Bosnia and with the Hungarian king Louis I. When Serbia’s power waned after the death of its emperor Stefan Dusan (d. 1355), Tvrtko occupied Podrinje and Travunja. In order to emphasize the independence and sovereignty of Bosnia, Tvrtko had himself crowned king of Bosnia in the spring of 1377. Since the crown of Bosnia had never existed nor was recognized by anyone, Tvrtko had himself crowned once more in Milesevo (Podrinje) on October 26th, 1377 with the old crown of Serbia, stating that it belonged to him as grandson of Elisabeth, daughter of the Serbian king Stefan Dragutin. At the same time Tvrtko hoped thereby to obtain the rich tribute of Mitrovdan which the people of Dubrovnik paid to the Serbian kings. (45) During the dynastic struggles in Croatia following the death of Louis I (d. 1382) Tvrtko extended his power far into Adriatic Croatia and took the title of "king of Dalmatia and Croatia." (46) Tvrtko’s intention was to bring together all the Croatian lands under Bosnian hegemony, but he was interrupted in this plan by a premature death in 1391.

The successors of Tvrtko I wasted their energies in the struggles with the Hungarian kings who wished to subjugate Bosnia once more to their authority. They were helped by selfish Bosnian aristocrats who attempted to consolidate the power of their families at the expense of the king’s central authority. The most powerful of these magnates were Hrvoje Vukcic Hrvatinic (d. 1416), Sandalj Hranic (d. 1435) and his nephew and successor Stjepan Vukcic Kosaca (1435 – 66). (47) In 1448 he received from the emperor Frederick III the honorary title of "duke (Herzog) of St. Sava" from which his country took the name of Herzegovina. (48) The last king of Croatian descent, the Bosnian king Stjepan Tomasevic, was put to death by the Turkish sultan Mehmed II below Jajce on May 25th, 1463.


DEVELOPMENT OF PRESENT-DAY BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
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The Islamization of Bosnia and Herzegovina

On account of the quarrels among the Bosnian rulers and because of the remnants of the Bogomils resisted the conversion to Christianity, Bosnia fell to Turkish domination in 1463. Apart from a small number of non-Slavic Wallachs and about 25,000 Serbs in Podrinje, at that time the population of the Bosnian kingdom was still exclusively Croatian, numbering about 750,000 Catholics and 80,000 to 90,000 Bogomils. (49) Seeing that the Catholic Croatians were fleeing en masse before the Turks, the conquerors of the land, the sultan Mehmed II on May 28th, 1463 granted to the head of the Franciscans, Fra Angelo of Vrhbosna, the Ahdnam, a solemn charter guaranteeing that the life of the Franciscans would be spared and that they could retain their possessions as long as they were loyal to him. Moreover the sultan allowed all who had fled to return unharmed to their homes. (50) It is to the credit of the Franciscans that the Catholic faith held out in Bosnia and Herzegovina although it disappeared in all other countries occupied by the Turks.

According to the Koran and to the Moslem religious laws, all Moslems in Turkey, regardless of national origin, were full citizens with full rights and could attain to every position in the state. They paid fewer taxes and enjoyed various social privileges. Turkey did not force the monotheistic Christians and Jews to embrace Islam. They could remain in their faith, but lived like cattle with no social status, in order to maintain the Islamic state with their labour and payment of taxes. (51)

In the new circumstances in which they found themselves the majority of the Croatian Bogomils passed over to Islam in the first years after the fall of Bosnia. Only a few Catholic Croats converted to Islam in the beginning, mostly the kindred of those prisoners who were Islamized after the fall of Bosnia, or of the Janissaries who, beginning in 1472, were being taken away by force as young boys from their Christian parents. (52) Generally the Catholic Croats clung fiercely to their creed and could not at all reconcile themselves to the loss of their freedom as a people and as a state. When the Turks began in earnest to extend their power to Croatia in 1512 – 13, the Franciscans and many Croatian Catholics secretly and openly became outlaws in order to work against Turkey. This was the reason in the first code of the Bosnian sanjak in 1516 a law was passed for the political persecution of Catholics. It read "Let all the newly erected churches be destroyed; and let those infidels and their clergymen who reside in them in order to watch on the state of affairs and to report to the infidel nations be severely punished…Let the crosses erected along the roads be taken down and let it be forbidden in the future to erect them." (53)

As a result of this law a severe persecution of Catholics got under way. Most of the Franciscan monasteries and the Franciscan and Glagolitic parishes in the Bosnian sanjak were demolished. These persecutions, sometimes severe and sometimes mild, lasted until the wars of Vienna (1683 – 99). The persecutions were sometimes localized and sometimes they were general. Among other things this resulted in a widespread desertion of the Catholic priesthood, not only in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, but even in western Bosnia. (54)

In order to escape an unbearable social situation and to preserve their faith, a part of the Catholic Croats migrated into the free Croatian lands and into other Catholic countries. Their number rose to about 300,000. This included the following Croatian people: the Bunjevci, Uskoci, Vodeni, Predavci and Sokci. (55) One part, particularly those who had been long since deserted by their Catholic priests, such as those in eastern Herzegovina and western Bosnia, placed themselves under the protection of the Orthodox church which enjoyed special privileges in the Turkish state. (56) The majority of the Croatian Catholics accepted Islam, completely so in the cities and trading centres, but only externally in the villages. These continued to live as Christians at home, while outside the home they made a show of being Moslems. They baptized and circumcised their children, publicly bore Moslem names but each one had his or her own Christian name, believing that the time would soon come when they would be liberated and called by their Christian names. These crypto Catholics were called "Poturi" i.e. half Turks. (57) They were found in all Croatian lands conquered by the Turks from the end of the XV to the end of the XVI century.

In 1624 there were about 900,000 Moslems in Bosnia and Herzegovina (67 percent), two thirds of whom were probably Poturi, about 300,000 Catholics (22 percent) and about 150,000 Orthodox (11 percent), mostly non-Slavic Wallachs and Catholics newly converted to Orthodoxy. (58) By the wars of Vienna the number of Catholics diminish by more than half, what with the migrations and conversion to Islam and Orthodoxy. After the migration of 1648 – 99 the number of Catholics Croats in Bosnia fall to 25,000 (59)



National consciousness in Bosnian and Herzegovina in Turkish times

The population of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Turkish administration, although its faith underwent several mutations both before and after the fall of Bosnia in 1463, remained Croatian and was made up of the same people that had settled in the land in 626.

