LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Marino Caboga (Photogravure)(From the Galleria di Ragusei Illustri) | [Frontispiece] |
Byzantine Door-knocker, Rector’s Palace | facing [Title-page] |
| PAGE | |
Entrance to the Harbour of Ragusa | facing [1] |
View of Ragusa(From P. G. Coronelli’s “Views of Dalmatia,” 1680) | facing [15] |
Onofrio’s Fountain in the Piazza | facing [41] |
The Quay and Harbour Gate | facing [54] |
Ragusa from the East | facing [58] |
Torre Menze | facing [66] |
General View of Ragusa, from the West | facing [83] |
Bas-relief of St. Blaize, near the Porta Ploce | facing [95] |
Plan of Ragusa | facing [97] |
Fortifications of Stagno Grande | facing [99] |
Cloister of the Franciscan Monastery | facing [108] |
Courtyard of the Sponza (Custom House) | facing [121] |
Façade of the Sponza (Custom House), and ClockTower | facing [131] |
Capital in the Franciscan Cloister | facing [152] |
Capital in the Franciscan Cloister | facing [153] |
Façade of the Rector’s Palace | facing [168] |
Apothecary’s Garden, Franciscan Monastery | facing [189] |
Entrance to the Franciscan Monastery | facing [196] |
Terrace of the Franciscan Monastery, with theTorre Menze in the Background | facing [207] |
| facing [231] | |
Sketch Map of the Territories of the RagusanRepublic | facing [240] |
The Orlando Column | facing [249] |
Bird’s-eye View of Ragusa and the Neighbourhood (From an Old Map, 1670) | facing [263] |
Sketch Map of the Environs of Ragusa | facing [272] |
Forte San Lorenzo | facing [289] |
Garden near Ragusa | facing [299] |
Isola di Mezzo | facing [313] |
Courtyard of the Rector’s Palace | facing [325] |
Mostar, in the Herzegovina | facing [334] |
“Æsculapius” Capital, Rector’s Palace | facing [340] |
Sculptured Impost, Rector’s Palace | facing [345] |
Sculptured Bracket, Rector’s Palace | facing [349] |
Church of the Confraternity of the Rosary | facing [355] |
Triptych by Niccolò Ragusei in the DominicanMonastery | facing [363] |
Giovanni Gondola(From the Galleria di Ragusei Illustri) | facing [375] |
Torre Menze and the Walls | facing [389] |
Terrace of the Ville Bravačić, near Ragusa | facing [405] |
Map of Dalmatia, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina | facing [417] |
Map of the Balkan Peninsula | facing [418] |
ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOUR OF RAGUSA
THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
THE eastern shore of the Adriatic from the Quarnero to the Bocche di Cattaro is a series of deep inlets and bays, with rocky mountains rising up behind, while countless islands, forming a veritable archipelago, follow the coastline. The country is for the most part bare and stony. The cypress, the olive, the vine grow on it, but never in great quantities. Patches of juniper and other bushes are often the only relief to the long stretches of sterile coast. Here and there more favoured spots appear. At Spalato and in the Canale dei Sette Castelli, on the island of Curzola, in the environs of Ragusa, the vegetation is luxuriant, almost tropical. But Dalmatia is always a narrow strip, and as one proceeds southwards it becomes ever narrower, the mountain ranges at various points coming right down to the water’s edge. The land is subject to intense heat in summer, and is free from great cold, even in the middle of winter. But it suffers from fierce winds, from the bora, which, whirling down from the treeless wastes of the Karst mountains in the north-east, sweeps along the coastline with terrific force. Another curse from which it suffers is the frequency and severity of the earthquakes, which from time to time have wrought fearful havoc among the Dalmatian towns.
But in spite of these disadvantages, along this shore a Latin civilisation arose and flourished which, if inferior to that of Italy, nevertheless played an important and valuable part in European development. Many wars were fought for the possession of Dalmatia. Roman, Byzantine Greek, Norman, Venetian, Hungarian, Slave, and Austrian struggled for it, and each left his impress on its civilisation, although the influence of two among these peoples far surpassed that of all the others—the Roman and the Venetian.
Dalmatia has at all times been essentially a borderland. Geographically it belongs to the eastern peninsula of the Mediterranean, to the Balkan lands. But this narrow strip of coast, as Professor Freeman said,[1] “has not a little the air of a thread, a finger, a branch cast forth from the western peninsula.” In its history its character as a march land is still more noticeable, and this feature has always been manifested in a series of civilised communities in the towns, with a hinterland of barbarous or semi-civilised races. Here were the farthest Greek settlements in the Adriatic, settlements placed in the midst of a native uncivilised Illyrian population. Here the Romans came and conquered, but did not wholly absorb, the native races. Then the land was disputed between the Eastern and the Western Empires, later between Christianity and Paganism, later still between the Eastern and Western Churches. The Slavonic invasion, while almost obliterating the native Illyrian race, could not sweep away the Roman-Greek civilisation of the coast. Again Dalmatia became the debating ground between Venetian and Hungarian, the former triumphing in the end. When Christianity found itself menaced by the Muhamedan invasion, Dalmatia was the borderland between the two faiths. A hundred years ago it was involved in one phase of the great struggle between England and France. To-day, under the rule of a Power which may be said to be all borderland, it is the scene of another nationalist conflict between two races. As before we still have a civilised fringe, a series of towns, with a vast hinterland inhabited by Slaves, by a race less civilised, yet wishing to become civilised on lines different from those of the Latin race. It is still the borderland between the Catholic and the Orthodox religions, and also between the two branches of the South-Slavonic people—the Croatians and the Serbs.
The Dalmatian townships had many features in their development similar to those of the towns of Italy, especially of the maritime republics. But, unlike their Italian sisters, they were always on the threshold of barbarism, and this fact imparts to their history its peculiar character. They were essentially border fortresses, keeping watch and ward to save their civilisation from being swept into the sea by the advancing tide of Slave and Turk.
Of all these towns, that in which this feature is most marked is Ragusa. Ragusa’s development shows in every way a stronger individuality than that of any other. For three characteristics above all is this city remarkable, characteristics which enabled it to attain and preserve such a peculiar position in the Adriatic. The first is its geographical situation. Ragusa was, as it were, the gate of the East, the meeting point of Latin and Slave, of the Eastern and Western Churches, of Christian and Muhamedan. One of the chief commercial highways from the coast to the interior had its terminus at Ragusa, while the sheltered position of its harbour, and of that of the neighbouring Gravosa, indicated it as meant by nature for a great commercial centre. Here the Slaves from the interior found their nearest market, and the nearest spot where civilisation and culture flourished. Ragusa was the means of spreading the beginnings of progress among the benighted Servian lands, for with the caravans of Western goods which made their way into the Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Servia, Western ideas penetrated as well, and to Ragusa came the sons of Slavonic princelings and nobles to be educated. Here there were schools where learned professors and famous men of letters from Italy taught. Italy came to impart Italian culture to the Ragusans and the Slaves.
Even to-day, when trade follows other routes, and Ragusa, no longer a great commercial centre, is reduced to a humble position, it is still the meeting point of many races. Italians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Montenegrins, Albanians, Turks, and Greeks throng its streets and piazzas on market days, filling them with brilliant costumes. Now that the railway from Mostar and Sarajevo has reached Gravosa, there is reason to hope that the ancient city of St. Blaize may once more become a trading centre of some importance. The prosperity of the hinterland which Austria-Hungary has reclaimed to civilisation cannot fail to have a favourable effect on Ragusa. Had not the Turkish invasion swept over the Balkans in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, Ragusa’s position as a civilising influence would have been still more considerable. Later its rôle changed to that of intermediary between the Christian Powers and the Sultan, and in its history we see reflected on a small scale the vast struggle which convulsed Europe for four hundred years.
The second characteristic of Ragusa is its natural position. It is one of nature’s fortresses, being surrounded by the sea on three sides, and the rocks on which it is built drop sheer down to the water’s edge. It seemed indeed a suitable spot on which to erect a city, in days when security was the first, almost the only, consideration. As we approach Ragusa from the south, it stands out a mass of rocks rising up from the sea, crowned with towers, bastions, and walls, which have defied ages of storm and stress, still imposing, still beautiful.
A third feature intimately connected with the last is Ragusa’s character as a haven of refuge. While all around there was chaos and strife, at Ragusa there was peace. The original inhabitants had fled from the ruins of Epidaurum and Salona, and fortified themselves here; subsequently other refugees from all parts of the country helped to increase the population, for the hospitality of its walls was denied to none. The Ragusans were ever ready, as they proved many a time, to undergo any risk rather than give up those who had placed themselves under the protection of the rock-built city. Even in recent times Ragusa remained true to its past; when in 1876-77 there was revolution in the Herzegovina, and the savage Turkish soldiery were at their accustomed work of massacre and torture, the luckless Christian rayahs found shelter and protection at Ragusa, as their ancestors had done before them.
