Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

The earliest known inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina belonged to that Illyrian stock which peopled the western side of the Balkan peninsula at the close of the fifth century B.C. At that period we find two Illyrian tribes, the Ardiæi and the Autariatæ, in possession of those lands. The former occupied West Bosnia, while the latter extended to the south and gave their name to the river Tara, which forms for some distance the present frontier between Montenegro and the Herzegovina. Few characteristics of these remote tribes have been preserved by the Greek and Roman writers, but we are told that the Ardiæi were noted even among the Illyrians for their drunken habits, and that they were the proprietors of a large body of slaves, who performed all their manual offices for them. Of the Autariatæ we know nothing beyond the fact of their power at that epoch.

But the old Illyrian inhabitants had to acknowledge the superiority of another race. About 380 B.C. the Celts invaded the peninsula, and, by dint of continual pushing, ousted the natives of what is now Serbia, and so became neighbours of the Ardiæi. Their next step was to drive the latter southward into the modern Herzegovina, and to seize their possessions in North Bosnia. Instead of uniting against the Celtic invaders the Illyrian tribes fell to quarrelling among themselves over some salt springs, which were unfortunately situated at the spot where their confines met. This fratricidal struggle had the effect of so weakening both parties that they fell an easy prey to the common foe. The victorious Celts pursued their southward course, and by 335 B.C. both Bosnia and the Herzegovina were in their power, and the Illyrians either exiles or else subject to the Celtic sway. This is the first instance of that fatal tendency to disunion which has throughout been the curse of these beautiful lands. The worst foes of Bosnia and the Herzegovina have been those of their own household.

The Celtic supremacy left few traces behind it. While in the south a powerful Illyrian state was formed, which offered a stubborn resistance to Rome herself, the Celtic and Illyrian inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina remained in the happy condition of having no history. But when the South Illyrian state fell before the Romans, in 167 B.C., and the legionaries encamped on the river Narenta, upon which the present Herzegovinian capital stands, the people who dwelt to the north felt that the time had come to defend themselves. One of their tribes had already submitted to the Romans, but the others combined in a confederation, which had its seat at Delminium, a fortress near the modern town of Sinj, in Dalmatia, from which the confederates took the common name of Dalmatians. The first struggle lasted for nearly a century, in spite of the capture and destruction of Delminium by Scipio Nasica in 155 B.C., and it was reserved for Caius Cosconius in 78 B.C. to subdue the Dalmatian confederates and bring Bosnia and the Herzegovina for the first time beneath the Roman sway. Those lands were then merged in the Roman province of Illyricum, which stretched from the Adriatic to the western frontier of modern Serbia and from the Save into North Albania. But the spirit of the brave Dalmatians was still unbroken, and they never lost an opportunity of rising against their Roman masters. Aided by their winter climate, they resisted the armies of Cæsar’s most trusted lieutenants, and the Emperor Augustus was twice wounded in his youthful campaign against them. One of their revolts in the early years of the Christian era was, in the words of Suetonius, “the greatest danger which had threatened Rome since the Punic wars.” Under their chiefs Bato and Pines they defied the legions of Tiberius for four long years, and it was only when their last stronghold had fallen, and Bato had been taken captive, that they submitted. Their power as an independent nation was broken for ever, their country was laid waste, and in A.D. 9 finally incorporated with the Roman Empire. North Bosnia became part of the province of Pannonia; the Herzegovina and Bosnia south of a line drawn from Novi through Banjaluka and Doboj to Zvornik, were included in the province of Dalmatia. The Romans divided up the latter in their usual methodical manner into three districts, grouped round three towns, where was the seat of justice, and whither the native chieftains came to confer with the Roman authorities. Thus Salona, near Spalato, once a city half as large as Constantinople, but now a heap of ruins, was made the centre of government for South Bosnia, while the Herzegovina fell within the jurisdiction of Narona, a fortress which has been identified with Vid, near Metkovich.