The Moslem Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially those educated in the janissary school and in the institutions of higher education in Istanbul, as the janissary elite and as educated state officials, contributed essentially to the ascendancy and greatness of the Turkish empire from the mid-fifteenth to mid-seventeenth century. Twenty-four of them were grand viziers of the Turkish empire, among them Rustem-pasha Hrvat and Mehmed-pasha Sokolovic, considered the greatest Turkish statesmen of all time. Twenty-three Croatian Moslems were sons-in-law of the Turkish sultan. (60)

Both in Bosnia and Herzegovina the native Moslem Croats performed military and administrative services. In 1463 Bosnia was turned into a Turkish sanjak. Then in 1580 it was raised to the rank of a vilayet or pashadom and all the sanjaks in Croatia were subordinate to it: Herzegovina, Zvornik, Klis, Krk, Bihac, Pozega and Cazma-Pakrac. The seat of the Bosnian sanjak was Sarajevo, of the vilayet in Banja Luka from 1580 to 1639, in Sarajevo from 1639 to 1697 and in Travnik after the wars of Vienna until 1850. (61)

The Turks themselves, except for some military and civil officials, did not come to Bosnia, nor did any members of any other Asiatic nations. (62) There was never enough Turks even to form an enclave of the Turkish language in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Up to the wars of Vienna (1683 – 99) the Croatian Moslems lived in close connection with the Croatian Catholics. Catholic and Moslem families of the same origin frequently cohabited in the same locality. In some families the parents were Catholic and the sons Moslems, or the husband was Moslem and the wife was Catholic. Both the Moslems and the Catholics were aware of their Croatian origin, although others, and even they themselves, called them Bosnians and Herzegovinians. Both groups spoke the old Croatian language in the Ikavian form with a strong mixture of Cakavian. They still used the Croatian script, called Bosanchitsa. They retained many old national customs governing the family and social relations, as well as ancient folk superstitions such as fairies, witches and vampires. Today Croatian Catholics and Moslems in Bosnia form a distinct linguistic and organic community, different from the Serbian newcomers. (63)

That the Catholics and the Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina were aware of their Croatian nationality even in Turkish times we are prepared to demonstrate with the following evidence.

When the native Bosnians, Bunjevie, Vodeni, Predavci and others began to flee west at the end of the XV century and the outset of the XVI century they called themselves Croats and their contemporaries also. (64)

The papal legate Burgio writes in 1526 "Bosnia belongs to Croatia." Another papal envoy notes in 1580 that the Uma is "the main river in Croatia." (65)

The Croatian writer Fra Franjo Glavinic, born in 1585 in Bosnian Glamoc, calls his language Croatian. In his work "Origins of the Province of Bosnian Croatia" he writes "The Bosnians are of the same nation as the Croats and their language is the same. " (66)

When the native Bosnians of the Catholic creed entered Turkish military service they called themselves "Croatian heroes." The Turkish chronicler Evila Chelebia, who travelled through Bosnia several times in the XVII century, note this name more than once. (67) Chelebia notes that the Orthodox inhabitants of Montenegrin Piva were "pure, genuine Croats." (68)

Fra Lovro Sitovic of Ljubuski, born a Moslem, regularly calls his language Croatian. In the introduction to his grammar, intended for the use of young Franciscans in Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slavonia and Backa, he addresses everyone with the same salutation "We Croats." (69)

The Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not ashamed of their Croatian name and language. Some grand viziers were particularly proud of the Croatian name, so that even today Turkish historians call them Croats. So we find names like Mahmud-pasha Hrvat, Rustem-pasha Hrvat, Sijavush-pasha Hrvat, Murad-pasha Hrvat and so on. (70) The Moslem Croats of the janissary schools in Istanbul not only spoke Croatian in the function of their duties throughout the empire but also even compelled other officials of other nations to learn and speak Croatian. In this way they were even emulated by certain sultans, such as Suleiman the Magnificent. On same subject the Viennese emissary A. Pigafetta writes in 1567: "They spoke Croatian. In Istanbul it is the custom to speak Croatian and all the Turks in the civil service and particularly in the army are familiar with it." (71) From the XV to the XVII century the Croatian language was the second diplomatic language in the Turkish empire. (72)

Mehmed-pasha Sokolovic (ca. 1510 – 79), born in eastern Bosnia near Visegrad, after having completed his higher education with outstanding honours, was asked by Suleiman II where he came from and he replied "from Croatia." (73)

In 1589 the emissary of the Bosnian vizier concluded an agreement with F. Nani, the Venetian providore in Dalmatia. The Bosnian emissary writes: "Therefore we, the aforesaid Hodaverdi, a non-commissioned officer in the Turkish army, wished to do right by this affair and to write two books in Turkish and two in Croatian." (74)



Bosnia and Herzegovina from the wars of Vienna (1683 – 99) to the Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878

During the wars of Vienna and the successive wars waged by the Western nations against Turkey up to 1878, the Moslems of Bosnia successfully kept Bosnia from becoming Christian. Even the "Poturi", who for several generations were forbidden to communicate with Catholic priests, finally became convinced Moslems. Those Croats who were converted to Islam in Dalmatia, Like, Slavonia and southern Hungary returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina when those lands passed into Christian hands. These returnees numbered about 100,000. (75) Seeing that the Catholic Croats participated in wars waged by the Western powers against Turkey, the Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina excluded themselves from any contact with them. They associated Islam with the name of Bosnia and forgetting their Croatian origin proclaimed themselves Bosnians.

The revival of Croatian consciousness among the Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina began in the first half of the XIX century and developed especially toward the end of that century when they began to attend Western institutions of higher learning, to study the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to discover their affinities with the other Croatian peoples. (76)

Of the present-day Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina 80 – 85 % are descended from native Croats of these lands, either former Bogomils or Catholics; 12 – 13 % from Moslem Croats who immigrated from the surrounding Croatian regions and from Montenegro; and finally 3 – 5 % are of Turkish or other foreign origin. (77)



B. Dubrovnik and its Republic

Origins of the Dalmatian city of Ragusa

In the southwestern part of present-day Dubrovnik, on a rocky elevation, a small settlement called Hrausion was situated in Illyrian times. It was separated from the mainland by a channel. At one time the "Stradun" ran along it (the modern Placa). (1) When the Avars, together with the Slavs of the first migration, destroyed the city of Epidaurum, situated on the site of modern Cavtat, at the outset of the VII century, some of the citizens saved themselves by seeking refuge in Hrausion, located ca. 15 kilometres northwest of Epidaurum. As Porphyrogenitus records on the basis of older sources, quite a few dignitaries from the chief city of Salona sought refuge in this spot when Salona was destroyed in 614/15. (2)

When the Croats liberated Dalmatia from the Avars in 626 they settled on the slopes of the hill of St. Sergius as far as the channel dividing Hrausion from the mainland. Seeing that this region was wooded the Croats called it Dubrava, from which the main settlement lying opposite Hrausion took the name Dubrovnik.