Ragusa was a small city, and its history is all on a small scale. At best she can only be regarded as a second-class city of the first rank. In size, wealth, and intellectual and artistic development she was far inferior to the city republics of Italy; but her close proximity to a world of barbarism, and the vastly important events in which she played a part, however small, make it loom large. Moreover, while the other republics of Dalmatia, with the exception of the tiny Poljica, were all absorbed by Venice, while those of Italy were a constant prey to civil wars, and lost their freedom and even their independence after a few centuries of chequered existence, Ragusa, after two hundred and fifty years of Venetian tutelage with internal autonomy, remained free, now under the nominal protection of this Power, now of that, for 450 years, actually surviving her mighty rival of the Lagoons.
The beginnings of Dalmatian history are purely legendary, and very little is known of the ethnographical character of its original inhabitants. Wanderers from pre-Homeric Greece are said to have settled along its shores, followed later by the Liburnii, who had been driven from Asia, whence part of the country was called Liburnia by the Romans. In the seventh century B.C. a Celtic invasion took place.[2] In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. a number of Greek colonies were planted among the islands at Issa (Lissa), Pharos (Lesina), and Kerkyra Melaina (Curzola), and others along the coast at Epidamnos (Durazzo), Epidauron (Ragusavecchia), and Tragyrion (Traù). In the third century Illyria[3] was welded by a native ruler into a powerful kingdom, which ere long came into contact with the Romans. The latter made several attempts to conquer the country, but met with a most stubborn resistance before they finally subdued it. In the year 180 B.C. the Dalmatians, a people inhabiting the middle part of modern Dalmatia,[4] revolted from the Illyrian kingdom and became independent. Their territory was comprised between the rivers Naro (Narenta) and Titius (Kerka); beyond the latter Liburnia began. During the second and first centuries B.C. the Romans waged no less than ten wars in Illyria, which was not completely reduced until the year A.D. 9.
In the meanwhile a number of Latin colonies had been settled along the coast, supplanting those of the Greeks. Their splendour and importance may be gauged from the magnificent Roman remains, especially those of the great palace built by Diocletian, himself an Illyrian, at Spalato, and of Salona,[5] the ancient capital of the province.
Roman Dalmatia included besides the modern region of that name the whole of Bosnia, the Herzegovina, Montenegro, and parts of Croatia and Albania. Diocletian divided it into two provinces, Dalmatia proper to the north, and Prævalis or Prævalitana to the south. At the time of the partition of the Roman Empire Dalmatia was apportioned to the Western division, the neighbouring provinces of Dardania, Mœsia Superior, and Prævalis to the Eastern. When the barbarian hordes began to pour down into Southern Europe the latter province remained under Roman rule until early in the sixth century, but Dalmatia was conquered in 481 by Odovakar, and added to the Gothic kingdom of Italy. Both these facts emphasise Dalmatia’s character as an outpost of the West in the Eastern world. But the Slaves, the last of the barbarians to march westwards and southwards, soon began to press ever more closely against the Roman settlements, and the colonists were driven from the interior to the coast towns. From the letters of Pope Gregory I. we see that at his time (590-603) Epidaurum, Salona, Doclea, and a few other Roman cities still survived. But in 600, in a letter to the Bishop of Salona, he expressed great sorrow that Dalmatia was hard pressed by the barbarians. “De Sclavorum gente, quae vobis imminet, affligor vehementer et conturbor.”[6] The whole province was becoming desolate. In 535 the Byzantine Greeks reconquered it from the Goths together with Pannonia. In 539 it was overrun by Huns, Bulgarians, and Slaves, liberated by Narses in 552, and added to the Exarchate of Ravenna. Later it was made into a separate Exarchate; but after the death of the Emperor Maurice the Slaves became masters of the greater part of the country.
When the Eastern Empire was divided into themes, the remaining fragments of the Roman colonies on the Illyrian shore were erected into the Themes of Dalmatia and Dyrrhachium. The former is described at length by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his De Administrando Imperio,[7] written in 949; it consisted of little more than a few cities and islands, all the rest of the land being peopled by barbarians.
The capital of the Dalmatian theme was no longer Salona, which together with Epidaurum had been destroyed by the Avars in the seventh century, but Jadera or Zara. The other towns of the theme were: Veglia, Arbe, and Opsara (comprising Cherso and Lussino) in the Quarnero; Tragurium, Spalatum or Aspalathum, and Rhagusium, founded by refugees from Salona and Epidaurum; Decatera (Cattaro), Rosa (Porto Rose), and Butova (Budua). The theme was governed by a Greek Strategos residing at Zara (Jadertinus Prior), and by inferior officials (dukes) in the smaller centres. But their authority hardly extended beyond the town walls.
The inhabitants of these cities in the themes of Dalmatia and Dyrrhachium were the remains of the Roman provincials from all parts of Illyria. Porphyrogenitus calls them Romans, as distinguished from the Ῥωμαῖοι or Byzantine Greeks. In spite of all subsequent Slavonic incursions Latin, and later Italian, always remained the official language; it was also the common language of the people all down the coast, save at Ragusa, where Slavonic was also spoken at an early date.[8] Other fragments of the Roman population were to be found perhaps among the shepherds of the mountains, who were either Latins or Latinised descendants of the native Illyrians. The Slaves speak of them as together with the town-dwellers as Vlachs, which word signifies Italians or Rumanians to this day. The townsmen described these shepherds as Maurovlachs, i.e. “Sea Vlachs” or “Black Vlachs.”[9]
The other Dalmatian towns and all the country outside the towns were occupied, as we have said, by the Southern Slaves. Of these the two principal tribes were the Serblii or Serbs and the Chrobatians or Croatians. The latter settled in the northern part of the country; their frontiers were the Save, the Kulpa, the Arsia, and the Četina. Their settlement seems to have preceded that of the Serbs. They came from the land beyond the Carpathians, with the name of which theirs may have been connected. Croatia was divided into fourteen Župe or counties, each governed by a Župan. The various Župans owed a somewhat shadowy allegiance to a Grand Župan, whose title was afterwards changed to that of king. The Serbs, who issued forth from what is now Galicia, settled in the land to the south and east of that of the Croatians, i.e. the modern kingdom of Servia, Old Servia, Montenegro, Northern Albania, and Dalmatia south of the Četina. For many centuries they recognised no central authority, but were divided into tribes, of which the most important were the Diocletiani or Docletiani, who occupied what is now Montenegro and part of Albania; the Terbuniotae, whose country, called Terbunia or Tribunia or Travunia, centres round the modern Trebinje, with the semi-independent southern district of Canale or Canali;[10] the coast north of Ragusa up to the Narenta was occupied by the Zachloumoi of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and was called Zachlumje, Zachulmia, Hlum, or Chelmo. It corresponds to the Herzegovina.[11] About the Narenta was the land of the Narentani (the Ἀρεντάνοι or Παγάνοι of Porphyrogenitus), notorious for their piratical exploits. This tribe was converted to Christianity much later than the other Serbs, whence their name of Pagani. Inland was Bosnia, inhabited by various tribes. Still deeper in the interior was the territory of the Serbs proper.[12]
Thus by the eighth century we have a series of coast towns and a few islands peopled by Latins still under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire set in the midst of a country whose inhabitants, if we except the Latin or Latinised shepherds, were all Slaves. Imperial influence over these townships gradually declined, and at an early date they constituted themselves into city-states of the Italian type.[13] As they grew rich and powerful they acquired territory, developed their trade, both sea-borne and with the interior, until they were finally absorbed by the Venetian Republic. Their conditions are, therefore, in many respects similar to those prevailing in the maritime republics of Italy during this period. In Italy there was a Latin civilisation, overwhelmed by hordes of pagan or partly pagan barbarians. Italy, like Dalmatia, is reclaimed to Latin culture by Greek arms, and the Greeks rule over it, although constantly fighting the armies of the invaders with varying success. There, too, city-communities arise on or near the sites of Roman cities, modelling their institutions and their laws on those of Rome, with certain modifications due to barbarian influences. But here the parallel ends. In Italy the barbarian hordes never settled in such large numbers as wholly to absorb the Latins, whereas the Slaves in Dalmatia far outnumbered the colonists, and, save for the Latin fringe, the land soon became a Slavonic land. Whereas in Italy, Latins and barbarians soon amalgamated—in fact, one may say that the former absorbed the latter—in Dalmatia, Latins and Slaves have remained distinct and separate to this day, in language, character, and ideals. The Latin cities were like islands in a Slavonic sea. The relations between the Latins and the barbarians in Italy, even before they amalgamated, were different from what they were in Dalmatia. In Italy the feudal system arose among the Germanic peoples, and Germanic lords had Latin subjects and serfs, whereas the Slavonic chieftains of Dalmatia had no Latin dependents to speak of. The causes of this division of race and language, which exercised so deep an influence on the history and development of the Dalmatian municipia, are not very apparent. They are probably to be sought in the different proportions of barbarians to Latins in the two countries. In Italy the number of invaders who settled permanently in the country was never very great compared with that of the Latin inhabitants. The conquered were, therefore, soon able to absorb the conquerors, having civilisation as well as numbers on their side. But in Dalmatia the Slaves were, as we have said, far more numerous than the Latin burghers; and while the former could not absorb the communities of the coast, because they were more civilised, the latter, being so few in numbers, failed to absorb the Slaves. It should, moreover, be remembered that even the Latins were originally colonists from another land, and that the native Illyrians, of whom no trace now remains in Dalmatia, may perhaps have been merged in the Slaves, and helped to swell their numbers.
