FOOTNOTES
[1] This is not the place to discuss the question of earlier Sclavonic immigrations.
[2] De Administrando Imperio, capp. xxx., xxxi., xxxii.
[3] Chorvat, one of the supposed Croatian leaders, is evidently the eponymus of the whole race of Croats, whose own name for themselves, Charvati or Hrvati, seems to signify ‘mountaineers,’ and to be connected with the name of the Carpathian mountains, and the Carpi of Roman historians. Hilferding points out that of the names of Chorvat’s four brothers, as given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, two are equivalent in meaning to ‘Delay’ or ‘Tarrying,’ and Chorvat’s two sisters bear the Sclavonic names of ‘Joy’ and ‘Sorrow.’ The names are perhaps allegorical of the gradual character of their conquests, and of defeats sustained as well as victories won.
[4] This seems to me far more probable than the poetic derivation of Župa from the same word in the sense of ‘sunny land.’
[5] Presbyteri Diocleatis, Regnum Slavorum (in Lucius, De Regno Dalmatiæ et Croatiæ, libri sex. Amst: 1676: p. 291.)
[6] See Codex Diplomaticus Regni Croatiæ, Dalmatiæ et Slavoniæ, p. 188 (u Zagrebu, 1874). Sub Anno 1100. The seven Bans appear in the following order:—1, the Ban of Croatia; 2, the Ban of Bosnia; 3, of Slavonia; 4, of Posega; 5, Podravia; 6, Albania; 7, Syrmia.
[7] According to the Presbyter of Dioclea, Basil subdued the whole of Bosnia, Rascia, and Dalmatia, including what is now Herzegovina. But this subjection, if it was ever effected, must have been of the most temporary character. From 1018 to 1076 the diadem of the Croatian Prince was received from Byzantium.
[8] The allied Serbian troops, under Dobroslav and Niklas, overwhelmed the army of Michael the Paphlagonian’s general in the gorge of Vranja in Zenta, and, subsequently, that of Michael the Logothete, Governor of Durazzo under Constantine Monomachus, in the defiles between Cattaro and the lake of Scutari, which form at present the heart of Montenegro. See Maximilian Schimek’s Politische Geschichte des Königreichs Bosnien und Rama. Wien, 1787, p. 21.
[9] See [p. 317]. Perhaps this stream once formed the boundary of Croatia in this direction. Evidently the name must first have been applied to Bosnia by Dalmatian borderers. The name Rama at first comprised the territory between this river and the Adriatic.
[10] Hilferding, Serben und Bulgaren, p. 150.
[11] The Ban Borić. The passages relating to Bosnia in Cinnamus are in his Historiar. lib. iii. c. 7 and 19.
[12] See pp. [220], [241], [403].
[13] At Novibrdo, in Serbia, the most flourishing of the Saxon colonies, spoken of rapturously by an old Serbian writer as ‘a city of silver and gold,’ the Teutonic word for ‘Burgher’ became naturalised, and a letter of the Ragusans is extant addressed in 1388 to the Captain and Burghers, Kefalii i Purgarom, of the town. See Jireček, Gesch. der Bulgaren, p. 401.
[14] See the Synodic ‘written in the Bulgarian language by command of the Czar Boris in the year 1210,’ a translation of which from the original manuscript is given by the Russian historian Hilferding (in the German translation of his History of the Serbs and Bulgarians, part i. p. 118).
[15] Excerpted in Sam. Andreæ, Disquisitio de Bogomilis.
[16] Recent Sclavonic writers accept the Bulgarian traditions as to the Pope Bogomil; but they seem to me not to allow sufficient weight to Byzantine evidence. It is right, however, to note that ‘Bogomil’ is a possible Bulgarian personal name, and exactly answers, as Jireček observes, to the German ‘Gottlieb.’ It is remarkable that the heretics never called themselves Bogomiles, but simply ‘Christians,’ as did the Patarenes and Albigensians of the West. By the orthodox Sclaves they were called Bogomiles, Babuni, Manicheji, and in Bosnia also Patareni, and, apparently from a corrupted form of that word, Potur.
[17] According to the Armenian Chronicle of Acogh’ig (iii. 20-22) the Czar Samuel himself embraced the Manichæan religion. According to the legend of St. Vladimir his son Gabriel and his wife were Bogomiles. See Hilferding, op. cit.
[18] Cited in Hilferding, op. cit.
[19] Alexiados, lib. xv.
[20] Though she afterwards admits that the heresy had infected high families.
[21] One, Slovo na Eretiki, against the heretics; and the other, Slovo o Cerkovnom Cinu, on church government. The works of Cosmas are the only monuments of Bulgarian literature dating from the epoch of Czar Samuel. The passages relating to the Bogomiles are excerpted in Hilferding.
[22] Hilferding, op. cit. i., identifies this original sect with a division of the Bogomiles known as ‘The Church of Dregovišce,’ and the later with ‘the Church of Bulgaria.’ These two Churches are among the thirteen Churches of the Cathari reckoned by the Italian Reniero Sacconi, a renegade member of that sect, in the thirteenth century. The two divisions are traceable in the Western heresies.
[23] The statements of Cosmas with reference to the existence of these dualistic tenets among the Bogomiles are attested by the ‘Synodic of Czar Boris,’ already referred to; by Euthymius Zygabenus, Panoplia; and, as regards the Bogomiles of Bosnia, by Raphael of Volaterræ, Geographia; and by the recent researches of Raški.
[24] Euthymius Zygabenus, Panoplia.
[25] It is remarkable that the only Bogomilian version of the Gospels which has been preserved, a Bosnian Codex written in 1404, contains, in spite of its late date, most primitive forms of speech; proving the care with which the Bogomiles copied from their older manuscripts. See Daničic’s account of the Bosnian Chval Codex in the Starine of the South-Sclavonic Academy, III. 1-146. Cited by Jireček, op. cit. p. 177.
[26] τελειοῦν.
[27] Cosmas, corroborated by the ‘Synodic’ and Harmenopulos.
[28] For their aversion to the cross see also Euthymius, Panoplia, Anna Comnena, and Harmenopulos. See also p. 176.
[29] Cosmas. Their aversion to images, churches, and a hierarchy, is borne out by the testimony of Euthymius and Anna Comnena.
[30] So too Anna Comnena and Euthymius.
[31] Rački (in Jireček, op. cit.)
[32] Thus Pope Gregory XI. writes in 1376: ‘Cum Bosnenses uxores accipiant cum condicione, si eris bona, et intentione dimittendi, quando sibi videbitur’ (MS. of the South Sclavonic Academy, cited in Jireček, op. cit. p. 183).
[33] Cosmas is again slanderous when he says that the Bogomiles begged from door to door.
[34] Jireček, op. cit. p. 180.
[35] Jireček, op. cit. p. 181.
[36] So Cosmas, ‘At the fifth time, however, they have the door open.’ According to Euthymius, who also bears witness to the Paternoster being their only form, they prayed five times during the day and seven at night. Euthymius (see also Epiphanius) says that they prayed also to demons to avert evil, and that Basilius, their heresiarch, declared that in their gospels was the text, ‘Worship demons, not that they may do good to you, but that they may not do you harm.’ On this charge of devil-worship, however even Cosmas is silent.
[37] This is illustrated by the missionary work of St. Sava in that century. At the end of the ninth century the Narentines, living in the immediate neighbourhood of Spalato and Ragusa, the two focuses of Roman Christianity, were still unconverted, and their country, according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, was still known as Pagania. See [p. 367]. How much more must this have been the case with the inland districts of Bosnia!
[38] I find that this explanation of the rapid advance of the Manichæan heresy among the Sclaves has suggested itself, quite independently, to Herr Jireček in his recent history. He says (Gesch. der Bulgaren, p. 175): ‘Es war für Bogomil keine schwere Aufgabe, das unlängst erst dem Heidenthüme entrückte Volk für eine Glaubenslehre zu gewinnen, welche, gleich dem alten slawischen Mythus von den Bosi und Bêsi, lehrt, dass es zweierlei höhere Wesen gebe, nämlich einen guten und einen bosen Gott.’ Herr Jireček, however, seems to forget that Armenian missionaries were at work in Bulgaria considerably before even the reputed date of Bogomil. If we remember that at the time when Manichæism first sought a footing among the Bulgarians a great part of the nation was still pagan, these considerations become still more cogent.
[39] See Schimek, Pol. Gesch. des Königreichs Bosnien u. Rama, p. 36.
[40] This is Hilferding’s conclusion.
[41] Or Spalato. Ragusa also laid claim to be the Metropolitan Church of Bosnia in Culin’s time.
[42] Culin had married a sister of Stephen Némanja of Serbia, whose Bogomilian opinions were notorious before her marriage. See Schimek, op. cit. p. 48.
[43] This we learn from a letter of the Apostolic Legate of Alexander III., then in Dalmatia, directed ‘Nobili et potenti viro Culin Bano Bosniæ.’ The Legate writes to say that he is in very good favour with the Pontiff; that he would like for himself a couple of slaves and a pair of martens’ skins; and ‘if you have anything to signify to the Pontiff we will benignantly listen to it.’ (!)
[44] Farlati, Episcopi Bosnenses. (In his Illyricum Sacrum, t. iv. p. 45.)
[45] The German word ‘Ketzer’ is derived from ‘Cathari,’ another name for the sect.
[46] As an example of the doctrinal identity of the Bogomilian and Albigensian creeds, I may be allowed to recall a few main features of the heresy about Toulouse as they struck the Roman Inquisitors in 1178. The heretics, we are told, declared that there were two Principles: one Good Spirit, who had created invisible things alone, and only those that were not susceptible of change and corruption; the other Evil, who had created the sky, earth, man, and all things visible. That the sacramental bread and wine were not transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. That they rejected priests, monks, bishops, and sacerdotalism generally. That churches were an abomination to them. That the laying on of hands, and that, on adults, was the only true baptism. As to marriage—‘virum cum uxore non posse salvari si alter alteri debitum reddat.’ That beggars deserved no alms. That they made use of the vernacular in their prayers: they were so ignorant of Latin ‘that they could not speak a couple of words.’ ‘It was necessary,’ says the Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, ‘to condescend to their ignorance, and to speak of the sacraments of the Church, though this was sufficiently absurd, in the vulgar tongue.’ Their preachers seem to have styled themselves, in the figurative language common to the Bogomiles as well, ‘Angels of Light.’ The Abbot of Clairvaux states that one of them, doubtless in the same figurative sense, called himself John the Baptist. This man, their chief leader, was an aged man, who presided at the nocturnal prayer-meetings of the sectaries, clad in a tunic or dalmatic. See Roger of Hoveden’s Chronicle, (Prof. Stubbs’s edition, in the Rolls Series, vol. ii. p. 153, &c.)
[47] Of the two divisions of the original Bulgarian Church, that of Dragoviče, with its more uncompromising dualism, was followed in the West by the Churches of Toulouse and Albano on the Lake of Garda. The other Western Churches accepted the modified monotheism of what was known as ‘The Bulgarian Church’ par excellence. This was in the thirteenth century. At an earlier period, however, the absolute dualism of the Dragovician Church had triumphed at the heretical Council of St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse. See Jireček, op. cit. p. 213.