John of Ravenna, metropolitan of Split, ca. 643 established a diocese in Hrausion to look after the remnants of the Christians in that town and to Christianize the Croats in the surrounding regions. (3) The anonymous author from Ravenna, in the third quarter of the VII century, mentions this settlement as a city known under the Latin name of Ragusium and called Ragusa by the native Romans. (4)

With the steady rise in the birthrate and the recent immigration of Illyro-Romans from the nearby surroundings fleeing the Narentian Croats, the population increased and the city limits had to be expanded several times. Finally the channel dividing the Roman town of Ragusa from the Croatian settlement of Dubrovnik was filled in and it became one city. Porphyrogenitus describes it thus: "At first they built a little town, then a larger one. After that the walls were rebuilt on a larger perimeter, until finally by gradual expansion and with the increase of the population they created this present city." (5)



Ragusa – Dubrovnik under Byzantine rule

Ragusa was one of the five cities which, being on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, remained under Byzantine rule when the Croats settled in those regions. (6) By the middle of the IX century the city was already so well fortified that it was able to hold out against a fifteen month siege by the Saracens from North Africa in 866 – 67. (7) When the Croats of South Croatia and others in 870 went to the aid of the Frankish emperor Louis II to liberate Bari in southern Italy from the Saracens, the Ragusans ferried them over. (8) This tells us that already by that time Ragusa had an important fleet and was beginning to develop as a commercial city.

In order that they might have free use of the land in the vicinity of their city, beginning in 879 Ragusa paid a yearly tribute of 36 gold pieces to the Croatian princes of Zahumlje and Travunja. (9) During the reigns of Tomislav (923 – 29) and Drzislav (969 – 95) Ragusa, together with all of Byzantine Dalmatia, was under Croatian suzerainty. (10)

When in 990 – 91 the Bulgarian emperor Samuel occupied Red Croatia, Ragusa also passed under his domination. In order to remove the Catholic bishops in the conquered territory from the authority of the metropolitan of Split who continued to exercise his jurisdictional authority in unconquered White Croatia, Samuel obtained from pope Gregory V (996 – 99) permission to raise the bishopric of Dubrovnik to the rank of metropolitanate or archbishopric. (11) In 1018 when Basil II destroyed the Bulgarian empire and took Bosnia and Red Croatia under his control, he reorganized these lands into a separate Byzantine theme with its seat in Ragusa. (12) Consequently Ragusa began to grown in importance and to develop with increased vigour.

During the uprising of 1036 – 42 Dobroslav, duke of Duklja, liberated Red Croatia from Byzantine control and acknowledged the suzerainty of the Croatian king Stephen I who came to his aid. (13) Because Ragusa remained under Byzantine authority, the bishops of Red Croatia once more came under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Split. The result of this was that the archdiocese of Dubrovnik was abolished for lack of suffragan diocese. (14)

At the outset of the reign of the Croatian king Peter Kresimir IV (ca. 1056 – 74) Byzantium handed over Upper and Lower Dalmatia, including Ragusa, to his control. (15) In 1074 when under Mihala, duke of Duklja, Red Croatia seceded from the united Croatian kingdom, Ragusa did not acknowledge Mihala’s authority. (16)

During the war waged by the Normans against Byzantium and Venice form 1081 to 1085 Ragusa joined the Norman cause in their fight against Byzantium with whom the Ragusans, as avowed Catholics, had become quite estranged because of the schism of 1054. According to the "Chronicle of Pop Dukljanin" king Bodin (1081 – 1101) waged war against Ragusa and occupied it because his rivals in the dynastic struggles in Duklja fled to it for protection. (17) Dubrovnik soon seceded from the authority of Duklja and made great progress in its development. In 1120 Dubrovnik succeeded in obtaining from pope Callixtus II the bull "De Domini sapientia" which granted to the diocese of Dubrovnik the right of a metropolitan see in those dioceses specified by the bull’s privileges and represented by Gerhard bishop of Dubrovnik. (18) The Byzantine emperor Emmanuel Comnenus (1143 – 80) occupied Duklja, including Ragusa, from 1149 to 1151. Since he considered it an ancient Byzantine possession, the emperor was very gracious in his dealings with the city and careful in his treatment of religious questions. (19) However in the autumn of 1171, when the doge of Venice Vital Michieli led a sizeable fleet against Byzantium and reached Dubrovnik, the city opened its gates to him and concluded a favourable treaty with him which served as a precedent for future agreements and as a basis on which to cement relations between Dubrovnik and Venice. (20)

Following the death of emperor Emmanuel in 1180 the grand prince of Serbia Stefan Nemanja wished to extend the limits of his state to the sea and to subjugate all the cities from the Neretva to the Drim in Albania. Foreseeing the danger Dubrovnik submitted to the protection of the Normans (1186 – 90). (21) Nemanja and his brother Miroslav waged war on Dubrovnik without success and in 1186 the brothers concluded peace with the city. In this peace, the proceeding drawn up in Latin, Nemanja and his brother granted the people of Dubrovnik free trade in all their countries. (22) In 1189 the Ragusans concluded a very favourable commercial treaty with the Bosnian ban Kulin, written in Croatian. In this treaty the name Ragusa was not mentioned, but only Dubrovnik. (23)



Ragusa – Dubrovnik becomes Croatian

The Slavs of the first migration did not settle on the islands and the littoral from Nerevta to the Bay of Kotor or on the entire Dalmatian littoral. (24) Only the Croats settled in those regions upon their arrival in 626. (25) They settled particularly in Dubrava and in the neighbouring regions around Ragusa. Porphyrogenitus records that "the Croats hindered" the Roman citizens of Ragusa from cultivating the land around them during the time of emperor Basil (867 – 86). (26) This tells us that the Croats were immediate neighbours of Ragusa. When the Croatian settlement of Dubrovnik, lying opposite Ragusa, merged with the Roman city, the result was that the Croatian population became an integral and considerable part of the new city of Ragusa – Dubrovnik. Most probably Ragusa and Dubrovnik merged into a single community when Ragusa became the chief city to the Byzantine military province of Red Croatia and Bosnia from 1018 – 1042.(27) In the first Statute of the city from the year 1272 Ragusa and Dubrovnik form one community – communitas Ragusina. (28)

Ragusa and its nobility continued to be Croatized when the Ragusans married the Croats from the surrounding vicinity and when prominent families from the surrounding regions and remote areas inhabited by Catholic Croats settled in Ragusa. This influx of Croats into Ragusa reached its peak from 923 to 1074, which is from the reign of king Tomislav to that of king Peter Kresimir IV, when the Croatian kings either governed or had under their control Byzantine Dalmatia including Ragusa. (29)

An old Ragusan tradition (30) as well as the church of St. Stephen mentioned by Porphyrogenitus in his work "De administrando imperio" attest to the close relations between the Croats and the Ragusans in the early times. That church was the work of Croatian builders and was richly decorated with Croatian troplets. (31) The fact that from the XI century the prince’s deputy in Ragusa was called by the Croatian title of ban attests to the presence of quite a numerous Croatian population in the early times. (32) It is our opinion that this was the title conferred on the head of the Croatian community in Dubrovnik and when the two towns merged, the ban became the deputy to the head of the combined towns of Ragusa and Dubrovnik. The Arab geographer Ibn Idris writes in 1154 that Dubrovnik is the last great "city of Croatia." (33)