View of Ragusa
(From P. G. Coronelli’s “Views of Dalmatia”, 1680)
CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDATION AND EARLY HISTORY
OF THE CITY (656-1204)
WE have alluded to the destruction by the Avars of Salona and Epidaurum,[14] and the flight of their inhabitants to the new settlements. Of Salona extensive ruins remain, but with regard to the site of Epidaurum there is a division of opinion among archæologists. It is generally held that the remains at or near the village of Ragusavecchia, a few miles to the south-east of Ragusa, are those of the ancient Epidaurum. In the neighbouring valley of Canali (Slavonic, Konavli) there are the ruins of a Roman aqueduct. The name Ragusavecchia corroborates the tradition that it was the original home of the Ragusans; while its Slavonic name, Cavtat, is undoubtedly derived from the Latin civitas. Some archæologists, however, have doubts as to this point, and Professor Giuseppe Gelcich, than whom no greater authority on Dalmatian history exists, is of opinion that Epidaurum must be sought for somewhere on the Sutorina promontory in the Bocche di Cattaro. Fragments of Roman brickwork and mosaic pavement have been found there too; and according to Professor Gelcich, the Canali aqueduct is so built that it must have served a city farther south than Ragusavecchia. On the other hand, the statements of the classical writers, especially of Pliny, seem to bear out the general opinion, which is, in fact, based on them.
The exact date of the incursion of the Avars and of the destruction of Epidaurum has also been the subject of controversy. According to some writers, among whom are the native historians of Ragusa, the city was destroyed by the Goths in the third century A.D. But documents written between the third and the seventh centuries mention it as still existing. Constantine Porphyrogenitus speaks of Ragusa as having been founded by refugees from Salona five hundred years before his own time, i.e. about 449.[15] But Pope Gregory I. is the last writer who alludes to Epidaurum, so that it was evidently not destroyed before 603. The geographer of Ravenna, who flourished in the eighth century, is the first to mention Ragusa. The Avars made their first appearance in Dalmatia in the year 597-598.[16] They belonged to the same Tartar group as the Huns, and their path was marked with the same ruin and destruction. At one time they were in the service of Justinian, but under his successors they became so powerful and insolent that the Greek emperors might almost be regarded as the vassals to the Chagan of the Avars. In 597 they raided Dalmatia and destroyed over forty towns; and during the next thirty years they conquered the whole country, with the exception of some of the coast settlements, unimpeded by the Greeks, who were then occupied with the Saracens. In 619 they destroyed Salona, whose inhabitants, or at least such of them as escaped from the fury of the barbarians, for the most part took refuge in the walls of Diocletian’s palace at Spalato. But a few wandered southwards and established themselves on an island rock, where Ragusa now stands. About the year 656 the Avars swept down on Epidaurum and razed it to the ground, the surviving inhabitants flying to Ragusa. This year is generally accepted as the date of the city’s, birth. In all probability, however, it was not founded at any definite period, but arose gradually through the influx of refugees from all parts of Southern Dalmatia, from a fishing village into a town. The original settlers were nearly all Latins, and it was not until later that a certain number of Slaves were admitted.[17]
The traditional origin of the name Ragusa is connected with the situation of the town on a precipitous ridge. According to Porphyrogenitus, it is derived from λαῦ, a precipice, and was originally Lausa. The L changed to R, and it became Rausa or Rhausion. According to Professor Jireček,[18] this derivation is quite inaccurate. The rocky seaward ridge, even in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, were called Labe or Laue, from the Latin word labes, a downfall or precipice. The form Ragusa is found in William of Tyre, and in the Arabic writer Edrisi (1153). Later we find the form Rausa, and in the fifteenth century Raugia, and occasionally Ragusium. The Slavonic name Dubrovnik is said to be derived from dubrava, a wood. This etymology does not sound unlikely, as there is a wood in close proximity to the town, a rarity in this part of the world. But Professor Jireček says that from Dubrava the original form should have been Dubravnik, and this appears nowhere. The Presbyter Diocleas writes: “Dubrounich, id est silvester sive silvestris, quoniam quando eam aedificaverunt, de silva venerunt.” Whatever may be the philological value of these traditions, they indicate the double character (i.e. Latin and Slavonic) of Ragusa in the early, if not in the earliest times.
Ragusa is situated on the coast of Southern Dalmatia, about forty kilometres to the north-west of the Bocche di Cattaro.[19] It is built partly on a precipitous rocky ridge jutting out into the Adriatic, and partly on the mainland, ascending the steep slopes of the Monte Sergio. The original town was limited to the seaward ridge, which was formerly an island divided from the mainland by a marshy channel where the Stradone now runs. There was also a settlement of Bosnians or Vlachs on the Monte Sergio opposite. The ridge slopes gradually up from the channel, but drops sheer down on the side towards the sea. In an old drawing preserved in the library of the Franciscan monastery at Ragusa we see the town as it was when it only occupied the ridge. It is surrounded by a wall, and divided into two parts by another wall. Three extensions of the walls are recorded previous to the beginning of the twelfth century, rendered necessary by the number of fugitives who took refuge within its walls in ever-increasing numbers. “The original city,” writes Professor Gelcich, “was limited to the centre of the northern slope of the ridge now called Santa Maria, which, separating from the Monte Sergio, stretches forth in an opposite direction to that of the neighbouring peninsula of Lapad; it comprised the quarter of the town between the diocesan seminary and the street leading from the Chiesa del Domino to the summit of the ridge.”[20] The earliest extensions were the suburbs of Garište and Pustijerna, the former on the western side, the latter to the east, reaching as far as the harbour. Thus the whole rock was occupied and surrounded by a wall. The channel which divided it from the mainland soon became a marshy field, and finally dried up. As a protection against the Slavonic settlement on the Monte Sergio a castle was built by the sea, on the site of the present rector’s palace, guarding the bridge to the mainland.[21] Later the Bosnian colony was also absorbed, and the town walls were extended to the circuit which they now occupy.
Of the various groups of refugees who settled within the hospitable walls of Ragusa we have fairly reliable accounts. Porphyrogenitus mentions the earliest of these immigrations, and also gives us the names of the most prominent among the newcomers: Arsaphios, Gregorios, Victorinos, Vitalios, Valentinos the archdeacon, and Valentinos the father of the Protospathar Stephen. All these have unquestionably a Latin sound; they were probably Roman provincials from the minor Dalmatian townships destroyed by the barbarians. Besides the Latin refugees, at an early date a certain number of Slaves, who preferred the quiet life and safety of Ragusa to the constant turmoils and disorders among their own people, added to the population. The Anonymous Chronicle of Ragusa[22] describes several of these immigrations:—
“690. Many people came to Ragusa with all their goods from Albania and the parts of Bosna, because many in Bosna were partisans of Duchagini,[23] and wished to save themselves from being accused (punished).”
This evidently refers to a civil war, but the date given is much too early: it is not likely that the Ragusans would have admitted barbarians within their walls so soon after the destruction of Epidaurum:—
“691. There came to Ragusa the men of two castles on the mainland, from Chastel Spilan and Chastel Gradaz,[24] and they all made their dwellings on the coast, for they were of the race of Epidaurum destroyed by the Saracens.”[25]
This obviously refers to the Latin colonists mentioned by the Imperial historian:—
“743. Many people came from Bosna with much wealth, for the king, Radosav, was a tyrant, and lived according to his pleasure: Murlacchi from the Narenta also came, and Catunari,[26] among whom there was a chief above all the others; they came with a great multitude of cattle of all sorts: to them was assigned the mountain of Saint Serge as a pasture, for it was so covered with trees that one could not see the sky, and so much timber was there that they made beams for their houses.”