The Roman domination, which lasted till the close of the fifth century, has left a permanent mark upon the country. The interior, it is true, never attained to such a high degree of civilisation as the more accessible towns on the Dalmatian coast, and no such magnificent building as the palace at Spalato in which Diocletian spent the evening of his days adorned the inland settlements. But the conquerors developed, much as the Austrians have done in our own time, those natural resources which the natives had neglected. Three great Roman roads united Salona and the sea with the principal places up country. One of these highways skirted the beautiful lake Jezero, traversed the now flourishing town of Banjaluka, which derives its modern name, “the Baths of St Luke,” from the ruins of a Roman bath, and ended at Gradishka, on the Save. Another connected Salona with the plain of Sarajevo, even then regarded as the centre of the Bosnian trade, and the valley of the Drina, while a branch penetrated as far as Plevlje, in the sandjak of Novibazar, then a considerable Roman settlement. The third, starting also from Salona, crossed the south of the Herzegovina, where traces of it may still be seen. Then, too, the mineral wealth of Bosnia was first exploited—the gold workings near the source of the river Vrbas and the rich deposits of iron ore in the north-west. The natives, hitherto occupied in fighting or farming, were now forced to work at the gold diggings. Roman authors extolled the Bosnian gold, the “Dalmatian metal” of Statius, of which as much as 50 lbs. were obtained in a single day, and a special functionary presided at Salona over the administration of the Bosnian gold mines. The salt springs of Dolnja Tuzla, now a busy manufacturing town, were another source of wealth, and the numerous coins of the Roman period discovered up and down the country show that a considerable amount of money was in circulation there. Many a Roman colonist must have been buried in Bosnian soil, for numbers of tombstones with Latin inscriptions have been found, and the national museum at Sarajevo is full of Roman cooking utensils, Roman vases, and Roman instruments of all kinds. Most important of all, it was during the Roman period that the first seeds of Christianity were sown in these remote Balkan lands. The exact date of this event, which was to exercise paramount influence for evil as well as good upon the future history of Bosnia, is unknown, but we may safely assume that the Archbishopric of Salona was the seat of the new doctrine, from which it rapidly spread throughout the Dalmatian province. Several bishoprics, which are mentioned as subordinate to the archiepiscopal See of Salona in the sixth century, are to be found in Bosnia, and one in particular, the bishopric of Bistue, lay in the very heart of that country.

But the power of Rome on the further shore of the Adriatic and in the mountains behind it did not long survive the break-up of the Western Empire in 476. Bosnia and the Herzegovina experienced the fate of the provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia, of which they had so long formed a part. Twenty years earlier Marcellinus, a Roman general, had carved out for himself an independent principality in Dalmatia, and his nephew and successor, Julius Nepos, maintained his independence there for a short space after the fall of the Empire. But Odoacer soon made himself master of the old Roman province, and in 493 the Ostrogoths under Theodoric overran the country, and for the next forty years Bosnia and the Herzegovina owned their sway. This change of rulers made little difference in the condition of the people. The Ostrogoths did not interfere with the religious institutions which they found already in existence. Under their government two ecclesiastical councils were held at Salona, and two new bishoprics founded, bringing the total number up to six. Theodoric, like the Romans before him, paid special attention to the mineral wealth of Bosnia, and a letter is extant in which he appoints an overseer of “the Dalmatian iron ore mines.” But in 535 began the twenty years’ war between the Ostrogoths and the Emperor Justinian. These lands at once became the prey of devastating armies, the battle-field of Gothic and Byzantine combatants. In the midst of the general confusion a horde of new invaders appeared, probably at the invitation of the Gothic King, and in 548 we hear of the Slavs for the first time in the history of the country. Further Slavonic detachments followed in the next few years, and before the second half of the sixth century was far advanced there was a considerable Slav population in the western part of the Balkan peninsula. Even when the war had ended with the overthrow of the Gothic realm, and Bosnia and the Herzegovina had fallen under the Byzantine sway, the inroads of the Slavs did not cease. Other savage tribes came too, and the Avars in particular were the terror of the inhabitants. This formidable race, akin to the Huns, whom they rivalled in ferocity, soon reduced the once flourishing province of Dalmatia to a wilderness. During one of their marches through Bosnia they destroyed nearly forty fortified places on the road from the Save to Salona, and finally reduced that prosperous city to the heap of ruins which it has ever since remained, while the citizens formed out of Diocletian’s abandoned palace the town which bears the name of Spalato, or the Palace, to this day. But the Avars were not to have an unchallenged supremacy over the country. In the first half of the seventh century the Emperor Herakleios summoned to his aid two Slavonic tribes, the Croats and Serbs, and offered them the old Illyrian lands as his vassals if they would drive out the Avars. Nothing loth they at once accepted the invitation, and, after a fierce struggle, subdued the barbarians, whose hands had been as heavy upon the Slavonic as upon the Roman settlers. The Croats, who came somewhat earlier than the Serbs, took up their abode in what is still known as Croatia, and in the northern part of Dalmatia, as far as the river Cetina; the Serbs occupied the coast line from that river as far south as the present Albanian town of Durazzo, and inland the whole of modern Serbia (as it was before 1912), Montenegro, Bosnia, the Herzegovina, and the sandjak of Novibazar. From that time onwards these regions have, under various alien dominations, never lost their Slavonic character, and to this day even the Bosniaks who profess the faith of Islâm, no less than their Orthodox brothers, are of Serbian stock.

The history of Bosnia and the Herzegovina from this Slavonic settlement in the first half of the seventh down to the middle of the tenth century is very obscure. We have few facts recorded, and nothing is gained by repeating the names of mythical rulers, whose existence has been disproved by the researches of critical historians. But it is possible to form some general idea of the state of the country during this period of transition. Nominally under the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire, much in the same sense as modern Bulgaria was till 1908 under that of the Sultan, Bosnia and its neighbouring lands were practically independent and formed a loose agglomeration of small districts, each of which was called by the Slavonic name of jupa and was governed by a headman known as a jupan. The most important of these petty chiefs was awarded the title of great jupan, and the various districts composed a sort of primitive confederation under his auspices. Two of the districts received names which attained considerable importance in subsequent history. The Slavonic settlers in the valley of the Upper Bosna adapted the Latin designation of that river, Basante, to their own idiom by calling the stream Bosna and themselves Bosniaks, and the name of the river was afterwards extended to the whole country, which from that time onwards was known as Bosnia—a term first found in the form “Bosona,” of Constantine Porphyrogenitus[885]. Similarly Mount Hum, above the present town of Mostar, gave its name to the surrounding district, which was called the Land of Hum, or Zahumlje, until in the middle of the fifteenth century it was re-christened the “Land of the Duke,” or the Herzegovina, from the German Herzog. These derivations are much more probable than the alternatives recently offered, according to which Bosnia means the “land of salt” in Albanian, and the Herzegovina means the “land of stones” in Turkish[886].

The Slavs, with the adaptability of many other conquerors, soon accepted the religion which they found already established in these countries. The Serbs, who settled at the mouth of the Narenta, alone adhered to paganism, and erected on the ruins of the old Roman town of Narona a shrine of their god Viddo, from whom the modern village of Vid derives its name. Here heathen rites were celebrated for more than two hundred years, and as late as the beginning of the last century the inhabitants of Vid cherished ancient idols, of which the original significance had long passed away.

The political history of Bosnia was determined for many generations by its geographical position on the boundary line between the Croatian and Serbian settlements. It was here that these two branches of the Slavonic race met, and from the moment when two rival groups were formed under Croatian and Serbian auspices Bosnia became the coveted object of both. That country accordingly submitted to Croatian and Serbian rulers by turns. Early in the tenth century it seems to have acknowledged the sway of Tomislav, first King of the Croats, and was administered as a dependency by an official known as a ban, the Croatian name for a “governor,” which survived to our own day. A little later the Serbian Prince Tchaslav incorporated it in the confederation which he welded together, and defended it against the Magyars, who now make their first appearance in its history. Under a chieftain named Kés these dangerous neighbours had penetrated as far as the upper waters of the river Drina, where the Serbian Prince inflicted a crushing defeat upon them. But, in his zeal to carry the war into the enemy’s country, he perished himself, and with his death his dominions fell asunder, and Bosnia became for a brief period independent. But Kreshimir, King of the Croats, recovered it in 968, and for the next half-century it belonged to the Croatian crown. But about 1019 the Emperor Basil II restored for a time the dormant Byzantine sovereignty over the whole Balkan peninsula. After the bloody campaigns which earned him the title of “the Bulgar-slayer” and ended in the destruction of the first Bulgarian Empire, he turned his arms against the Serbs and Croats, forcing the latter to receive their crown from Constantinople and reducing Bosnia to more than nominal subjection to his throne.

Meanwhile the Herzegovina, or the “Land of Hum,” as it was then called, had had a considerable history of its own. Early in the tenth century, at the time when the Croatian King Tomislav was extending his authority over Bosnia, we hear of a certain Michael Vishevich, who ruled over the sister land and held his court in the ancient fortress of Blagaj, above the source of the river Buna. Vishevich was evidently a prince of considerable importance. The Pope addressed him as “the most excellent Duke of the people of Hum”; the Byzantine Emperor awarded him the proud titles of “proconsul and Patrician.” The Republic of Ragusa paid him an annual tribute of thirty-six ducats for the vineyards of her citizens which lay within his territory. His fleet, starting from the seaport of Stagno, then the seat of a bishopric as well as an important haven, ravaged the Italian coast opposite, and made the name of “Michael, King of the Slavs,” as a chronicler styles him, a terror to the inhabitants of Apulia. The great Bulgarian Tsar Symeon was his ally, and on two occasions during his struggle with the Byzantine Empire he received aid or advice from him. We find him seconding Tomislav’s proposal for summoning the famous ecclesiastical council which met at Spalato in 925 and prohibited the use of the Slavonic liturgy. In short, nothing of importance occurred in that region during his reign in which he had not his say[887]. But after his death his dominions seem to have been included, like Bosnia, in the Serbian confederation of Tchaslav; and, when that collapsed, they were annexed by the King of Dioklitia, whose realm derived its name from the town of Doclea in what is now Montenegro, and took its origin in the valley of the Zeta, which divides that kingdom in two. About the end of the tenth century however, the powerful Bulgarian Tsar Samuel established his supremacy over the Kingdom of Dioklitia, and the treacherous murder of its King a few years later completed the incorporation of Dioklitia, and consequently of the Herzegovina, in the Bulgarian Empire. But its connexion with Bulgaria was short-lived. When Basil “the Bulgar-slayer” destroyed the sovereignty of the Bulgarian Tsars he added the Herzegovina as well as Bosnia to his own domains. Thus the twin provinces fell at the same moment beneath the Byzantine sway, and from 1019 remained for a space parts of that Empire, governed sometimes by imperial governors, sometimes by native princes acting as imperial viceroys. Bosnia was the first to raise the standard of revolt, and no sooner was the Emperor Basil II dead than it regained its independence under bans of its own, who raised it to an important position among the petty states of that time. The Herzegovina, less fortunate, only exchanged the sovereignty of the Emperor at Constantinople for that of the King of Dioklitia, who in 1050 made himself master of the land. For exactly a century it remained an integral portion of that kingdom, and had therefore no separate history. Even Bosnia succumbed a generation later to the monarchs of Dioklitia, for about 1085 all the three neighbouring lands, Serbia, Bosnia and the Herzegovina, had to accept governors from King Bodin of the Zeta, and thus a great Serb state existed under his sceptre.