[48] ‘Patarenes,’ the name by which the Bogomiles of Bosnia and other Sclavonic lands are always called by Roman writers, was derived from ‘Pataria,’ a suburb of Milan where heresy first raised its head in Italy.
[49] Jireček, loc. cit. The Armenian influence on Bulgaria and Bosnia, and the Bogomilian influence on the West, is connected with the spread of a curious heretical literature, derived from Oriental sources; of phantastic Apocrypha and spurious Gospels, as well as of works of Oriental magic, which, disseminated by the more corrupt adherents of the sect, entered into the mediæval mythology of the West, and have still left their traces on its folklore as well as on that of the Russians, Bulgarians, and Serbs. Jireček cites, among other such works, the favourite Bulgarian legend of St. John Bogoslov, containing a vision of the Dies iræ, which was brought from Bulgaria in 1170 by Nazarius, bishop of the Upper Italian Patarenes, and translated by him into Latin. Another such work is the account of the wanderings of the Mother of God in hell; but perhaps the most interesting of all, and one which in its origin seems to be almost purely Sclavonic, is the account—reflecting the primitive Sclavonic custom of the ‘Pobratimstvo’—of how the Sirmian Emperor, Probus, made Christ his sworn brother.
[50] Radulphi de Coggeshale, Chronicon Anglicanum (in the Rolls Series, p. 121, &c.) The name ‘Publicani,’ by which the Essex chronicler alludes to them, is a common name for the Bogomiles in the West, and is, of course, a corruption of Pauliciani, or, perhaps, of a Sclavonic form of that word. The heretics seem to have spread to England from Flanders, where they were much oppressed by the Count. From the fragmentary details which Ralph has given us, they seem to have preserved their Bogomilian faith in a very pure form. They believed in the Two Principles and the evilness of matter, rejected Purgatory, prayers for the dead, invocation of saints, infant baptism, and accepted no scriptures but the Gospels and Canonical Epistles. Some went so far as to charge them (as Euthymius had done long before) with praying to Lucifer in their subterranean meeting-houses. They were ‘rusticani,’ and therefore not amenable to the argument of authority; by which, I suppose, the preference of the early Protestants for the vulgar tongue is alluded to. They observed a vegetable diet, and condemned marriage. From a shameless relation of Gervase of Tilbury which Ralph reports, it appears that there were holy women of the sect under vows of perpetual chastity. Gervase himself, a clerk of the Archbishop of Rheims, coolly related to his monkish friend, who chronicled the story with pleasing gusto, how, having failed to seduce a beautiful country girl, he perceived her heresy, accused her successfully of being a ‘Publican’ before the Inquisition, and feasted his eyes with her dying agonies at the stake. Girl though she was, she died without a groan, ‘instar,’ as even the monk cannot refrain from adding, ‘martyrum Christi (sed dissimili causa) qui olim pro Christiana religione a paganis trucidabantur.’ The tragedy, even as told by Ralph, is of an intense pathos, and deserves immortalising. How beautiful is that innocence and how unutterable the villainy which provokes an under-current of humanity even in a monkish narrator! After relations like this, the conduct of Henry II. to the Oxford ‘Publicans’ will appear almost merciful: he merely gave orders that they should be branded on the forehead with a red-hot key and thrust forth from the city, and that nobody should give them food or shelter. The notices of the Publicani, Albigenses, and other Bogomilian sects who gained a footing in England, both by way of Flanders and Guienne, never seem to have attracted the attention they deserve from English historians. Yet the hatred born by the orthodox against these Bulgarian intruders has added a word of reproach to the language.
[51] Nor is this the place to enquire how far, in the Languedoc at all events, the spread of these doctrines may have been aided by survivals of an earlier Gnosticism. What, for example, became of those Gnostici who had established themselves in the end of the fourth century in Spain and parts of the south of Gaul? (See Sulpicius Severus, Sacræ Historiæ, lib. ii.)
[52] By means of two merchants of Zara, Matthew and Aristodius, who brought the Patarene doctrines from Bosnia to Spalato. Thomas Archidiaconus, c. 24, quoted in Wilkinson’s Dalmatia.
[53] With the exception of the Croats, who perhaps hardly came under the denomination of Balkan Sclaves.
[54] Hist. Maj. ad annum 1223 (Rolls Series, vol. iii. p. 78); and compare Ralph of Coggeshale’s account (Rolls Series, p. 195). Jireček (op. cit p. 214) refers to a diploma of Innocent IV. in 1244, which reveals an intercourse between Bosnia and the Waldenses he cites Palacky and Brandl in the Čas. matice moravské, 1, 2.
[55] His residence is fixed as ‘on the borders of the Hungarians and between the limits of Bulgaria, Croatia, and Dalmatia,’ which indicates the position of Bosnia with sufficient exactitude.
[56] The style of Bartholomew, the vicar of the Roman antipope, was, according to Matthew Paris, ‘servus servorum sanctæ fidei;’ according to Ralph of Coggeshale, ‘servus servorum hospitalis sanctæ fidei.’ Ralph writes ‘Poios’ instead of ‘Porlos.’
[57] Raynaldus, Annal. Eccles. sub anno 1233.
[58] The Prince himself is described as ‘King of the Ruthenians, and Ban of Sclavonia.’ See Farlati, op. cit. and Spicilegium Observationum Historico-Geographicarum de Bosniæ Regno, Lugd. Bat. 1737.
[59] Yet the historian of Latin Christianity might have spared a line to chronicle the struggles and sufferings of these early Protestants of Bosnia, to whom even the cultured sons of Provence turned for spiritual guidance.
[60] Raynaldus, Annal. Eccles. s. a. 1238.
[61] Raynaldus, s. a. 1246. Ninosclav had succeeded Zibisclav as Ban.
[62] Farlati, Episcopi Bosnenses.
[63] Under the Franciscan ‘Vicar of Bosna’ we now read of the following Custodiæ, viz. Dulmna, Greben, Bosna Civitas, Ussora, Machovia, Bulgaria, Corvinum, and Rascia.
[64] Farlati, Ep. Bosn.
[65] Waddingus, Annales Minorum (Ed. Fonsecæ), tom. vii. sub. anno 1325.
[66] Presbyter Cosmas. Just the same account of the apparent innocence of the Bogomiles appears in Euthymius: ‘They bid those who listen to their doctrines to keep the commandments of the gospel, and to be meek and merciful, and of brotherly love. Thus they entice men on by teaching all good things and useful doctrine, but they poison by degrees and draw to perdition.’
[67] Anonym. Acutheanus (in Farlati).
[68] Raynaldus, Annal. Eccles. sub anno 1369. The Franciscan Mission had complained to the Pope of Tvartko the same year, as protector of the Patarenes and ‘persecutor of that true son of the Church,’ his brother, Stephen Wuk. In 1370 the Pope writes to the bishops of Ragusa, Spalato, and ‘Dirrhachio’ to put the Patarenes under ban. In 1372, from a letter of Pope Gregory XI. to the Vicar of the Minorites in Bosnia, we learn that, in view of the continuance of the heresy in Bosnia, Rascia, ‘Bassarat,’ and the neighbouring regions, he granted them many privileges of building religious houses in those countries; ‘Bourich, belonging to the noble Nicolas de Altomanich’ in Rascia, and the ‘Contrata de Glas’ in the dominion of the King of Hungary, being specified. Waddingus, Annales Minorum, sub anno 1372.
[69] Farlati, Ep. Bosn.
[70] Waddingus, Annales Minorum, tom. xiii. sub anno 1462.
[71] See Farlati, Ep. Bosn.; and Spicilegium, &c. de Regno Bosniæ.
[72] Raynaldus, Annal. Eccles. sub anno 1450.
[73] Laonicus, de Rebus Turc. lib. x.; Gobelinus, lib. ii.; and Johannes Leunclavius. The Sultan is said to have made use of the authority of the captured king to obtain the seventy cities, but the account given of the betrayal of Bobovac shows that the Bogomiles were the real cause of the quick submission.
[74] I have already noticed the early branching off of a Bogomilian church which rejected Dualism pure and simple. Herr Jireček remarks this compromising tendency, and observes that an Italian adherent of the sect, Giovanni di Lugio, taught the real humanity of Christ and accepted the Old Testament: while others conceded free will.
[75] Waddingus, Annales Minorum, sub anno 1478. There is also a curious passage in Raphael of Volaterra, who appears to have written his Geographia towards the end of the fifteenth century. He says (Geog. p. 244, ed. Lyons, 1599), ‘In Bosnia, Rascia, and Serbia the sect of the Manichees is still followed. They say there are two Principia Rerum—one good, one evil. Nor do they acknowledge the Roman Pope, nor Christ “Omousion.” They have monasteries (cœnobia) in hidden mountain valleys, where go matrons who have escaped from certain diseases.’ These matrons say that for a certain period they act as menials to holy men in accordance with a vow: ‘Atque ita inter monachos mixtæ una vivunt; quæ quidem labes adhuc durat.’
[76] Besides the evidence on this point which I have gathered from other sources, I may notice a most interesting allusion to the Bogomiles or Patarenes who had turned renegades, and a direct testimony that they went over wholesale to Islâm, in J. Bapt. Montalbano, Rerum Turcarum Commentarius, written certainly before the year 1630 (when it was published in the Elzevir Turci Imperii Status). After mentioning the Catholic inhabitants, the writer goes on to say, ‘Est aliud eo in regno (sc. Bosnæ) hominum genus Potur appellatum, qui neque Christiani sunt, neque Turcæ, circumciduntur tamen, pessimique habentur.’ ‘Potur’ is evidently a Sclavonised form of Patarene. The writer goes on to say of these ‘Poturs’ that they, ‘to the number of many thousand,’ offered to renegade from the Christian faith to that of Mahomet if Sultan Soliman would grant them indemnity, and release them from tribute. Soliman, says the writer (a Bolognese Doctor), thereupon doubled their tribute, and enrolled their children among the Janissaries, and ‘hence they are despised by both Turks and Christians.’ But this whole account evidently bears witness to the wholesale renegation of the Bogomiles. Further on the same writer, who had visited the country, bears witness to the continuance of Protestantism in Turkish Bosnia in the sixteenth century. ‘Eos inter,’ says he, of the inhabitants, ‘Calvinistæ Arrianique multi.’
[77] I am indebted for this fact to Mr. W. J. Stillman, the excellent correspondent of the Times in the Herzegovina, who gives an account of these refugees in a letter from Ragusa dated Oct. 19, 1875, which I may be allowed to quote as illustrating the more recent sufferings of this interesting sect, and the sad case of the Christian refugees of Bosnia and the Herzegovina generally. ‘The people of Popovo were tranquilly engaged in their fields and houses, when the troops—Regulars and Bashi-Bazouks—came up; the latter killed the first they came upon where they found them (one of them, the brother of a villager who had appealed successfully to the Pashà at Trebinje against the extortions of the Agas some months ago, being cut to pieces alive), and all the rest fled in panic. The good curé of Ossonich is doing all he can for them; but there are only eighty-five houses in this village, and he has 2,125 souls of the Popovites on his register for succour. Of these 300 were out on the mountain-side on the night of the worst storm we have had this season. One woman with a new-born babe was so exhausted in her flight that she went to sleep, sitting on a rock nursing her child, fell off in her sleep, and was found by one of the other peasants next morning still sleeping, with her babe at her bosom, in a pool of water which had fallen during the storm. The curé tells me that these people are mainly Bogomilites, remains of an ancient sect once widely spread in Bosnia and identical with the Albigenses.’ I observe that Jireček, quoting Kosanović (Glasnik 29, (1871), 174), alludes to a rumour that in the valley of the Narenta and near Creševo, ‘there are still Christians who neither submit to Franciscans, nor Popes, nor Imâms, but govern themselves according to old traditions, which an Elder delivers to the rest.’ I hope at some future period to be able to say more on the present state of the Bogomiles.