The oldest preserved official documents of the community of Dubrovnik from the XI and XII centuries tell us that already by then a considerable part of the nobility and officials of Dubrovnik had been Croatized. (34) In a treaty with the Bulgarian emperor Michael Asen in 1253 the members of the Lesser and Greater Councils and the other officials of Dubrovnik all bore Croatian Christian names and surnames. (35)

The Serbs did not take part in the Slavization of Ragusa. They only reached the Adriatic just by the end of the XII century (36), when Ragusa already had been for the most part Croatized. Moreover the Serbs were mostly pagans until the time of emperor Basil I (867 – 86). Afterwards they were converted to Orthodoxy and after the schism of 1054 remained loyal to Orthodoxy. (37) The Ragusans who from early times were zealous Catholics and devoted to the Roman liturgy and church life, refused to marry Orthodox Serbs and even forbade them to settle in the city. (38)



Dubrovnik under Venetian overlordship (1205 – 1358)

During the fourth crusade (1202 – 04) Venice occupied Byzantium and many territories of the former Byzantine empire. Thereby it became on of the great European powers. In 1205 Dubrovnik had to recognize the overlordship of Venice but concluded an agreement with the Venetians in which the city’s autonomy was guaranteed. (39) From that time on the prince or rector of Dubrovnik was a Venetian, but he governed the city in conjunction with the municipal council in accordance with the established customs of the city. In conjunction with the prince the citizens of Dubrovnik conducted their domestic and foreign policies with a good measure of independence. Without asking for Venice’s approval they conducted commercial and other treaties with foreign cities and states. The protection of the powerful ‘Republic of St. Mark’ enabled the Ragusans to develop without hindrance their trade relations with all the countries of the Mediterranean. (40) Dubrovnik had a trade agreement with the rich maritime republic of Pisa as early as 1169. In this period Dubrovnik formed alliances and trade relations with the kingdoms of Naples and Spain. In particular it developed and almost completely controlled the trade and mining industry of the Slavic countries of the Balkans: Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria. (41)



Dubrovnik under the protection of the kingdom of Hungary and Croatia (1358 – 1526)

By the peace of Zadar in 1358 the Venetians were forced to cede all of Dalmatia, including Dubrovnik, considered part of the old kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia, to the Hungarian king Louis I. (42) After mutual agreement Louis, by the charter of May 27th, 1358 took Dubrovnik under his protection and bound himself to respect the established regulations and freedom of the city. On their side the Ragusans bound themselves to pay an annual tribute of 500 ducats to the king and to assist him in his naval campaigns by providing one ship for every thirty provided by the king. (43)

With this treaty Dubrovnik really became an independent republic. Henceforth it was wholly responsible for its own protection and for the development of its trade. From 1359 to 1361 Dubrovnik waged war with the Serbian magnate Vojislav and from 1370 to 1371 with Nikola Altomanovic. (44) Still more arduous were the wars waged by Dubrovnik against the Bosnian king Ostoja (1403 - 04), duke Radoslav Pavlovic (1430 – 31) and Stjepan Kosaca (1451 – 54). (45) Thanks to its wealth and its allies from the neighbouring states Dubrovnik always managed to skirt every perilous situation without grave consequences. The golden era in Dubrovnik’s history lasted from 1359 to the major earthquake of 1667.
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LANDS BELONGING TO THE REPUBLIC OF DUBROVNIK


Territorial expansion of the Republic of Dubrovnik

In order to use the land in its immediate vicinity, Ragusa in 879 began to pay a yearly tribute of 36 ducats each to the Croatian princes of Zahumlje and Travunja. (46) The Ragusans planted vineyards and later claimed those lands for themselves, but continued to pay rent to the princes until Turkish times.

The island of Lastovo submitted to the authority of Dubrovnik in 1272. (47) In 1333 the Serbian king Stefan Dusan sold Ston and the peninsula of Rat (Peljesac) to Dubrovnik for a lump sum of 8,000 perpers plus 500 perpers annuity. (48) Dusan then embarked on a policy of removing all Serbs from the land sold, so that only native Croats remained on Ston and Rat. Seeing that Ston and Rat originally belonged to Zahumlje, Dubrovnik bound itself to pay a yearly tribute of 500 perpers to the Bosnian bans of the Kotromanic dynasty, the masters of Zahumlje at the time. (50)

In the second half of the XIV century Dubrovnik took over the island of Mljet, owned by the local Benedictines. It had been a gift to them from the princes of Zahumlje to whom the island originally belonged. (51)

In 1399 the Bosnian king Stephan Ostoja sold to Dubrovnik the littoral from Zaton to Ston, so that the possessions of Dubrovnik extended without the interruption from the peninsula to Rat to the city itself. (52)

Dubrovnik acquired the fertile district of Konavlje in tow stages: the first half was purchased from the Bosnian duke Sandalj Hranic in 1419 (53) and the second, including Cavtat, from duke Radoslav Pavlovic in 1427. (54) At that time it was inhabited by the old Croatian Catholic, Bogomil and Orthodox populations.

With all these purchases the territory of the republic of Dubrovnik extended from the mouth of the bay of Boka Kotorska to the head of the peninsula of Rat, an overall length of 170 kilometres. Dubrovnik ruled over this territory until the dissolution of the republic in 1808.

Dubrovnik finally became a fully Croatian state with its political expansion into regions occupied by a purely Croatian population during the XIV and at the outset of the XV century. Although according to the customs then in use and for the sake of foreign trade Latin was employed, but Croatian was spoken at home. By that time the last Roman families in Dubrovnik had been Croatized by the environment and through intermarriage.



Political organization of the Republic of Dubrovnik

According to the customs of the late Roman empire Ragusa was governed in early times by a prince called a comes with consuls and judges in accordance with the decrees of a general assembly of the citizens. These made up the "community of Ragusa." The popes addressed their letters "to the prince and people of Ragusa." (55) In 1169 – 70 the borough of the plain of Popovo wrote: "To the prince and municipality of Dubrovnik." Here for the first time the Croatian name of the city is mentioned in a verifiable source. (56) In 1186 Stefan Nemanja and his brother Miroslav concluded a peace treaty with Dubrovnik "in the presence of prince Gervasius, all the nobles and the whole people." (57)