Of the first two centuries of Ragusan history little is known. The town, like the other Latin communities of Dalmatia, at first formed part of the Eastern Empire. Heraclius had abandoned all the rest of the country to the Slaves, and even in the coast towns Imperial authority was becoming ever more shadowy. Under Michael II Balbus they were granted what practically amounted to autonomy, and they constituted themselves, as we have said, into municipia of the Italian type, while inland Dalmatia became part of Charlemagne’s Empire (803), to whom also some of the coast towns, including Zara, owed allegiance.[27] Ragusa, although still small, was increasing. At that time, with a world of barbarism all round, with everlasting wars between the various Slavonic tribes of the interior, there was indeed an opening for such a haven of refuge as this city offered.
We can picture it to ourselves as a small settlement where all that was civilised in Southern Dalmatia congregated—the scattered Latins from ruined townships and the more progressive Slaves. It was a beacon in the darkness, a spot where the peaceful and the industrious might pursue their avocations in safety. Of the internal constitution of the community in these early days, of its laws and customs, we have the meagrest information. The only account of them which we possess is that given in the Anonymous Chronicle, a not very reliable document of a much later date than the events recorded. The chief passage on the subject is as follows:—
“In Ragusa a division of all the people was made.... Those who were the richest were (appointed) chiefs and governors.... Each family had its own saint, some San Sergio, some this saint, some that.... And when men had come from Lower Vulasi (Wallachia),[28] a division of the citizens was made, each class for itself. Many Wallachians were rich in possessions—gold, silver, cattle, and other things: among them were many Chatunari, each of whom considered himself a count, and had his own Naredbenizi (stewards). One was master of the horse, another looked after the cattle, another after the sheep and goats, another managed the household, another commanded the servants. But there was one chief above all the others, called the Grand Chatunar.... These Chatunari formed the Sboro (Council or Parliament), and for their convenience divided the population into three parts: the first was of gentlemen, the second of burghers, the third of serfs. Many serfs had come from Wallachia with cattle, and it seemed to them a mean thing to be called even as the shepherds.[29] Some attended to the house, some to the horses, some to the person of their master, but the latter were few in number. The third part was of gentlemen; for at the beginning there were many who had fled from Bosna and Albania, and who were not men of low condition, but of much account, having been captains or counts or Naredbenizi, and these were of noble origin.... Those who were gentlemen were made governors of the land or were given other offices, and they alone entered the Sboro or General Council. The other part was of the people, populani, from pol vilani, or half villeins,[30] for although those villeins were of low condition, some were in the houses of gentlemen as guardians, and therefore enjoyed benefits.”
This account is somewhat confused and difficult to understand. As far as we can make out, the people were divided into three classes; i.e. the nobles, who alone formed the Grand Council, and were either the descendants of the original Latin refugees from Epidaurum and Salona, or those among the newcomers who were of noble birth; the middle class, consisting of non-noble burghers, the stewards, and chief retainers of the nobles, and the men of small property; the third class, which was composed of serfs and of the poorest citizens. Over the general assembly presided the head of the State, the Byzantine Duke, Prior, or Præses. After Ragusa had made submission to Venice in 998 we find Venetian counts instead.[31] During the intervals when the city was independent, and no foreign rulers were appointed, the head of the Government was chosen by the Council, as it was in after times. But even when sent from Venice or Constantinople he does not seem to have exercised much direct influence on the internal affairs of the Republic.
Besides the Count and the General Council, there was the assembly of the people, or laudo populi, to whom the decisions of the Council in all the more important cases had to be submitted. Lampredius, præses of Ragusa in 1023, sanctioned a decree “una cum omnibus ejusdem civitatis nobilibus,” “temporibus Sanctorum Imperatorum Basilii et Constantini.” Petrus Slabba, prior in 1044, issued another decree, “temporibus piissimi Augusti Constantini scilicet Monomacho ... cum parited nobiles atque ignobiles.”[32] Thus we have the aristocratic principle represented by the council of nobles, and the democratic principle by the assembly of the people, who were summoned “cum sonitu campane.”[33] As the constitution evolved, the laudo populi gradually dropped into disuse, and Ragusa finally developed into a purely aristocratic community on Venetian lines.
Next in authority to the head of the State was the bishop,[34] by whom the acts of the Government had to be countersigned. The question as to who should appoint this dignitary was frequently a subject of dispute between the Ragusans and the Venetians, on account of his political influence.
The Ragusans provided for the defence of their city by surrounding it with walls, “un muro di masiera e travi,”[35] as Ragnina says, and these fortifications stood them in good stead by enabling them to hold out against the Saracens, who in 847-848 besieged Ragusa for fifteen months. The citizens implored help from the Emperor Basil the Macedonian, and he at once sent a fleet, under Nicephorus, which relieved the beleaguered city from the raiders.[36]
The Greek Emperors wished to pursue the Saracens into Apulia, where they had established themselves, and the rendezvous for one part of the expedition was Ragusa. A large force of Serbs and Croatians in the pay of the Empire congregated there, and were transported to the Italian shore on Ragusan ships. The expedition was successful, Bari being recaptured, and the Saracen power in Southern Italy broken.[37] This is the first mention we have of Ragusan shipping, which was afterwards to play so large a part in the history of the Levant trade.
Of all the Slavonic tribes settled in Dalmatia, the most lawless and uncivilised were the Narentans, the Arentani or Porphyrogenitus. This hardy race of mariners occupied the land about the mouth of the Narenta[38] and the coast,[39] between that river and the Četina, besides the islands of Brazza, Lesina, Curzola, Lissa, Meleda, and Lagosta. Connected by racial ties with the Serbs and the Croatians, they obeyed the laws of neither. The ancient Illyrians were famous for their piracy, which first called the attention of the Romans to the country, and the Narentans proved worthy successors of the aborigines. The conformation of the coast with its numerous inlets, well-sheltered harbours, safe refuges, and countless islands lends itself to this species of occupation. The Narentans ravaged the coast towns of Dalmatia with their swift galleys, plundered peaceful merchantmen, and so harried Venetian trade that the Republic was forced to pay them blackmail for a hundred and fifty years. On more than one occasion it sent its fleets to attempt their subjugation, at first with but little success. At the beginning of these wars Ragusa was a friendly harbour for the Venetian galleys, their most southern port of call in the Adriatic, where they could revictual and their crews rest from the fatigues of the voyage.[40] But the Ragusans very soon began to look askance at the Venetians as a possible danger to their own independence, and adopted the practice of secretly, or even openly, supporting the pirates against the Venetians. This naturally caused trouble later when the Venetians were strong enough to act energetically against the Narentans: it affords a curious insight into the policy of the Ragusans, who, while anxious to preserve their own civilisation and culture, were never averse to siding with barbarians, whether they were Narentans or Turks, against Christian Powers, especially against Venice.
As early as the reign of the Doge Giovanni Particiaco I. (829-836) the pirates of the Narenta had begun to seize Venetian galleys, and his successor, Pietro Tradonico (836-864), sent two punitive expeditions against them without definite result. After the Venetian fleet had been defeated by the Saracens, the Dalmatian corsairs were audacious enough to make a raid on the Lagoons. In 887 the Doge Pietro Candiano I. sent a first unsuccessful expedition against them, and a few months later led a second himself. This too was defeated, and the Doge killed. Probably there was another in 948 under Pietro Candiano III., and this time operations were directed against Ragusa itself, if we are to believe the native historians, the town being saved only through the special intercession of San Biagio,[41] who henceforth became the patron of Ragusa in the place of San Bacco.[42]
In the course of the tenth century Ragusa was again besieged by barbarians—they were Bulgarians this time, under the Tsar Simeon (not Samuel, as had been stated), who invaded the western provinces of the Eastern Empire. According to Cedren, his attack on Ragusa failed,[43] whereas the Presbyter of Doclea writes that the town was burnt.