[78] See [p. 214]. There seems, however, to be some discrepancy as to dates. According to Schimek (op. cit. p. 76), Czar Dūshan only annexed Bosnia in 1347, whereas the date of the Armorial is 1340. The Ban, Stephen Kotromanović, retained a small part of his dominions on the Hungarian frontier. Dūshan placed the rest under the despot Lazar of Rascia. On Dūshan’s death in 1355 the Ban recovered the whole of Bosnia, including a part of Serbia beyond the Drina and the grave of St. Sava at Mileševo, where he built a Franciscan Monastery, and where he himself was buried in 1357.
[79] Spicilegium, &c., De Bosniæ Regno, p. 51; Farlati, Ep. Bosn. &c. Schimek (op. cit. p. 84).
[80] Henceforth he is generally known as Stephen Myrza.
[81] Thoemmel, Vilajet Bosnien, p. 12.
[82] For an account of the collection of Bishop Strossmayer I am entirely indebted to Canon Liddon, who visited Diakovar in the summer of this year. As a slight monument of mediæval art in Bosnia I may refer the reader to the Great Seal of King Tvartko III. engraved on the title-page of this book.
[83] See [p. 384] for the Župa Canawlovska and the Roman aqueduct from which it derived its name. Tribunja or Terbunja is, of course, Trebinje, the Roman Terbulium.
[84] Jireček (op. cit. p. 338), who brings out clearly the prominent part played by King Tvartko in the last great South-Sclavonic struggle against the Turks.
[85] Rački, Pokret na Slavenskom jugu, koncem XIV. i pocetkom XV. stolieca (cited in Jireček, loc. cit.)
[86] The English reader will find a full and graphic account of the battle of Kóssovo Polje (or the field of Thrushes) in The Slavonic Provinces of Turkey in Europe, by G. Muir Mackenzie and A. P. Irby, ch. xv. Some extracts from some of the Servian Pjesme on this subject are translated by Sir John Bowring in his Servian Popular Poetry. There is also an interesting account of the battle in Knolles’ Turkish History, 1610, which shows how great was already the poetic influence on the story. ‘The brightness of the Armor and Weapons,’ writes our English historian, ‘was as it had been the Lightning, the multitude of Launces and other horsemen’s staves shadowed the light of the Sun. Arrows and darts fell so fast that a man would have thought they had poured down from Heaven. The noise of the Instruments of War, with the neighing of Horses and outcries of men was so terrible and great that the wild Beasts of the mountains stood astonied therewith; and the Turkish Histories, to express the terror of the day (vainly say) that the Angels of Heaven amazed with that hideous noise for that time forgot the heavenly hymns wherewith they always glorifie God.’ It is possible that the thunder of cannon was now heard for the first time in the Balkan peninsula. In 1383 the Venetians had sold King Tvartko a Falconus.
[87] Zinkeisen, (I. 290) cited in Jireček (op. cit. p. 344).
[89] Also known as Tvartko II.
[90] See [pp. 105, 106].
[91] Spicilegium, &c., De Bosniæ Regno, p. 7.
[92] See deed of Stephen Dabiscia to Goiko Mergnjavić (translated on [p. 223]) in return for services performed: ‘Quando venit Paiasit cum Turcis et stetit in Naglasincis et destruxit Bosnam.’
[93] According to the Spicilegium he assumed the title Princeps Bosnæ et dominus Jayczæ. When under Ostoja’s suzerainty he styled himself ‘Supremus Vayvoda Regni Bosnæ et Vicarius Regum Vladislai et Ostojæ.’ According to Schimek (op. cit. p. 25) his land extended from the middle of the vale of Bosna along the Croatian border.
[94] Stephen assumed the style Liber Princeps et Dominus Bosnæ, Ussoræ, Salæ atque plurium aliorum locorum, atque Chelmi Comes.
[95] From him the noble Venetian family of Cozzas derives its origin.
[96] It seems to me probable that the title accorded by Frederick was Duke of Primorie (which is now incorporated in the County of Chelm), and that the name Duke of St. Sava was rather a popular piecing together of this and his other title of ‘Keeper of the Sepulchre of St. Sava.’ In 1446 he is called Herzegh Sancti Sabbæ by the Bosnian king in the account of the Conventus of Coinica; but if we may judge from the Italian style used by his son, the refugee duke, he called himself Duke of Primorie. Stephen Cosaccia’s son calls himself ‘Duca Primorschi, Signor di Hum, e Guardiano del Sepolchro del beato Sava.’
[97] Herzegovina, the adjectival form of Herzega—literally ‘the ducal’—land being understood.
[98] Stephen Cosaccia’s father, Sandalj Hranić, in addition to his original heritage of Chelm, had been ceded lands beyond the Drina by Ostoja. Stephen himself succeeded in annexing from Tvartko’s successor the districts of Duvno, Rama, and Ljubuška. On the other hand Sandalj had parted with Ostrovizza to the Venetians, and the Župa Kanawlovska to Ragusa. See L’Herzégovine, Étude Géographique, Historique, et Statistique, par E. de Sainte-Marie.
[99] For Mostar and its bridge see [p. 347], &c.
[100] Schimek (op. cit. p. 100).
[101] This is illustrated by a curious fact. A deed (described by Schimek, op. cit. p. 117) is still extant in the Imperial Archives at Vienna, in which King Thomas, in return for services in reconciling him to his Hungarian suzerain, grants John Hunyadi an annuity of 3000 ducats. In this document, datum in Castro Bobovacz, feria quarta post festum Pentecostes (3 Junii) An. Dom. 1444, Thomas still makes use of the seal of his predecessor Tvartko III. A representation of this seal from Schimek is given on the title-page of this book.
[103] Schimek (op. cit. p. 119, note 2), on what authority I know not, asserts that the Electi omnium comitatuum regni nostri nobiles, who attended at the ‘Conventus,’ were the Elders of the Patarene (Bogomilian) clergy, ‘und die Edlen (nobiles) scheinen, nach der polnischen Art, die Landboten gewesen zu seyn.’
[104] Datum sub castro nostro regali de Bobovatz in oppido Sutischæ, die xxiv Julii, A.D. 1457 (in Spic. De Bosniæ Regno).
[105] This appears from a curious document, dated that year, by which King Stephen Thomas engages not to introduce the Turks into Hungary. ‘Nec iisdem Turcis in tenutis nostris, apud manus nostras existentibus a Drino usque fluvium Ukrina, vadum seu navigium præstabimus.’ It does not appear whether these were actual settlers, or a Turkish garrison quartered on the dominions of the Bosnian King.
[106] Other accounts make Mahomet disguise himself as a merchant; others transfer the scene to Jaycze; and, according to another version, the Bosnian King was not Stephen Thomas, but his son Tomašević.
[107] Proceres Regni.
[108] Præfecti.
[109] This summons is preserved in the monastery of the Holy Ghost at Foinica, and is given in Balthasar Kerselich, De Regnis Dalmatiæ, Croatiæ, Sclavoniæ, notitiæ præliminares, Zagrab, s. a. In my first edition I had followed the wrong chronology of Farlato and referred it to Stephen Thomas, but there can be no doubt that it is, as Schimek points out, the act of Tomašević.
[110] Schimek (op. cit. p. 144).
[111] Variously described as Radovil Večinćić, Radić, Radac, and, in latinised forms, Radazes and Rastizes.
[112] For the fall of the Bosnian kingdom and the Banat of Jaycze I have compared the accounts of Johannes Leunclavius, Laonicus, De Reb. Turc, lib. x.; Gobelinus, lib. ii.; Isthvanfius, and Bonfinius.
[113] A few towns on the Bosna and Save, where, as nearer Hungary, the strength of the Bogomilian malcontents would be weakest, are said (Schimek, op. cit. p. 109) to have resisted, but were soon reduced by the Beg Omer from Thessaly, and laid waste with fire and sword.
[114] Schimek beheads Tomašević at Blagai after the Herzegovinian campaign.
[115] So too in the Languedoc the strength of the heretics seems to have lain with the industrial population of the times, and one of the names applied to them, Tisserands, shews that they made many converts among the weavers. This illustrates what I have already noticed, the connexion between Bogomilian propagandism and commercial intercourse. It is interesting to notice that the Bogomiles who still survive in the district of Popovo have retained certain mechanic arts that have died out among the rest of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian population.
[116] Including Ragatica, Cernica, Kecka, and Michiac.
[117] The Venetians at different times succeeded in extending their dominion over parts of Herzegovina. The coast-land (Primorie), including Macarska, Castelnuovo, &c., passed definitely into their hands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to become at a later period the inheritance of Austria. The Venetians at one time extended their suzerainty over the Popovo Polje, Gacko and Piva. In 1694 their Proveditor-General in Dalmatia, Delfino, took Gabella Citluk (Počitelj); and their general, Marcello, pursued the Seraskier to Nevešinje. At this time the Christian inhabitants of the districts of Trebinje, Popovo, Klobuć, and Grahovo (i.e. of much the same area as that of the latest Herzegovinian outbreak) rose against the Pashàs and Agas, and the Mussulman inhabitants. By the peace of Carlovitz in 1699 the Herzegovinian towns of Citluk, Gabella, Cattaro, Castelnuovo, and Risano, with Knin and Zengg and other places, were left in the hands of the Venetians; and the only remaining strips of Herzegovinian coast-land, the narrow enclaves of Klek and Sutorina, were left to the Turks by English influence and Ragusan precaution, which feared Venetian contact.
[118] The Duke’s son.
[119] Possibly rather restored. A convent and royal residence (the two were generally combined by the Sclavonic princes) had certainly existed at Sutisca much earlier, and as far back as 1278 a Ban, Stephen Kotromanović, dates a diploma ‘from our palace of “Suttisca.”’ The convent reared by the pious Thomas and his Queen was destroyed by the Turks, but the Franciscans obtained permission to rebuild it, and set a great cross there, which according to their own account (Relation of Bosnian Monks in Farlati) was made by St. Bernardin, ‘and is most formidable to demons and drives off airy tempests.’ Perhaps it acted as a lightning-conductor.
[120] This account is taken from the relation of Bosnian monks ‘On the Present State of Bosnia,’ supplied to Farlati in 1769. I have assumed above that the picture of King Thomas still exists.
[121] Her mother was Helena Comnena, wife of Stephen Cosaccia.
[122] Waddingus, Annales Minorum, sub anno 1475.
[123] Waddingus, op. cit. sub anno 1478.
[124] See [frontispiece] to this Historical Review of Bosnia. I have copied my illustration of the monument of Queen Catharine, from a representation of it as existing in 1677, in Alphonsi Ciacconii Vitæ et Res Gestæ Pontificum Romanorum et S. R. E. Cardinalium ab Augustino Oldoino recognitæ, &c., tom. iii. col. 41 (Romæ, 1677). I do not know whether the monument is still existent.