Under the overlordship of Venice the nobility gathered all the more into their hands the reins of government. In 1235 the Lesser and Greater Councils are mentioned along with the prince, but the general assembly of all the citizens still had the final say in all resolutions. (58) Before 1243 a senate was created. When in 1272 prince Marko Justinian codified all common laws up to his time and proposed the Statute of the Municipality of Dubrovnik, it was discussed and passed at the first by the Lesser and Greater Councils, then by the local nobility and was finally presented to a general assembly of all the citizens, who at last put it into force. (59) In this Statute the nobility secured for itself the right to govern the city in conjunction with the prince. According to the agreement with king Louis I in 1358 the nobility assumed all the power in the republic of Dubrovnik. From then on the Greater Council i.e. the assembly of all adult males of the nobility, became the supreme political authority and legislative body. By prior agreement it usually held a session once a month. The Greater Council elected the prince and the members of the Lesser Council and the senate. From 1358 the prince was elected once a month with the proviso that the same person could not be re-elected for the next two calendar years. The Lesser Council of the eleven members was elected once a year. It represented the executive body and conferred with the prince several times a week on matters of immediate importance. The senate had 45 members and in it were enrolled all the members of the Lesser Council. It deliberated on al the matters of domestic and foreign policy, and the Lesser Council, in conjunction with the prince, had to put them into effect. (60)



Dubrovnik as a Turkish protectorate (1526 – 1806)

Dubrovnik first came into contact with the Turks through its commerce immediately after the battle of Kossovo in 1389, when the Turks occupied the central Balkans. It carried on a particularly lively trade with the Turkish warlords of the western regions of Skoplje. (63) In 1430 Sultan Murad II granted privileges to Dubrovnik, opening up its trade with the Turkish empire. (64) In return Dubrovnik in 1442 promised to send to the sultan an annual gift of 1,000 ducats in silver plate. (65) In 1463 this same sultan renewed Dubrovnik’s commercial privileges throughout his empire on condition that it pay a tax of 2% on all good sold. (66) Moreover he converted Dubrovnik’s gift into a tax which he raised to 5,000 ducats in 1469 and to 12,500 in 1478. (67)

After the Hungarian defeat at Mohacs in 1526 Dubrovnik put itself under Turkish protection. Turkey was content with Dubrovnik’s annual tribute 12,500 ducats and refrained from encroaching on its territory or its political freedom. (68) Turkey rightly saw the great advantage that Dubrovnik afforded it. Through this city it acquired the necessary Western goods during its frequent and protracted wars with the Western Christian nations. In these wars Dubrovnik cautiously guarded its neutrality and traded with both sides. In all the major towns and cities of the Turkish empire Dubrovnik established its commercial emporiums: in Istanbul, Adrianople, Sophia, Skoplje, Belgrade, Sarajevo and Mostar.

Through its western trade Dubrovnik at the outset of the XVI century strengthened its ties with Spain, which at that time took possession of the kingdom of Naples and with the discovery of America became a great power. From Spain Dubrovnik obtained considerable trading privileges. (69)

Dubrovnik also maintained good relations with France, which was embarking on a policy of gradual rapprochement with Turkey in order to check the growth of the house of Hapsburg. Dubrovnik’s relations with England were also good when England developed into a considerable maritime power in the XVII and XVIII centuries. (70)

Dubrovnik’s only consistent foe was the Venetian republic that looked upon with disfavour the growth of its trade with Turkey and the Western countries. Venice sought to prevent Dubrovnik’s trade with the infidel Turks as well as with Christian nations. In this contention the popes tended to side mostly with Dubrovnik. Above all they appreciated the protection and aid which Dubrovnik extended to the Catholic missions in all of European Turkey and approved of Dubrovnik’s neutrality and of its commerce with the Turkish empire.

When Dubrovnik’s navigation and trade was at its height and the city reached its maximum prosperity and was at the height of its wealth, it experienced a terrible earthquake on April 6th, 1667. The earthquake destroyed more than half of the habitations and two thirds of the population. (71) Even after that misfortune Dubrovnik recovered and got back on its feet.

During the wars of Vienna (1683 – 99) Dubrovnik made a rapprochement with Austria. In return Austria made sure that another article was added to the regulations of the treaty of Karlovac in 1699 which ordered that all obstacles in the way of Dubrovnik’s trade with Turkey be removed. (72) In the treaty of Pozarevac in 1718 at Dubrovnik’s insistence, Klek near Nerevta and Sutorina in Boka Kotorska were given to Turkey, so that Dubrovnik’s territory was in this way separated from the Venetian possessions in Dalmatia. (73)

In 1806 the French army entered Dubrovnik and two years later Napoleon dissolved the republic of Dubrovnik. By the provisions of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the territory of the republic of Dubrovnik was annexed to Dalmatia and handed over to Austria. (74) Thereby the name of Dalmatia covered all the regions from Neretva to Boka Kotorska inclusively.



Cultural achievements and Croatian literature in Dubrovnik

With its genius the wealthy city of Dubrovnik during its long commercial and political history accomplished achievements of lasting value exceeding those of several great and powerful states. Thus the Statute of the city of Dubrovnik from the year of 1272 belongs among the first and most famous political constitutions in Europe. (75) From 1278 Dubrovnik systematically kept records of administrative proceedings, preserving the original of all documents received and copies of all those sent. (76) Since Dubrovnik had frequent and multilateral connections with the outside world, it came to have its own state archives in which up to the present day a large number of very valuable sources in the history of the republic, Red Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and a good part of the Mediterranean nations are preserved. The state archives of Dubrovnik belong among the greatest and most important archives of Europe. (77)

Dubrovnik began early to implement measures for the maintenance of public health. In 1377 Dubrovnik began to put in quarantine on the island of Mrkan those who were affected with contagious diseases which often broke out in those times. This institution was among the first of its kind in Europe. (78) From the middle of the XIV century Dubrovnik had also a city hospital with its own pharmacy. The first pharmacy accessible to all was established in a Franciscan monastery as early as 1317. These two pharmacies, among the first in Europe, still exist today. (79) Between 1436 and 1438 Dubrovnik built the city canalization system. It had a length of 12 kilometres and brought water from the Sumet.

The first schools for the education of the youth of Dubrovnik were established in very early times. It was the rule even in the early Middle Ages that every cathedral had its school. Numerous Benedictine monasteries, both for men and for women, in Dubrovnik and vicinity, had their schools. The establishment of some of these schools dates from the X or XI century, if not earlier. The first municipal public school in the republic of Dubrovnik was founded in 1333. This school in 1435 was divided into a lower and upper section. In the lower section the basic knowledge of Latin and Croatian was taught and in the upper section, the humanities and classical literature. (81) From 1658 to 1773 this school was under the direction of the Jesuits and took the name of Collegium Ragusinum. (82) To further their education the sons of the Ragusans were sent to different European universities, particularly to Naples, Padua and Paris.

In the domain of the arts, especially architecture, Dubrovnik accomplished singular achievements. Particularly noteworthy are the court of the prince, the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries, the church of St. Blaise, the basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the massive city walls which in their present form were erected during the XV and XVI centuries. (83)

Dubrovnik’s most significant cultural contribution is its Croatian literature (84), which is not indigenous to the city but originally developed under the influence of the Glagolitic church literature of western Croatia and particularly on the island of Krk. (85) In Croatian Glagolitic literature the poetical language and forms were elaborated during the X and XI centuries when the nobility of Dubrovnik was still for the most part speaking a Dalmatian version of Latin. The Glagolitic clerics, both priest and lay, introduced to Dubrovnik the poetic treasures of Croatian Glagolitic literature. (86) Secular Croatian literature from western Croatia, particularly from Split and Hvar, influenced the first poets of Dubrovnik. Secular Croatian poetry first developed here because it was closest to the centre of Glagolitic literature in the northern Adriatic islands. Already by the outset of the XVI century Dubrovnik became the centre of Croatian literary activity. By that time in Dubrovnik the nobility generally spoke Croatian and only a few old men still know the old Dalmatian Latin language.