It was during this same century that Ragusa first began to acquire territorial possessions. The account of the manner of these acquisitions is in part legendary; but, according to Prof. Gelcich, it has some substratum of fact. Paulimir Belo or Belus, King of Rascia,[44] having been deposed and exiled, took refuge in Rome, and married a Roman lady. In 950 he returned to Illyria, and landed at Gravosa, near Ragusa, with a large suite of Roman nobles. The Ragusans received him with great honours, and he in return helped them to enlarge their city, and sent a number of his followers, including some Romans, to increase the population. After this he returned to Rascia and regained his throne. As Prof. Gelcich observes, Rome is evidently a mistake for Rama, a country which forms part of the Herzegovina, and takes its name from a small river tributary to the Narenta. A few years later Stephen, Banus of Bosnia, and his wife, Margaret, came to Ragusa in order to fulfil a vow which the former had made to St. Stephen when his wife was ill, that he would visit the saint’s church in the city if she recovered. As a reward for the welcome accorded to him by the citizens he gave them the districts of Breno, Bergato (Brgat), Ombla, Gravosa, Malfi, and part of Gionchetto.
Nearly fifty years had passed since the last Venetian expedition to Dalmatia; but when the great Doge Pietro Orseolo came to the throne in 991, he determined to put an end to the depredations of the Narentans once for all. The annual tribute which the Venetians had been forced to pay to the freebooters only secured a very imperfect immunity, and the Adriatic trade was never really safe. Orseolo suspended the tribute, and as the Narentans at once recommenced their molestations, an expedition under Badoer was sent out which destroyed the town of Lissa. The Venetian admiral took a great many prisoners, but failed to attack the pirates’ chief stronghold at Lagosta and the Narenta’s mouth. They retaliated on the Latin towns of the coast, and the latter, unable to obtain help from their natural protector, the Greek Emperor, placed themselves under the suzerainty of the Venetians, whom they implored to intervene once more. The Croatians, to whom the towns in the northern and central parts of the country had paid tribute, now declared war on all who obeyed the Venetians, ravaged the territory of Zara, and attacked the islands of the Quarnero. The Ragusans were then tributary to the Serbs, by whom they were surrounded, and fearing the Narentans, who were so close at hand, separated their cause from that of the rest of Latin Dalmatia, and maintained an ambiguous attitude.[45] The Croatians, not content with terrorising the towns, sent ambassadors to Venice to demand the tribute; but the Doge replied: “Non per quemlibet nuntiorum tributum remittere curo; sed ad hanc persolvendam dationem venire ipso non denegabo.” He at once fitted out another expedition on a large scale, which set forth under his command on May 9, 1000.[46] It reached Ossero on June 5, and the Doge claimed the homage of the Dalmatians as their protector; this was paid both by the Latins and by a number of the Slaves. He then proceeded to Zara, which recognised his authority, and the bishops of Arbe and Veglia came to swear fealty to him, promising that his praises should be sung in the churches after those of the Emperor. Negotiations with the Narentans were now opened; the pirates agreed to forego all tributes, and swore to infest the Adriatic no longer; but the moment the Doge’s back was turned they recommenced their depredations. Orseolo then sailed with the fleet for Beograd[47] (Zaravecchia), the residence of the Croatian king. The terrified inhabitants paid him homage, and he prepared to strike a decisive blow at the Narentans. He sailed down the coast and received the submission of Traù and Spalato, and on hearing that forty Narentan “nobles” (pirate captains) were returning from Apulia, some of his galleys lay in wait for them, and captured them off the island of Cazza. The Narentans then sued for peace, which was granted them on a promise of future good behaviour, and all the prisoners were liberated save six, who were retained as hostages. The pirates on the islands of Curzola, Lesina, and Lagosta still held out. The first two were easily captured, but the Lagostans, hearing that the Doge meant to raze their stronghold to the ground, made a desperate resistance. The Venetians and their Dalmatian allies attacked the town, poured in through a breach in the walls, and put all the inhabitants to the sword. After the capture of this important fortress the power of the Narentans was broken, and the whole of Dalmatia lay at Orseolo’s feet.
With regard to the subsequent proceedings and the dedition of Ragusa there is considerable divergence of opinion between Venetian and Ragusan writers. The latter wish to prove that their city remained independent, at all events until the beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the Venetians affirm that in 998 (1000) Ragusa made full submission to Venice.
The first account of this dedition is that of Johannes Diaconus, who writes: “This (the capture of Lesina, Curzola, and Lagosta) having been accomplished, the victorious prince repaired to the church of St. Maximus; there the Archbishop of Ragusa and his suite came and did great homage to the said prince, all partaking of the sacrament.” Dandolo uses almost identical language, and Sabellico adds that the Archbishop and the Ragusan envoys made formal submission to the Doge and the Venetians,[48] and that counts were appointed to govern the Dalmatian towns, Ottone Orseolo being chosen for Ragusa. To this a Ragusan writer, calling himself “Albinus Esadastes de Vargas” (whom Pisani declares to be Sebastiano Dolci,[49] a Ragusan monk of the seventeenth century), in a work entitled Libertas perpetua reip. Ragusine ab omni jure Venete reipub,[50] replies that the church of St. Maximus must mean that of Masline at Lesina, and that this island is so far that the Ragusan envoys would hardly have come there to tender their submission. Jadesta, which is also alluded to, does not exist. The Ragusans, who had resisted other attacks, both by the Venetians and the Saracens, so valiantly, would not have surrendered now without striking a blow; and, moreover, the Greek Emperors, Basil and Constantine, would not have authorised the submission. With regard to the first and third objections, it is most probable that when the fate of Lagosta had become known to the Ragusans they would have gone to tender their submission to Orseolo wherever he happened to be. Jadesta is simply an old name for Lagosta. As for the Greek Emperors, they were far too much occupied in holding their own against the Bulgarians to be able to make any objections. The former attacks on Ragusa had all been on a small scale, whereas this expedition was a large and well-equipped force, against which it would have been madness for the tiny Ragusa to resist. Then “Esadastes” shifts his ground, and asserts that the envoys went to the Doge merely to reclaim a ship captured by the Venetians, and that they actually threatened reprisals on the part of the Emperors if satisfaction were refused. But it is most unlikely that for so trifling a cause the Archbishop and chief citizens would have been sent to the Doge. This version, however, is accepted by Mauro Orbini.[51] Ragnina does not even mention the expedition. Resti[52] says that Ottone Orseolo was sent to Ragusa merely to make a commercial treaty; but as Pisani observes, if the magistrates appointed to the other Dalmatian towns were sent to govern them, there is no reason to suppose that an exception was made for Ragusa. There is, on the whole, the strongest evidence that Ragusa did actually submit to Venetian supremacy, together with the other coast towns, in 1000, and received a Venetian governor. Local usages and laws, however, were respected, according to the Venetian practice of the time; nor was Imperial authority wholly disregarded, and prayers for the Emperor continued to be sung in the churches of Ragusa.
Venetian rule was not of long duration. On the death of Pietro Orseolo in 1008, his son Ottone became Doge; and during this reign a strong opposition to the house of Orseolo was aroused, which ended with Ottone’s expulsion in 1026. During the reign of his successor, Pietro Centranico, faction feuds broke out, greatly weakening the Republic, and the Dalmatian towns revolted, as Venetian suzerainty was of use to them only so long as Venice was powerful. Some of them went over to Dobroslav, prince of the Tribunian Serbs, and elsewhere Byzantine authority revived. Thus in 1036, instead of a Venetian count at Zara, we find Gregory, Jadertinus Prior, Pro-consul and Imperial Strategos for all Dalmatia.[53] But his authority was disputed by the Croatians, whose sovereign now proclaimed himself King of Dalmatia.[54] Against this act the Venetians issued a protest, and the Doge Domenico Contarini (1043-1071) reasserted the authority of the Republic.
In the year 1071 the Normans from Apulia made their first appearance in Dalmatia; they crossed the Adriatic, and threatened the Eastern Empire. The Emperor Alexius Comnenus having implored the help of the Venetians, the Doge Selvo set sail for Dyrrhachium in command of a fleet. Alexius had also asked help of the Ragusans, who were now practically independent; but they feared the Normans more, and cast in their lot with them. The Græco-Venetian fleet encountered the Normans off Dyrrhachium; but in spite of the valour displayed by the allies they were defeated, and the town fell into the enemies’ hands. It is said that the Ragusan contingent distinguished itself by hurling clouds of arrows, which wrought much havoc among the Venetians.[55] As a reward they obtained important commercial privileges in Southern Italy. In 1085 the Venetians again attacked the Normans, and partially defeated them at Corfu, for which action Alexius granted the Doge Vitale Falier the Golden Bull, conferring upon him the title of Protosebastus, and created him Duke of Dalmatia and Croatia. Thus the Republic regained all its lost influence on the eastern shore of the Adriatic.