[125] Ciacconius, loc. cit.
[126] Foinica also appears to have belonged to Mathias. See the interesting diploma of 1469, by which he cedes it to Tomko Mergnjavić, given on p. 224.
[127] Niklas Ujlak was made titulary king, and assumed the style Nicolaus Dei Gracia Rex Bosniæ. See diploma of 1464, given by Kerczelich, Histor. Eccl. Zagrab. cap. xiii. p. 183 (cited by Schimek). With Nicklas’ death even the titulary kingship of Bosnia died out, and his son, in a diploma of 1492, styles himself simply Dux Boznæ.
[128] Literally ‘a little egg,’ the diminutive of ‘Jaje,’ an egg.
[129] Waddingus, sub anno 1478.
[131] Kraljevo Polje, perhaps ‘Field’ in the old English sense, would be a better rendering of Polje. According to one account, it was the scene of the execution of the last king of Bosnia.
[132] Tormenta Curulia.
[133] J. Bapt. Montalbano, Rerum Turcicarum Commentarius, s.v. Bosnæ Regnum.
[134] A very interesting account of ‘the War in Bosnia,’ during the years 1737-9, has been left us by a native Bosnian historian, Omer Effendi, of Novi, which was printed by Ibrahim in Turkish, and was translated into English by C. Fraser, and published by the ‘Oriental Translation Fund’ in 1830.
[135] Thoemmel, Vilajet Bosnien.
[136] Of course there are plenty of accounts of border warfare carried on between Bosnian Pashàs and Agas and the Imperialists and Venetians, many of which have been collected by Schimek, whose work—which professes to be a political history of Bosnia—is absolutely silent as to the inner relations of the province for the last two centuries of Bosnian history after the conquest, which he professes to describe. A more confused and purposeless tissue of wars and rumours of wars it is impossible to conceive. The difficulty of obtaining trustworthy materials for the history of Bosnia after the Turkish conquest has led me to confine my sketch of this period to a few general remarks. I hope to discuss the subject more fully at some future opportunity.
[137] J. Bapt. Montalbano, loc. cit. The writer had visited Bosnia, apparently in the days of the Banat of Jaycze.
[139] To this westward and northward immigration of Serbs and Rascians I am inclined to attribute the peculiarity of many of the Bosnian Piesme, the half mythical heroes of which are taken rather from the history of the Serbs proper than of the Bosnians.
[140] Die letzten Unruhen in Bosnien (translated into English by Mrs. Alexander Kerr, and published in Bohn’s series).
[141] I am indebted to Canon Liddon for this valuable information. On such occasions the bishop generally takes his text from the Sermon on the Mount.
[142] M. de Ste. Marie.
[143] Ami Boué. In corroboration of this I may cite the testimony of an English traveller, Edmund Spencer:—‘While attending the Parliamentary debates of the Skuptchina, I was much struck with the self-possessed, dignified air of the almost unlettered orators, who were earnest without violence, impassioned without intemperance, depending rather on the force of their arguments than the strength of their lungs and theatrical gesticulations, to win the attention of their auditors. The Serbs resemble us in more than one particular: they have the same dogged resolution, the same love of fair play, the same detestation of the use of the knife, together with no inconsiderable portion of that mixture of the aristocratic and democratic in their character which so especially distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race.’ The last remark is now peculiarly applicable to the Bosnian branch of the Serbs.
[144] M. Yriarte, Bosnie et Herzégovine, p. 245.
[145] Franz Maurer, ‘Reise durch Bosnien, die Saveländer und Ungarn.’ Berlin, 1870, p. 45.
[146] See Brachet, ‘Dictionnaire Etymologique de la Langue Française,’ and Wedgewood’s ‘Dictionary of English Etymology.’
[147] See, for instance, the Croat man in [the engraving on p. 4].
[148] The Italian Testo, the Spanish Tjesto, and French Têt, came rather from the Latin Testum; while Testa, among the Romance population of Gaul, supplied the word for a head, tête. But in East Europe Testa does not seem to have developed this secondary meaning, as the Wallacks use Cap (Caput) for ‘head;’ and therefore Testa may still have retained its sense of ‘a pot.’
‘Fistula cui semper decrescit arundinis ordo,
Nam calamus cera jungitur usque minor.’—Tibullus II. v. 31.
[150] This, however, may be connected with the Croatian word Fuk, which is used to express the howling of the wind, the whirring of birds’ wings and other sounds, and can hardly be a derivative from Fistula.
[151] γαμήλιον αὔλημα. See Chappell, ‘History of Music,’ vol. i. p. 277.
[152] Chappell, loc. cit. p. 301.
[153] See Diez, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen.
[154] Venice strove to make the connection political; from 1115 to 1358 A.D. her Doges maintained the title of Dukes of Croatia.
[155] Vuk Karadjić was not a Croat, but a Serb.
[156] Called by Germans and Germanizers, Carlstadt.
[157] Thus our forefathers knew the Romans as Rom-Weallas. Wales and Welsh still preserve their name for Roman Britain and its inhabitants. The Romance population of the Netherlands is known as Walloon. Italy is still Welschland to the German. It is, however, quite wrong to suppose, as good writers do, that the Wallacks got their name from a German population. They certainly were first called Vlach by their Sclavonic borderers. Vlach is also said to be Sclavonic for shepherd.
[158] Slavonia and Slavonian are used throughout this book to denote the Austro-Hungarian province and its people. The branch of the Aryan Family of which these, the Serbs, Croats, &c., are severally members, I call Sclaves, and their tongue Sclavonic.
[159] For the charter of Rudolf to Karlovac, in 1581, and its confirmation by Ferdinand III., see Balthazar Kerselich, De Regnis Dalmatiæ, Croatiæ, Sclavoniæ, Notitiæ Præliminares, Zagreb. s. a. p. 392, &c.
[160] If we understood the peasants correctly, it was called Terg; and if so, is almost identical in name with Torg, the Swedish for a market-place. Terg in Croatian means generally ‘wares;’ Tirgovac, a merchant or dealer; Tirgoviste, a market.
[161] The house-father and house-mother are not necessarily man and wife; nor, though generally chosen with respect to age, are they always the oldest members of the community.
[162] The usual word for brigand, &c., in Eastern Europe. The word is said to be Magyar originally, and to signify ‘the unmarried.’ It was originally applied to youthful Free-lances—‘Knights Bachelors’—and has been compared with the derivation of Cossack, which has the same meaning. In Hungary the population of certain towns are known as Hajduks, and the towns are called Hajduk towns.
[163] Belenus, the Celtic Apollo, and tutelary god of Aquileja.
[164] From whom the earlier title of the city Flavia Siscia may have been derived.
[165] Ausonius, De Claris Urbibus. The order of eminence given by the rhetorician to the great cities of the empire is evidently perverted by pedantry and provincial favouritism. Neither Siscia, Sirmium, nor Nicomedia is mentioned. Illyria has, at least, as much right to be heard on this question of precedency as Aquitaine!
[166] Very few tituli militares have been discovered at Siscia. The camps originally established here and at Pætovio were soon moved on to Aquincum and Brigetio. See Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum, vol. iii. pt. 1, where he insists on the civil character of Siscia.
[167] Prudentius, Peristephanon vii.
[168] The inscription was
CERERI‖AVG SAC‖Q. IVLIVS‖MODERATVS‖B. PROC‖VSLM.
It is given in the Corpus Inscriptionum, vol. iii. pt. I. No. 3944. The vase, however, beside the patera, is not mentioned there.
[169] Balthasar Kerselich, De Regnis Dalmatiæ, Croatiæ, Sclavoniæ Notitiæ præliminares; and see Danubian Principalities, by a British Resident of Twenty Years in the East, vol. i. p. 88.
[171] The usual name given to the residence of a Turkish official.
[172] According to some accounts Dobor, a village further down the Bosna, was the scene of this conspiracy and its dénouement. But Doboj, whose great castle was certainly the scene of the tragedy of 1408, seems the more probable reading. It seems to me possible that Doboj was first called Dobor like the lower village, and that the name Doboj or Dvoboj was afterwards affixed to it by reason of its having been the scene of these two struggles. Towns run a good deal in couples in Bosnia, and there may well have been a Veliki and Mali Dobor.
[173] Martial, Ep. lib. iv. 64.
[174] I assume that the Castrum Tessenii of the Chronicles mean Tešanj.
[175] This curious impress of Mahometanism on Bosnian Christianity may be illustrated by other facts. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem are undertaken by Christians almost as frequently as pilgrimages to Mecca by Mahometans. The performance of such is reckoned as honourable among the rayahs as among the Turks, and the Christian pilgrims assume the same title of Hadji. The Holy Sepulchre is often known by the name Tjaba, which is nothing but the Arabian Caaba!—See Ranke, ‘Die letzten Unruhen in Bosnien, 1820-1832,’ (in Bohn’s translation, p. 314.)
[176] For the story of Marko Kraljević or ‘Kings’ son Marko,’ and the Cycles of Serbian poetry, see ‘The Slavonic Provinces of Turkey in Europe,’ by G. Muir Mackenzie and A. P. Irby, p. 87, &c.
[177] Wessely, quoted in Introduction to ‘Servian Popular Poetry,’ translated by Sir John Bowring.
[178] Let any English reader who thinks these encomiums overdrawn procure the faithful and beautiful translations of Sir John Bowring, cited above, and judge for himself.
[179] Miller.
[180] ‘Servian Popular Poetry,’ translated by J. Bowring, p. 219.
[181] ‘A Voyage into the Levant. A Briefe Relation of a Iourney lately performed by Master Henry Blunt, Gentleman, from England by the way of Venice into Dalmatia, Sclavonia, Bosnah, Hungary, Macedonia, Thessaly, Thrace, Rhodes, and Egypt, unto Gran Cairo.’ The Third Edition. London: 1638; p. 8. The giant size of the Bosniacs also struck the Bolognese doctor J. Bapt. Montalbans who visited Bosnia in the 16th century. v. Rerum Turcarum Commentarius,—Bosnæ Regnum.
[182] An officer of the general staff who was employed by the Austrian Government to draw up a map of Bosnia, and followed this up by his ‘Studien über Bosnien und die Herzegovina,’ partly an itinerary, partly a statistical account, but meagre and disappointing. Franz Maurer, ‘Reise durch Bosnien,’ is equally loud in his denunciations of the Major’s map.
[183] Had Milton viewed a scene like this? or was his sublime simile for the fallen Angels a pure creation of his imagination?
‘Yet faithful how they stood
Their glory withered; as when heaven’s fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines,
With singed top their stately growth, though bare,
Stands on the blasted heath.’—Par. Lost, i. 612.
[184] Asplenium Trichomanes.
[185] Clausilia laminata.
[186] Omer Effendi of Novi, op. cit. p. 85.
[187] Bryum ligulatum.
[188] As, for instance, some rough Roman sarcophagi found at York, and now in the garden of the Philosophical Society of the town.
[189] There are at present about 3,000 Jews in Bosnia, resident mainly in Serajevo, Travnik, Banjaluka, and Novipazar. See Thoemmel, Beschreibung des Vilajet Bosnien, p. 108.
[190] Dalmatia and Montenegro, by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, F.R.S., vol. ii. p. 181, &c. For some in Narenta Valley, see p. 31.
