Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

But in the early years of the twelfth century a new force made itself felt in South Slavonic lands, a force which even in our own day has till lately exercised a powerful influence over the fortunes of the Balkan peninsula. Since their unsuccessful incursion in the time of Tchaslav the Hungarians had never abandoned their cherished object of gaining a foothold there. But it was not till the union of Croatia in 1102, and of Dalmatia in 1105, with the Hungarian Crown by Koloman, that this object was attained. The Hungarian Kings thus came into close contact with Bosnia, and were not long in extending their authority over that country. So far from meeting with opposition they were regarded by the people as valuable allies in the common struggle against the Byzantine Emperors of the family of the Comnenoi, who aimed at restoring the past glories and dimensions of their realm. Accordingly in 1135 we find an Hungarian King, Béla II, for the first time styling himself “King of Rama”—the name of a river in Bosnia, which Magyar chroniclers applied first to the surrounding district and then to the whole country. From that time onward, whoever the actual possessors of Rama, or Bosnia, might be, it was always included among the titles of the Hungarian monarchs, and, till our own time, the Emperor Francis Joseph in his capacity of King of Hungary called himself also “King of Rama.” In his case the phrase had certainly a more practical significance than it possessed in earlier centuries.

The precise manner in which this close connexion between Hungary and Bosnia was formed is obscure. According to one theory Béla received the country as the dowry of his Serbian wife; according to another the Bosnian magnates, seeing the increasing power of Hungary and the revived pretensions of the Byzantine Emperors, decided to seek the protection of the former against the latter. At any rate a little later Béla assigned Bosnia as a duchy to his second son, Ladislaus, leaving, however, the actual government of that land in the hands of native bans. It is now that we hear the name of one of these rulers for the first time. Hitherto the Bosnian governors have been mere shadowy figures, flitting unrecognised and almost unnoticed across the stage of history. But ban Borich, who now comes into view, is a man of flesh and blood. In the wars between the Emperor Manuel Comnenos and the Hungarians he was the staunch ally of the latter, and when a disputed succession to the Hungarian throne took place he aspired to play the part of a king-maker and supported the claims of Ladislaus, the titular “duke” of Bosnia. But he made the mistake of choosing the losing side and, after being conquered by the troops of the successful candidate, disappeared mysteriously in 1163. Short, however, as was his career, he had extended the eastern borders of Bosnia to the river Drina, and we learn from the contemporary Greek historian Cinnamus[888] that his country was “independent of Serbia and governed in its own fashion.” Three years after his disappearance from the scene Bosnia shared the fate of Croatia and Dalmatia, and fell into the hands of Manuel Comnenos. But upon the death of that powerful Emperor in 1180 the fabric which he had laboriously erected collapsed; the Balkan peoples had nothing more to fear from the Byzantine Empire, and Bosnia under her famous ban Kulin attained to greater freedom and prosperity than she had yet enjoyed. But the same period which witnessed this political and material progress witnessed also the development of that ecclesiastical schism which was one day destined to cause the loss of all freedom and the suspension of all progress by facilitating the Turkish conquest of the land.

II. The Great Bosnian Bans (1180-1376).

Kulin is the first great figure in Bosnian history. By nature a man of peace, he devoted his attention to the organisation of the country, which in his time was a ten days’ journey in circumference, the development of its commerce, and the maintenance of its independence. He allowed foreigners ready access to his dominions, employed two Italian painters and goldsmiths at his court, and gave liberal mining concessions to two shrewd burghers of Ragusa, which during the middle ages was the chief emporium of the inland trade. He concluded in 1189 a treaty of commerce with that city—the earliest known Bosnian document—in which he swore to be its “true friend now and for ever, and to keep true peace and genuine troth” with it all his life. Ragusan merchants were permitted to settle wherever they chose in his territory, and no harm was to be done them by his officials. Agriculture flourished under his rule, and years afterwards, whenever the Bosnian farmer had a particularly prosperous year, he would say to his fellows, “The times of Kulin are coming back again.” Even to-day the people regard him as a favourite of the fairies, and his reign as a golden age, and to “talk of ban Kulin” is a popular expression for one who speaks of the remote past, when the Bosnian plum-trees always groaned with fruit and the yellow corn-fields never ceased to wave in the fertile plains. Kulin’s position was strengthened too by his powerful connections; for his sister was the wife of Miroslav, Prince of the Herzegovina, which, as we have seen, had formed part of the Kingdom of Dioklitia down to 1150, when it was conquered by the Serbian great jupan, Desa. Some twenty years later Stephen Nemanja made his brother Miroslav its prince, and thus was closely connected with Kulin. The latter, like Nemanja in Serbia, threw off all ties of allegiance to the Byzantine Empire on the death of Manuel Comnenos, and at the same time ignored the previous relations which had existed between the Kings of Hungary and the Bosnian bans.