Yet another Power now begins to interfere in the affairs of Dalmatia, a Power which was to play a most important part in its subsequent history. In 1091 Ladislas, King of Hungary, was summoned by the Slaves of inland Croatia, who as usual when quarrelling among themselves called in foreign aid, and they willingly recognised him as their king. He did not wait to be asked a second time, but at once entered the province and appointed his nephew, Almus, Count of Cismontane Croatia. On his death in 1094 he was succeeded by another nephew, Koloman, who in the following year crossed the Velebit mountains and invaded Maritime Croatia. He defeated and killed the Croatian king, Krešimir, at Petrovogora, became master of the littoral from Istria to the Narenta, and prepared to conquer the Serb states of Rascia and Tribunia. By marrying Busita, daughter of King Roger, he allied himself with the Normans, and enlisted their help for his schemes. At Beograd he crowned himself King of Dalmatia and Croatia. These conquests were not at all to the taste of the Ragusans, who had every interest in the maintenance of a number of weak but independent Slavonic buffer States at their back, whereas they dreaded the advance of a powerful military monarchy like Hungary. At first they tried to conciliate Koloman with gifts,[56] but as this availed them little they applied to their old enemies, the Venetians; the latter made a treaty with the Hungarian king, by which the Latin municipalities of Dalmatia were recognised as outside the Hungarian sphere. But it was not respected for long. The Emperor Alexius, annoyed with the Venetians for their action in the First Crusade and in the Levant generally, intrigued with Koloman, and induced him to violate his pledges. The Magyar king needed but little pressure, as the conquest of the Dalmatian seaboard was one of his chief ambitions. When the Venetians sent their fleet to Palestine in 1105 he occupied Zara, Traù, and Spalato, and forced the citizens to swear fealty to him. The Ragusans were not disturbed, but they sent him another deputation. The Venetians, exhausted with their last efforts in the Holy Land, were unable to do anything for the moment.[57]
In 1116 hostilities recommenced, and ended in 1118 with the defeat of the Venetians, who agreed to a five years’ truce with Hungary. War broke out again in 1124, and lasted for several years, with varying success. Bela II., who succeeded to Koloman, while the Venetians were occupied elsewhere, crossed the Narenta and conquered the Serb principalities of Tribunia, Zachulmia, and Rama, and tried to induce the coast towns to rebel against Venice. The Ragusans once more applied for Venetian help, and even requested that Venetian counts should be sent to govern them. Both requests were granted.
Of the next twenty-eight years of Ragusan history there is little to tell. “Esadastes” mentions the names of four Venetian counts—Marco Dandolo, Cristiano Pontestorto, Jacopo Doseduro or Dorsoduro, and Pietro Molina. Resti mentions a plague in 1145, which, he says, carried off three-quarters of the inhabitants, evidently an exaggeration. In 1148, according to the same writer, the Servian Prince Dessa, ancestor of the Nemanjas, granted the island of Meleda to three Benedictine monks, with the provision that its civil government should be entrusted to Ragusa. This is the most distant possession which the Republic had as yet acquired.
In 1152 the series of Venetian counts came to an end,[58] the last of them having apparently received notice to quit from the Ragusans themselves, who sent him home in one of their own galleys, with many gifts, as a reward, “Esasdastes” says ironically, for having ruled the city so well for thirty years; but he adds the following extract from an early chronicle:—
“These counts had begun to tyrannise, and, moreover, Ragusa being at war with the Bosnians, five hundred soldiers who had come from Venice to aid us outraged our women and committed countless robberies. To free the city from them the Council ordered them to be so placed in the van of the army that they should all be killed. This stratagem having succeeded, they sent the Venetian rector back to Venice.”
Whether this story be true or not, it is characteristic both of the customs of the time and of the feelings with which the Ragusans ever regarded the Venetians. For the latter and their government no native historian ever has a good word to say.
The reason why the Venetians submitted so tamely to being turned out of Ragusa lies in the general situation of affairs in Dalmatia. In 1148 Venice had formed an alliance with the Emperor Manuel Comnenus against the Normans, whose incursions in the Adriatic constituted a menace for both Powers; but Venetians and Greeks were on the worst of terms, and at the siege of Corfu the Emperor’s name had been grossly insulted. Manuel vowed vengeance on his allies, and sent emissaries to stir up the Dalmatians against Venice. The latter was at war on the mainland with Hungary and in Syria, and therefore found it expedient to ignore the Dalmatian question for the time being. Venetian authority, however, did not cease altogether even at Ragusa, where Venetians continued to be appointed as archbishops. Thus in 1150 or 1151 the dignity was conferred on a certain Domenico of Venice, and in 1153 on another Venetian named Tribuno; the latter in 1155 made formal submission to the Patriarch of Grado, with the consent of the clergy and people of Ragusa.[59] The town continued, in fact, to be regarded as one of those under Venetian protection, or, at least, as friendly to the Republic of the lagoons.
In 1169 Manuel Comnenus determined to conquer Dalmatia, and even Italy. He sent a squadron up the Adriatic to molest Venetian shipping, and encouraged corsairs to do the same. The Imperial fleet occupied the towns protected by Venice, treating them as conquered territory. Ragusa too was occupied, and was doubtless not unwilling to get rid of all Venetian authority; the Imperial standard was raised on a tower expressly built for the purpose. On March 7, 1171, the Emperor had all the Venetians at Constantinople arrested and their property seized. Venice immediately declared war, and, in spite of the scarcity of men and money, a fleet of one hundred and twenty ships, to which ten Dalmatian galleys were added, was fitted out in a hundred days.[60] It set sail in September under the command of the Doge Vitale Michiel, and most of the Dalmatian towns willingly returned to Venetian suzerainty.[61] Ragusa too surrendered, though not without resistance, and the event is thus described in the Cronaca Altinate:[62]—
“The Ragusans, who, like the others (Dalmatians), were under oath of fealty to the lord Doge, would not go forth to do him homage, but they came out in arms as though to insult the host. Wherefore the Venetians, in high dudgeon, marched against them, and pursued them even to the gates of the city. The same day, at the ninth hour, they began the attack with so much vigour that many of the citizens were killed, and, having stormed the battlements, they captured some of the towers, on which they raised the ducal standards. The assault was kept up with great energy until evening. At dawn on the following morning, while men and machines were being prepared for the battle, Tribuno Michiel, the Archbishop of Ragusa, issued forth from the city with the clergy and the nobles bearing crosses, and they cast themselves at the feet of the Doge, imploring mercy for themselves and all the citizens, and declaring that they and their city made full submission. The Doge, calm and prudent, was moved by pity, and on the advice of his followers received them. And all the citizens sang the praises of the Doge, and all who were above twelve years of age swore the oath of fealty to him and his successors. In addition, they provided money and wine for each galley, and in obedience to the Doge’s orders demolished part of their walls, that tower which had been expressly built for the Emperor. They consented that their archbishopric should be subject to the Patriarchate of Grado, provided that the Pope permitted it.[63] When these things had been accomplished the Doge appointed the noble youth Raynerius Joannes (Renier Zane or Zen) as Viscount, and set sail with his fleet for Romania.”[64]
ONOFRIO’S FOUNTAIN IN THE PIAZZA
Dandolo’s account is almost identical, and so is that of Sabellico, save that the latter does not mention the actual storming of the town. He merely says that the Ragusans sued for peace through their archbishop, and that they themselves demolished the tower on which the Imperial standard had been raised. Whichever version we accept, it is clear that Ragusa again made full submission to the ducal authority, and came once more under Venetian supremacy. We must not forget that Tribuno Michiel, the archbishop, was a Venetian, and probably there was a Venetian party in the city as well as a Byzantine party. When it became evident that the Venetians were in earnest, the faction which favoured them at once prevailed. “Esadastes,” as usual, casts doubts on the whole story, because Dandolo and Sabellico do not agree as to the attack, but he does not even mention the account of the Cronaca Altinate. Resti denies the submission altogether. It should be remembered that whereas Dandolo and the author of the Altinate Chronicle wrote barely a century after the events related, the Ragusan historians flourished in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and wrote with the express purpose of combating all Venice’s claims over Ragusa.
But, as before, the surrender did not greatly affect the internal affairs of the city, which continued to be managed by the citizens themselves. Nor did Venetian suzerainty last long. The campaign against the Eastern Empire ended most disastrously; the fleet was decimated by disease, and returned to Venice in 1172 a complete wreck. Venetian influence in Dalmatia was greatly reduced in consequence, while that of the Empire revived proportionately, and lasted until Manuel’s death in 1180. The country was, however, regarded as still in a measure connected with Venice, and in the treaty of peace which the latter made with William of Sicily in 1175 he promised not to invade “the lands which are under the rule of the Doge of Venice and of the Venetians,”[65] and Dalmatia was included among these.