[191] The coincidence between the appearance of the moon on these monuments and on the Bosnian arms had already suggested itself to me before I was aware that it had also struck Sir Gardner Wilkinson.
[192] The moon and stars were favourite symbols on Mithraic gems and monuments, which are nowhere more plentiful than in Illyria, if I may judge from personal experience. They were also in vogue with the Gnostics. According to Manes the moon was a purgatory of good spirits; their immediate haven after death. See King’s Gnostics and their Remains. But, for a more probable explanation of the moon and stars on Bosnian arms and monuments, see [page 219].
[193] Euthymius Zygabenus, Panoplia. Presbyter Cosmas, Harmenopulus, and Anna Comnena give the same account. See my [Historical Review of Bosnia].
[194] Raph. Volat. 1-8.
[195] See the introductory [Historical Review of Bosnia].
[196] The respective numbers at the last official return were:—Greeks, 576,756; Mahometans, 442,050.
[198] In Bosnia even the parochial duties are performed by monks of this order, who discard the monastic dress and wear the ordinary civil costume, including cutlasses and pistols. Every three years the chapter of the order (the Provincial, that is, of the Minorites, with a custos and four definitors) elects a ‘mission for the cure of souls,’ and the monks who are doing service an secular priests are either confirmed in their office or exchanged for others. The head or ‘Quardian’ of every monastery is also priest for his district. Thus the parish churches are completely dependent on the Franciscan brotherhood, each monastery possessing so many churches. This at Gučiagora has nine; that at Sutiska, the largest in Bosnia, as many as twenty-two churches. As parish priests, however, the brothers find their allegiance somewhat divided between the Vicar Apostolic of Bosnia and the Provincial of their order. See Thoemmel, Beschreibung des Vilajet Bosnien, p. 96, &c.
[199] Gustav Thoemmel, op. cit. pp. 94-6, gives statistics showing the improved state of the Roman Catholic Church in Bosnia since the establishment of the Austrian Consulate-General in Serajevo. Writing in 1867, he says that in 1850 there were only forty-one parsonages in Bosnia, now sixty-nine. Up to 1860 only the three old monasteries of Sutiska, Foinica, and Kreševo existed; since then three more have been founded, namely this at Gučiagora, one at Gorica, near Livno, and one at Siroki-brieg, in the Herzegovina, six hours west of Mostar. In 1850 the Roman Catholic population was 160,000, in 1874 it had risen to 185,503.
[200] Gustav Thoemmel, Beschreibung des Vilajet Bosnien. Wien, 1867, p. 101.
[201] According to the last census there were 576,756 Bosniacs of the Orthodox Greek Church, and only 185,503 Roman Catholics.
[202] I am indebted to Canon Liddon for this fact.
[203] Since the new constitutional laws of July, 1865, Travnik has become the seat of Government for one of the seven circles, or Mutasarifliks, into which the Vilajet of Bosnia (including Herzegovina) is divided. The Mutasarìf is an officer superior to the Kaïmakàm as the Kaïmakàm to the Mudìr. The Mutasarifliks answer to the German Kreise, the Kaïmakamliks (districts under Kaïmakàm) to Bezirke.
[204] Omer Effendi of Novi, whose writings were edited and printed by Ibrahim in Turkish, and were translated into English by C. Fraser in 1830.
[205] See Roskiević.
[206] I take this anecdote from the author of The Danubian Principalities (vol. ii. p. 326), to whom Omer Pashà related it.
[207] See A. von Hilferding, Bosnien,—Reise-Skizzen aus dem Jahre 1857, p. 12 (translated from the Russian).
[208] In the French translation (Paris, 1674), which is the only copy I have by me. P. 76.
[209] The old name of Travnik appears to have been Herbosa. (See Farlato, Illyricum Sacrum, t. iv.) I notice a serious error in Dr. Spruner’s Historisch-Geographisches Hand-Atlas, where Travnik is made identical with Bobovac, the old seat of Bosnian bans and kings, which is 40 miles to the west, near Vareš.
[210] It is curious that the Italian word should pass current in Bosnia.
[211] See [page 118].
[212] Of what place I am uncertain. He was only visiting Foinica, which itself does not possess so exalted a functionary.
[213] In the original Bosnian, as written into Latin characters for me by one of the monks, it ran—Rodoslovje Bosanakoga aliti Iliričkoga, i Srbskoga vladanja, zai edno postavlieno po Stanislaú Rubčiću popu, na slavu Stipana Nemanjiću, Cara Srblienak Bosniakak, (1340.)
[214] Hunc codicem ab immemorabili tempore, nempe a captivitate Regni Bosniæ, studiose conservatum esse a Reverendis Fratribus Franciscanis Familiæ Foinicensis.
[215] Query, a monastic error for St. Mark.
[216] I refer to the Church of Giurgevi Stúpovi, whose dome still rises on a hill above Novipazar. A description of it will be found in Travels through the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey in Europe, by G. Muir Mackenzie and A. P. Irby. London, 1866, p. 309.
[217] I find this erroneous theory put forth by the author of the Spicilegium Observationum Historico-Geographicarum de Bosniæ Regno, Lug. Bat. 1736, p. 84. He supposes that this change must have taken place about 1463, when Mahomet subdued the Duchy of St. Sava, and quotes Varennes to the effect that the original arms of Bosnia were an arm of offence—Varennes himself having mistaken the arms of Primorie for those of Bosnia. The Bosnian arms, however, appear to have changed. Thus, in a MS. armorial in the Bodleian Library, the date of which seems to be about 1506, they are given as—Quarterly, first and fourth, gules, a crown or; second and third, azure, a heart argent. This may have been the arms of the titulary Kingdom of Bosnia, erected by Mathias when Upper Bosnia was in the hands of the Turks. Compare also the arms on the monumental slab of Queen Catharine of Bosnia.
[218] The Ban Legeth, who reigned at the end of the tenth century. Risano, Castelnuovo, &c., on the Bocche di Cattaro, belonged directly to Bosnia till King Tvartko ceded his immediate sovereignty over them to the Duke of St. Sava.
[219] ‘There can be no doubt,’ says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, ‘that the crescent on the Turkish arms is an old Byzantine emblem copied by the Moslems on their invasion of the provinces of the empire.’ It had been chosen of old, so the story goes, by Byzantium because she had been saved from a night attack of Philip by the moon coming out and revealing the approach of the enemy. See Dalmatia, &c. vol. ii. p. 184. The Osmanlìs must have borrowed the device from their Saracenic predecessors.
[220] Of course it is not meant to connect either family with the royal races of France or England.
[221] This is given by Thoemmel, Vilajet Bosnien, p. 92, from whom I take its substance.
[222] ‘Indicia vetustatis et nobilitatis familiæ Marciæ vulgo Marnavitzæ, Nissensis.’ Per Joannem Tomkum ejusdem generis collecta. Romæ typ. Vat. 1632. Whether this book is still attainable I know not; its contents are copied as curious by Balthasar Kerselich in the seventeenth century. See De Regnis Dalmatiæ, &c. p. 295, et seq.
[223] ‘In Naglasincis:’ no doubt—Nevešinje, near Mostar. See ‘Historical Review of Bosnia.’
[224] ‘Dedi et donavi et descripsi Goico Marnaitio, Voinicum et Godaliensem Campum in Imoteschio territorio prope Possussinam, et illi et illius posteritati, et postremæ posteritati in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.’ Posusje, near Imoschi, seems to be the ‘Possussina in territorio Imoteschio.’
[225] It was translated into Latin in 1629, and witnessed by the Pope. To avoid fraud two translations of the original document were prepared, one by the interested Tomko, and the other by a certain Father Methodius Terlecki.
[226] In Kerselich, ‘Pagus Huonice,’ a misprint for Foinicæ.
[227] At the village of Dušina.
[228] Gučiagora, which is the centre of another Roman Catholic district, may be added to these. The waters of the Lašva, which runs through this neighbourhood, contain gold, for which its sands were formerly washed. But I noticed another trace of Ragusan mining influence in the name of the spur of Mt. Vlašić, which overlooks the monastery. This is called Mt. Mossor, a name given in the Dalmatian coast-lands to mountains where gold existed, and which will recall the Mossor that rises above Almissa in Dalmatia. The derivation is simply ‘Mons Auri,’ the gold mountain.
[229] Præpositus Thesaurorum Dalmaticorum.
[230] The Serbs or members of the Greek Church are most imbued with patriotic ideas, it is true; but these aim rather at a re-establishment of a Serbian Empire, or a Democratic government of some kind, with, or without, a princely figure-head. The Provincially historic party are the Roman Catholics, or rather their instructors, the monks.
[231] See, for the original French, Stubbs’ Select Charters, p. 461. I have followed Professor Stubbs’ translation, substituting only ‘wheresoever’ for ‘whereas.’
[232] To such a conclusion I am led by an examination of several similar monuments given in Montfaucon—L’Antiquité Expliquée. A monument of this kind is alluded to by Isaac Disraeli (Curiosities of Literature) in ‘The Skeleton of Death,’ where the contrast between the Classical and Mediæval representations of death is drawn out.
[233] Dr. Blau (formerly Prussian Consul at Serajevo), who has worked at the Roman remains in Bosnia, does not mention any in this vicinity, and even thinks it worthy of mention that he could hear of no Roman remains near Illidzje. See papers in Monatsbericht der k. preuss. Acad. der Wissensch. Dec. 1866, Nov. 1867, and Aug. 1870. Dr. Blau has especially explored the remains at Tašlidzje or Plevlje (about half way between Serajevo and Novipazar), where he has discovered twenty inscriptions and other antique fragments. The existence of a Roman Municipium here is shown by two monuments—one recording a decree of the Decuriones; another mentioning the Duumviri. On these and other Bosnian inscriptions one can trace the development of a kind of Illyrian Romance dialect. Masimile appears for Maximillæ, Amavilis for Amabilis, and another reads Filie defunte.
[234] The Roman baths at Novipazar are briefly described by Roskiević, op. cit. p. 75.
[235] Dr. Blau identifies Banjaluka with the Roman station AD LADIOS.
[236] Banjaluka = Luke’s bath.
[237] Omer Effendi, of Novi, compares the climate of Bosnia to that of Misr and Sham (Egypt and Syria). Op. cit. p. 85.
[238] Damascus is described by Easterns as ‘a pearl set round with emeralds.’
[239] Engel, Geschichte des Freistaates Ragusa. See Roskiević, p. 175. The Ragusans worked mines in Mt. Jagodina, where the present Turkish citadel of Serajevo is. Traces of these are still to be seen.
[240] Blunt, Voyage into the Levant, p. 8. Anno 1634.
[241] Eugenii Heldenthaten, cited in Spicilegium, &c.
[242] See Ranke’s Bosnia, ch. 1, and especially ‘The Danubian Principalities,’ vol. ii. p. 345.
[243] Miss Irby and Miss Johnston are at the present moment engaged, amid the barbarous wilds of Slavonia, in alleviating the urgent needs of the Bosnian refugees, with a philanthropy and devotedness worthy of the land which can number among its daughters a Mrs. Fry and a Florence Nightingale. Those who, by subscribing to the ‘Bosnian and Herzegovinian Fugitives’ Orphan Relief Fund,’ have aided their efforts, will be glad to learn that these practical manifestations of English sympathy have rescued hundreds from incalculable misery, and produced a profound impression on all South-Sclavonic peoples.