Enjoying freedom and affluence the Ragusans could look after the cultural refinement of their sons better than the western Croats under Venetian authority. The prosperity of their families enabled some talented individuals to dedicate a good part of their to literary activity.

During the flowering of the literature of Dubrovnik its poets were constantly in touch with those of western Croatia. They read one another’s works and influenced one another. The one and the other were conscious of their Croatian origin and expressed this in their poetry. Thus the Ragusan poet Nikola Naljeskovic (1510 – 86) calls the poet Ivan Vidali of Korcula the "pride of glory of the Croatian language" and Vidali hails Dubrovnik as the "crown of all Croatian cities." (87) Mavro Vetranovic-Cavcic (1482 – 1576) says to his fellow citizens that in literature and renown they have surpassed "all Croats put together." (88)

During the Counter Reformation following the Council of Trent (1543 – 63), with the defeat of the Turks at Sisak in 1593 and in the fighting that continued up to 1606, the idea arose that all Slavs could be liberated from the Turks and united in the Catholic church. People began to think of all the Slavic nations as one nation, referred to as ‘Slovinci’, and speaking one common Slavic language expressed in several dialects. The Croatian Dominican Vinko Pribojevic (89) and the Benedictine Marvo Orbini from Dubrovnik with this work "Kingdom of the Slavs" (90) laid the groundwork for the historical basis of such a notion. The Jesuits Bartul Kasic (1575 – 1650), Mikalja and others asserted that Bosnian should be adopted as the common literary language of all Slavs, being the most elegant of all the Slavic languages, and that Serbian Cyrillic should be used as the common script, being similar to the Cyrillic alphabet used by the majority of Slavs. (91) Rome accepted this proposal and began to work in view of accomplishing it. (92)

Dubrovnik was situated at the centre of this movement and in the XVII and XVIII centuries the language of the people of the city was usually called Slavic (‘slovinsk’). The foremost Ragusan poet Ivan Gundulic (1589 – 1638) composed his work "Osman" in this spirit, preoccupied as he was by the idea that all Slavs would be liberated from Turkey under the hegemony of Catholic Poland and become one great Catholic nation in Europe. (93) Nevertheless, not even all these dreams of Panslavism could make Dubrovnik forget its particular association with the rest of Croatia. The Rugusan poet Vladislav Mencetic (1600 – 66), dedicating his verses "Trublja slovinska" (Ancona 1665) to the Croatian ban Peter Zrinski, expresses feeling full of patriotic sentiment:

"Your people are crowned with fame,

A teeming Croatian mulitude –

Under captivity’s wave long since

Would Italy have sunk

Had the Ottoman sea not broken

Upon Croatia’s beaches." (94)

The Franciscan Bernardin Pavlovic from Dubrovnik, born in Ston, had two works printed in Venice in 1747 "in the Croatian language." The title of the second work runs as follows: "Salves for the dying…new and revised edition printed in Croatian…for the benefit of the Croatian nation, Venice, 1747." (95)

In Dubrovnik the Jesuit Peric, the Franciscan J. Gjurinic and the Croatized Frenchman Derivaux-Bruerovic call their language Croatian. The latter at the outset of the XIX century complains that some of the people of Dubrovnik forsake their "Croatian heritage" and are ashamed "to speak only Slavic" (slovinski). (96)

In its abundance the diversity of its literary genres and their artistic quality the Croatian literature of Dubrovnik in the XVI and XVII centuries far surpasses the literature of other contemporaneous Slavic nations. Neither Polish nor Russian literature of that time can be compared with it in any way.

The Serbs did not play any part at all in the genesis and development of Dubrovnik’s literature. Up to the XVIII century the Serbs in general had no real literature. The whole corpus of Serbian literature up to that time consisted of some translations from Bulgarian and Greek, mostly ecclesiastical material and didactic treatises, of transcripts, printed from 1494 on, of church ritual, prayer and liturgical books. This Serbian corpus in no way influenced the development of Dubrovnik’s literature, nor was it influenced by Dubrovnik. The contemporaneous Orthodox monks who were laying the cornerstone of Serbian literature, brought up in the Eastern liturgy and the Byzantine spirit, were not interested in Dubrovnik’s literature which was Western and Catholic. The Serbs of that time did not consider Dubrovnik a Serbian city nor did they write about it or abut its history in their chronicles and annuals. The Serbian historian Vladimir Corovic wrote in 1931: "In spite of such diverse connections and relations between the Republic of Dubrovnik and medieval Serbian states, it is quite obvious that in our ancient chronicles and genealogies almost no interest emerges for the city of St. Blaise. In the collection of ancient Serbian genealogies and chronicles published in 1927 by Lj. Stojanovic in a publication of the Royal Serbian Academy, only a few lines are dedicated to the subject of Dubrovnik. (97)
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[ivica]

V. HISTORY OF THE SERBS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

History of the Serbs in Rasa during the first two centuries

The history of the Serbs during the first two centuries is shrouded in obscurity. There are no Serbian sources at all for the first five centuries of their existence in the Balkans. After the death of Heraclius I in 641, Byzantium had no interest in the central Balkans on account of their dynastic quarrels and their wars with the Persians and the Saracens. Porphyrogenitus, almost the only source for the Serbs during their first three centuries, records only this: "Because that prefect who had sought refuge with Heraclius died, his son ruled by the right of succession, then his grandson, and so on down the line of succession." (1)

When the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV (668 – 85) vanquished the Saracens I 678 and restored the reputation of the emperor in the western parts of his empire, the Serbs in Rasa must have been among the nations which acknowledged Byzantine suzerainty. (2)

In the original Croatian work ‘Methodus’ the evidence has been preserved that Rasa was a component part of the Croatian state at the diet of Duvno in 753. (3) In all probability Rasa in the second quarter of the VIII century remained under the aegis of the Croatian state in order to protect it from the Avars who had recovered their former power after a succession of defeats from 626 to 635, or from the Bulgars who had arrived in the Balkans in 681 and in the second quarter of the VIII century were beginning to encroach upon the central and northwestern Balkans. (4) As we must conclude from Ljudevit Posavski’s flight into Serbia in 822 (5), at that time Rasa was no long part of the Croatian state nor did it acknowledge Charlemagne’s suzerainty which the Croats had recognized in 803. (6) It is most likely that the Serbs seceded from Croatia and acknowledged the suzerainty of the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I (802 – 11) when in 805 – 06 he took old Illyricum from the Croats in order to swallow up Dyrrhachium within the confines of the Byzantine empire. (7)



Christianization of the Serbs

According to Porphyrogenitus the Serbs were Christianized twice: the first time during the reign of Heraclius I (610 – 41) and the second time during the reign of Basil I (867 – 86).

