Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

by M. E. Durham

The Lamp of the Past illumines the Present.

The summer of 1906 saw me no longer restricted to two months' travel, but free to go where I pleased for as long as I liked. I planned a great scheme for the study and comparison of the traditions and customs of all the Balkan races, and in August started for Bosnia.

In ancient days all Bosnia and the Herzegovina formed part of Illyria, and was inhabited by the ancestors of the modern Albanian. Thousands of prehistoric graves, similar to those found also in Serbia and Albania, are scattered over the land. A huge cemetery exists at Glasinatz above Serajevo. The multitude of objects found in these graves reveal a very early Iron Age. Bosnia was one of Europe's earliest "Sheffields." Iron tools and bronze ornaments show that their makers were skilled workmen. The ornaments are of particular interest, as many are very similar in design to those still worn by Balkan peasantry, and as the bulk of Balkan silversmiths are Albanians or Vlachs both craft and design would appear to have been handed down from very ancient days.

The Illyrians were great warriors. "The difficulty," says J. B. Bury, the eminent historian of the later Roman Empire, "experienced by the Romans in subduing and incorporating the brave tribes is well known." Briefly, Rome's first punitive expedition to Illyria was in 230 B.C., but the land was not finally annexed till 169 A.D.

The Romans colonized Illyria. Christianity reached the coast early and slowly penetrated inland. Illyria formed part of the Patriarchate of Rome, and Latin became the official language throughout the Peninsula, save in the extreme south and south-east coast-line. Up-country and in the mountains the people evidently retained their own speech, that from which modern Albanian derives. The people in the plains, in direct contact with the Roman settlers, developed a sort of bastard Latin speech and doubtless intermarried largely with the Romans. They and their language exist to-day. They are known as the Kutzovlachs, and are thickly settled on the old Roman routes and the hill-tops. As frequently happens in history, but is invariably forgotten by those who go out to conquer, the marked individuality of the vanquished speedily re-asserted itself and gradually absorbed the victor. The Roman Empire shortly split in twain, and the East was largely ruled by Emperors of native Balkan blood, Diocletian, Constantine the Great, and many of lesser note. Greatest of all was Justinian (527-565), who was of Illyrian birth and succeeded his uncle Justin, a common soldier risen to the purple.

"In four departments," says Bury, "Justinian has won immortal fame. In warfare, in architecture, in law and in Church history." To him the world owes St. Sofia. He and his uncle Justin both strove against the schism between the Roman and Byzantine Churches, and he was powerful enough to carry a measure which tended to unity by modifying, the Synod of Chalcedon without breaking with Rome. And he prided himself upon speaking Latin. Yet there are those to-day who would hand over his Church of the Holy Wisdom to Greek propagandists. He dealt the final blow at Paganism and denounced the Manicheans—of whom we shall hear much later—and enacted severe laws against them.

The history of modern Bosnia begins in Justinian's reign. The Slavs then began to threaten the Empire. Tribes began to drift across the Danube and settle in groups already in the fifth century, but were stopped for a while by the Huns and Ostrogoths, who swept over the Peninsula and infested Illyria and Epirus.

"The departure of the Ostrogoths," says Bury, "was like the opening of a sluice. The Slavs and Bulgars, whom their presence had held back, were let loose on the Empire. . . . The havoc made by these barbarians was so serious that Justinian made new lines of defence." In 548 and 551 A.D. masses of Slavs ravaged the land. "The massacres and cruelties committed by these barbarians," says Bury, "make the readers of Procopius shudder." The readers of the Carnegie report of 1913 do likewise.

Among the fortresses built by Justinian was Singidunum, now Belgrade, which, founded to hold back the Slav, is now his capital. The invading Slavs were pagan, the natives largely Christian. "The Christians," says Presbyter Diocleas, "seeing themselves in great tribulation and persecution, began to gather on the mountains and tried to construct castles and strongholds that they might escape from the hands of the Slavs until God should visit and liberate them." This is probably the origin of the Vlach settlements on hill-tops and the Albanian mountain strongholds. "The year 581," says John of Ephesus, "was famous for the invasion of the accursed Slavonians . . . who captured cities and forts, and devastated and burnt, reducing the people to slavery, and made themselves masters of the country and settled it by main force. Four years have elapsed and still they live in the land . . . and ravage and burn." The Romans and their civilization were swept coastward, and in Dalmatia their civilization never quite died out. In later times the term "Romanes" was used in a special sense to denote the Romans who maintained their independence against the Slavs. Ragusa and Cattaro are some of the towns they founded.

Of the native population many refuged in the Albanian mountains, where they retained their language. Many doubtless remained and were absorbed by the Slavs. Traces, however, of the Illyrian still remain in Bosnia. Tattooing is still common there in many districts. Tattooing is not a Slav custom, but is specially noticed by classic authors as a characteristic of the ancient Balkan tribes. Neither have the Bosnians, as a whole, ever been attached to the Orthodox Church as have the remainder of the Balkan Slavs.