[244] See ‘Bosnia in 1875,’ an interesting paper by Miss Irby in the Victoria Magazine for Nov. 1875.
[245] The Cattle-tax is of three kinds: the Porez, or from fifteen to twenty piastres on every head of large cattle; the Resmi Agnam, of two piastres on every head of small cattle; and the Donuzia, or hog-tax. To these pastoral imposts may be added the Travarina or Herbatico, four piastres for every head of neat cattle pastured in mountain forests claimed by the State; four piastres levied on every plot of ground planted with Broc, a flower which produces a red dye much used in Bosnia; a tax of four piastres on every beehive; the Rad, or labour-tax, of about twenty-five piastres; Corvée on public roads; and the Komore, or forced loan of horses.
[246] ‘The tax in lieu of military service, which is paid by all non-Mussulmans, weighs very heavily on the poor, who have to pay, equally with the rich, twenty-eight piastres for every male. In the poorest and most miserable family this sum must be paid for the male infant who has first seen the light a few hours before the visit of the tax-gatherer. I have heard the bitterest complaints of the cruelty of this tax on the young children of the rayah.’—Miss Irby, loc. cit. p. 79. In principle this tax (known as Bédélat Askarié) is only levied on males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. In practice it is levied on old men of eighty as well as infants in arms, and often amounts to thirty piastres. A round sum is demanded from every village, and the Knez, or Mayor, has to divide it as best he may; but the sum demanded by the Government is always out of all proportion to the number of those who are legally called on to pay it.
[247] The tithe or ‘dime’ was converted into an eighth a few years ago, (to pay the expense of the Sultan’s European tour), by the imposition of an extra two-and-a-half per cent., which, by an artifice common to the thimble-rigging financiers of Stamboul, was called ‘a temporary aid.’ Since the revolt this aid has been given up by the Iradè of October 10, 1875.
[248] See on this device of extortion, M. Yriarte’s Bosnie et Herzégovine, souvenirs de voyage pendant l’insurrection. Plon, Paris, 1876, p. 199.
[249] To show that these and other tortures are by no means new in Bosnia, I may be allowed to cite a curious passage from a book on Turkish Manners and Customs, and having especial reference to the Turkish border-province of Dalmatia, written in the sixteenth century by a citizen of Zara, Messer Luigi Bassano, and entitled I Costumi et i Modi particolari de la vita de Turchi. Roma, 1545. Ch. xxxiii. is headed ‘Modo che usano d’impalare, e d’altre sorti de Morti, e torture che danno.’ After giving the most ghastly details as to the method of impalement, and instancing the case of a certain Capitan Lazero Albanese, who had been recently captured on the Dalmatian-Herzegovinian frontier, and had suffered in this way, the writer continues:
‘Usano oltro l’impalare anchora l’inganciare sopra le forche, dove sono tre ganci fatti à modo d’una falcetta da mietere il grano, ma grosse tanto che possin sostenere un’huomo, e qui s’appiccha chi v’è condennato, e vi pende per molti giorne miserabilmente. Appicchano anchora con una fune sottile e lunga, tal che l’appiccato tocca quasi terra co piedi, con tutto che la forcha sia alta. Soglion’ anchora ligare l’huomo tra due tavole, e con quelle dal capo dividerlo per il mezzo con una siega. Usano tormentare lardando, hor con pece hor con lardo, metter celate rouide in testa, metter’i temperatoi sotto l’ungna, cacciare un’ asciugatoio, di quei che loro usano da cingersi, bagnato d’aceto giu per la gola e retirarlo poi su à poco à poco, e questo è un tormento crudelissimo. Sogliono tal’hora ligare un’huomo per un piede nudo à una colonna, attorno la quale fanno assai buon fuoco, l’ultimo rimedio, poi che il ligato è caldo, è di muoversi hor di la, hor di qua, ma poi che non puo piu, stanco e sforzato mancare, e morire, arrostito e rosso, com’un Gambero.’
Recent accounts of impalement in Bosnia have been received with incredulity by a portion of the English public, and that although the Turkish denials were absolutely worthless. For my own part I am credulous enough to believe that the impaled figure seen by Canon Liddon and Mr. McColl was not a scarecrow; and further, that Bishop Strossmayer was well-informed in stating that this was by no means an isolated case. The recent instances attested by Miss Irby’s friends now set the matter beyond dispute. Impalement was common in Bosnia during the disturbed times immediately preceding the Crimean war, and the supposition that a time-honoured institution like this should in a few years’ time have died out in the most conservative country in Europe, is, à priori, extremely improbable. Barbarities like these are characteristic of a certain stage of society, and need excite no surprise. Many of the tortures still practised in Bosnia are an inheritance from præ-Turkish times, and should be considered in connection with the general survival there of feudalism under a Mahometan guise.
[250] The Rev. W. Denton, The Christians in Turkey, p. 44. Hilferding (Ruskaja Besiéda, quoted by M. Yriarte, op. cit.) gives a frightful account of how a Bosnian landlord, a Beg, extorted money from six rayahs by suspending them over a fire of maize-stalks. ‘Les six raïas ne furent rendus la liberté qu’à moitié asphyxiés, après que la douleur leur eut arraché la promesse de donner tout ce qu’ils possédaient.’ In the forthcoming work of Mr. Stillman, the Times’ correspondent, on the ‘Insurrection in the Herzegovina,’ the reader will find (p. 9) an account of horrible instances of judicial torture perpetrated on a rayah family near Trebinje, in the period immediately preceding the revolt. Two were put in long wooden boxes like coffins and rolled down hill: others were stood upright with their heads in a hole in the floor of the prison which allowed them to rest on their shoulders, and splinters of wood were then driven under their finger-nails.
[251] Dervish Pashà has since been removed from the Vilajet of Bosnia.
[252] For the organisation of the Greek Church in Bosnia, see Thoemmel, op. cit. p. 102.
[253] According to the official reports of 1874, there were 576,756 Christians of the Greek Church in the Vilajet of Bosnia (which includes the Herzegovina). The total population was 1,216,846, of whom 442,050 were Bosnian Mussulmans; 185,503 Roman Catholics; 3,000 Jews; 9,537 Gipsies.
[254] Even in Greece, where the state of the Greek Church is said to be somewhat better, the simony is as rampant, and most humiliating disclosures are now (1876) taking place.
[255] For these facts, and some further statistics, I am indebted to Thoemmel. The ordinary price of a cure of souls is from twenty to thirty ducats.
[256] Lest this account of the Fanariote Hierarchy, as it exists in Bosnia should appear incredible to my readers, I may be allowed to appeal to Herr Kanitz’s description of the spiritual rule of these same gentry in Bulgaria, now happily terminated by the resolute action of their Bulgar flock. Herr Kanitz, who is a most candid and impartial observer, and has the advantage of twelve years’ residence in the country, finds no word for them but Spiritual Pashàs. Four thousand ducats (2,000l.) was a tolerably cheap price for a bishopric in Bulgaria, and the bishops, even of the poorest dioceses, sucked as much as 1,500l. a year from their flocks. When the Porte proposed the erection of school-houses for the Christians, the Fanariote Hierarchy stood out against this liberal measure, and embezzled their educational fund to build new churches in their usual swaggering style. ‘What need have you of better schools?’ asked the Archbishop of Nish of his congregation. ‘Do you want your children to become unbelieving heretics?’ True to their Grecizing policy, these Angels of Darkness burnt all the monuments of old Bulgarian literature that they could lay hands on, and imposed Greek services on congregations who could not understand a word. Of their moral influence I will let Herr Kanitz speak—in German:
‘Die schlimmste Demoralisation wurde in directester Weise in die Familien hineingetragen. Weder Frauen noch Jungfrauen waren vor den Gelüsten des höheren Klerus aus dem Fanar sicher. Die dem Grossvezier im Jahre 1860 vorgebrachten Anklagen in allen Städten, die er durchzog, überstiegen, was die Abscheulichkeit und Zahl betrifft, alle Begriffe. Unter vielen Thatsachen sei hier nur erwähnt, dass der Griechische Bischof von Sarköi von dem griechischen Arzte dieser Stadt beschuldigt wurde, 13- bis 14-jährige Mädchen der dortigen Schule geschändet zu haben. Zu diesen Verheerungen in der Unmündigen Jugend ihrer Sprengel gesellte sich ein anderer, nicht minder schwerer, sehr häufig gegen die fanariotische Geistlichkeit erhobener Vorwurf: ihre Begünstigung des Kindesmordes im Mutterschoosse.’—Donau-Bulgarien und der Balkan, I. Band, p. 129.
Herr Jireček, in his recent Geschichte der Bulgaren, corroborates these facts, and adds others even more gross (see p. 513). Brought to bay at last by the sturdy opposition of the Bulgarian people, the Fanariote bishops got rid of some of their principal opponents by poison. See Jireček, op. cit, p. 555.
[257] Both Maurer and Roskiević were able to visit this mosque. For further details I will refer the reader to their descriptions, to which I am indebted.
[258] I am indebted to Miss Irby for this fact. Were the Bosnian Jews to return to Spain, we should have a strange illustration of the fable of the ‘Seven Sleepers’!
[259] Maurer, who gives an account of the commercial frauds practised by the Serajevan Jews.
[260] ‘Bosnia in 1875.’ See Victoria Magazine for November, 1875.
[261] Pretyla, which means originally fat, is also used for beautiful!—Hilferding.
[262] King, op. cit., connects the abundance of Gnostic remains in the Gothic part of France, with the triumph of the Albigensian and other heresies of the same area. The same may perhaps be true of the Bogomiles of Bosnia.
[263] This stone is now in the garden of the French Consulate. It reads I.O.M.‖TONITRA (T)‖RORI A/R‖MAXIMVS‖VI (?) P. AVGG‖SALVTI. The (?) means that an uncertain letter is missed out. The Saluti is doubtful. I saw several Roman coins in the silversmiths’ shops, and in some cases Ragusan coins found with them—another evidence of the way in which the Ragusans may be said to have stepped into the shoes of the Romans in these parts.
[264] Bosnie et Herzégovine, p. 241.
[265] Also a thunder-bolt. See King’s Gnostics and their Remains.
[266] Ami Boué.
[267] Fritillaria.
[268] Hralimir in the first half of the eleventh century had married the sister of the Bosnian Ban Niklas, his vassal.
[269] Farlato appears to have obtained this from a Vladmirović, a member of the same noble family as the bishop who, in the capacity of secretary, drew up the document for the king.
[270] In pago nostro de Cogniz.
[271] In generali congregatione.
[272] Proceribus.
[273] The Bogomiles are meant.
[274] Sedis Regiæ.
[275] Herzegh Sancti Sabbæ.
[276] Castra.
[277] Aulæ.
[278] It is interesting to observe the Byzantine influence on the Bosnian court and civilization which this charter incidentally reveals. It seems connected with the flourishing state of the Eastern Church in Bosnia at this time, and is further evidenced by the titles of the court officials.
[279] Or Dapifers.
[280] The best stone houses in Turkey are said to be in the Herzegovina.