Porphyrogenitus writes that the emperor Heraclius "had priests brought over from Rome" and had the Serbs Christianized. (8) This detail confirms the credibility of Porphyrogenitus’ statement. From the earliest times up to 732, indeed the whole of the Balkans up to the Rhodopus belonged to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Rome. (9) This state of affairs was recognized both by the ecclesiastical and secular authority during the time of the Heraclian dynasty. So during this time only the priests authorized by the Roman See could preach Christianity among the Croats and Serbs settled in the central and western Balkans.

The old Serbian ecclesiastical terminology that has its origin in Latin terms, attests to the fact that the Serbs were originally Christianized by priests of the Roman rite who spoke Latin. So we find the terms masa (missa), otar (altare), komkati (communicare), Kum-a (compater), poganin (paganus), raka (arca), kriz (crux) and so on. (11)

The ‘Chronicle of Pop Dukljanin’ states that a Latin diocese for the Serbs was established just at the outset of the X century (12), but this is doubtful. The archaeologist K. Patsch found in the village of Drenovo near Prijepolje a fragment of a Latin inscription from the VIII or outset of the IX century, which tells us how a Latin bishop of that time dedicated a local church. (13)

In Roman times the entire province of Predolje (Praevalis) was a dependency of the metropolitan of Skadar. Seeing that it was destroyed at the outset of the VII century (14), the littoral part of Predolje, settled by the Croats, was made a dependency of the restored metropolitan diocese of Salona in Split. When the Bulgarian emperor Samuel conquered Red Croatia and obtained permission from the pope Gregory V to establish a metropolitan bishopric in Dubrovnik for the Latin diocese under his authority, the diocese of Rasa became subordinate to this metropolitan see. (15) For a long time the diocese of Rasa was reckoned among its suffragan dioceses. The "Provinciale Vetus" mentions that the diocese in Rasa was under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan see of Dubrovnik. (16)

As Porphyrogenitus records it, up to the time of Basil I most of the Serbs were pagans. (17) The fact that the Serbian ruling dynasty remained quite pagan up to that time confirms this. (18)

Basil I sent to Rasa "his confidant together with certain priests", who compelled the conversion of the Serbs (19), either in 871 or 872. The Byzantine priests performed the conversion and other religious activities according to their own Byzantine rite and in Greek. Seeing that up until that time in Rasa the Roman rite and the Latin language prevailed, someone informed pope John VIII (872 – 82) of the activities of the Byzantine missionaries. In May 873 the pope dispatched a letter to the Serbian count Mutimir which said that in his state "errant" priests from different regions "are conducting activities not in accordance with the canons." The pope instructed Mutimir to submit himself to the spiritual guidance of bishop Methodus, whom the See of St. Peter had appointed as bishop of Mitrovica. (20) We do not know whether Mutimir complied with the pope’s instructions. In any case the influence of the Roman priesthood remained quite strong for some time in Rasa. The fact that the sons of the Serbian rulers at the end of the IX and the outset of the X centuries bore the names Peter, Paul, Stephen, Zachary, etc., names customary to countries observing the Roman rite bear witness to this influence. (21)

The Eastern liturgy in Rasa became generally adopted when the Serbs, during the Bulgarian occupation, adopted the Old Slavonic liturgy and received the liturgical books of the Bulgarian type. In all likelihood, this was the time of the emperor Simeon the Great (893 – 927) and the certainly at the latest in the time of Samuel II (976 – 1014). In 1020 Basil II made the diocese of Rasa a dependency of the Bulgarian archbishopric in Ohrid where the Eastern rite was observed.



Origins of Serbian Independence

According to Porphyrogenitus the first Serbian ruler known by name was Viseslav. The Bulgarian ruler Presjam waged war on him "but after three years of fighting not only did he achieve nothing, but he lost most of his army." (23) According to the Bulgarian historian V. N. Zlatarski, Presjam ruled Bulgaria from 836 to 852 and waged war on the Serbs between 832 and 840. (24) Jirecek is of the opinion that this war against the Serbs took place ca. 850. (25)

Following the death of Viseslav his sons Mutimir, Storjimir and Gojnik divided their father’s kingdom among themselves. On this subject Porphyrogenitus writes: "In their time Boris Mihailo became ruler of Bulgaria and wishing to avenge the defeat of his father Presjam opened hostilities with the Serbs. But the Serbs routed him and took prisoner his son Vladimir together with twelve powerful boyars. Then Boris, whose son was suffering tribulations, treated for peace with the Serbs, although reluctantly…Some time later a quarrel broke out among the three Serbian rulers and when Mutimir emerged as the most powerful of the three, he wishing to be sole ruler, took both his brothers prisoners and delivered them to the Bulgarians…then he kept under his tutelage Peter, son of his brother Gojnik, but Peter later fled to Croatia." (26)

Mutimir in 871 or 872 acknowledged the suzerainty of the Byzantine emperor Basil I and requested him to send priests with the objective of converting the Serbs who were still not fully Christianized. (27)

Porphyrogenitus adds the Strojimir, Mutimir’s brother and a prisoner of the Bulgarians, had a son Klonimir whom the Bulgarian ruler Boris gave in marriage to a Bulgarian bride. "A son, Caslav, was born to her in Bulgaria. Mutimir, once he had driven out his brothers and assumed the power himself, begot three sons, Pribislav, Bran and Stefan. After his death he was succeeded by his eldest son Pribislav. But Peter, Gojnik’s son, came back from Croatia after one year and drove out his cousins Pribislav, Bran and Stefan assuming power for himself. These in turn fled for refuge in Croatia. After three years Bran waged war on Peter, but was defeated, taken prisoner and blinded. After two years Caslav’s father Klonimir fled from Bulgaria and arrived in Serbia, entering Dostinik, one of the Serbian towns, at the head of an army with the intention of usurping the power. Peter attacked and slew him. His rule lasted twenty years beginning with the reign of the blessed and holy emperor Leo, to whom Peter was obedient and subservient. He treated for peace with Simeon, the Bulgarian emperor who became his godfather. (28)

When grand prince Peter, after the battle of Aheloja on the Black Sea (August 20th, 917), had made an agreement with the Byzantine military governor of Dyrrhachium in Neretva (29), Miholvil, duke of Zahumlje, informed the Bulgarian emperor Simeon the Great that Peter was preparing to attack Bulgaria with the Magyars. Whereupon Simeon sent an army into Rasa, laid hold of Peter by a ruse and took him prisoner to Bulgaria where he died in prison. Simeon had him replaced by Paul, Bran’s son and the grandson of grand prince Mutimir at the end of 917 or the beginning of 918. (30) In the third year of Paul’s reign the Byzantine emperor Roman Lekapenus (920 – 44) sent Zaharija, son of Pribislav, eldest son of Mutimir, to Serbia. In the fighting Paul took Zaharija prisoner and delivered him to the Bulgarians. When Paul in 921 turned against the Bulgarians, Simeon sent Zaharija into Serbia. Paul was ousted and Zaharija assumed power himself. But Zaharija broke away from the Bulgarians, rebelling against their oppressive suzerainty which infringed upon the autonomy of the Serbs. In the first encounter Zaharija defeated the Bulgarians, but Simeon the Great sent against him a second army under Caslav, son of Klonimir and "Zaharija was afraid and fled to Croatia." (31) Whereupon the Bulgarians invaded Serbia and gathered together the whole people, men, women and children, and deported them to Bulgaria. Some of these escaped and reached Croatia and the country remained deserted." (32) Whereupon Porphyrogenitus adds: "At that time the Bulgarians waged a war on the Croats under the command of Alogobotur, but there they were all killed by the Croats." (33) This event was in 927. (34) This indicates that the Bulgarians waged war on the Croats because they welcomed and protected the Serbs who fled for refuge to them from the Bulgarians.

After seven years (934) Caslav fled to Bulgaria. "He came to Serbia where he found only fifty men." "When the Serbs in Croatia and in the other countries in which they had been dispersed by Simeon heard of this, they returned and gathered around Caslav." (35)

With the help of Byzantium whose suzerainty Caslav acknowledged, he returned order to Serbia and consolidated it. In 944 during the dynastic quarrels in Croatia Caslav occupied Red Croatia, Bosnia and three districts of White Croatia. (36) In the last years of the reign of Porphyrogenitus (d. 959) Caslav made Serbia independent of Byzantium, but soon perished in the fighting with the Magyars. Whereupon the Croats liberated Bosnia and the other Croatian lands from the Serbs and reunited them with Croatia. (37) The Byzantine emperor John Tzimisces (969 – 76) submitted Bulgaria in 971 and Serbia in 972 to Byzantine overlordship. (38)



The Serbs during the fighting between Byzantium and the Second Bulgarian Empire

After the death of John Tzimisces the sons of the Bulgarian prince Nicholas, headed by the future emperor Samuel (976 – 1014), instigated an uprising in western Bulgaria against Byzantium. After the decisive battle of the Gates of Trajan in 986 Samuel took over the entire central Balkans. It was at that time, we think, that Rasa fell under Samuel’s authority. (39) In 1018 the Byzantine emperor Basil II (976 – 1025) toppled the Second Bulgarian Empire and took over control of all lands formerly ruled by the Bulgarians. With this act Rasa came once more under Byzantine suzerainty. (40)

During their rule in Rasa the Bulgarians completely exterminated the old Serbian royal family. From 1036 to 1042 Dobroslav, called Stjepan Vojislav, member of an old Croatian family from Duklja, revolted and liberated Duklja and Rasa. (41) He considered himself the lawful heir of the extinct family of the grand princes of Serbia, being the maternal grandson of Ljutomir, the last prince of Serbia. (42) Later the Byzantines took Rasa once more, but Mihala, son of Dobroslav and duke of Duklja, liberated it once more and installed his son Petrislav as grand prince of Serbia. After the abortive rebellion in Bulgaria the military governor of Dyrrhachium, Nicephorus Bryennius, restored Byzantine rule to Rasa in 1073. (43)

Bodin (1081 – 1101), king of medieval Croatian Duklja, ushered in a new political era in Serbia. At the outset of his reign Bodin liberated Rasa from Byzantium and installed as its princes his two palatines Vukan and Marko, both Croats from Duklja born in Ribnica near modern Titograd. They swore allegiance to king Bodin and to his successors. (44) Vukan (1083 – 1115) as the older brother became grand prince and Marko took over the administration of part of the land. Anna Comnena wrote about Vukan that he was a man "accomplished in word and deed." (45) He raided and ravaged Byzantine territory as far as Skoplje several times. Emperor Alexius forced Vukan to acknowledge Byzantine suzerainty in 1094. On that occasion Vukan had to hand over twenty hostages to the emperor, among them his nephews Uros and Stjepan Vuk. (46) After Bodin’s death in 1101 Vukan interfered frequently in Duklja’s dynastic struggles. King Vladimir, Mihala’s grandson, took as a wife Vukan’s daughter. (47)

Uros I (ca. 1115 – 1131), Vukan’s nephew, was his successor. His children were Uros II, Desa, Belos, Zavida (Stefan Nemanja’s father), Helen and Maria. Helen married the Hungarian-Croatian king Bela II the Blind. (48) He was the palatine of Hungary and was ban for a long time in Croatia, where he was considered a compatriot, being the grandson of the Croatian nobleman Marko from Ribnica in Duklja. In 1124 or 1125 the cousins of Uros I unseated him and imprisoned him. Djuro, king of Duklja, freed him and restored him to the position of grand prince. (50)

After the death of Uros I his eldest son Uros II (1131 – 61) became grand prince. Zavida, the cadet, was deprived of his portion by his brothers and banished. (51) He retired to Ribnica, the birthplace of his family. There Stefan Nemanja, his fourth or fifth son, was born ca. 1132. Seeing that the whole population of Duklja was Catholic, Nemanja was baptised according to the Roman rite. Several years later when Zavida returned to Rasa, the bishop of Rasa baptised him again, this time according to the Byzantine rite. (52)

Under the influence of his sister Helen and of his brother or close cousin Belos, Uros II in 1138 acknowledged the suzerainty of the Hungarian-Croatian king Bela II. (53)

During the preliminary campaigns of the Byzantine emperor Emmanuel Comnenus (1143 – 80) in Rasa in 1149 and 1150, Uros II acknowledged Byzantium’s suzerainty. (54) In the ensuing war between Byzantium and Hungary from 1154 to 1156 the Hungarian faction in Rasa ousted Uros II and placed his brother Desa as grand prince on the throne. The emperor Emmanuel restored Uros as grand prince after his victory and gave to Desa the nearby Byzantine region of Dendra by Nis to administer. (55) After the death of Uros, Desa ascended to the throne once more as grand prince, but in 1166 was again ousted by the emperor Emmanuel who installed Tihomir, Zavida’s eldest son, as grand prince. (56) Each of the grand prince’s brothers was then allotted his particular region in Rasa. The youngest brother Nemanja got "part of his patrimony, namely Toplica, Ibar, Rasina and the so-called Reke." (57) These regions are situated on the river Ibar and the middle course of the Morava. In the meantime the brothers came into open conflict. Nemanja vanquished his brothers, although they were all against him. One of the brothers escaped but drowned while attempting to cross a river. (58) After his victory Nemanja became grand prince of Rasa in 1168.
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