In the meanwhile Ragusa was developing international relations of a different character, i.e. with the Slavonic principalities of the interior. In the earliest times Ragusan territory was limited to a small part of the actual city, and for a long time did not extend beyond the walls. Constantine Porphyrogenitus informs us that it bordered on the two states of Zachulmia and Tribunia. The vineyards of the Ragusans were on the territory of these tribes, and the citizens paid a yearly tribute of thirty-six numismata (gold pieces) to the Prince of Zachulmia, and as much to the Prince of Tribunia.[66] As the population increased they gradually extended their cultivation to the whole of these districts. The Tribunian vineyards were in the Župa of Žrnovica (Breno); those of Zachulmia in the Župa of Rijeka (Ombla), as far as Malfi, and in that of Poljice.[67] The tribute which the Ragusans paid for this privilege was called margarisium or magarisium;[68] its value varied considerably. In 1363 that due to the Zachulmians was of sixty ipperperi, paid by the owners of the vineyards in proportion to the extent of their holdings. The Zachulmians, on their side, sent a cow, called the vacca di margarisio, which was divided between the Count of Ragusa and some of the boni homines (optimates) of the city. Later, instead of one animal, several were sent.[69] Besides the tribute, the Ragusans paid a tithe in kind to the Slave princelings. From time to time they made special treaties with their neighbours, usually of a commercial character. By one of these, which Resti dates 831,[70] Svetimir, King of Bosnia, agreed to send 50 oxen, 500 sheep and goats, and 200 loads of oats to Ragusa, and to treat the Ragusans in his territory as though they were his own subjects, while they were to send him fourteen braccia[71] of red cloth. This indicates the city’s economic position, which enabled it to send manufactured articles from the west into the Balkan lands, while it bought from the latter the cattle and foodstuffs which its own limited territory could not provide. Even in later times most of the grain consumed by the Ragusans was imported from abroad.
Relations with the Slaves, however, were not always of so peaceable a character, and the Ragusans were often engaged in little wars with their turbulent neighbours. The gradual extension of the Ragusan vineyards was a fertile source of dispute (lis de vineis),[72] as the Republic claimed and finally obtained by prescription the right to govern the territory in question. Another cause of dispute was the arrest and ill-treatment to which Ragusan merchants were often subjected when travelling in the interior. At other times the Ragusans aroused the ire of the neighbouring princes by giving shelter to their rebellious subjects. The story of Bodino, in spite of its legendary character, illustrates this very clearly. This Slavonic prince, having deposed his uncle, Radoslav,[73] and made himself King of Dalmatia and Croatia, conquered Bosnia and Servia. But he wished to get rid of Radoslav’s sons, who still ruled over a small territory on the river Drina. In this he succeeded by treachery, but their children managed to escape to Ragusa, and placed themselves under the protection of the Republic. Bodino demanded that they should be given up to him, and on the refusal of the Ragusans he besieged their city for seven years. At the end of this time, finding that his efforts were useless, he put his cousins to death, and retired with the bulk of his army. But in order to molest Ragusa he built a castle at the head of the bridge connecting the town with the mainland, and left a small containing force behind. The Ragusans obtained possession of this stronghold by the following stratagem. After having bribed the commanders of the garrison by promising them land and honours in the city, they allowed a large consignment of wine to fall into the hands of the enemy; while the latter were making merry on it the burghers issued forth and put them all to the sword. The castle was destroyed, and the church of San Niccolò in Prijeki[74] erected on its site. These events are recorded as having occurred some time during the eleventh or twelfth century, but the accounts are by writers who lived several hundreds of years later. Probably there were wars with the Slaves in which incidents of a similar character occurred, but the seven years’ siege is pure fiction, and the name of Bodino is not found in any history of the Serbs or Croatians.
Another Servian war, on which we possess somewhat more reliable information, is that which broke out in 1184 between the Ragusans and Stephen Nemanja, King of the Serbs. An army commanded by the King himself attacked the city from the land side,[75] while a fleet under his brother, Miroslav, attacked it by sea. The citizens, under Michele Bobali, completely defeated the besiegers, who were ignorant of siege operations and quite unprovided with necessaries. On the Feast of the Three Martyrs,[76] September 27, 1186, peace was concluded.[77] Both sides agreed to forget past injuries, and Nemanja granted the Ragusans permission to trade in all parts of his dominions, while his own subjects were to be protected at Ragusa; but it was also stipulated that rebels should be prevented from using the city as a place in which to conspire against their sovereign. There was another stipulation, that should the King or his brother ever need a safe refuge, Ragusa should be open to them—a clause found in many subsequent treaties.
Venice in all that concerned Ragusa’s relations with the Slave states allowed the citizens to do as they pleased, even during the period when Venetian counts presided over its government. It was only in questions concerning maritime affairs that the Queen of the Adriatic asserted her authority over Ragusa from time to time.
This same year the Normans made another raid into Dalmatia, and occupied Ragusa and several other coast towns. Norman rule lasted until 1190, and does not seem to have left any traces beyond a few documents. The treaty of peace, dated September 27, 1186,[78] was drawn up “at the court of the most glorious King William and of the lord archbishop Tribunus, in the presence of Tasilgard, the Royal Chamberlain, of all the nobles, of Gervase the count (of Ragusa), and of all the people.” This shows that Ragusa was under a Norman count. Document xxii. of the Monumenta spectantia Historiam Slavorum Meridionalium is a treaty of peace between Ragusa and the Cazichi (another name for the Narentan, pirates): “And on the side of the Ragusans, Gervase the count swore to preserve this peace, without prejudice to his sovereign lord.... In the year of our Lord (1190), in the month of February, on the day of St. Blaize (the 3rd), the Assembly having been summoned by Gervase the count to the sound of the bell, we decided,” &c. Document xxiii., dated June 13, 1190, is a treaty between this same count of Ragusa and Miroslav, Prince of the Serbs, in which Gervase promises that the latter should receive hospitality at Ragusa if he ever required it, salvo sacramento domini nostri regi Tancredi.
The occupation of Ragusa by the Normans is evidently an episode in the wars which they waged against the Eastern Empire, and the town was probably seized merely as a basis for further operations. Gervase, who ruled the whole time, does not seem to have been an absolute despot, as the consent of the Assembly was required for all the acts of the Government. Norman rule in Dalmatia did not survive the death of Tancred and the consequent collapse of the Sicilian kingdom in 1190. In documents of a date posterior to this, such as the treaty with Fano in 1199,[79] with Ancona[80] of the same year, with Bari of 1201,[81] and with Termoli of 1203,[82] no mention either of Venetian or Norman counts is made, so that we may conclude that for the time being Ragusa enjoyed freedom from foreign rulers.
But Venice was preparing to re-occupy the whole of Dalmatia, and the Fourth Crusade of 1202 provided her with the desired opportunity. The Crusaders began their expedition to the Holy Land by storming and sacking Zara, where they wintered. In 1204 they captured Constantinople, subverted the Greek Empire, and set up the ephemeral Latin Empire of the East in its place, with Baldwin of Flanders as Emperor. The Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, the prime mover and leader of the expedition, became “lord of a quarter and a half of Romania.” In 1205 the Venetians, at the height of their power, demanded the submission of Ragusa, which was at once tendered. Dandolo (the historian) thus describes this fourth surrender:—
“Tommaso Morosini, who had been nominated Patriarch (of Constantinople) by Innocent III., returned to Venice, carrying the Pope’s letters; he set sail with a fleet of four triremes and made war against the city of Ragusa, who, at the suggestion of the Greeks, had rebelled against Venice. The citizens, no longer trusting in the strength of the Greeks, surrendered their city to the Venetians.”
Two other chronicles[83] give similar accounts of the event. The indefatigable “Esadastes” of course tries to prove that Ragusa did not surrender, because the people who had held out so bravely and successfully against the Saracens 340 years previously would not have tamely submitted to a squadron of four ships commanded by a priest. The Ragusan apologist, however, forgets the enormous prestige acquired by the Venetians as a consequence of their exploits in subverting the Eastern Empire, after which event Ragusa could not hope to oppose the greatest Power in the Adriatic with any chance of success.[84]
With this act of submission ends the first period of Ragusan history, during which the possession, or rather suzerainty over the city was a matter of dispute between the Venetians and the Greeks, with intervals of absolute independence, and four years of Norman rule. As, however, Byzantine influence, not necessarily political, predominates even in Venice itself, we may call this the Byzantine period. For the next hundred and fifty years, save for one short interruption, Ragusa remains under Venetian supremacy.