[281] The little river Rama—which is the first stream in Bosnia, after crossing the frontier from the Herzegovina by the Narenta valley highway—is interesting from having given the name Rama to the whole country before it was known as Bosnia.
[282] As a parallel instance to this, I may mention that in parts of Upper Albania, according to Ami Boué, the Mahometan women are to be seen unveiled.
[284] This part of the road is known as Klanac, a name used in Bosnia to signify an ‘overhanging place,’ or a road hewn along the side of a precipice. At this point we re-cross the Herzegovinian frontier.
[285] Their height above sea-level is circ. 6,000 feet.
[286] See King’s Gnostics and their Remains, who cites Boccaccio.
[287] For the benefit of any future traveller who may wish to sleep at the Casino, I may mention that a sure preservative against certain fauna of the country is to be found amongst its flora. Our Consul kindly supplied us with some Herzegovinian flea-plant, by scattering which, previously reduced to chaff, about the bed, a magic circle is formed round the body of the sleeper, which is fatal to every noxious insect that attempts to cross it.
[288] See the report of a Foreign Consul in the Times of December 15, 1875, for a more detailed account of the insurrection and its causes. I must refer my readers to this. A personage who was also in a position to obtain authentic information on this subject, has communicated an interesting account of the origin of the insurrection in the Narenta Valley to the Pesther Lloyd; and many details, proving the falsity of these Turkish statements, have been published by the distinguished gentleman who has been acting as the Times’ correspondent in the Herzegovina.
[290] The rayahs in their ‘Appeal’ say of these ‘Giumrukers’:—‘They go in procession from house to house, and from plantation to plantation, and prolong the time as they please, in order to feed gratuitously. But for fear they may have put down too little, the round is repeated twice again, on the pretext of correcting any mistake that may have been made. Then they are in the habit of sending other searchers after the first, on the pretence of finding out any trickery on the part of these, as if they were not all accomplices; and they give themselves airs of patronage, and would make it appear that they are acting with a scrupulous regard for justice and the public welfare. So that the people are ever in the midst of inconceivable injury and abuse of authority.’
The Herzegovinian rayahs have such a good cause that it is a pity that a tone of undignified vituperation should run through the greater part of their appeal to the civilized Powers. Indeed, I should have supposed that the document in question had been drawn up by an old woman, did I not find internal evidence of a monkish pen! The passage quoted above is comparatively moderate.
[291] The Metayer system is mostly in vogue. In general the tiller of the soil has to furnish the implements of agriculture. See on this M. de Sainte Marie (who was for some time French Consul at Mostar), L’Herzégovine, étude géographique, historique et statistique, p. 102, &c.
[292] M. Yriarte, who visited Bosnia and the Herzegovinian frontier shortly after our return, with the object of reporting on the causes and progress of the insurrection, estimates the total number of the insurgents in Bosnia and the Herzegovina at about 15,000 men, of which 2,000 were auxiliaries of kindred race from beyond the frontier. Of these he sets down 1,000 as Montenegrines, who had come in defiance of their own Government, and divides the rest among the Sclaves of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and the Free Principality of Serbia; to which he adds a few Italians, and an infinitesimal contingent of Poles, Russians and Frenchmen.—Bosnie et Herzégovine, souvenirs de voyage pendant l’insurrection, p. 277. I am indebted to M. Yriarte for an account of the organization of the Čotas in Herzegovina.
[293] Captured shortly after this was written by Austro-Hungarian authorities on Turkish soil, and now (1876) languishing, not in a Turkish, but an Austrian dungeon! Ljubibratić, however, was born in Lower Herzegovina.
[294] Though, since this was written, many of the Roman Catholics have deserted the national cause. According to the consular report quoted, the sole wish of the Franciscan monks all along was to make a display of the extent, and consequent value, of their influence among the Latin population.
[295] The lines in which Claudian (In Ruf. lib. ii. v. 45, &c.) describes the sufferings of the inhabitants of these lands (plaga Pannoniæ miserandaque mœnia Thracum, arvaque Mysorum) subject to the annual incursions of the barbarians, are hardly less applicable now than they were then! Claudian’s lines may, perhaps, be translated:—
The devastating course each year renews,
Each year his ravaged fields the peasant views,
Nor weeps he, now, the havoc of the foe—
Long use has stolen e’en the sense of woe!
[296] This movement of Dervish Pashà may, however, have been not such a matter of his own discretion as he wished to make out. Its announcement synchronizes suspiciously with his removal from the Governor-generalship of Bosnia by the Porte, and this account may have been devised to conceal his discomfiture from the consular body.
[297] Since writing this I observe that the derivation of Mt. Porim had also struck M. de St. Marie.
[298] Though authorities differ as to whether it is the ancient Andetrium (otherwise Mandertium), Saloniana or Sarsenterum. By the Sclaves it was originally called Vitrinica.
[299] The coins I saw were silver and brass. There were one or two Greek of Dyrrhachium, and besides Consular and Imperial Roman denarii, there were many third-brass coins dating from the time of Gallienus to that of Constantius II., but the series broke off so abruptly with Constantius, that one would think that the Roman settlement must have been destroyed about the middle of the fourth century. At Siscia, on the other hand, Roman coins were common till the time of Honorius.
[300] I take this measurement from Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who visited Mostar about thirty years ago, and then took accurate plans of the bridge. See Dalmatia, vol. ii. p. 58, &c. On the piers of the abutment at the east end of the bridge Sir Gardner deciphered two Turkish inscriptions, one of them bearing the date 1087 A.H. (1650 A.D.), the second year of Sultan Mahomet, probably referring to repairs made in his reign.
[301] ‘Virtus Romana quid non doman? sub jugum, ecce, rapitur et Danuvius,’ was the inscription on Trajan’s bridge over the Danube.
[302] Most = bridge; Star = old.
[303] Though it is probably hardly true to say that he founded Mostar.
[304] Cokorilo. His account was originally published in Russian, and has since been translated into German in the Bautzen series entitled Türkische Zustände.
[305] A village of Herzegovina, not the Cerna Gora or Montenegro.
[306] This word is applied by the Mahometan Sclaves of the Herzegovina to the rayahs. For its other uses see [p. 35].
[307] But the monk should have mentioned that some, at least, of these were the trophies of war with the Montenegrines, who adorned their Vladika’s palace at Cettinje with the same barbarous spoil. The Bosnian arms, with their impaled Moors’ heads, are perhaps a witness to the antiquity of this practice in these countries. Sir Gardner Wilkinson tried to persuade Ali Pashà to give up the practice, and even attempted a mutual agreement between the Pashà and the Vladika on the subject, but Sir Gardner hardly appreciated the character of the man with whom he was dealing. When the author of Dalmatia and Montenegro visited Mostar he only saw five heads on the palace, but as these were over the tower, there may have been far more. The monk mentions that over 1,000 Christians were executed in the Herzegovina under Ali Pashà’s government, and, during the same space of time, only three Mahometans! Ali Pashà used also to impale rayahs.
[308] For Vlach see [p. 36]. Here it is applied by a native Mahometan in the sense of a Giaour-Turk, or Christian generally. Omer Pashà was a renegade, the son of a Christian, and to this the taunt alludes.
[309] Of these 3,000 to 3,500 are of the Greek communion, which possesses two churches; 400 to 500 are Roman Catholics, who have a chapel; the rest are Mahometans.
[310] Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who made an excursion to Mostar during his Dalmatian travels, met with similar adventures. ‘Some,’ says he, ‘of the Mostar women go without their mask and pull the cloth feregi over their heads, holding it tight to their faces, and peeping out of a corner with one eye, who, when pretty, frequently contrive to remove it “accidentally on purpose.”... I am bound to say that they were often very pretty, and with very delicate complexions.’
[311] See Sir J. Bowring, Serbian Popular Poetry, p. 36.
[312] In a climate such as that of the lower Narenta the traveller must be careful to take abundant doses of quinine, or he will be struck down at once with malarious fever.
[313] Slow! slow!
[314] An account of these events, to which I am indebted, was communicated to the Pesther Lloyd.
[315] I venture to assume an etymologic connexion between the Dalmatian Narbona and the Narbo Martius of Southern Gaul. If we had not the testimony of ancient writers to the fact that there was a Celtic ingredient in ancient Illyria, we should surely be justified in assuming it from the names of some of the cities. Orange seems to repeat itself in the Illyrian Arauso; Anderida in Andretium; and Corinium gives us a Cirencester in the neighbourhood of Zara. Epulus, the name of an Illyrian king, is curiously suggestive of the Eppillus of British coins. This Narbona has certain analogies of position with its Gallic homonym. Of course the ancient name of the Narenta—Naro—is also connected with that of the city. This city is called Narbona by both Ptolemy and Polybius, but accounts of its origin differ. According to one it was a Phœnician colony; according to others its founders were Phrygian or Thracian. The chief authority on Narbona or Narona is Dr. Lanza, in his Saggio storico-statistico-medico sopra l’antica Città di Narona, Bologna, 1842, which I only know through the summary in Neigebaur’s Süd-Slaven. For the inscriptions of course the Illyrian volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum is now the authority; but in elucidating and first calling attention to these much credit is due to Dr. Lanza, Major Sabljur, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who gives fac-similes of thirty-three in his work on Dalmatia. Some Naronan inscriptions were published at Ragusa, in 1811, in the Marmora Macarensia.
[316] Viddo seems to answer to the Vid or Vit in the Rügen deities Sviantovid, Rugevit, and Porevit, in which names it is variously interpreted as ‘warrior’ or ‘sight,’ Sviantovid being ‘holy sight’ or ‘holy warrior.’ In Illyria Vid means ‘sight.’ It is possible that this Vid is connected with another Sclavonic god Woda, who has been compared with Woden.
[317] San Vito is curiously like Sviantovid.
[318] A tempest is also called Fortunale.
[319] They were mostly oblate spheroids, formed of three layers, and when broken showing an agate-like section.
[320] Kohl, Dalmatien.
[321] In my account of Ragusan history I have chiefly followed Appendini, Storia di Ragusa, which is the chief authority; Engel, Geschichte des Freistaates Ragusa; Chiudina (as given in Neigebaur’s Süd-Slaven); and Kohl’s Dalmatien; and the most recent work on the subject, Ragusa, Cenni Storici, compilati da Stefano Skurla, Canon Onor., Profess. Ginnasiale (Zagabria, 1876). For English readers Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his Dalmatia, and Mr. A. A. Paton in his Danube and Adriatic, have given such excellent accounts of Ragusan history that I only give here a general sketch of it, in which I have tried as much as possible to avoid treading in the footsteps of English fellow-investigators.
[322] Professor Mommsen visited Epidaurus and took down most of the inscriptions for the Illyrian volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum. I have no wish to give more than a general description of the antiquities of Epidaurus here, as I hope to give a full account of my epigraphic gleanings elsewhere.
[323] In the Monumenta Macarensia, Rhacusæ, 1810, p. 47, is a votive inscription reading I.O.M.S. ‖ MAXIMVS ‖ LAPIDARI ‖ VS EX VOTO ‖ ARAM POS., found at Narona (Viddo). Is it possible that this was raised by a Lapidary in our sense of the word? May not the coarser craft have been combined with the more refined? Mediæval architects were often goldsmiths as well.
[324] Adiantum Capillus-Veneris.
[325] Or serpent.