But it was Kulin’s ecclesiastical policy which rendered his reign most memorable in the after history of Bosnia. In the tenth century there had appeared in Bulgaria a priest named “Bogomil,” or the “Beloved of God,” who preached a mystical doctrine, peculiarly attractive to the intellect of a Slavonic race. From the assumption that there existed in the universe a bad as well as a good deity the Bogomiles, as his disciples were called, deduced a complete system of theology, which explained all phenomena to their own satisfaction. But the Bogomiles did not content themselves with metaphysics alone. They descended from the serene atmosphere of abstract reasoning to the questions of ritual and the customs of society. Appropriating to themselves the title of “good Christians,” they regarded the monks as little short of idolators, set at naught the authority of bishops, and defied the thunders of the popes. Their worship was characterised by extreme simplicity and often conducted in the open air, while in their lives they aimed at a plain and primitive ideal. A “perfect” Bogomile, one who belonged to the strictest of the two castes into which they were divided, looked upon marriage as impure and bloodshed as a deadly sin; he despised riches, and owned allegiance to no one save God alone, while he had the quaker’s objection to an oath. No wonder that popes, trembling for their authority, branded them as heretics and pursued them with all the horrors of fire and sword; no wonder that potentates found them sometimes intractable subjects, and sometimes useful allies in a struggle against ecclesiastical pretensions.

The Bogomiles appear to have entered Bosnia about the middle of the twelfth century, and speedily gained a hold upon the country. Kulin at first remained uninfluenced by their teachings. Thus, in 1180, we find the papal legate writing to him in the most courteous terms, and addressing him as the “noble and powerful man, the great ban of Bosnia.” The legate sends him a letter and the Holy Father’s blessing, and begs him to give him in return, as a token of his devotion, “two servants and marten skins.” But Kulin found it politic later on to secede from the Roman Church. For some time past the rival Archbishoprics of Spalato and Ragusa had striven for ecclesiastical supremacy over Bosnia. Béla III, King of Hungary, who had now time to devote to his ambitious schemes against that country, warmly supported the claims of the See of Spalato, to which he had appointed a creature of his own. Kulin was naturally on the side of Ragusa, and was encouraged by his sister, whose late husband, Miroslav, Prince of the Herzegovina, had had a similar contest with the Archbishop of Spalato, and had concluded a treaty with the Ragusans. The Pope took the part of Spalato, and Kulin retorted by defying him, as Miroslav had done before. The latter had probably been a Bogomile for some time before his death; the former now formally abandoned the Roman Church, with his wife, his sister, his whole family, and ten thousand of his subjects. The force of so potent an example was at once felt. The Bogomile or Patarene heresy, as it was called by the Bosniaks of other creeds, now spread apace, not only over Bosnia, but in the neighbouring lands. The two Italian painters, whom we have mentioned as residing at Kulin’s court, carried it to Spalato, where it extended to the other Dalmatian coast towns; and the destruction of Zara by the crusaders in 1202 was regarded by pious chroniclers as a judgment upon that city for its heretical opinions.

King Béla III was not slow to make Kulin’s defection the excuse for posing as defender of the true faith. But his death and the quarrels between his heirs gave Kulin a little breathing space, and it was not till 1200 that he was in actual danger. By that time Béla’s sons, Emerich and Andrew, had established themselves respectively as King of Hungary and Duke of the Herzegovina, and accordingly threatened Bosnia from two sides. Emerich, following his father’s policy, endeavoured to induce the Pope to preach a crusade against the Bosnian heretics, and Innocent III, who then occupied the chair of St Peter, hailed the King of Hungary as overlord of Bosnia, and bade him summon Kulin to recant, or if the latter remained obdurate invade Bosnia and occupy it himself. Thus menaced by a combination of the spiritual and the temporal power, Kulin bowed before the storm. He felt that at all costs Hungarian intervention must be avoided, so he made the rather lame excuse that he had “regarded the Patarenes not as heretics, but as Catholics,” and begged the Pope to send him some safe adviser, who should guide his erring feet into the right way. Innocent, pleased at Kulin’s submission, sent two ecclesiastics to Bosnia to inquire into the religious condition of the country and to bring back its ruler to the true fold. The mission was temporarily successful. Early in the spring of 1203 the ban, his great nobles, and the heads of the Bogomile community met in solemn assembly in the “white plain,” or Bjelopolje, on the river Bosna, confessed their errors, and drew up a formal document embodying their recantation. “We renounce the schism of which we are accused”—so runs the deed—“we promise to have altars and crosses in all our churches, to receive the sacrament seven times a year, to observe the fasts ordained by the church, and to keep the festivals of the saints. Henceforth we will no more call ourselves ‘Christians,’ but ‘brothers,’ so as not to cast a slur upon other Christians.” The oath thus taken was renewed by representatives of the Bogomiles in the presence of the King of Hungary, who bade Kulin observe his promises for the future. The cloud had passed away, but with its disappearance Kulin too disappears from the scene. An inscription, said to be the oldest in the country and ascribed to the year 1203-04, which was found in 1898 at Muhashinovichi, on the river Bosna, refers to a church erected by him to prove the sincerity of his re-conversion, and prays God to grant health to him and his wife, Voyslava. We hear no more of him after 1204; but his memory was not soon forgotten[889]. Two centuries later a Bosnian King desired to have confirmed to him all the “customs, usages, privileges and frontiers, which existed in the time of Kulin,” and the rich Bosnian family of Kulenovich of our own time (whose ancestral castle of Jaskopolje may be seen near Jajce, almost on the spot where, in 1878, the great fight between the Austrians and the insurgents took place) is said to derive its name and lineage from him.

But the recantation of Kulin did not check the growth of the Bogomile heresy. Under his successor, Stephen, the numbers of the sect increased, and the efforts of Pope Honorius III and his legate to preach a crusade against the heretics remained fruitless. The Holy Father might exclaim that “the unbelievers in Bosnia, just as witches in a cave nourish their offspring with their bare breasts, publicly preach their abominable errors, to the great harm of the Lord’s flock”; but even this mixture of metaphors failed to stimulate the flagging zeal of the Hungarian Catholics. Even when the King of Hungary had pacified his rebellious nobles by the golden bull, and was therefore able to turn his attention to Bosnian affairs, the proposed crusade fell flat. The King worked upon the cupidity of the Archbishop of Kalocsa by granting him spiritual authority over Bosnia; but the only result was to stiffen the backs of the recalcitrant Bosniaks. Imitating their neighbours in the Herzegovina, who had lately made a Bogomile their Prince, they deposed the weak-kneed Stephen and put Matthew Ninoslav, a Bogomile by birth and education, in his place. The new ban proved, however, more pliant than his poorer subjects. Alarmed at the threatening attitude of the King of Hungary, he recanted, as Kulin had done before him, and placed his country under the protection of St Peter. But the conversion of their Prince had little effect upon the masses. The monks of the Dominican order might boast that they had converted, if not convinced, Ninoslav, but it was felt that stronger measures must be taken against his people. In 1234 a crusade was at last organised, and for the next five years the Bogomiles of Bosnia experienced all those horrors of fire and sword which their fellows, the Albigenses, had suffered in the south of France. Under different names and in widely different spheres the two bodies of heretics had adopted similar doctrines. Indeed, the Albigenses had looked to the Bogomile “pope,” or primate, of Bosnia for spiritual instruction and advice, and accepted their “vicar” at his hands. But while historians and poets of renown have cast lustre upon the struggles and sufferings of the martyrs of Provence the probably equally heroic resistance of the Bosnian Bogomiles has made little impression upon literature. Yet it is clear that they possessed all the stubborn valour of our own puritans. In spite of the conquest of both Bosnia and the Herzegovina in 1237 by the Hungarian King’s son, Koloman, who received the former country from the King and the Pope as the reward of his labours, in spite of the erection of forts and a Catholic Cathedral to keep the unruly passions and heretical inclinations of the people in order, the spirit of the Bogomiles remained unbroken. Ninoslav, furious at the arbitrary substitution of Koloman for himself, once more appeared as their champion, and the great defeat of the Hungarians by the Tartars in 1241 not only rid him of his rival, Koloman, but freed his land from all fear of Hungarian intervention for some time to come. Even the incursion of the Tartars into Bosnia was a small disadvantage as compared with the benefits which that country had derived from their previous victory over its foes. Ninoslav now felt himself strong enough to assist Spalato in its struggle against the King of Hungary and to offer an alliance to Ragusa against the growing power of the Serbian monarchy. A second crusade in Bosnia in 1246 was not more successful than the first, and the Pope in placing the Bosnian See under the authority of the Archbishop of Kalocsa, expressly gave as his reason “the utter hopelessness of a voluntary conversion of that country to the true faith.” Even the papal permission to use the Slavonic tongue and the Glagolitic characters in the Catholic service did not win over the Bogomiles to Rome. Crusades and concessions had alike failed[890].

Ninoslav passes out of sight in 1250, and the next two generations are, with the exception of the Turkish supremacy, the gloomiest period of Bosnian history. Religious differences and a disputed succession made the country an easy prey to the ambitious designs of the Hungarian monarchs, who, after a brief support of Ninoslav’s relative, the Catholic Prijesda I, in 1254 subdued not only Bosnia but the Herzegovina beneath their sway. While the latter about 1284 fell under Serbian influence the former was split up into two parts. The Upper, or hill-country, Bosnia properly so-called, was allowed to retain native bans—Prijesda I and his sons[891], Prijesda II and Stephen Kotroman, till 1302; Lower Bosnia, i.e. the “salt” district of Soli (the modern Tuzla) with Usora, for the sake of greater security, was at first entrusted to Hungarian magnates, and then combined with a large slice of northern Serbia, known as Matchva, in a compact duchy, which was conferred upon near relatives of the Hungarian King. During this period the history of this distracted land is practically a blank. Beyond the names of its successive rulers we have little handed down to us by the chroniclers. “A sleep as of death,” in the words of a Croatian writer, “had fallen upon the country. The whole national and religious life of Bosnia had perished beneath the cold blasts of the wind from beyond the Save.” Now and again we come upon traces of the old Bogomile spirit and the old zeal of the persecutors. Stephen Dragutin, who had been driven by lameness from the Serbian throne and had become under Hungarian auspices Duke of Matchva and Bosnia in 1284, was specially noted for his “conversion and baptism of many heretics,” and it was in answer to his request that the Franciscans, who have since played such an important part in Bosnian history, settled in the country. But still the Pope complained that “the churches were deserted and the priesthood uprooted.” Meanwhile two powerful families began to make their influence felt, the Croatian clan of Shubich and the race of Kotromanich, whose legendary founder (according to Orbini), a German knight, had entered Bosnia in the Hungarian service and was the ancestor of the Bosnian Kings. We now know, however, from a document of the great Tvrtko[892], quoted by Pope Gregory XI, that Tvrtko’s uncle, Stephen Kotromanich, was grandson of “the great” Prijesda I. The latest authority on the subject[893] accordingly believed the Kotroman family to have sprung from Upper Bosnia and to have been very probably related to Borich and Kulin. The legend of its German, or Gothic, origin arose out of its matrimonial connections with great families of Central Europe. The family of Shubich was at first in the ascendant, and became lords of part and then the whole of the land. In fact Paul Shubich, in 1299, styled himself “lord of Bosnia” and early in the fourteenth century his son, Mladen, ruled, under the title of “ban of the Croats and all Bosnia,” a vast tract of territory extending from the Save to the Narenta and from the Drina to the Adriatic. But in 1322 he fell before a combination of rivals, and young Stephen Kotromanich, who had been his deputy in Bosnia, became independent and united both Upper and Lower Bosnia under his sway[894].