An important question in connection with the growth of Ragusa is its ecclesiastical history. Native historians have attempted to prove that the city was an archiepiscopal see from the earliest times, and that it succeeded to Salona, whence some of its first settlers had come, as the metropolis of all Dalmatia. This latter contention proving quite untenable (the Archbishop of Salona, together with the majority of the surviving inhabitants, took refuge at Spalato, which became an archiepiscopal see in consequence), they declare that the Ragusan archbishops had succeeded to those of Doclea. That city, they assert, had been destroyed by the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel, and its archbishop fled to Ragusa, which became ipso facto an archiepiscopal see. A more accurate account is that contained in the Illyricum Sacrum of Farlati. Doclea was destroyed, not by Samuel, who became Tsar of the Bulgarians in 976, but by Simeon. In fact Porphyrogenitus, who wrote in 949, mentions the event as having occurred during his own lifetime. According to the Illyricum Sacrum the exact date was 926. John (the archbishop) actually did take refuge at Ragusa, where, on the death of the local bishop, he succeeded to the see, retaining his superior title by courtesy. His successors wished to continue in the dignity, and even began to assume metropolitan authority, refusing to obey the archbishop of Spalato. The dispute lasted many years, and the bishops of the newly-created see of Antivari[85] claimed that they were the true successors to the archbishops of Doclea. Pope Gregory VII. apparently refers to these contentions in his Epistle to Michael, King of the Slaves.[86] The Roman Pontiff hereby summons “Peter, bishop of Antivari, the bishop of Ragusa, and other suitable witnesses, by means of whom the contention between the archbishop of Spalato and Ragusa[87] may be judicially examined and canonically defined,” to repair to the Holy See. What Gregory’s decision was we are not informed, but in the end the see of Ragusa was separated from that of Spalato and erected into an archbishopric with metropolitan authority. The same thing was done in the case of Antivari. Thus by the thirteenth century we find that Dalmatia was divided into three ecclesiastical provinces. The reasons why the Ragusans were so anxious to have an archbishopric of their own were political not less than religious. We have seen how important a personage the Ragusan bishop was in the constitution, and if he were to owe obedience to a prelate in a foreign and possibly hostile State, he might be induced to act in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the Republic. The existence of a separate province, which lasted down to our own times, also constituted a further assertion of Ragusan independence.
The importance of the Ragusan Church was further enhanced by the conversion of the neighbouring Slaves, to whom Ragusa was the nearest religious centre. Ragusan missionaries went among them to preach the Gospel, and ecclesiastics from Constantinople made the city their headquarters and starting-point. The part which Ragusa played in these conversions explains the gifts which the Servian princes and nobles made to its churches.[88] In later times religious controversies arose between the citizens and their neighbours, in consequence of the heretical and schismatic sects which were spreading throughout the Balkan lands. Ragusa was nothing if not orthodox, and used all her influence to second the Papacy in trying to suppress these movements, which were often countenanced by the kings and princes of Servia and Bosnia. Bernard, archbishop of Ragusa at the end of the twelfth century, wished to bring the bishops of Bosnia under his authority, and the Banus Čulin, who at that time professed himself a Catholic, consented. But while Bernard was in Rome, Čulin abjured Catholicism for Bogomilism,[89] and set up Bogomil bishops in opposition to those consecrated by Bernard. Vulkan, Grand Župan of Chelmo (Zachulmia), did likewise, and convoked a synod at Antivari.[90]
In 1023 the Benedictine Order came to Ragusa from the Tremiti Islands under one Peter, and established itself on the island of Lacroma. Various Serb princes and Ragusan citizens made gifts of land to the monastery.
The Ragusans were essentially a commercial people, and trade, both inland and sea-borne, formed the chief source of their wealth. In the Byzantine period, however, we only find the germs of their future commercial development. We have already alluded to the part played by Ragusan shipping, first in the Greek expedition to Apulia in 848, and then at the battle of Durazzo. But the vessels were small, and the sea-borne trade of a very limited character. Navigation was of three kinds—coastwise traffic, navigation intra Culfum, and navigation extra Culfum.[91] Coastwise traffic was comprised between the peninsula of Molonta (a little to the north-west of the Bay of Cattaro) and the Canale di Stagno, a distance of about 70 kilometres in all, with ten harbours. Navigation intra Culfum, which extended from the Capo Cumano to Apulia and Durazzo, was of considerable importance even during the Byzantine epoch. Fine Milan cloths, skins, tan, and canvas for sails were brought on Ragusan ships from the ports of the Marche and Apulia, and forwarded to all parts of the Eastern Empire and the Slavonic lands. All trade to places situated beyond these limits came under the heading of navigation extra Culfum, but we shall defer a detailed account of its conditions to a later chapter, as it did not grow to important proportions until the thirteenth century. There was, however, apparently a Ragusan colony at Constantinople.
The Quay and Harbour Gate
The earliest recorded commercial treaty made by the Republic is the one of 1169 with Pisa. In 1168 the Republic of Pisa sent three envoys to Constantinople to settle a contention with Manuel Comnenus. On the way they stopped at Ragusa, and on May 13, 1169, signed a commercial treaty with the city, guaranteeing mutual immunities and other privileges. The Pisan envoys then proceeded on their journey, accompanied by the newly appointed chief of the Ragusan colony in the Imperial capital.[92] There were political as well as commercial reasons for this agreement, in the hostility of both Republics to Venetian supremacy in the Adriatic. About this time the Ragusans obtained the right of citizenship at Constantinople, granted to them by Manuel, and confirmed by his son, Alexius II. The original documents have not been preserved, but the privilege is frequently alluded to by later writers.
Many treaties with the other towns of Dalmatia, Istria, and Italy are published in the Monumenta spectantia Historiam Slavorum Meridionalium. Thus in 1188 a perpetual peace was concluded with Rovigno;[93] in 1190 an agreement with the Cazichi or Narentans[94] (also called Dalmisiani, from the town of Almissa); in 1191 a treaty with Fano, and others to which we have already alluded. These agreements were all similar in character, and their object being to insure mutual and commercial privileges. Some contained special clauses exempting the citizens of the contracting cities from certain taxes and customs dues.
Traffic with the Slavonic states also began early, but the great trade highways from the coast to the interior were not fully developed until the next century.
Artistic and intellectual development, in which Byzantine influence is conspicuous, was still in its infancy, and of the few buildings of this period with any architectural pretensions only the smallest traces remain. The town was built chiefly of wood, save for the walls and a couple of small churches. The oldest edifice of which anything remains is the Church of San Stefano, mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus as the most important in the town. Four ruined walls in a court near the diocesan seminary are believed to have belonged to this very ancient building. The tradition is that it was erected by Stephen, Banus of Bosnia, or by his widow. Gelcich suggestively describes what the building must have been like: “In the church of St. Stephen at Ragusa we must picture to ourselves not a work of art, but a chapel capable of containing few beyond the ministers at the altar; low-vaulted, decorated internally, and perhaps externally, with frescoes; an apse just large enough for the altar, lit by such few rays of sunlight as could penetrate by an irregular number of holes piercing the stone slab which closed the single-arched window placed over the altar.”[95] On the outside wall there is a fragment of bas-relief of two arches, each containing a cross on a design of foliage. Close by is the area of a larger church, also in ruins, of a later date, to which Santo Stefano afterwards served as a sacristy.
Another church of the Byzantine period is that of San Giacomo in Peline,[96] on the slopes of the Monte Sergio, mentioned by documents of the thirteenth century as already very ancient. Seen from outside, there is nothing to tell one that it is a church at all, but internally it is in good repair, and it is still occasionally used for services. It is quite plain, and has round arches and vaultings. It consists of a nave, three bays, and an apse. The single window, which is a later addition, is to the left of the altar. A small painting of the fourteenth century is the only ornament. Two other churches—San Niccolò in Prijeki, and Santa Maria in Castello—although both of this epoch, were entirely rebuilt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The best—one is tempted to say the only—piece of Byzantine sculpture in the town is a handsomely carved doorway in a chapel near the Duomo. The design, though simple, is elegant and graceful. On the island of Lacroma an inscription marks the burial-place of Vitalis, archbishop of Ragusa from 1023 to 1047.
This, then, is the sum of Byzantine remnants at Ragusa. The name of Monte Sergio, as Prof. Eitelberger says, is the only relic of the Oriental Church; while the name of the west gate, Porta Pile or Pille, is apparently derived from the Greek Πύλαι.
Of literary production it is as yet too early to speak, for Ragusan literature only begins with the Renaissance.