[326] It is, perhaps, worth noticing that the two St. Hilaries, of Arles and Poitiers, are signalised in ancient iconography as slayers of serpents or dragons.
[327] De Administrando Imperio. The derivation Roccosa or Reclusa might be suggested. Ragusa appears in early writers under various forms, Lavusa, Labusa, Labuda, Labusædum, Rausium, Rangia, Rachusa, &c.
[328] Sir Gardner Wilkinson and others called it ‘oak-wood,’ forgetting that Dubrava and Dub mean ‘oak-wood,’ and ‘oak’ only as their secondary meaning, and primarily signify a wood and tree generally. Remains of the original pine-wood still covered the mountain side till the French destroyed it about the year 1806, when they swept away the freedom of the Republic. See Kohl’s Dalmatien, vol. ii. p. 45.
[329] Alas! that I should have to record that the statue dates at least eight centuries later than Orlando’s time. This statue, which originally stood before the Church of S. Biagio, was thrown down in 1825 by a hurricane, when the following inscription was found on a brass plate beneath its pedestal: MCCCC.... III. DI MAGGIO ‖ FATTO NEL TEMPO DI PAPA MARTINO QUINTO ‖ E NEL TEMPO DEL SIGNOR NOSTRO ‖ SIGISMONDO IMPERATOR ROMANORUM ‖ ET SEMPER AUGUSTUS ET RE D’ONGARIA ‖ E DALMATIA ET CROATIA ETC. FÒ MESSA ‖ QUESTA PIETRA ET STENDARDO QUI ‖ IN HONOR DI DIO E DI SANTO BLASIO ‖ NOSTRO GONFALON. LI OFFICIALI.... It is interesting to notice that the Ragusan account of Orlando as ‘Governor of Bretagne’ agrees with the contemporary Einhard’s account of the historical Roland. The historian of Charles the Great calls him ‘Hruodlandus Brittannici limitis præfectus.’ Orlando’s exploits are associated with other towns of the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Sir Gardner Wilkinson mentions that the magnificent harbour of Pola is called ‘Orlando’s house.’ The probable design of the statue of Roland at Ragusa was, as in the free German cities, to signify her independence of external authority.
[330] A full account of these events is given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson from Appendini.
[331] Giacomo da Evora, who published his poems in 1596, writes of Cœur-de-Lion’s Cathedral at Ragusa:
‘Aurea templa micant regis monumenta Britanni
Quo nullum majus Dalmata vidit opus.’
[332] Perhaps the earliest testimony to the municipal government of Ragusa in the Middle Ages is a diploma of the Byzantine Emperors Basil and Constantine VI., dated 997, addressed ‘Vitali Archiepiscopo et Lampridio præsidi civitatis, una cum omnibus ejusdem civitatis nobilibus.’
[333] As the Segretaria, Cancelleria, Notaria, Dogana, Tesoreria, and Annona.
[334] Or Maggior Consiglio.
[335] Decrees and letters to foreign princes from this body are signed ‘Il Rettore e Consiglieri della Repubblica di Ragusa.’
[336] E.g., to head a procession to the Cathedral. Such days were scrupulously marked in the Ragusan almanacks—‘Oggi sua serenità si porta al duomo.’
[337] For criminal causes there was a tribunal of four judges; for civil causes four consuls—consoli delle cause civili.
[338] There was, indeed, a serious squabble in 1763 between the old and new nobility, the Salamanchesi and Sorbonnesi, but it evaporated in high words.
[339] ‘Domine Pater Omnipotens, qui eligisti hanc Rempublicam ad serviendum tibi. Elige, quæsumus, gubernatores nostros secundum voluntatem Tuam et necessitatem nostram, ut Te timeant et tua sancta Præcepta custodiant, et nos verâ caritate diligant et dirigant. Amen!’ I take this from Kohl, who copied it from the beginning of the Specchio del Maggior Consiglio.
[340] De situ oræ Illyrici, lib. i.
[341] The Congregazione dei Preti was instituted here in 1391 for the relief of poor priests.
[342] The senate erected a foundling hospital here in 1432. ‘Considerando di quanta abbominazione et inhumanità era il gettar delle creature humane piccole, le quali molte fiate non erano raccolte, nè secondo humanità e bisogno sovvenute.’ This institution was called ‘Ospitale della Misericordia.’ In 1347 the Republic built a Poor-house, ‘Ospitale ad consolationem et suffragium pauperum cunctorum.’ In 1540 an Infirmary for the poor was added.
[343] This law had to be repeated in 1466 with graver penalties; and unless the slave-dealer could recover those he had sold from captivity within a fixed term, he was to be hanged.
[344] Appendini makes it actually Orchan, but Engel’s account is the only one reconcilable with the date 1370.
[345] There is an interesting correspondence between Ragusa and Cardinal Pole on the subject of Ragusan merchants settled in England, and a letter is extant from the cardinal to the Ragusan senate, dated July 11, 1558.
[346] Merchant of Venice, Act I., sc. i., where Salarino is speaking of Antonio’s ‘argosies.’
[347] Often wrongly derived from Argo. Possibly the word arrived to us by way of Spain.
[348] Between 1530 and 1535.
[349] See Skurla, op. cit. p. 54.
[350] Representations of these effigies as they still existed in Appendini’s time, will be found in his Storia di Ragusa.
[351] Appendini has occupied a volume of his Storia di Ragusa with the literary history of this single city.
[352] Or in their Sclavonic forms Gundulić and Pulmotić.
[353] As, for instance, ‘Danitza the daughter of Ostoja,’ ‘Paulimir and Zaptisclava.’
[354] See Mr. A. A. Paton’s ode ‘To the Shade of Gondola,’ in his Researches on the Danube and Adriatic, where the English reader will find a brilliant notice of Gondola. Mr. Paton says:—‘The elastic vigour of Ariosto, and the smoothness, the elegance, and completeness of Tasso, seem to mingle their alternate inspirations in the genius of Gondola.’
[355] Skurla, op. cit. p. 70.
[356] An inscription on it shows that it was erected in 1438 by the Neapolitan architect Onofrio di Giordano: ‘Rhaguseorum Nobilium providentia et amplissimi Ordinis jussu, coacto argento publico.’
[357] Below this is the date, 1506, and the name of the maker, Giambattista d’Arbe, who made it ‘to the honour and glory of St. Blasius.’
[358] The date seems tolerably fixed from the resemblance of these coins to those of Stephen Uroš. See Della Monetazione Ragusea, Studi di Vincenzo Adamović, p. 17. The administration of the Mint was entrusted to three senators called Zecchieri.
[359] Civitatis Raguseæ Nobiles Providentissimique Cives Blasii Martyris Pontif. q. SS. Præcl. hujus Epidauræ Raguseæ Patroni auspicante Numine, ad prid. Idium Sextilium Aug., Faustum Feliciss.que Diem, ex S.C. et Amplissimi Ordinis decretis, Atrium Prætorianum hoc Insigne ut Publ. Civit. aulam et Senatoriam Ædem Optumis Curanib. (sic) V. Vir. Optimm. in omnem opportunum præsentem et Posteritatis Usum Ære publico Dicandum Exornandumque Dedere. K. A. A.D. MCCCCXXXV SIGISMVNDI IMP. A. II.
[360] Many of the Ragusan archives have been carried off by the Austrians to Vienna. What still remain are practically inaccessible, since, to obtain permission to view them, an order is required from the Governor of Dalmatia at Zara! Among the archives are the Rolls of the Consiglio de’ Pregati, for the years from 1301 to 1802; of the Maggior Consiglio, from 1415 to 1806; of the Minor Consiglio, from 1415 to 1805; Lettere e Commissioni di Levante, from 1339 to 1802; Lettere e Commissioni di Ponente, from 1566 to 1802; many Lettere e Relazioni of Ragusan nobles at foreign courts; and many Trattati Turchi, relations of ambassadors to the Sublime Porte, and negotiations with neighbouring Pashàs. There is also a kind of Ragusan Domesday book—the Libro Matizza.
Munera diva patris, qui solus Apollinis artes
Invenit medicas per secula quinque sepultas,
Et docuit gramen quod ad usum quodque valeret,
Hic Esculapius celatus, gloria nostra,
Ragusii genitus, voluit quem grata relatum
Esse deos inter veterum Sapientia patrum,
Humanas laudes superaret nata quod omnes:
Quo melius toti nemo quasi profuit orbi.
According to De Diversis (as cited by Signor Skurla) the conceit which originally identified the sculpture of the alchemist with Æsculapius is due to a Cremonese noble, Niccolò Lazziri, to whom the above lines are also attributed.
[362] ‘Sire, io sono abbastanza ricco, per non accettar ricchezze; sono re sulle mie caracche, per non cercar onori; sono cittadino libero di Ragusa mia patria, per non cercar titoli; qual memoria della sovrana vestra grazia cedetemi quest’ asciugamano.’ Skurla, op. cit. p. 16.
[363] Or Di Bona.
[364] Of Marino Caboga and his embassy Mr. Paton gives an excellent account in his Danube and the Adriatic, vol. i. p. 224, &c.
[365] D. O. M. Nicolao de Bona, Joannis filio, singularis prudentiæ senatori, qui, gravissimis Reip. temporibus, gravissimâ legatione sponte susceptâ, ad vicinum Bossinæ proregem per vim (sic) Silistriam ad Turcarum Imperatorem transmissus, ibi diuturno in carcere pro Patriæ Libertate catenatus obiit, morte ipsâ animique constantiâ immortalitatem nominis in omnem posteritatem promeritus. Hoc ex Sen. Con. monumentum honoris et memorie positum, Anno MDCLXXVIII. Underneath this is written: Qui lapis veterem Aulam Senatoriam incendio et variis casibus corruptam diu ornaverat in vestibulo ædium civicarum positus est ex Consilii Publici Sententiâ, MDCCCLXX.
[366] We experienced some difficulty in obtaining access to the Cappella delle Reliquie, as three keys have to be obtained: one from the bishop, one from the commune, and one (I think) from the Government.
[367] Progonović was commissioned to make it by the Archbishop, Timoteo Maffei, who wished to present it in person to Matthias Corvinus, but died in 1471 before he could accomplish his journey. The Archbishop left it to his grandson, who sold it to the Republic. See Skurla, op. cit. p. 100. We did not witness ourselves the effect of pouring water into the basin.
[368] I have followed Signor Skurla’s Italian rendering of the old Serbian original.
[369] I communicated this account of the refugees to the Graphic of Oct. 9, 1875, and with it the illustration of which the [frontispiece] is a reduced copy.
[370] If my theory is correct (see [p. 390]). The peasants about Cattaro wear the same kind of girdle set with stones.
[371] Another interesting evidence of the Turkish influence on Old Ragusa is to be found in the names and values of her coins under the Republic. Thus the Mischlin or Vižlin is derived from the Turkish Altmishlük; and the Altiluk or Artilucco is the Turkish Altilük.
[372] Voyage into the Levant, p. 98.
Transcriber’s Note: Map is clickable for a larger version.
Sketch Map of the Vilayet of
BOSNIA
including
THE HERZEGÓVINA
or Sandjakate of Mostar,
but excluding RASCIA or the Sandjakate
of Novi-pazar.
To illustrate the Itinerary described in this Book.
Prepared from the Austrian Official Survey
With additions & Corrections.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET