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BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGÓVINA
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
[Illustration: HERZEGÓVINAN REFUGEES AT RAGUSA. (See p. 428 seqq.)
TO THE RIGHT, TWO RAGUSAN PEASANTS.]
THROUGH
BOSNIA
AND THE
HERZEGÓVINA
ON FOOT
_DURING THE INSURRECTION, AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1875_
WITH AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF BOSNIA
REVISED AND ENLARGED
AND A GLIMPSE AT THE CROATS, SLAVONIANS, AND THE ANCIENT
REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
[Illustration]
BY ARTHUR J. EVANS, B.A., F.S.A.
_WITH A MAP AND FIFTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR_
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1877
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Having obtained access to some new authorities on Bosnian history, I have
thought it desirable to make some additions to my ‘Historical Review’ in
the present Edition. I was the more anxious to do this as the brevity
with which I had expressed my views on the most important aspect of
Bosnian history—its connection, namely, with the early history of Western
Protestantism—has led in some quarters to strange misconception. In
setting my conclusions on this head in, I trust, a clearer light, I have
been greatly aided by the recent appearance of Herr Jireček’s _Geschichte
der Bulgaren_, which contains some valuable data from South-Sclavonic
sources touching the tenets and Church government of the Bogomiles, and
their missionary triumphs in Italy and Provence.
I have also added a few considerations on the present state of Bosnia,
the malign and artificial character of the Osmanlì government in that
province, and the reforms which it were most desirable that an united
Europe should enforce.
In doing so—though I, for one, was never so sanguine as to imagine
that the agreement of the great Powers was anything else than a hollow
pretence—I had found it convenient to assume that the Conference was
prepared to speak to Turkey in the only language to which she was capable
of listening. As I write, however, the divisions of Christendom, and,
more than all, the anti-Sclavonic jealousies of Austria-Hungary, have
baffled the efforts of diplomacy; and, after womanish expostulation and
pitiable huckstering, the representatives of Europe have been shown the
door by the Sick Man. The two alternatives apparently left to us are, to
England at least, equally pernicious and equally shameful—a Russo-Turkish
war, or a new cycle of tyranny, agitation, and revolt, ending where it
began, and involving the solution, it may be, of graver questions, than
the fate of one Empire.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The tour described in this book was not in the slightest degree due to
the Insurrection in Bosnia and the Herzegovina. It was planned before the
outbreak, and was first suggested by the interest which previous visits
to other South-Sclavonic lands had led me to take in the branch of that
race still under the Sultan’s dominion, and owing to a special curiosity
to see a race of Sclavonic Mahometans. My desire of visiting Bosnia was
further whetted by a day spent a few years ago beyond the Bosnian border,
and by the interesting problems suggested by the history and present
state of Illyria. While I and my brother, Lewis Evans, who accompanied
me throughout, were preparing for our journey, the Insurrection in the
Herzegovina broke out, so that it was undertaken rather in spite of than
by reason of that event. During our walk through Bosnia that country also
burst into insurrection; and as we heard many accounts from trustworthy
sources as to the origin of the outbreak, both in Bosnia and the
Herzegovina, I have ventured to give some particulars in the story of our
itinerary.
We were armed with an autograph letter from the Vali Pashà, or
Governor-General of Bosnia and Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish forces,
and owing to this were able to accomplish our tour without serious
molestation, though it must be confessed that we underwent some risks.
With a few short breaks we made our way through the country on foot,
which is perhaps a novelty in Turkish travel. Our only impedimenta
consisted of the knapsack and sleeping gear on our backs, so that we were
entirely independent; and being able to use our legs and arms and sleep
out in the forest, we were able to surmount mountains and penetrate into
districts which, I think I may say, have never been described, and it is
possible never visited, by an ‘European’ before.
If this book should do anything to interest Englishmen in a land and
people among the most interesting in Europe, and to open people’s eyes
to the evils of the government under which the Bosniacs suffer, its
object will have been fully attained. Those who may be inclined to ‘try
Bosnia’ will meet with many hardships. They must be prepared to sleep
out in the open air, in the forest, or on the mountain-side. They will
have now and then to put up with indifferent food, or supply their own
commissariat. They will nowhere meet with mountains so fine as the Alps
of Switzerland or Tyrol, and they will be disappointed if they search
for æsthetic embellishments in the towns. But those who are curious as
to some of the most absorbing political problems of modern Europe; those
who delight in out-of-the-way revelations of antiquity, and who perceive
the high historic and ethnologic interest which attaches to the Southern
Sclaves; and lastly, those who take pleasure in picturesque costumes and
stupendous forest scenery; will be amply rewarded by a visit to Bosnia.
There is much beautiful mountain scenery as well, and the member of the
Alpine Club who has a taste for the jagged outlines of the Dolomites and
the Julian Alps, in spite of a certain amount of attendant limestone
nakedness, may find some peaks worthy of his attention towards the
Montenegrine frontier. It would not be difficult to mention routes of
greater natural attractions than that we followed, and I may observe that
the falls of the Pliva, which we did not see, have been reckoned among
the most beautiful waterfalls in Europe.
The first two chapters, written mostly while delayed in Croatia, refer
rather to the borderland of Bosnia, and may not be of general interest,
dealing much in costumes and antiquities. The last, which describes the
old Republic of Ragusa, may serve to show that the Southern Sclaves are
capable of the highest culture and civilisation. In the Historical Review
of Bosnia I have attempted to elucidate and emphasise a most important
aspect of Bosnian history—the connection, namely, between that till
lately almost unknown land, and the Protestant Reformation of Europe, and
the debt which even civilised England owes to that now unhappy country.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
HISTORICAL REVIEW OF BOSNIA xxiii
CHAPTER I.
AGRAM AND THE CROATS.
Slovenization in Styria—Regrets of a Prussian—Agram—Her
Sclavonic Features, Hero, Art, and Architecture—Flowers
of the Market-place—Croatian Costume—Prehistoric Ornament
and Influence of Oriental Art—South-Sclavonic Crockery,
Jewelry, and Musical Instruments—Heirlooms from Trajan or
Heraclius?—Venice and Croatia—Croatian Gift of Tongues—Lost
in the Forest—A Bulgarian Colony—On to Carlovatz—The Welsh of
Croatia—Croatian Characteristics—Carlovatz Fair—On the Outposts
of Christendom 1
CHAPTER II.
THE OLD MILITARY FRONTIER, SISCIA, AND THE SAVE.
The Military Frontier, its Origin and Extinction—Effects
of Turkish Conquest on South-Sclavonic Society—Family
Communities—Among the House-fathers—Granitza Homesteads—The
_Stupa_—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—Contrast between Croats
of Granitza and Slovenes—The Advantages and Defects of Family
Communities—Larger Family Community near Brood—A little
Parliament House—Croatian Brigands—A Serb Lady—Turkish Effendi
and Pilgrim—Siszek—Roman Siscia; her Commercial Importance—Her
Martyr—Remains of ancient Siscia—Destiny of Siszek—Croatian
Dances and Songs—Down the Save—New Amsterdam—South-Sclavonic
Types—Arrive at Brood—Russian Spies!—A Sunset between two
Worlds—Marched off—Bearding an Official—A Scaffold Speech—In
Durance vile—Liberated! 42
CHAPTER III.
THROUGH THE BOSNIAN POSSÁVINA AND USSORA.
Insurrectionary Agitation among Southern Sclaves—Proclamation
of the Pashà of Bosnia—We land in Turkish Brood—Moslem
Children—Interview with the Mudìr—Behaviour of our
Zaptieh—Peasants of Greek Church—How these Christians love
one another—Arrive at Dervent—Interview with Pashà of
Banjaluka—Hajduks’ Graves—Rayah Hovel—Difficulty with our
Host—Doboj; its old Castle and Historical Associations—A
South-Sclavonic Patriot—First Mountain Panorama—The ‘Old
Stones,’ a Prehistoric Monument—Tešanj: its old Castle and
History—‘_Une Petite Guerre_’—Latin Quarter of Tešanj—Soused
by an old Woman—Influence of Oriental Superstitions on Bosnian
Rayahs—Argument with the Kaïmakàm—Excusable Suspicions 86
CHAPTER IV.
THE PILGRIMAGE ON THE FOREST-MOUNTAIN.
Through the Forests of the Black Mountain—The Flower
of Illyria—A Mysterious Fly—Enchanted Ground—The Fairy
Mountain—Great Christian Pilgrimage—The Shrine on the
Mountain-top—Christian Votaries in the Garb of Islâm—The
Night-encampment—How the Turks dance—Anacreontic Songs—An
Epic Bard, Poetic Genius of Bosniacs—Insolence of Turkish
Soldiers and their Ill-treatment of the Rayahs—Types at
the Fair—Aspect and Character of Men—_Chefs-d’œuvre_ of
Flint-knapping—Christian Graveyard and Monastery—Dismiss our
Zaptieh—Night on Forest-mountain of Troghìr—Wrecks by Wind
and Lightning—Scene of Forest Fire—Timber Barricades—Summit
of Vučia Planina—A _Bon-vivant_—Steep Descent—Night in a
Hole—Almost impassable Gorge—Egyptian Rocks—Repulsed from a
Moslem Village—Tombs of the Bogomiles—Arrive at Franciscan
Monastery of Gučiagora—Fears of a Massacre—Relations of
Roman Catholics with the Turks—Austrian Influence in
Bosnia—Aspirations of the Bosnian Monks 126
CHAPTER V.
TRAVNIK AND FOINICA.
A Turkish Cemetery—Arrive at Travnik—Taken for Insurgent
Emissaries—The ex-Capital of Bosnia—New Readings of
the Koràn—Streets of Travnik—Veiling of Women in
Bosnia—Survivals of old Sclavonic Family Life among Bosnian
Mahometans—Their Views on the Picturesque—Their Dignity,
oracular Condescension, and _Laisser-Aller_—Hostile
Demonstrations—Bashi-Bazouks—‘Alarums Excursions!’—Insulted
by armed Turks—Rout of the Infidels—Departure of Mahometan
Volunteers for Seat of War—Ordered to change our Route—A
Turkish Road—Busovac—Romish Chapel and Bosnian Han—The
Police defied—Our Mountain Route to Foinica—Ores and Mineral
Springs—Dignity at a Disadvantage—Turkish Picnic—The Franciscan
Monastery at Foinica—Refused Admittance—An ‘Open Sesamé!’—‘The
Book of Arms of the Old Bosnian Nobility’—Escutcheon of Czar
Dūshan—Shield of Bosnia—Armorial Mythology of Sclaves—The
Descendants of Bosnian Kings and Nobles—The Ancient Lords of
Foinica—The ‘Marcian Family’ and their Royal Grants—A Lift in
the Kadi’s Carriage—Traces of former Gold Mines—Mineral Wealth
of Bosnia—A ‘Black Country’ of the future—Why Bosnian Mines
are unworked—Influence of Ancient Rome and Ragusa on past and
present History of Bosnia, and on the distribution of her
Population—A fashionable Spa—Kisseljak and—Beds! 185
CHAPTER VI.
THE PANIC IN SERAJEVO.
Outbreak of the Insurrection in Bosnia—Roadside Precautions
against Brigands—Panorama of Serajevsko Polje—Roman Bas-relief
of Cupid—Roman Remains in Bosnia—_Banja_ and _Balnea_—‘The
Damascus of the North’: first Sight of Serajevo—Her History and
Municipal Government—Fall of the Janissaries—Dangerous Spirit
of the Mahometan Population of Serajevo—Outbreak of Moslem
Fanaticism here on building of the new Serbian Cathedral—We
enter the City through smouldering Ruins—Hospitable Reception
at English Consulate—Great Fire in Serajevo—Consternation of
the Pashà—Panic among the Christians—Missionaries of Culture:
two English Ladies—Causes of the Insurrection in Bosnia: the
Tax-farmers: Rayahs tortured by Turks—‘Smoking’—The Outbreak
in Lower Bosnia—Paralysis of the Government, and Mahometan
Counter-Revolution—Conjuration of leading Fanatics in the Great
Mosque—We are accused before the Pashà by forty Turks—Consular
Protection—The Fanariote Metropolitan and Bishops of
Bosnia—Their boundless Rapacity, and Oppression of the Rayah—A
Bosnian Bath—Mosques and Cloth-hall of Serajevo—Types of the
Population—Spanish Jews, and Pravoslave Merchants—Bosnian Ideas
of Beauty!—Opposition of Christians to Culture—Extraordinary
Proceedings of the Board of Health—The Zaptiehs—Continuance of
the Panic—Portentous Atmospheric Phenomenon—The Beginning of
the End 234
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE HERZEGÓVINA.
Talismans and Phylacteries—Connection between the Geology
of Illyria and her Cabalistic Science—Roman Gems, and
Altar of Jove the Thunderer—Amulets against the Evil
Eye—On our Way again—The Gorge of the Želesnica—Pursued
by Armed Horsemen—Sleep under a Haystack—Chryselephantine
Rock-sculpture—Wasting her Sweetness on the Desert Air!—Mt.
Trescovica—The Forest Scenery of Mt. Igman—Transformations
of the Herb Gentian—Reminiscences of the Karst—No Water!—A
Race against Night—Strange Bedfellows—A Bosnian-Herzegovinian
House—We encounter Bashi-Bazouks—Cross the Watershed
between the Black Sea and Adriatic—First Glimpse of the
Herzegovina—Signs of a Southern Sky—Coinica, the Runnymede
of the Old Bosnian Kingdom—Great Charter of King Stephen
Thomas—Our Host: the Untutored Savage—Absence of Nature’s
Gentlemen—Democratic Genius of Bosniacs and Southern
Sclaves—The Narenta and its treacherous Waters—Iron
Bridge—Entertained by Belgian Engineer—Murder of Young
Christian by two armed Turks—Trepidation of our Host
and Preparations for Flight—Touching Instance of Filial
Affection!—A Village of Unveiled Mahometans—_Rhododactyls_:
Darwinianism refuted at last!—The Tragic Lay of the Golden
Knife—Magnificent Scenery of the Narenta Valley; Amethystine
Cliffs and Emerald Pools—A Land of Wild Figs and Pomegranates 285
CHAPTER VIII.
MOSTAR AND THE VALE OF NARENTA.
Amulets against Blight—A Hymn in the Wilderness—We arrive
at Mostar—Our Consul—Anglo-Turkish Account of Origin of
the Insurrection in the Herzegovina—The real Facts—The
‘_Giumruk_’—The Begs and Agas and their Serfs—The Demands
of the Men of Nevešinje—Massacre of Sick Rayahs by
Native Mahometans begins the War—Plan of Dervish Pashà’s
Campaign—Interview with the Governor-General, Dervish
Pashà—Roman Characteristics of Mostar, and her Roman
Antiquities—Trajan’s Bridge—Ali Pashà, his Death’s-heads and
Tragical End—The Grapes of Mostar—Start with Caravan for
Dalmatian Frontier—A Ride in the Dark—Buna and the Vizier’s
Villa—Bosnian Saddles—A Karst Landscape—Tassorić: Christian
Crosses and interesting Graveyard—Outbreak of Revolt in
Lower Narenta Valley—The Armed Watch against the Begs—A
burnt Village—On Christian Soil once more—Metcović—Voyage
Down the Narenta Piccola—Ruins of a Roman City—The Illyrian
Narbonne—Metamorphosis of Sclavonic God into Christian
Saint—The old _Pagania_—The Narentines and Venetians—Narentine
Characteristics—A Scotch Type—Subterranean Bellowings near Fort
Opus: The Haunts of a Minotaur!—Adverse Winds—Tremendous Scene
at the Mouth of Narenta—_La Fortuna è rotta!_—Our Boat swept
back by the Hurricane—A Celestial Cannonade—Sheltered by a
Family-Community—Dalmatian Fellowship with the English—Stagno—A
Romantic Damsel—Gravosa, the Port of Ragusa 326
CHAPTER IX.
RAGUSA AND EPIDAURUS.
Marvels of the Valle d’Ombla—Port of Gravosa—Rocky Coves and
Gardens of Ragusa—Ragusa Vecchia; Remains of Epidaurus—Monument
of a Roman Ensign—Mithraic Rock-sculpture—Plan of Canale and
the Roman Aqueduct—Antique Gems: the Lapidary Art in Ancient
Illyria—Epidauritan Cult of Cadmus and Æsculapius—Phœnician
Traces on this Coast—Syrian Types among modern Peasants—_Grotta
d’Escolapio_ and _Vasca della Ninfa_—Cavern, and Legend of
St. Hilarion and the Dragon—Mediæval Sculpture in Ragusa
Vecchia—The Founding of Ragusa—The Roman City on the Rock,
and the Sclavonic Colony in the Wood—Orlando saves the City
from the Saracens, and St. Blasius from the Venetians—Ragusa
as a City of Refuge—Visit of Cœur-de-Lion—Government of
the Republic—Sober Genius of Ragusans—Early Laws against
Slavery—Hereditary Diplomatists—Extraordinary Bloom of
Ragusan Commerce—The ‘Argosies’—Commercial and other
relations with England—Literature of Ragusa; she creates
a Sclavonic Drama—Poets and Mathematicians: Gondola and
Ghetaldi—The great Earthquake—End of the Republic—A Walk in
Ragusa—Porta Pille—Stradone—Torre del Orologio—Zecca and
Dogana—Ancient Coinage of Ragusa—Palazzo Rettorale—A Mediæval
Æsculapius—Monuments to Ragusan Peabody and Regulus—_Cappella
delle Reliquie_—Silver Palissy-ware by a Ragusan Master—Cross
of Stephen Uroš—Discovery of St. Luke’s Arm!—The Narrow
Streets of Ragusa: _Case Signorili_, and Hanging Gardens—A
Bird’s-eye View of the City—The Herzegovinian Refugees—A
jewelled _Ceinture_ from Nevešinje—The Fugitives taken!—Turkish
Influence on Ragusan Costume—Contrast between Ragusan Peasants
and ‘_Morlacchi_’—Refinement of the Citizens—Blending of
Italian and Sclave—The Natural Seaport of Bosnia—A Vision of
Gold and Sapphire—On the Margin of the Hellenic World—Shadow
and Night 379
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS.
HERZEGOVINIAN REFUGEES AT RAGUSA _Frontispiece_
GREAT SEAL OF TVARTKO, KING OF BOSNIA (see p. lxxi, note) _on title-page_
TOMB OF CATHARINE, last lawful Queen of Bosnia _To face page_ xxiii
CROATIAN TYPES ” ” 11
BOSNIAN TYPES AT SARAJEVO ” ” 277
WOODCUTS IN TEXT.
PAGE
Croatian Clothes-shop, Agram 4
Croat Woman in the Agram Market 9
Roman and Croatian Pottery 18
Croatian Pottery 19
Outlines of Croatian Musical Instruments 22
Outline of Tracery 23
Bulgarian Settlement 29
Bulgarian Profile 31
Sluin Woman 35
Croat Man 37
A Granitza Homestead 48
Stupa 50
Homestead of Family Community, near Brood, Slavonia 57
Plan of Common Dwelling 59
Head of Slavonian 85
View on River Save, looking from Slavonian Brood towards the
Bosnian Shore 88
Plan of Turbine Mill 95
Bosnian Girl of the Possávina 96
Diagram of Salt-mill 104
Old Castle of Doboj 105
The ‘Old Stones,’ near Tešanj 112
Castle of Tešanj 114
Turkish Café, Tešanj 117
Latin Maiden of Tešanj 120
Pots from Tešanj 121
Pilgrims at the Shrine, near Comušina 132
Types at the Fair 145
Bosnian Belle 148
Gun-Flint 153
Tree struck by Lightning 158
Rocky Gorge of the Jasenica 169
Mysterious Sepulchres, Podove 171
Ancient Monuments in Želesnica Valley 175
View in Travnik 192
Bosniac Mahometan Woman 195
Old Castle of King Tvartko at Travnik 203
Bosnian Armorial Bearings 218
Bas-relief of Cupid 237
Arrowhead Charms 291
Amulets against the Evil Eye 292
Mount Trescovica, from South-Eastern Spur of Mount Igman 297
Mount Bielastica 298
Plan of Bosnian Han 302
First Glimpse of the Herzegovina 304
View of Coinica 305
Unveiled Mahometan Women at Jablanica 322
Mostar Bridge 348
Christian Monuments, Tassorić 360
Graveyard at Tassorić 361
Women and Child, Stagno 376
Sculpture of Roman Standard-Bearer at Ragusa Vecchia 387
Head of Brenese Peasant 393
Virgin and Child 397
Palazzo Rettorale and Torre del Orologio, Ragusa 429
_Key to the Pronunciation of the Serbo-Croatian Orthography, adopted for
Illyrian Names in this Book._
Serbo-Croatian Letters Approximate Sound.
ž = French _j_.
lj = Italian _gl_.
nj = Italian _gn_.
ć = English _ch_.
c = _tz_.
č = German _tsch_.
dž = _dsch_.
š = English _sh_.
j = English _y_.
[Illustration: TOMB OF CATHARINE, LAST LAWFUL QUEEN OF BOSNIA.]
HISTORICAL REVIEW OF BOSNIA.
‘Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.’
About the middle of the fifth century, when Britain was passing
definitely into the hands of the English, and when on the Continent the
hordes of Attila were dealing the most tremendous blow that had yet
fallen on the Roman Empire, Sclavonic tribes overran Mœsia, Thrace,
Macedonia, and Illyricum, and pushed on to the Adriatic shores. From
this period the final settlement of the Sclaves in the area of what
is now known as Turkey-in-Europe may be safely dated.[1] Their first
ravages over, the Sclaves, who from their communal family-organisation
were little capable of formidable combination, appear to have easily
accepted Roman suzerainty. The new settlers were soon among the most
trusted troops of the Eastern Emperor, and at the beginning of the sixth
century the Sclavonic colony of Dardania gives Eastern Rome one of its
most renowned Emperors and its greatest general. The Sclave Upravda, the
son of Istok, is better known as the Emperor Justinian, and Veličaŕ as
Belisarius.
Thus were first cemented those peculiar relations between the Sclaves
and Byzantium which are still of supreme importance in considering ‘the
Eastern Question.’ The Byzantine government saw itself so capable of
dealing with the Sclaves, that when the Avar nomads, at the beginning of
the seventh century, devastated Illyricum, massacring alike Sclavonic
settler and Roman provincial, and sacking even the coast cities of
Dalmatia, Heraclius, as a masterstroke of policy, called in two new
Sclavonic tribes from beyond the Danube as a counterpoise to the Avars;
and the corner of the Balkan peninsula between the Save, the Morava, and
the Adriatic, was divided among the Sclavonic tribes, the Serbs, and the
Croats, who still throughout this area form the bulk of the population.
The account given of this settlement by Constantine Porphyrogenitus[2] is
so mixed up with mythical elements that we can only accept the general
outlines. As might be expected from the analogy of our own history of the
conquest of Britain, the Sclavonic sagas, which seem to form the basis of
the Byzantine version, bring into the field certain leaders with eponymic
names;[3] but the old family life of the Sclaves asserts itself even in
these legends, and we read that the Croats were led to the conquest of
the Avars by a family of brothers and sisters.
The Croatian settlement seems to have been the earlier. The Croats came
from the countries beyond the Carpathians, and colonized the countries
now known as Austrian and Turkish Croatia, and the northern part of
Dalmatia. The Save formed a rough boundary to the Croatian nationality on
the north, the Verbas on the east, and to the south the Cetina.
The Serbs, then inhabiting a part of what is now Galicia, hastened to
imitate the example of the Croats, and took for their share the lands to
the east and south of that occupied by their brother race. They occupied
the whole, or nearly the whole, of the area now occupied by Free Serbia,
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Old Serbia, and the northern half of
Albania, and stretched themselves along the Adriatic coasts from the
neighbourhood of Spalato, where the river Cetina runs into the sea, to
Durazzo, then still Dyrrhachium. Thus, with the exception of the barren
corner called the Kraina, or Turkish Croatia, the whole of what is now
known as Bosnia, with which we have particularly to deal, belongs to the
Serbian branch of the Sclaves.
For long the history of what later became the Bosnian kingdom is
indistinguishable from that of the rest of the Serbs. The whole Illyrian
triangle was divided into a great number of small independent districts,
somewhat answering to the Teutonic ‘_Gaus_,’ called Župy. Župa means
‘bond’[4] or confederation, and each Župa was simply a confederation
of village communities, whose union was represented by a magistrate
or governor, called a Župan. The Župans in turn seem to have chosen
a Grand-Župan, who may be looked on as the President of the Serbian
Federation. We know little about the early Županships of the Bosnian
area, but a few of the petty commonwealths of the Serbian coastland, and
what later on became the Herzegovina, are mentioned by the Byzantine
Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who wrote about 950, and the names
and situation of some in the Bosnian interior may be gathered from
ecclesiastical diplomas. Here and there we read of a ‘Ban’ (translated,
in Diocleas, by the Latin word ‘_Dux_’), who was rather higher than an
ordinary Župan.
These Serbian ‘Archons,’ as the Byzantine historians speak of them,
acknowledged the suzerainty of the Eastern Empire, and even, in some
cases (though doubtless to a less extent than the Croats), accepted
Byzantine dignities. Thus a Ban of Zachlumia accepted the titles of
Proconsul and Patrician. Later on, when Czar Simeon erected the new
Bulgarian Empire, Serbia was forced for a while to bow to the dominion
of the conqueror of Leo Phocas. In the tenth century the Serbs shake off
the Bulgarian yoke, and we now begin to hear of four Grand-Župans, whose
jurisdictions answer to Serbia proper, Rascia, Dioclea, and Bosnia. The
power of the lesser Župans was during this period being diminished for
the benefit of these greater potentates, who in Bosnia are generally
known as Bans. ‘The Bans,’ says the contemporary Serbian historian,[5]
‘ruled each of them in his own province, and subjugated the Župans,
receiving from them the taxes which beforetime had been paid to the
King,’ _i.e._ the sole Grand-Župan.
During the ninth and tenth centuries, while Bosnian-Serbian history is
still so obscure, that of the Croats had achieved some prominence. The
settlement of the Croats had, as we have seen, somewhat preceded the
Serbian. They bordered on the coast-cities of Dalmatia, where Roman
nationality and something of Roman civilization still lingered. Their
relations with Byzantium were more defined, and they had also for a
moment entered into the system of the renovated Empire of the West. Thus
the Croats were earlier imbued with Christianity than the Serbs, and
external influences were earlier at work to give their too acephalous
government greater unity than their inland neighbours, still under the
full sway of Sclavonic communism, could attain to. In the year 914 a
Croatian Grand-Župan, Tomislav, who, in virtue of his relations to the
Byzantine government and the Roman population of the Dalmatian cities,
had assumed the title of ‘Consul,’ begins to be known to foreign princes
as ‘King of the Croats.’ The successor of Tomislav is said to have
conquered the neighbouring Serbian Banat, which from the principal river
within its confines begins about this time to be known as Bosona, or
Bosnia. It even became a constitutional principle in Croatia that, when
the king died childless, a new king should be elected by the seven Bans
of the crown-lands, one of whom was the Ban of Bosnia.[6]
But this Croatian suzerainty was, as yet, premature. At the beginning
of the eleventh century the Greek Emperor Basil having completed the
slaughter of the Bulgarians succeeded in subjugating the Croats, and
the introduction of Byzantine Governors and Protospathars into Dalmatia
threw back Bosnia on to the support of her Serbian neighbours.[7] The
Bosnian Ban Niklas not only accepted the Serbian Grand-Župan Dobroslav
as his overlord, but aided him most efficaciously in annihilating two
Byzantine armies[8] in those gorges of the Black Mountain which, from
time immemorial, have been so fatal to the ambition of Stamboul.
Thus down to nearly the middle of the twelfth century, Bosnia continued
to own allegiance to her Serbian suzerains, and the claims of the
Croats to Bosnia continued to be little more than nominal till their
own country fell into hands more capable of enforcing them. But at the
beginning of the twelfth century the Magyars overthrew the kingdom of
the Croats, and in 1141 Geiza II. of Hungary completed the conquest of
Bosnia, or, as it is generally known in the Hungarian annals, of Rama,
from the little river of that name, flowing into the Narenta.[9] Still,
the Hungarian dominion does not seem as yet to have been much more than
a vague suzerainty. Bosnia, indeed, throughout the whole of this period,
seems to have stood aloof from all its neighbours. It might own a nominal
allegiance, now to Serbia, now to Croatia, now to Hungary, but it enjoyed
a practical independence. Its general isolation from the main current of
Serbian history may be gathered from the chronicler of Dioclea; and when
Manuel Comnenus reduced Hungary to a temporary subjection, his historian
Cinnamus was struck with the same phenomenon. ‘The Drina,’ says he,
‘divides Bosthna from the rest of Serbia. For Bosthna is not subject
to the Grand-Župan of Serbia, but the people were at that time under
their own magistrates, and used their own customs.’ The recent Russian
historian of the Serbs and Bulgarians[10] traces many of the later
misfortunes of Bosnia to this fatal estrangement from the other Sclavonic
lands.
The Hungarian alliance now makes this alienation irrevocable. Cinnamus
shows the close relations existing between Bosnia and Hungary at the
date of Manuel’s invasion when he goes on to say that ‘Boritzes,[11]
Exarch of Bosthna,’ aided the King of Hungary against the Greeks; and,
indeed, we know from other sources that the Bosnian Ban was himself an
illegitimate son of the Magyar king, Coloman. Manuel reduced Bosnia, with
Croatia and other parts of Hungary, for a while; but the Ban was not long
in recovering the province. The Hungarian connection was only cemented
the more firmly, and on Borić’s death, in 1168, his son, the new Ban
Culin, accepted his investiture from Bela III., and subscribed himself
henceforth _Fiduciarius Regni Hungariæ_.
The rule of Ban Culin is justly regarded as the brightest period in
the annals of Christian Bosnia. His first care on his accession was to
surround himself with trustworthy Župans and Voivodes, and during the
thirty-six years of his reign Bosnia enjoyed a profound peace. Under his
auspices and protection the merchants of Ragusa began to plant their
factories in Bosnia, and open out anew the rich mines which had been
left unworked since the days of the Romans. The very year after Culin’s
accession, two Ragusan brothers built a factory and opened mines on the
site of what has since become the capital of Bosnia.[12] Other mines were
shortly opened in the neighbourhood, and a fortress, called after the
Sclavonic name of their mother city, Dubrovnik, was built by the same
enterprising merchants to protect their industries. The same wise policy
encouraged another immigration, this time, of Saxon miners, who, like
the Ragusans, did much to lay bare the great mineral wealth of this and
the other Serbian lands, and who have left their traces in several old
German mining expressions still current among the miners and mountaineers
of Bosnia. These Saxons, or _Sasi_, settled chiefly in the towns, where
their influence was valuable in instilling something of the civic unity
of the free Teutonic burghs into the loosely compacted aggregation of
hovels that clustered round the fortified ‘grad’ of the Bosnian lord.[13]
Culin is said to have been the first Bosnian prince who struck coins, and
the general prosperity was such that to this day ‘the times of good Ban
Culin’ are invoked by the Bosniac when he wishes to express the golden
age.
But the patronage which Culin afforded to a religious sect that now
becomes prominent in Bosnia makes his rule of still greater importance,
and leads us to the consideration of a subject which has its bearings
even on English history.
The doctrine of the Two Principles of Good and Evil, which had its origin
perhaps in the sublime mythology of Persia and the eternal conflict of
Light and Darkness, held its own amongst the various Gnostic sects of
Christianity, scattered throughout the Eastern world, while the West was
content to slumber in comparative orthodoxy. In Armenia, where these
doctrines had certain affinities with the earlier religion, they seem
to have taken especially firm root; and here, as in the other border
states of the Byzantine Empire, heterodoxy went hand in hand with
patriotism. Considering the hostile relations in which both nations stood
to Byzantium, it is not at all surprising that friendly communications
should have subsisted between the Armenians and the Bulgarian Sclaves
whose country lay to the east of the Serbians. Further, it was extremely
natural that Armenians, for national as well as sectarian reasons,
should view with jealousy the progress of orthodox missionaries among
the Bulgarians, and should attempt to counteract it by organising a
propaganda of their own Manichæism.
Such was actually set on foot. How early this proselytism was first
commenced is doubtful, but it is certain that the Danubian Sclaves
were converted from heathenism _pari passu_ by Manichæan and orthodox
missionaries. The Byzantine Emperors, by their transplantation system,
gave the Armenians every facility for their work. In the middle of the
eighth century Constantine Copronymus, who had perhaps some sympathies
with the heretics, transplanted a body of Paulicians from Armenia
into Thrace, who we learn, on the authority of Cedrenus, spread the
Paulician heresy through those parts, then largely inhabited by the
Bulgarian Sclaves. At the end of the ninth century, when the persecution
of Byzantium had provoked the Paulicians of Armenia to assert their
independence, when ‘the Roman Emperor fled before the heretics whom his
mother had condemned to the flames,’ and Tephricé became the capital of
a free-state devoted to Gnostic Christianity, the missionary efforts of
the Armenians among the Sclaves was prosecuted with still greater vigour.
Petrus Siculus, who in 870 resided nine months at Tephricé as legate
of the Byzantine Government, to arrange for an exchange of prisoners,
discovered that a Manichæan mission was about to start from Tephricé to
the Bulgarians, and addressed his ‘Historia Manichæorum’ to the Bulgarian
Patriarch, with the express purpose of counteracting these baneful
efforts.
The fall of the Paulician free-state of Tephricé synchronizes with the
rise of the first Bulgarian Empire, and we can well imagine that the
refugees of vanquished Armenia found shelter among their Manichæan
co-religionists in the dominions of Czar Simeon, the hero of the
Achelous. From this period onwards the Paulician heresy may be said
to change its nationality, and to become Sclavonic. According to the
Bulgarian national traditions,[14] a certain priest named Bogomil spread
the Manichæan doctrines among the subjects of the Bulgarian Czar
who succeeded Simeon, Peter Simeonović. A more enlightened criticism
will perhaps see in the name ‘Bogomil’ only another instance of that
‘eponymic’ tendency of barbarous minds which refers to individuals events
and institutions which have really a more national character. In the same
Bulgarian document which professes to give the origin of their name,
they are connected with the Massalian heresy; by Harmenopulos and other
Byzantine writers they are made almost or quite identical with these same
Massalians, and with the Euchites, their Greek equivalent, and there
seems to be no reasonable doubt that the name Bogomile is really nothing
but a Sclavonic translation of the Greek and Syriac names for the sect.
The name of Massalians is derived from a Syriac word, signifying ‘those
who pray,’ and the Greek Euchites have of course the same derivation.
The Byzantine writer Epiphanius[15] has the credit of giving the right
etymology of the word Bogomile, in that he derives it from the Bulgarian
words _Bog z’milui_, signifying ‘God have mercy,’ an etymology which fits
in with that peculiar devotion to prayer which was characteristic of the
Bogomilian religion, which harmonizes with that of the allied sectaries,
the Massalians and Euchites, and which would be still intelligible to all
Sclavonic peoples, from the White Sea to the Ægean.
We need not, however, go so far as to deny that the Bogomilian heresy
took its characteristic shape under the direction of a Bulgarian
heresiarch. The historic existence of the first Bogomilian pope seems
sufficiently attested,[16] but the Bulgarian traditions name him
indifferently Jeremias and Bogomil, and it is quite possible that the
latter name was added at a later time by a confusion with the Sclavonic
homonym for Massalians and Euchites.
Through all the varying phases of Bulgarian history the Bogomiles, as
these Sclavonic Manichæans are now known, hold their own. It seems
certain that the Bulgarian Czars, in their struggle with Byzantium, did
not wish to alienate a powerful party at home, and we hear occasionally
ominous whispers that Bulgarian Emperors themselves leaned towards the
doctrine of the Two Principles.[17] The Bulgarian heresy was perpetually
fed from its Oriental sources by new Byzantine transplantations, and in
the tenth century the Emperor John Zimisces did much for the propagation
of Gnosticism among the Sclaves by transporting a more powerful colony
of Armenians than any that had gone before ‘from the Chalybian hills
to the valleys of Mount Hæmus.’ It is now that the Bogomilian heresy
begins to spread beyond the limits of Bulgaria, among the kindred Serbian
tribes to the west. Bulgaria, earlier civilized from her closer contact
with Byzantium, was exercising during these centuries a predominating
influence over the less cultured Serbs. From the Bulgarian missionaries
Serbia first received the seeds of her orthodox Christianity, and there
can be no doubt that proselytism was at work on the Manichæan side as
well. Add to this that a large part of Serbia fell at different times
under the Bulgarian dominion.
By the end of the tenth century the Bogomiles have taken firm root among
the Serbs. In the legend of the Serbian prince, St. Vladimir,[18] one of
his highest merits is that he was the zealous enemy of the Bogomiles. St.
Vladimir certainly included in his dominions parts of what is now the
Herzegovina, and, according to some accounts, Bosnia as well.
The events which now follow must have largely increased the number of
Manichæans in these and the other Serbian lands. Basil, ‘the slayer
of the Bulgarians,’ at the beginning of the eleventh century, finally
overthrew the first Bulgarian Empire. Towards the end of the same
century the Bulgarian heretics, now under Byzantine rule, were hunted
down by the orthodox Emperor. The Princess Anna Comnena[19] has left us
an account of the persecution of the Bogomiles by her father Alexius.
The Byzantine princess unblushingly relates the trap which the Emperor
condescended to set for the chief apostle of the sect, at that time a
certain Basil; how he artfully led on the heresiarch by holding out
hopes of conversion; how he invited him to the imperial table, and in
his closet wormed out of him the secrets of his sect; and then, suddenly
throwing aside the arras on the wall, revealed the scribe who had taken
down the confession of his heresy, and beckoned to his apparitors to
throw his victim into irons. The account which Anna Comnena gives of
this sect is valuable in spite of its scurrility. The princess calls
the Bogomiles ‘a mixture of Manichees and Massalians.’ She laughs at
their uncombed hair, their low origin,[20] and their long faces, ‘which
they hide to the nose, and walk bowed, attired like monks, muttering
something between their lips.’ Basil himself was ‘a lanky man, with a
sparse beard, tall and thin.’ From the account given of his confession
we have intimations of a belief in the phantastic doctrine, and what
was more shocking still, ‘He called the sacred churches—woe is me!—the
sacred churches, fanes of demons!’ When he saw himself betrayed by the
Emperor, he declared that he would be rescued from death by ‘angels and
demons.’ Anna Comnena would like to say more of this cursed heresy, ‘but
modesty keeps me from doing so, as beautiful Sappho says somewhere; for
though I am an historian, I am also a woman, and the most honourable of
the purple, and the first offshoot of Alexius.’ The ‘most honourable of
the purple,’ however, feels no hesitation in describing the holocaust
which her father made of all the Bogomiles he could catch, and more
particularly the roasting of Basil. This delicately sensitive princess
gloats over the preparations in the hippodrome, the crackling of the
fire, the breaking out of poor human nature as the victim comes nearer
to the scorching, the turning away of his eyes, and finally the quivering
of his limbs. One asks, in amazement, whether any religion that has
ever existed in the world has produced such monsters of humanity as
Christianity calling itself orthodox!
It may readily be believed that these persecutions drove the Bogomiles
to take refuge more and more in the Serbian regions, out of the way of
the orthodox savagery of Byzantium. There were moreover reasons which
diverted the current of heresy from that part of Serbia which became
afterwards the nucleus of the Empire of the Némanjas. The Serbian princes
who ruled over the territory now occupied by old Serbia and Montenegro
were faithful sons of the orthodox church, and directed their utmost
efforts to keep the shrine of St. Vladimir and the national patriarchate
of Dioclea free from the contamination of Manichæism. Thus a variety of
causes combined to direct the course of the new movement to the Serbian
races of Western Illyricum; and in the twelfth century—the century
immediately preceding the outbreak of Gnostic Puritanism in Western
Europe—Bosnia had become the head-quarters of what we may now call the
great Sclavonic Heresy.
Thanks to the publication of many South-Sclavonic archives, we are now in
a position to arrive at the tenets of the Bogomiles, from native as well
as from Byzantine sources; and, as I hope to show, both the Greek and
Sclavonic accounts of the sect which now plays such an important part in
Bosnian history harmonize to a very great extent. The best native account
that we possess of the Bogomilian heretics is to be found in the works
of a Bulgarian writer, one Presbyter Cosmas, who lived at the end of the
tenth century, just at the period when the heresy was striking root among
the Serbs and Bosniacs, and who wrote (in his native tongue) two of his
most important works against the Bogomiles—whom he considers ‘worse and
more horrible than demons!’[21]
One of the fundamental doctrines of the Bogomiles was, as has been
already implied, the belief in two Principles of Good and Evil. ‘I hear,’
says the worthy Presbyter Cosmas, ‘many of our orthodox congregation ask,
“Wherefore does God permit the Devil to exercise sway over man?” Verily
this is the first question which prepares the weak in belief for the
reception of the Manichæan heresy.’ The Bogomiles satisfied their reason
by supposing two conflicting self-existent principles of Good and Evil.
Matter and the visible world belong to the Spirit of Evil. ‘Everything,’
says Cosmas, ‘exists, according to the Bogomiles, of the will of the
Devil. The sky, the sun, the earth, men, churches, crosses, and all that
is God’s, they give over to the Devil.’ The evil in the world is thus
accounted for by supposing the Creation to be the work of the Evil One,
and it consequently followed that the Bogomiles looked on the book of
Genesis and the other Mosaic writings as inspired by this evil God, or,
as they knew him, Satanael. But beyond this visible world, of which they
could see only the dark and melancholy side, there existed, according to
the Bogomiles, another, invisible, heavenly and perfect, the creation of
the Spirit of Goodness and Light—Himself a perfect triune Being, from
whom proceeded nothing incomplete or temporary.
Cosmas distinguishes, however, two branches of the Bogomilian heretics.
According to the earlier sect, dualism in its most uncompromising form
prevailed.[22] According to a later offshoot of the Bogomiles, the Spirit
of Good had two sons, the elder of whom, Satanael, rebelled and created
matter, and that to rescue the world thus created from the dominion of
the Prince of Evil, God the Father sent down his younger son Christ to
enable men to combat the Ruler of this world.[23] Both sects, however,
were agreed in accepting the Phantastic theory of the Incarnation. The
antagonism between spirit and matter was too great to admit of the union
of the two. The body of Christ was a phantom, left in the clouds at his
ascension; and the Virgin was an angel and not the mother of God.
Cosmas denies generally their belief in any of the books of the Old
Testament or the Gospels; but this does not agree with the circumstantial
account of Euthymius Zygabenus, who from having been commissioned by the
Emperor to extract the tenets of his sect from the Bogomilian heresiarch
Basil, is certainly one of the best authorities. Further, it is disproved
by the whole conduct of the Bogomiles, which, as Cosmas himself shows,
was based on a too literal interpretation of the Gospels. According
to Euthymius,[24] the Bogomiles accepted seven holy books, which he
enumerates as follows:—1, the Psalms; 2, the Sixteen Prophets; 3, 4, 5,
and 6, the Gospels; 7, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the
Apocalypse. So far, indeed, as the New Testament was concerned, they
clung to the version of the orthodox Sclavic apostle, in which they
altered not a word.[25]
Touching baptism again, accounts are contradictory. Harmenopulos says
that the Bogomiles practised the rite, but did not attribute to it any
perfecting[26] virtue. On the other hand, the most recent investigations
into the observances of the Bogomiles of Bosnia show that strictly
speaking the rite did not exist among them at all, though they observed
something analogous to it. Only adults could be admitted into the
communion of the faithful; and, after they had first qualified themselves
for admission by prayer and fasting, the mystery of initiation was
performed, not by water—for did not water itself appertain to the evil
realm of matter?—but by the laying on of St. John’s Gospel. Thus Cosmas
is technically right in saying that the Bogomiles rejected baptism
altogether, though it is probable that he was merely calumniating them
when he added as a reason, that ‘they are afraid of the children to be
baptized; and if by chance they see small children, they turn away from
them as from carrion, and spit, and call them children of mammon, as
being creations of the Devil;’ still under the sway, that is, of the Evil
Creator Spirit. As regards Bosnia, at any rate, this is a foul slander.
So far were the Bosnian Bogomiles from spurning little children, that the
instruction of the young was considered a work worthy of the most saintly
of the sect.
They were staunch opponents of the prevailing Mariolatry. ‘They pay no
honour to the Mother of God.’[27] ‘As to the cross,’ says the Presbyter,
they say: ‘Wherefore should we bow to that which dishonoured God?’ and
they ask further, ‘if any man slew the son of a king with a bit of wood,
how could this bit of wood be dear to the king?’[28] They considered it
idolatry to bow down before the icons of saints. ‘They further revile the
ceremonies of the church and all church dignities, and they call orthodox
priests blind Pharisees, and bay at them as dogs at horses.’[29] ‘As to
the Lord’s Supper,’ continues the Bulgarian champion of orthodoxy, ‘they
assert that it is not kept according to God’s commandment, and that it is
not the body of God, but ordinary bread.’[30]
Their belief in the evilness of matter was productive, as such a belief
always has been, of much asceticism; which, if the concurrent testimony
of their enemies is to be believed, they carried at times to deplorable
excesses. ‘They show themselves,’ says Cosmas, ‘strong ascetics, for
they call the Devil the Creator of all things, and declare that it is
his Commandment that men should take wives, eat flesh, and drink wine.
Everything as it exists with us (the orthodox) is utterly rejected. They
give themselves up to a celestial life, insomuch that they call married
men and those living in the way of the world “Mammon’s Children.”’
The descriptions of Anna Comnena and the monk Cosmas bring before us
the familiar Puritan type, as it has reproduced itself in all ages.
They bowed their heads and groaned and pulled long faces, in the true
Roundhead style. ‘You will see heretics,’ quoth Cosmas, ‘quiet and
peaceful as lambs without, silent, and wan with hypocritical fasting, who
do not speak much nor laugh loud, who let their beard grow, and leave
their person incompt.’
These descriptions of their enemies must, however, be taken with this
reserve: they apply, as a rule, only to a small minority of the sect.
The Bogomiles, like most ascetic sects, were divided into two castes:
the simple believers, the _Credentes_ of the West, who formed the large
majority; and ‘the perfect,’ or those who by a long course of asceticism
had successfully mortified the flesh. In the thirteenth century, at
the most blooming period of their history, among the millions of these
sectaries were reckoned less than 4,000 of ‘the perfect.’[31] These
‘perfect’ called themselves in Bosnia _Krstjani_, _dobri Bošniani_,
_Svršiteli_, ‘Christians,’ that is, ‘good Bosnians,’ or ‘the elect,’
terms which reappear in a Romance guise in Italy and the Languedoc.
The ‘perfect’ were clad like monks in long black gowns; they condemned
themselves to perpetual celibacy; they abjured wine, nor tasted aught
but vegetables, fish, and oil; they forsook the ‘pomps and vanities of
this wicked world,’ and gave themselves up to devotion and good works.
The women (for this saintly minority included both sexes) taught children
or tended the sick, while the men acted as the spiritual guides of their
weaker brethren or preached the Gospel among unbelievers.
But it stood to reason that the great bulk of the Bogomilian flock could
never attain to this higher standard. In the abstract, no doubt, the
simple ‘believer’ accepted the doctrine which his spiritual guides were
careful to instil into him, that his soul was an angel fallen from above
and fettered in the prison-house of his body, and that only by perpetual
mortification of the flesh could he hope to set the celestial captive
free at last. But the laws of nature and society are perpetually holding
back religious extravagance from its logical consequences, and the simple
‘believer’ was content to govern himself by the more ordinary standard
of mankind. As in Provence and Italy, so in Bosnia, he dispensed himself
from the prohibition against drinking wine; and though the ‘perfect’
refused to bear arms and preached against war as devilish, the mass of
the heretics, Sclavonic as well as Romance, showed that on occasion
they could measure swords with the most orthodox. Though marriage was
contrary to their tenets, the Bogomiles took wives, the man, however, in
Bosnia only taking the woman on the condition that she was good and true
to him, reserving the right of dismissing her if he thought her conduct
unsatisfactory; an arrangement productive of laxity, and giving occasion
to the orthodox adversary of which he was not slow to take advantage.[32]
Yet, though in his manner of life falling short of the extreme asceticism
of ‘the perfect,’ the ordinary Bogomile, on the showing of his enemies
themselves, distinguished himself by his superior industry and thrift,
and put to shame the saintly idleness of more orthodox professors
by refusing to neglect his work on feast-days. Among the Bogomiles,
beggars were looked on with contempt.[33] The ‘perfect’ themselves
abhorred what was slothful in a monastic life, and the ‘heresiarch’
Basil set a good example by earning his living as a doctor. The simple
believer devoted part of the worldly goods thus acquired to the relief
of sick and indigent brothers, and also to the support of Gospellers
among unbelievers, but neither his industry nor his good works could
satisfy his conscience. The higher life of the ‘perfect’ was a perpetual
reproach to him. His soul seemed clotted with the contagion of a too
sensual existence, nor did his theology allow him a purgatory for the
imbodied and imbruted spirit. Standing on the threshold of another world,
and forced to choose between heaven and hell, the simple ‘believer’
considered it essential to his salvation that he should be admitted into
the ranks of the ‘perfect’ by a death-bed ceremony of initiation, which
reappears as _la Convenenza_ among the more Western Patarenes of Italy
and Provence.
The Bogomiles, in spite of their hatred of orthodox priests and temples,
possessed ministers and even conventicles of their own. In the earliest
accounts that have reached us we find at the head of the sect an elder
or teacher surrounded by twelve disciples, answering to Christ and the
Apostles. The half legendary accounts of the ‘pope’ Bogomil surround
him with such disciples; and Basil ‘the heresiarch’ has his twelve.
But as the Bogomiles spread beyond the limits of Bulgaria, each new
province, if we may so term it, added to the dominion of the faithful,
required a new elder or bishop. At the head of the Bogomilian flock in
Bosnia stood a _Djed_ or elder, answering to the _Episcopus_ or _Senior_
of the Albigensians, and under him came the Apostles, the _Strojniks_
(Western _Magistri_), of which there were two grades, the _Gosti_ and
the _Starci_, who again reappear as the _Filii_ and _Diaconi_ of Italy.
But there was no hierarchy, and nothing at all answering to a papacy;
‘the ecclesiastical officers were simply the representatives of the
congregation, and were chosen by their votes.’[34] Every one who ranked
among the ‘perfect,’ whether a man or woman, had the right of preaching.
Although in some parts the Bogomiles seem to have had no recognized
place of worship, and performed their devotions in their own huts, or
on some lonely heath beneath the open canopy of heaven, we have yet
sufficient evidence, both Byzantine and Sclavonic, that they often
possessed meeting-houses of their own. Their churches, according to
Epiphanius, were like boats turned keel uppermost, but some were of a
more ecclesiastical form. It appears that in Bosnia, as in the Languedoc,
their prayer-houses were plain sheds without tower, or bells, which they
called the trumpets of demons,—devoid of ornament or icons, containing
neither chancel nor altar, but a simple table covered with a clean white
linen cloth, on which was laid a copy of the Gospels.[35] Here they
assembled by torchlight and sang hymns of their own, called by the Greek
writer ‘Euphemies.’ Their service chiefly consisted of prayer, which
according to their creed was the only means of resisting the demon within
them, or of attaining salvation. The Lord’s Prayer was the only form used
by them, and this they repeated in their own house with closed doors,
five times every day and five times every night.[36]
Such are some of the main features of the Bogomilian heresy, as they have
come down to us, to a great extent, from the writings of their bitterest
opponents. Nor will anyone marvel that these doctrines should have spread
as they did among those Sclavonic races, who acted as the missionaries
of the first Reformation in Western Europe. It can hardly be considered
fanciful if we detect certain remarkable analogies between the belief and
observances of the Bogomiles and the primitive institutions, and even the
heathen religion, of the Sclaves. It has already been mentioned that the
Manichæan conversion began among the Bulgarians when they were still to
a great extent pagan. The same is true with regard to the spread of the
Bogomilian heresy among the Serbs, with whom heathendom held its own in
parts till the thirteenth century.[37] A remarkable uniformity presents
itself in the languages, beliefs, and institutions of all Sclavonic
nations; and if we may assert, from the analogy of the Baltic Sclaves,
that the Bulgarians and Serbs also divided their worship between their
Black God or Spirit of Evil, and their White God or Spirit of Good, it
follows that the Manichæan missionaries found the dualistic theology,
which lies at the bottom of so much of their doctrine, already existing
among the people they wished to convert;[38] while the propagandists
of orthodoxy must have discovered to their vexation that the Sclavonic
mind had been trained by superstition, as well as by what mother-wit it
possessed, to rebel against their stupendous dogma, that an All-powerful
Spirit of Good could create and tolerate the Spirit of Evil. Our
Presbyter Cosmas notices that this difficulty presented itself, even to
the ‘orthodox’ Bulgarians, and so lost is he in indignation at these
profane inquiries as to the devil’s paternity, that he forgets to answer
them.
An equally marked parallel is presented between the customs and church
government, if the expression is allowable, of the Bogomiles, and the
primitive institutions of the Sclaves. Their Presbyters answer to the
Sclavonic _Starescina_, the elders of the primitive family-community.
The Communistic doctrines which these heretics discovered in the New
Testament fitted in well with the equality and fraternity of the
Sclavonic home-life. They were essentially levellers, and their evangelic
religion was mixed up, as among the Puritans of Western Europe, with
political insurgency. In Bulgaria we seem to trace, in the opposition
of the Bogomiles to the powers that be, an alliance between them and
the champions of the Sclavonic democracy against the usurpations of the
Ugrian dynasty and nobles. ‘They rail,’ says Cosmas, ‘at the magistrates
and boljars (or nobles), and hold it a crime to do service for the
Czar. They say, moreover, to every servant that he should not serve his
master.’ The Bogomiles, it must be remembered, become a political power
in Bosnia just at the time when the ‘elders’ and Župans, who represented
the free institutions which the Sclavonic settlers brought with them, are
bowing before the Bans and a new, semi-feudal, nobility.
By the beginning of the twelfth century the Bogomilian heresy had struck
such firm root in Bosnia as to rouse the faithful sons of the Church in
Hungary and Dalmatia to armed opposition, insomuch that in 1138 Bela II.
was induced to make an incursion against the ‘Patarenes,’ in the country
between the Cetina and Narenta.[39] It was not, however, till the end of
this century that the progress of heresy in other parts turned the Pope’s
serious attention to the fountain-head of the ‘Bulgarian heresy,’ then
undoubtedly his Illyrian province. Nominally, Bosnia had long belonged
to the Church of Rome, which claimed Western Illyricum as an inheritance
from the Western Empire. Practically, what orthodox Christianity Bosnia
and the other Serbian lands possessed was of a strongly national
character, and derived, not from Roman sources, but from the missionary
efforts of the Sclavonic apostles, Cyril and Methodius.[40] But the
Church of Bosnia, though using the native liturgy and eschewing the
Latin language, acknowledged some allegiance to Rome, and the bishops of
Bosnia recognized the Archbishop of Salona[41] as their metropolitan.
In the year 1180 Culin himself is still considered a dutiful son of the
Church. But a few years later Culin ‘has degenerated from himself’ and
fallen into heresy, and together with his wife[42] and his sister, the
widow of the Count of Chelm, had given ear to the Patarenes, as Roman
ecclesiastics begin to call the Bogomiles who have now spread their
heresy into Italy and the West. The Pope, exerting pressure on Culin by
means of the King of Hungary, had the satisfaction of seeing him recant
in person at Rome.[43] But a few years later, in 1199, the Prince of
orthodox Zenta, which we may almost translate Montenegro, informs the
Pope by letter that Culin has relapsed into his errors, and that ten
thousand of his subjects are already infected with the heresy.[44] A
little later, we hear that Daniel, the bishop of Bosnia himself, has
joined the Patarenes, who shortly after destroyed the orthodox-Roman
Cathedral and Episcopal palace at Crescevo. From this time begins an
ominous interregnum in the Roman Episcopate of Bosnia.
It was in vain that the Pope appealed to the King of Hungary to punish
his heretic vassal. Culin was now too strong to fear even the Hungarian
arms; and at the very period when the hordes of De Montfort were
devastating Provence, the Banat of Bosnia offered an asylum to persecuted
adherents of the Bulgarian heresy throughout Europe. This is hardly
the place to show how essentially the first Protestants of Western
Europe, the Bulgares as they are called by orthodox writers of the age,
were spiritual children of the Sclavonic Bogomiles. The history of the
Patarenes and Albigenses of Italy and Provence, of the ‘Ketzers’[45] of
the Lower Rhine, who made their way even to our shores, lies of course
beyond the scope of this essay. Word for word, nearly all that has been,
with some pains, collected here, from Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Bosnian
sources, regarding the tenets of the more Eastern heretics, might be
paralleled by citations from Latin chronicles,[46] touching those who
broke the harmony of Western Christendom. Enough if, while describing
the belief and observances of the Bogomiles in Bosnia and Bulgaria,
we have alluded, here and there, to such striking similarities in the
details of church ministration and observances as show that the more
Western sectaries clung to their original Bulgarian model in its minutest
particulars. The doctrinal differences themselves which afflicted the
more Western offshoots of the heresy had, as we have seen, their roots
in a Bulgarian, perhaps an Armenian, soil.[47] Bulgarian elders sat in
Provençal synods, Provençal bishops consulted with Bosnian Djeds on
matters of faith. To the orthodox Sclave or Byzantine, there were only
Bogomiles in the Languedoc, and the Romish hierarchy named the heretics
of Bosnia from a suburb of Milan.[48] ‘The believers of the plains of
Lombardy and the South of France,’ to quote the words of the recent
Bohemian historian of Bulgaria, ‘kept up a regular intercourse with their
co-religionists in the Byzantine Empire, Bosnia and Bulgaria, and long
before the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders or the Turks, a
mighty but secret interchange of thought was at work between East and
West.’[49]
It was during the reign of Culin that this great Puritan movement
attained its widest dimensions, and it is from a contemporary of his,
the Italian Reniero Sacconi, who from a heretic became an inquisitor,
that we obtain the most satisfactory evidence as to the organization of
this early Protestant Church, and the solidarity of its various members,
Sclavonic, Greek, Romance, and Teutonic. The Church of the Cathari, as
he calls them, numbered then as many as thirteen bishoprics, amongst
which that of Bosnia or ‘Slavonia’ was not the least important. By
Culin’s time, the Bogomilian missionaries had succeeded in disseminating
their Armenian doctrines from Philippopolis to Bordeaux, and had formed,
if we may so term it, a middle kingdom of their own—a Lotharingia
of heterodoxy, extending in an unbroken zone through the centre of
orthodox Europe, from the Black Sea to the Atlantic. Nay, the ark of
the faithful, borne northwards and westwards on the free bosom of the
Rhine, had crossed the Channel, and penetrated, as it were by our
great English river, to the seat of English learning; and at the very
time when Protestant Christendom looked to the Ban of Bosnia as its
chief protector, his Angevin contemporary, our Henry II., was branding
Paulicians at Oxford.[50]
Rapid and astonishing as was the spread of these Oriental doctrines
through Latin Christendom, there seems no difficulty in accounting for
it when we remember the missionary zeal which the Sclavonic Bogomiles
had inherited from their Armenian teachers, and which led them, as
we have seen, to set apart funds for the support of Gospellers among
unbelievers. The same impulses which planted an Armenian faith among
the Sclaves are sufficient to account for the success with which the
new converts acclimatized what was now a Sclavonic faith amongst Greeks
and Latins. It is certain that the Bulgarian propaganda made use of
existing trade-routes by land and sea. This indeed is not the place to
enquire what part Bulgaria and what part Bosnia, what part the Save, the
Danube and the Rhine, the Po or the Adige, the commercial currents of the
Adriatic and the Mediterranean—what part Durazzo and the Egnatian Way,
what part Byzantium and Byzantine Lower Italy, may have severally and
collectively played in conveying the Bogomilian heresy to Toulouse,[51]
Milan and Cologne. On the whole the Bosnian influence may be regarded as
later and secondary. It is probable that the first wave of propagandism
was almost entirely Bulgarian, and followed in the wake of Greek
merchantmen. The great part played by Bosnia was rather that of asylum
for the persecuted, and promoter of the faith, in days when heresy had
been stamped out elsewhere with fire and sword. We have, however, precise
data as to the Bogomilian religion having been communicated to Dalmatia
through commercial relations with the interior of Bosnia,[52] and
doubtless, just as the Bulgarians, the South-Easternmost of the Sclavonic
races of the Balkan peninsula, first received their Manichæan Puritanism
from Armenia and the East, so the Bosnians, the North-Westernmost[53] of
the Balkan Sclaves, played at least a part in first communicating it to
Europe and the West.
It is from the pen of a St. Alban’s monk, and a letter of a bishop of
Porto, that we gain the most convincing testimony as to the influence
which, in the palmy days of Ban Culin, and the period immediately
succeeding, was exercised by Bosnia in directing the great Protestant
movement in Western Europe. Matthew Paris[54] relates that the
Albigensians of Provence and Italy possessed a pope of their own, who
resided in Bosnia.[55] This man created a vicar ‘in partibus Galliarum.’
The vicar of this Bosnian anti-pope, who resided at Toulouse, granted him
some lands at a place called Porlos, and the Albigensian heretics betook
themselves to their Bosnian pope to consult him on divers questions of
faith. Matthew Paris and Ralph of Coggeshale are certainly wrong in
converting this Bosnian elder into an anti-pope, and his vicar into
the parody of an orthodox bishop,[56] hierarchy of any sort being, as
we have seen, alien to the spirit of the Bogomilian as well as to the
Albigensian sectaries. Yet it is quite possible that a kind of informal
primacy was at this time accorded to the Bosnian _Djed_, and he may have
fulfilled such moderating functions, as interpreter in matters doctrinal,
as seem to have devolved, a century before, on the ‘heresiarch’ Basil.
The fact that this vicar had been originally sent to the Albigenses by
the Illyrian ‘antipope’ is a convincing proof of the direct missionary
connection between Bosnia and Provence, and the whole incident shows
that in the thirteenth century the Western heretics still looked to the
Slavonic East for the sources of true belief.
It was in vain that on Culin’s death the King of Hungary appointed a
Catholic Ban Zibisclave. It was in vain that in 1216 the Pope sent the
sub-deacon Aconcius to labour at the conversion of the heretics. The
Bogomiles only gained strength, and their faith struck firmer roots in
the neighbouring countries of Croatia, Dalmatia, Istria, Carniola, and
Slavonia. But Rome, in the Albigensian crusades, had already tasted
Christian blood, and resolved to have recourse to the same weapons in
Bosnia which she had employed so efficaciously in Provence. An Archbishop
of Colocz was at hand to play the part of the Abbot of Citeaux. In 1222
he entered Bosnia at the head of an Hungarian host, and used the sword
with such good effect that he had shortly possessed himself of the
provinces of ‘Bosna, Ussora, and Soy.’ Zibisclav, who had defected from
the true faith, saw himself reduced to abjure his errors and to fling
himself at the toes of St. Peter, and the Pope was graciously pleased
‘to embrace sincerely in the arms of his charity both his person and
his lands, and all the goods that he at the present possessed.’[57]
But Zibisclav’s subjects were not inclined to follow the example of
their Ban. On the contrary, they hardened their hearts, and in the very
year, 1233, in which this fond embrace took place, a Bogomilian ‘pope’
or bishop continued to flourish and exercise a powerful authority in
Bosnia. A new crusade was necessary. Coloman, the brother of the King of
Hungary,[58] was the De Montfort of the occasion, and in 1238 entered
Bosnia with a large army to exterminate the heretics. He extended his
havoc through the whole country, and even ‘purged,’ we are told, the
principality of Chelm, which answers to the south-western part of the
Herzegovina. From this period onwards the history of Bosnia for centuries
consists of little more than a series of such bloody inroads; but
there are here none of those details which secure for the heretics of
Alby the commiseration of mankind. Cities are sacked, but there is not
here a Beziers or Carcassonne; the first germs of a civilization are
trodden under foot, but these are not the full-blown roses of Provence;
troubadours of a kind there doubtless were here, too, but it was in
barbarous Sclavonic tongue, and not in the polished _Langue d’Oc_ that
they poured forth ‘their unpremeditated lay,’ and the sound of their lyre
died away among the mountains that gave them birth.[59]
Gregory IX. congratulates Coloman on ‘wiping out the heresy and restoring
the light of Catholic purity,’[60] but the Pope was quick in discovering
that these congratulations were premature. The Tartar invasion which
in 1241 weakened Hungary was the strength of the Bogomiles of Bosnia.
Nor, perhaps, did the slaughter of Ban Zibisclav and many of his bravest
adherents by the horde of Khan Ugadai much affect the subjects whose
creed and interests he had deserted. In 1246 Pope Innocent IV.[61] had
to stir up a third Bosnian crusade, the conduct of which was entrusted
to the Archbishop of Colocz—‘a man skilled,’ as was fitting in an
archbishop, ‘in all the science of war.’ He received a cross from the
Pope to fix upon his heart, and aided by the King Bela, of Hungary,
renewed the pious work. Many heretics were butchered, others were
cast into dungeons; and so great were considered the deserts of the
archbishop, that the Pope transferred the church of Bosnia from Spalato
to Colocz. But once more it was discovered that fire and sword had raged
in vain. Heresy continued to be so rampant in Bosnia that from 1256 the
episcopate of Bosnia, which had been renewed after the first crusade,
lapses a second time.[62] The papacy next resorted to persuasion, the
more so as during the last part of the thirteenth century the Hungarian
suzerainty was becoming less and less binding on Bosnia. About the year
1260 the Minorite brothers of the order of St. Francis of Assisi were
sent into Bosnia to aid the Dominicans, who had been already established
here.[63] At the end of the thirteenth century Bosnia passed for a while
under the overlordship of the Prince of Serbia, and Stephen Dragutine,
who was favourable to the Roman church, allowed two Franciscan brothers
to establish the Inquisition here in 1291.[64]
But at the beginning of the fourteenth century the Hungarians had once
more recovered their ascendency in Bosnia, and the Pope eagerly seized
the weapon of orthodoxy at his service. John XXII. directed two letters,
one to Charles, King of Hungary, and the other to Stephen, Ban of Bosnia.
The letters are almost identical in scope, and are interesting as showing
that Bosnia was still the stronghold and asylum of European heresy, and
as illustrating the peculiar character of these sectaries. The letter
to the Bosnian Ban is dated Avignon, June 1325.[65] ‘To our beloved
son and nobleman, Stephen, Prince of Bosnia,’—‘Knowing that thou art
a faithful son of the church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate
the heretics in thy dominions, and to render aid and assistance unto
Fabian, our Inquisitor, for as much as a large multitude of heretics,
from many and divers parts collected, hath flowed together into the
principality of Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and
to dwell there in safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old
Fiend, and armed with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of
Catholics by outward show of simplicity and lying assumption of the name
of Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with
humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheeps’ clothing,
covering their bestial fury as a means whereby they may deceive the
simple sheep of Christ.’
The true believers still need to be warned against the apparent meekness
and innocence of these men of the gospel! His Holiness seems almost to
be repeating the description of the Bogomiles given by the Bulgarian
Presbyter over three centuries before. ‘When men,’ says Cosmas, ‘see
their lowly behaviour, then think they that they are of true belief;
they approach them therefore and consult them about their souls’ health.
But they, like wolves that will swallow up a lamb, bow their head, sigh,
and answer full of humility, and set themselves up as if they knew how
it is ordered in heaven.’[66] Hypocritical meekness has been a ready
accusation in the mouths of opponents of puritanism in all ages; but
we may be allowed to see, in the slanders of foul-mouthed popes and
prelates, a tribute to the evangelic purity of the lives of those whom
they persecuted and traduced.
Once more ‘the Lilies of the Field,’ as in their figurative parlance they
loved to style themselves, are trampled under foot. In 1330 the King
of Hungary and the Ban combined to assist the Inquisitor Fabian; many
heretics were hounded from the realm, and the usual scenes of horror were
repeated. In 1337, however, heresy is again as rampant as ever in Bosnia,
and the Pope accordingly stirred up the neighbouring princes to another
Bosnian crusade, which was only averted by the address of the Ban Stephen.
Sometimes the monks condescended to work miracles to forward the work of
conversion. One, while addressing a congregation of heretics, ‘stepped,’
we are assured, ‘into a large fire, and with great hilarity stood in the
middle of the flames while he recited the fiftieth Psalm.’ We hardly need
the further assurance that many were turned from the error of their ways
by miracles like this, especially when it is remembered that the heretics
had the alternative of repenting, or repeating the experiment.
Nor were there wanting, we are told, miraculous tokens in the sky to
manifest the displeasure of heaven itself at these scoffers at Catholic
verity. The mountains whither the Bogomiles had been driven by the pious
zeal of Ban Stephen were struck by celestial fire. ‘Upon the eve of St.
Catharine, 1367, a mighty heavenly flame appeared in the East, with an
intense light terribly apparent to the whole globe. At that time they
say that the loftiest mountains of Bosnia, with all rocks, cattle, wild
beasts, and fowls of the air, were miraculously consumed, so that they
were reduced to a plain; and there dwell the Patarene Manichæans, and
say that God burnt up those mountains for their convenience, because He
loved their faith.’[67] In fact, neither the Bogomiles nor the new Ban
Stephen Tvartko, who favoured them, seem to have been the least appalled
by this phenomenon. Only two years after this miraculous conflagration,
Urban V. writes to the King of Hungary to complain of the Ban of Bosnia,
‘who, following in the detestable footsteps of his fathers, fosters and
defends the heretics who flow together into these parts from divers
corners of the world as into a sink of iniquity.’[68] The Bans of Bosnia,
even when Catholics themselves, seem to have been forced by the strength
of national feeling into an attitude at least of toleration towards the
Bogomiles, and their position in this respect has been aptly compared by
Hilferding to that of the Bulgarian Czars.
During the troublous times of the Bosnian kingdom the Bogomiles increased
in strength, and, what is extremely significant, the heretics of Bosnia
begin to play a part in the revival of the Protestant movement throughout
Europe. We do not know what part the Sclavonic heretics of Bosnia may
have taken in preparing the minds of their Czechian brothers for the
religious revolt of which Huss and Jerome of Prague were the leaders
and exponents. But we do know that from the first intimate relations
existed between the Bogomiles of Bosnia and the Hussites; in 1433 four
Bogomilian or Patarene bishops made their way from Bosnia to the Council
of Basil,[69] and shortly after, in 1437, the Romish bishop Joseph
complains that Bosnia was swarming with Hussites and other heretics.
We have, moreover, very strong indirect evidence that the movement in
Bosnia was at this time directed by men of learning and ability. In 1462
Pius II., being much alarmed at the progress of heresy in Bosnia, and
‘hearing that there was a great want there of men skilled in philosophy,
the sacred canons, and theology,’ sent thither ‘learned men from the
neighbouring provinces,’ and especially the brother Peter de Mili, a
native of Bosnia, and four fellows. These five ‘had studied in the best
Cismontane and Transmontane Universities under the most learned doctors.’
The Pope, moreover, gave orders that some of the largest convents should
be converted into schools for literary studies.[70] We may conclude with
confidence that learning was required in Bosnia to cope with learning.
But the preparation of this polemic artillery was cut short by an event,
the effects of which are even now distracting Christendom. In the year
following that in which his Holiness laments over the continued progress
of heresy in Bosnia, the whole country passed in the short space of
eight days irrevocably under the dominion of the Infidel. The continued
crusades, the persecutions of the Inquisition—fire, sword, exile, and
dungeon—had done their work. The Protestant population of Bosnia had at
last deliberately taken its choice, and preferred the dominion of what
it believed to be the more tolerant Turks to the ferocious tyranny of
Catholic kings, magnates, and monks. There never was a clearer instance
of the Nemesis which follows on the heels of religious persecution.
Europe has mainly to thank the Church of Rome that an alien civilisation
and religion has been thrust into her midst, and that Bosnia at the
present day remains Mahometan.
At the very moment when the Turks were threatening the existence of the
Bosnian kingdom, the King, then Stephen Tomašević, and priests, aided
by the magnates and aristocratic party in the State, were pushing the
persecution of the Bogomiles to an extreme which perhaps it had never
reached before. In the year 1459 King Stephen turned his feudal arms
against the inoffensive Bogomiles at home, and hounded out as many, it
is said,[71] as forty thousand, who took refuge in the Herzegovina, with
their co-religionist, the Duke of St. Sava. Others he sent in chains to
Rome, where it appears they were ‘benignantly converted’—whatever that
means. But the expulsion of forty thousand did little to diminish the
strength of the Bogomiles in Bosnia. In 1462, as we know from the Roman
archives, heresy was as powerful as ever in Bosnia. Already, twelve years
before,[72] the Bogomiles had invited the Turks into Bosnia as their
deliverers; in 1463 the invitation was repeated, a successful negotiation
was opened with the Sultan, and, on Mahomet II.’s invasion, the Catholic
king found himself deserted by his people. The keys of the principal
fortress, the royal city of Bobovac, were handed over to the Turk by
the ‘Manichæan’ governor;[73] the other fortresses and towns hastened
to imitate its example, and within a week ‘seventy cities defended by
nature and art’ passed into the hands of Mahomet. Bosnia, which may be
described as one vast stronghold, refused to strike a blow in defence of
her priestly tyrants.
Perhaps enough has been said to show the really important part played
by Bosnia in European history. We have seen her aid in interpreting
to the West the sublime puritanism which the more Eastern Sclaves of
Bulgaria had first received from the Armenian missionaries. We have seen
her take the lead in the first religious revolt against Rome. We have
seen a Bosnian religious teacher directing the movement in Provence.
We have seen the Protestants of Bosnia successfully resisting all the
efforts of Rome, supported by the arms of Hungary, to put them down.
We have seen them offering an asylum to their persecuted brothers of
the West,—Albigensians, Patarenes, and Waldenses. We have seen them
connected with the Reformation in Bohemia, and affording shelter to
the followers of Huss. From the twelfth century to the final conquest
of the Turks in the sixteenth, when the fight of religious freedom had
been won in Northern Europe, Bosnia presents the unique phenomenon of a
Protestant State existing within the limits of the Holy Roman Empire,
and in a province claimed by the Roman Church. Bosnia was the religious
Switzerland of Mediæval Europe, and the signal service which she has
rendered to the freedom of the human intellect by her successful stand
against authority can hardly be exaggerated. Resistance, broken down in
the gardens of Provence, buried beneath the charred rafters of the Roman
cities of the Langue d’Oc, smothered in the dungeons of the Inquisition,
was prolonged from generation to generation amongst the primeval forests
and mountain fastnesses of Bosnia. There were not wanting, amongst those
who sought to exterminate the Bogomiles, Churchmen as dead to human pity
as the Abbot of Citeaux, and lay arms as bloodthirsty as De Montfort;
but the stubborn genius of the Serbian people fought on with rare
persistence, and held out to the end. The history of these champions of
a purer religion has been written by their enemies, and ignored by those
who owe most to their heroism. No Martyrology of the Bogomiles of Bosnia
has come down to us. We have no Huss or Tyndale to arrest our pity.
‘Invidious silence’ has obscured their fame,
Illachrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
Protestant historians, fearful of claiming relationship with heretics
whose views on the Origin of Evil were more logical than their own, have
almost or entirely ignored the existence of these Sclavonic Puritans.
Yet of all worn-out devices of _ad captandum_ argument this assuredly
is the most threadbare, to ignore the transitions of intervening links,
and pointing to the extremes of a long concatenation of causes and
effects, to seize upon their differences as a proof of disconnection.
In the course of ages the development of creeds and churches is not
less striking than that of more secular institutions. Bogomilism
obeyed an universal law; it paid the universal tribute of successful
propagandism; it compromised; or, where it did not compromise, it was
ruthlessly stamped out. The Manichæan elements, most distasteful to
modern Protestants, were in fact the first to disappear.[74] In its
contact with the semi-pagan Christianity of the West, the puritanism of
the Gnostic East became, perforce, materialized; just as, ages before,
Christianity itself, an earlier wave of the same Eastern puritanism had
materialized in its contact with the undiluted heathendom of the Western
empire. To a certain extent Bogomilism gained. It lost something of its
dreamy transcendentalism, something of its anti-human vigour, and by
conforming to the exigencies of Western society, became to a certain
extent more practical. Thus by the sixteenth century the path had been
cleared for a compromise with orthodoxy itself. The Reformation marks the
confluence of the two main currents of religious thought that traverse
the middle ages, in their several sources, Romish and Armenian. No doubt,
from the orthodox side, which refused to reject all that was beautiful
in the older world, which consecrated Greco-Roman civilization and
linked art with religion, the West has gained much; but in days of gross
materialism and degrading sacerdotalism, it has gained perhaps even more
from the purging and elevating influence of these early Puritans. The
most devout Protestant need not be afraid to acknowledge the religious
obligations which he owes to his spiritual forefathers, Manichæan though
they were; while those who perceive in Protestantism itself nothing more
than a stepping-stone to still greater freedom of the human mind, and
who recognize the universal bearings of the doctrine of Evolution, will
be slow to deny that England herself and the most enlightened countries
of the modern world may owe a debt, which it is hard to estimate, to the
Bogomiles of Bulgaria and Bosnia.
After the Turkish conquest of Bosnia the history of the Bogomiles in
those parts becomes obscure. That they still existed in the revived
Banat of lower Bosnia we may gather from a passage in the ‘Annals of
the Minorites,’[75] to the effect that in 1478 the city of Jaycze
was ‘polluted by heretics and schismatics.’ Many who had resisted the
propaganda of Rome appear to have found in the iconoclastic puritanism
of Islâm a belief less incompatible with their own. We have direct
evidence that it was the Bogomiles who chiefly swelled the ranks of the
renegades.[76] Many, doubtless, when they found how hard were the masters
they had called in, were provoked to their old attitude of resistance,
and perished for their obstinacy. They are generally said to have died
out, and the Bosnian monks of the order of St. Francis, who, in 1769,
supplied the author of ‘Illyricum Sacrum’ with an account of the present
state of that country, declare that there are no traces left of them.
This, however, is not the case. During the recent insurrection, over
2,000 Bogomiles from Popovo, a single district of the Herzegovina, took
refuge in the hospitable territory of what was once the Republic of
Ragusa.[77]
To return to the more secular aspects of Bosnian history. Much still
remains to be elucidated by Sclavonic historians with regard to the inner
government of the country, the rise of the semi-feudal nobility, and the
complicated relations of parties. Here it would be hopeless to attempt
anything more than the merest outline, giving prominence only to a few
episodes of general interest. The Hungarian overlordship is occasionally
broken by a Serbian, and Stephen Dūshan, who, in the middle of the
fourteenth century, revived the Czardom among the Balkan Sclaves, seized
the pretext of a claim on the Principality of Chelm to overrun Bosnia,
and add its dominion to his titles. For an interesting monument of this
period I may refer the reader to the account of the Book of Arms of
Bosnian Nobility, drawn up in the year 1340 by order of the Serbian Czar,
which we saw in the Franciscan Monastery of Foinica.[78]
But this Serbian suzerainty vanishes with the dreams of Stephen Dūshan.
Shortly after his date the Bans of Bosnia become so powerful that they
are able to annex the two important Serbian provinces of Rascia and
Zenta, which answers to the modern Montenegro, and to proclaim themselves
virtually independent both of the Serbian and Hungarian monarchies. In
1376 the Ban, Stephen Tvartko, was strong enough to extort from his
uncle, King Louis of Hungary, permission to assume the royal style—the
King of Hungary only reserving the _suprema dominatio_.[79] After half a
year spent in preparations, Tvartko, accompanied by his lords spiritual
and temporal, and by four representatives from each important town,
progressed from his residence of Sutiska to the Monastery of Mileševo,
the foundation and burial-place of his uncle and predecessor, but the
greater glory of which was that it contained the tomb of the Serbian
Apostle, St. Sava. There he was crowned by the hands of the Metropolitan,
and assumed the title of Stephen Tvartko, by the grace of God King of
Rascia, Bosnia, and Primorie.[80]
Stephen Tvartko distinguished his rule by his wisdom and toleration.
Though himself leaning in his belief alternately to Greek orthodoxy and
Roman Catholicism, he displayed a generous toleration of the Bogomiles;
he did much to encourage trade and commerce, and was indeed, after Culin,
the first Bosnian prince who struck coins.[81] He succeeded in quelling
the insolence of his great nobles who had burst out into rebellion, under
the leadership of his brother, and the attendance at his coronation of
four representatives from each of his great cities would alone be a
striking proof that Bosnia was advancing on the path of constitutional
liberty, and was not by any means alien to the civic and industrial
impulses of fourteenth-century Europe. Nay, it is certain that, in spite
of the prevalence of Bogomilism among the masses, and of the artistically
blighting influence of an iconoclastic religion on a rude society, arts
of a more æsthetic kind were penetrating among the Bosnian mountains.
Nor was it only in the illuminations of heraldry, the embellishment of
gold and silver work, and the superb embroidery of sacred vestments that
these more refined influences asserted themselves. That munificent patron
of South-Sclavonic Art, the present Roman Catholic bishop of Bosnia, has
collected in his palace of Diakovar, a series of paintings by Bosnian
artists of this and the succeeding century, which reflect the Giottesque
revulsion from the wooden Byzantinism which preceded it, and show that
Bosnia bade fair to produce a school of artists who might hold a place in
the galleries of Europe.[82]
_Dîs aliter placitum!_ Already, through the passes of the Balkan the
storm was howling nearer and nearer that was to annihilate the budding
gems of culture and free government in Bosnia. In 1353,—five years before
Tvartko’s accession to the Banat,—under Suleiman, the son of Orchan, the
Turks had first set foot in Europe. In twelve more years their ravages
had spread to Attica, the Palæologi had pawned their crown jewels,
and the Turkish Sultan had transferred his residence from Broussa to
Adrianople. The tide of invasion poured along the Pontic shores, across
the plains of Thrace, and was bursting through the iron gates of Hæmus.
The Crescent already floated on the holy city of Bulgaria, the Marica had
run red with the blood of Serbian chivalry, and turbaned warriors had
scaled the salt steppes of Albania; the people, in the plaintive words of
their heroic poetry, ‘were scattered abroad like the fowls of the air,’
and Macedonia was resigned to wolves and vultures. Meanwhile, Bulgaria,
already half conquered, was split up into the two rival Czardoms of
Tirnovo and Widdin; Serbia, by the death of Czar Dūshan, had lost the one
man capable of restraining anarchy at home, or of marshalling the forces
of the nation against the Turkish invaders, and the great empire of the
Némanjas had shivered into a hundred fragments.
Thus it was that in the hour of disunion and despair Serb and Bulgar
alike turned to the new and rising kingdom that their Bosnian kinsmen
had established in the Illyrian West. Tvartko was now at the height
of his power, and included under his sceptre more extensive dominions
than any Bosnian Ban, or King, before or after. He had seized the land
of Chelm, the later Herzegovina, which had belonged to former Bans
of Bosnia, till exchanged for Primorie with the King of Hungary; and
added to it the two old Serbian Župas of Canali[83] and Tribunja; he
had extended at least a suzerainty over the Principality of Zenta or
the Black-Mountain; and by 1382 appears to have reduced the whole of
Dalmatia, with the single exception of the city of Zara. Tvartko ruled
already from beyond the Drina to the islands of the Adriatic, and from
the Save to the lake of Skodra, but his ambition aimed at nothing short
of re-establishing the empire of the Balkan Sclaves under a Bosnian
sceptre, and of ruling, it might be, over wider realms than the greatest
of the Némanjas. For these mighty schemes not only did he seem qualified
by his personal abilities, but by connection and descent. His first wife,
Dorothea, was the daughter of the Bulgarian Czar, Sracimir of Widdin;
on his mother’s side he traced his descent from Stephen Dragutin; and,
on the extinction of the Némanjids, claimed to be the rightful heir of
the Serbian Kings and Czars.[84] In Croatia he had allied himself with
the nobility in their opposition to their Hungarian suzerain, with the
object of incorporating that province in his own dominions, and extending
his frontier to the Drave.[85] Thus the appeal of the Sclavonic princes,
Serbian and Bulgarian, who felt themselves powerless to repel the Turks,
not only roused the Bosnian King to a sense of his own impending danger,
but flattered his ambition. He hastened to respond to the appeal, by
gathering an army of 30,000 men and advancing in person against the
Infidel. For a moment that fatal spell of isolation which had held Bosnia
so long aloof from the fortunes of neighbouring and kindred people is
broken through, and she stands forth against the Turks at the head of a
great confederacy of the Southern Sclaves, whose members were scattered
from Silistria to Durazzo, and from Thessalonica to Belgrade. Joining his
forces to the Serbian host collected by the ill-starred Knez Lazar, King
Tvartko took advantage of the absence of Sultan Amurath in Asia, to fall
upon his army near Pločnik on the Toplica, and inflicted on it such an
annihilating defeat that scarce a fifth escaped the sword or captivity.
Amurath was furious, and hurried from Asia to avenge the disaster.
Tirnovo fell, and the sight of a captive Czar struck terror into the
Bulgarians. Tvartko despatched an army under his brave General, Vlatko
Hranić, to the aid of the Sclavonic confederates, and for the last time
Bosniac, Serb, Croat, and Bulgarian, joined their forces against the
Infidel. Only two years after the rout of Pločnik, on June 15, St. Vitus’
day, 1389, on the ill-omened field of Kóssovo was fought one of the great
battles of the world, decisive even in its indecisiveness.
Nothing but a brilliant victory could have galvanized into unity the
ill-compacted alliance of the Sclaves. We need not dwell upon the
incidents of the fight.[86] How the hero Miloš met the wassail taunts of
treachery by rushing to his doom and stabbing ‘the Turkish Czar Murad’ in
his pavilion; how the head of the Serbian Knez Lazar was held aloft by
its grey hairs to glut the glazing eyes of the Turkish Sultan; how the
Bosnian Voivode, metamorphosed into his Herzegovinian successor,—‘ducal
Stephen,’ struck down nine Pashàs and sank himself before the tenth; of
the lightning charge of Bajazet, the thunder-stroke of his iron mace,
the crowning treachery of Vuk; or how, long afterwards, the Serbian
wayfarers on the Field of Thrushes found the body of their sainted King,
and Knez Lazar was borne at last by priestly hands ‘to beauteous Ravanica
in the mountain forest,’ there to lie amidst his kindred in the convent
of his rearing: all this, with many a legendary aftergrowth, lives as
fresh in the minds of the Southern Sclaves as if it were of yesterday.
There is not a name in that heroic muster-roll which is not a household
word wherever the Serbian tongue is spoken. Epic lays of the fatal day
of Kóssovo are still sung every day to throngs of peasant listeners by
minstrels of the people, whose rhapsodies, set to the dolorous strains of
the ghuzla, resound in a great national dirge along the willowed banks of
Save and Danube, through the beechwood glens of Bosnia, the dark recesses
of the Balkan, the mountain strongholds of the Czernagora, till, far away
across the Illyrian desert, they find an echo in that caverned waste
of rock that frowns above the blue waters of the Adriatic. The battle
of Kóssovo has grown and grown on the imagination of oppressed peoples
who only realized its full significance long afterwards. Tragic and
romantic as were the actual incidents of that great contest, they stand
out against the disastrous twilight that succeeded, in fantastic and
supernatural relief, lit up by the lurid conflagrations of after ravages.
At the time, we have the most direct evidence that the battle was
regarded by one at least of the principal actors as a great victory for
Christendom. Amurath was slain, the Turks had retired from the field of
battle, and the brave Bosnian General had returned to his sovereign with
unbroken forces. Tvartko wrote word to the citizens of Traù and Florence
that he had once more triumphed over the Infidel, and Te Deums of
thanksgiving for the success of the Christian arms were celebrated in the
cathedral of Notre Dame and in the presence of the king of France.[87]
Yet the death-knell of the Serbians and Bulgarians had already sounded,
the last confederacy of the Southern Sclaves was broken up, the imperial
aspirations of the Bosnian King were dashed for ever, and the doom of
Bosnia itself was but postponed.
The battle of Kóssovo was the turning-point in Tvartko’s fortunes. His
intrigues in Croatia, and a victory obtained over the Hungarian arms in
Dalmatia, roused the Magyar King, Sigismund, to vengeance, and Tvartko,
prevented himself by bodily weakness from taking an active part in the
hostilities, saw his allies defeated, his province of Ussora overrun,[88]
and himself reduced to renew his homage.
In 1391 Tvartko dies, of vexation, it is said, at these reverses, and is
succeeded by Stephen Dabiscia, otherwise known as Tvartko II., and he
again in 1396 by Tvartko III.[89] The greater part of the long reign of
this King, which lasted forty-seven years, is distracted by perpetual
wars, connected with the disputed succession of the Hungarian crown. It
is extremely difficult to trace out the aims of the different parties
who are now disputing for mastery in Bosnia. At one time Tvartko III.,
who seems, like his father, Tvartko I., to have aimed at Croatian
annexations, appears at the head of an insurrection of Bosnian and
Croatian magnates against Sigismund of Hungary, and in 1408 is defeated
and captured under the walls of his historic Castle of Doboj,[90] where
the conqueror executed 180 Bosnian and Croatian nobles. Tvartko, though
forced to resume his allegiance, was suffered to retain his crown, and
for many years we find him maintaining his position in league with the
party of Sigismund among the Magyars, and generally by the support of
the Bogomiles, and the popular party who seem to be identical with them.
When the Magnates and their auxiliaries of the Neapolitan and Dalmatian
faction sought to oppose him and set up a rival king, Tvartko carried
out his national policy still further by sending a message to Vladislaus
Jagellon, the Polish claimant of the Hungarian throne, in which he
offered him his homage and begged for assistance on the plea of the
common origin of the Poles and Bosniacs.[91]
In this universal confusion the Turks first make good a footing in
Bosnia. Already in the reign of Stephen Dabiscia, Bajazet had advanced
into the county of Chelm and established stationary quarters at a spot
become memorable in the most recent times as the scene of the first
outbreak of a revolt which has shaken Turkish dominion in Bosnia to its
foundations—Nevešinje.[92] But in the factious contests which distracted
the reign of the third Tvartko, each of the competitors for dominion
outbade the other for Turkish help, and it was by the direct invitation
and under the actual leadership of a turbulent noble that the Turks first
gained sufficient footing in Bosnia to establish there a Sandjakate. The
whole story is worth repeating, as it singularly illustrates the state
into which this unhappy country had fallen. At the time there were two
kings in Bosnia; Tvartko, who had now made his peace with Sigismund
and ruled over the parts of Bosnia along the Drina and the Serbian
frontier, and Ostoja, who owed his elevation to the Neapolitan faction of
Ladislaus, and whose territory embraced the maritime parts and a tract
roughly answering to the later Herzegovina. Between the Eastern and the
Western kingdom lay a more or less neutral wedge of country which had
been carved out by King Sigismund and formed into a Hungarian Banat under
the great Croatian noble Hervoja Horvatić, whose dominion included the
city of Jaycze, and anticipated in its extent that Banat of lower Bosnia
which, at a later time, Mathias Corvinus recovered from the Turkish
conqueror. Hervoja, who assumed the title of Chief Voivode, and even
Prince, of Bosnia,[93] and who shifted his allegiance, as the whim seized
him, from Tvartko and Sigismund to Ostoja and Ladislaus, happened on one
occasion to have honoured King Sigismund with his presence at his court.
Hervoja, who added a bullying manner to a body of bovine dimensions, was
haranguing the assembled magnates, Hungarian and Bosnian, in his usual
tones, when a certain Paul Chupor, Ban of Slavonia, broke in upon his
lordship by bellowing like a bull. This was too much for the gravity of
court ceremonial, and King Sigismund himself could not help joining in
the general laugh. But Hervoja, in a frantic rage, left the court, and
hurried back to his Banat, vowing vengeance against the Hungarian King,
his Bosnian liegeman King Tvartko, and every baron who followed their
banners. Seizing the opportunity when both of them were away in Germany,
he called in the Turks and took the command of the invading horde in
person. In the absence of the two Kings, the magnates of the country,
with his mortal enemy, Paul Chupor, at their head, united their retainers
to oppose him. Hervoja defeated their army, and having the luck to take
his old insulter prisoner, had him sewn up alive in a bull’s hide and
thrown into the river, with the characteristic jest, ‘When thou wert a
man thou didst speak with a bull’s voice; take now thy bull’s hide as
well!’
The Turks after devastating the country, destroying Varch Bosna near
the site of Serajevo and penetrating into the district of Sala in lower
Bosnia, refused this time to content themselves with plunder, and
established their first Sandjakate in Bosnia. Hervoja, seeing himself
thrown over by the Turks, who found him no longer useful as a cat’s-paw,
and deserted by his own adherents, shut himself up in his family castle
at Cattaro, and worn with vexation, perhaps remorse, died the same
summer. The two Kings, Tvartko and Sigismund, succeeded on their return
in gaining a victory over the Turks, slaying the Sandjak Ikach, and
freeing Bosnia for a while from the occupation of the Infidel. But the
anarchy within continued, and in 1430 culminated in the spectacle of
three rival princes, each of them claiming to be King of Bosnia! In 1435
the death of his two rivals left Tvartko III. once more sole king; but
shortly after that date the part of his dominions which answers to the
modern Herzegovina separates itself from the rest of Bosnia, and forms
for a while an independent principality.
The County of Chelm, variously designated as the Banat of Zachlumje and
the land of Humska, had been originally incorporated in the Banat of
Bosnia by the Ban Stephen[94] in 1326. We have seen it exchanged for
Primorie with the King of Hungary, and re-annexed by the first King of
Bosnia, who granted it as a fief to his brave general Vlatko Hranić. His
grandson, who from his birthplace Cosac, was known as Stephen Cosača, or
Cosaccia,[95] took advantage of the weakness of Tvartko III. to transfer
the immediate suzerainty of his county to the Emperor Frederick IV., who
in 1440 created him Duke, or, as his Sclavonic subjects who had borrowed
the German word expressed it, _Herzega_, of St. Sava.[96] This, and the
further title of ‘Keeper of St. Sava’s Sepulchre,’ he derived from the
tomb of the patron saint of Serbia in his monastery of Mileševo.
The Herzegovina, or Duchy, as this country now begins to be called,[97]
included, besides the old county of Chelm, the coastland district known
as Primorie, and extended from the borders of Rascia to the neighbourhood
of Zara.[98] Stephen Cosaccia fixed as the seat of his government
the important point where the old Roman bridge still spans the river
Narenta, and the City of Mostar still looks back to Radivoj Gost, his
_Curopalata_ or ‘Mayor of the Palace,’ as its founder.[99]
During the last years of Tvartko’s reign Bosnia enjoyed the peace she
so much needed. The King who had inherited many of the good qualities,
though not perhaps the martial ardour and masterful ambition of
his father, the first Tvartko, won the hearts of his people by his
even-handed justice. He heard complaints himself, sitting in the gate,
as the Prince of Montenegro does at the present day, and decided the
cases set before him with wisdom. Before punishment could be inflicted
on anyone judgment had first to be pronounced by the Starosts or Elders
of the realm, and the verdict had first to be submitted to the approval
of the people. Business of state was conducted by the King in Council,
and his chief advisers were the Bans of Jaycze and Bosna. In Tvartko’s
days, we are told, no flatterer dare approach the Court. The Bogomiles
enjoyed toleration, and Tvartko himself and the chief barons of the
realm, including the Count of Popovo and Trebinje, the despot George of
Serbia, and Sandalj Hranić were adherents of the sect. The Franciscan
Missionaries, to whom directly or indirectly a very large share of the
troubles of the Bosnian kingdom was due, were confined to the districts
where they were already settled, and compelled to limit their exactions
to a more restricted sphere; Tvartko even profited by a quarrel that
broke out between them and the superior of their order, to place them
under his direct jurisdiction.[100]
Stephen Thomas succeeded Tvartko ‘the Just’ on the throne of Bosnia in
1443. He was an illegitimate son of Ostoja and a Ragusan lady, Voiacchia,
and was raised to the throne by the Bogomiles to whose communion he
belonged. True to the policy which prompted the Puritan population of
Bosnia to seek a counterpoise against Catholic Hungary in their fellow
Puritans, the champions of Islâm, King Stephen Thomas began his reign by
promising a yearly tribute to the Sultan. But the Papal party had rightly
reckoned on the weakness of Thomas’s character; and the subtle genius of
the Apostolic legate, Thomasini, whom the Pope had sent to effect his
conversion, knew only too well how to play upon his fears and cupidity.
Stephen Thomas was illegitimate; the lawful son of Ostoja, Radivoj (or
Gaudenzo) had returned from Turkish exile and put in a claim on the
Bosnian crown; the Papal party had powerful weapons at their command in
the Duke of St. Sava, then a staunch Catholic, who refused allegiance and
invaded Thomas’s territory, and in the King of Hungary, who as suzerain,
declined to recognize the title of a heretic prince. Thomasini offered to
legitimate Thomas and his heirs, to obtain for him a consecrated crown,
to reconcile his rivals and his suzerain. The King of Bosnia yielded,
abjured his Bogomilian heresy, and was baptized into the Catholic fold.
Thomas, who had hitherto hesitated to take the style of King in his
official acts,[101] was formally crowned in 1444. His homage was accepted
by the Hungarian King Ladislaus, and his rival Radivoj was pacified with
the grant of the Banat of Jaycze.
In Bosnia itself this abjuration of the national faith produced the most
deplorable effects. The Inquisition raised its head, the Franciscans
were again rampant. The Bogomiles saw themselves betrayed by the King
of their own creation. The great vassal of the Bosnian crown, Stephen
Cosaccia, Duke of St. Sava, who in the first blush of Thomas’s conversion
had been induced to return to his allegiance, and whose goodwill had
been further courted by Thomas taking his daughter Catharine to wife,
now began to find it politic to cut himself adrift from the Papal party,
and to bid for complete independence of the Bosnian Crown by posing
as the protector of the Bogomiles. Meanwhile, beyond the border, the
great battle of Varna had been fought, the Hungarians routed, and their
King slain. As the danger of Turkish conquest drew nearer and nearer,
the most bigoted champions of the Roman Church might see the danger of
throwing the Protestant population into the arms of the invader; and
the most sanguine of the Christian Puritans, viewing the fate of their
brothers in Bulgaria, might shrink from accepting the dominion of their
Mahometan counterparts. In the Diet, or Great Council of the Realm,
which King Stephen Thomas assembled at Coinica, we may see a last effort
to check the growing anarchy, and unite the discordant elements of the
realm. I have given an account of the great charter of King Stephen
Thomas while describing the scene of the ‘Conventus’ of Coinica.[102]
In it the constitutional relation of the Duke of St. Sava will be found
defined, and the clause which enacts ‘that the Manichæans build no new
church nor restore the old,’ but which omits to prescribe any further
penalties or to fulminate any of the usual anathemas against them, seems
to me to imply that even the Bogomiles were to be accorded comparative
toleration.[103] But passions ran too high, anarchy was too inveterate
in Bosnia, for this attempt at internal pacification to succeed. In
the Papal legate, Thomasini, King Stephen Thomas had ever at his side
an evil genius, who inclined him more and more towards the path of
persecution. With the Turk at the door King Thomas, who was known to
the Roman Catholics as the ‘pious,’ once more lent the support of the
civil arm to the Inquisition. The Bogomiles turned for protection to the
Turks, their only possible ally, and, four years after the ‘Conventus’ of
Coinica, invited them into the country. Stephen Thomas, a tyrant towards
his own subjects, showed himself a craven before the foe, and purchased
an ignominious peace from Amurath by agreeing to pay him 25,000 ducats a
year. But the Turkish suzerainty became more and more galling, and the
fall of Constantinople in 1453 finally roused him from his lethargy.
Four years after that event he issued from his Palace of Sutisca, near
the Castle of Bobovac, an appeal to the whole Christian world for help
against the Infidel.[104] This was addressed to the Pope, the King of
Arragon, the Doge of Venice, the Duke of Burgundy, and other Christian
princes. But the days of the Crusades were gone by, and the appeal of
the King of Bosnia met with no response, save that the Pope sent him a
consecrated standard and a cross.
Meanwhile the death of the brave John Hunyadi, and the paralysing civil
war in Hungary, left the Bosnian King without his one ally. The Turkish
ravages now extended to the heart of Bosnia. Already, in 1449, Turks
were settled in the country between the Drina and Ukrina stream,[105]
on the main line of communication between Bosnia and Hungary; now, the
neighbouring Pashàs and Agas begin to drive a regular traffic in Bosnian
slaves. A half mythical atmosphere surrounds the last days of the Bosnian
kingdom. It is said that the craven Thomas, fearing to resist the Turks,
entered into a secret league with them. We are told by contemporary
writers that Mahomet himself, disguised as a Morabite, made his way
in company with two real members of that order, into the royal palace
of Sutiska,[106] that King Thomas showed him all honour, and solemnly
entered with him into that sworn brothership so hallowed amongst the
Southern Sclaves, the _Pobratimstvo_. Whether such a meeting actually
occurred, or whether the whole story was the invention of domestic
enemies, there can be no doubt that the poltroonery and tergiversation
of Thomas had alienated even that Catholic faction on which since his
abjuration of Bogomilism he had relied. Signs of defection already
appeared, and the King turned the arms that he should have employed
against the national enemy, to reduce a refractory Croatian vassal. It
was while besieging his castle, encamped on the field of Bielaj, that
King Stephen Thomas was assassinated, if report spoke truly, by his
step-brother Radivoj and his illegitimate son Stephen.
The parricide Stephen Tomašević at once usurped the throne, though
Stephen Thomas is often regarded by Bosnians as their last king. The
Catholic and anti-Turkish party were now triumphant, and the new King
began his reign by an appeal to the feudal nobility of Bosnia to meet
him with their retainers equipped for battle against the Infidel, on
the field of Kóssovo. This summons is dated Pristina, June 3, 1459,
and is one of the last records of feudal Bosnia. The Barons, Prelates,
Nobles, Voivodes, and magnates of the realm,[107] are summoned by
name. The Župans[108] of Rascia and of Serbia, with their banners and
retainers, the Ban of Jaycze, the Ban of Ussora, the Duke of St. Sava,
and the lesser nobles, are marshalled before us on parchment. The King
appeals to their orthodox bigotry, and seems to take an illustration
from the fire-drakes of Sclavonic folk-lore. ‘What faithful Christian,’
he asks, ‘and zealous lover of the orthodox faith can restrain his
tears when considering the capture of Constantinople?’ He calls on the
Barons aforesaid ‘to meet us on the field of Kóssovo in June, for we
ought in a body to advance against the dragon, lest he spit forth over
us his venom.’[109] But King Stephen Tomašević inherited his father’s
poltroonery, with more than his father’s bigotry. We do not know that
he ever met the Turks at Kóssovo; but we know that this same year he
turned the arms of his orthodox Magnates against his unoffending Bogomile
subjects, and hounded 40,000 of them from the realm. His brave generals,
Paul Kubretić and Tomko Mergnjavić, defended severally the line of
the Drina and the Rascian frontier with success, but the surrender of
Semendria which the Hungarians had intrusted to his safe-keeping, to
the Turks, had irritated Mathias Corvinus and the powerful Hungarian
faction among the Magnates, and this dissatisfaction was intensified by
Tomašević throwing himself and his kingdom at the feet of the Papacy,
which, however, wisely refused to accept it. Meanwhile it was no secret
that Mahomet was preparing for his great invasion of Bosnia.
The King of Bosnia who had already secured the alliance of the Venetians
and Scanderbeg, turned once more to the Pope, if not to gain him fresh
allies, at least to sanctify his efforts, and to breathe into his
followers the enthusiasm of a new crusade. The ambassadors of Tomašević
appeared at Rome in 1463, and were received in solemn conclave by the
Pope. They read to him and the spiritual senators assembled an appeal
drawn up by the Bosnian King’s own hand. The speech, for it is nothing
less, has been preserved, and is the last monument of Christian Bosnia.
In turns it is argumentative, insinuating, and solemn; selfish personal
ambition is blended in a remarkable way with a real appreciation of the
gravity of the situation, and the far-reaching consequences of a Turkish
conquest of Bosnia to Hungary and Christendom; and the King as he warms
with his harangue forgets the official plural of a royal style and lapses
into the impressive individuality of a prophet.
‘Most Holy Father, we, Stephen Tomašević, King of Bosnia, send this
embassy unto thee, for that Mahomet hath conceived this summer to fall
upon our realm. Already hath he gathered together his array of war; nor
is our strength sufficient that we should stand against him. In our
grievous necessity we have turned to the Hungarians and the Venetians
for succour; and George, the Prince of Albania, hath promised us his
help. Now, therefore, have we also turned to thee, O most Holy Father.
No mountains of gold do we ask of thee, but this alone, that our enemies
and our true friends should know that we have thy protection. If so
be that the Bosnians know that they fight not alone, then will their
courage be the keener; whereas the Barbarian will fear to attack our
land, the passes wherein are difficult, and the fenced cities well nigh
impregnable. Eugenius, thy predecessor, promised our father the throne,
and that he would establish some bishoprics in Bosnia; but our father
refused to accept this treaty, lest peradventure he should magnify the
hatred of the Turks against him; for that he himself was newly converted,
and the Manichæans were not yet pursued the realm. But I was christened
in the true faith, I learned Latin in my childhood, and have remained
steadfast in my Christian belief. I fear not therefore what my father
feared, and therefore do I entreat thee that thou wouldest send me a
crown and the holy bishops. Let this be for a monument that thou wilt
not forsake me or my realm. If the enemy breaks in, a crown received
from thy hands will be unto my friends as an earnest of victory, and
for a terror to my foes. In my father’s lifetime, thou didst issue thy
commands that the Crusaders, assembled in Dalmatia under the overseeing
of the Venetians, should help him, but this pleased not the Venetian
Senate. Bid them now that they come to my aid, if haply thou shalt find
more obedience, forasmuch as they have turned from their former designs,
and they shall make war against the Turks. This moreover do I pray, that
thou send thy legate unto Hungary, that so he may set before the King my
grievous necessity, and may spur him on to join his arms with mine.
‘By such means the realm of Bosnia may yet be preserved; otherwise it
falls to pieces: for insatiable ambition knows no bounds. But if so be
that I am subjugated, the hereditary foe will fall upon the Hungarians,
and having subdued the Dalmatians, Istrians, and Carinthians, will turn
his arms also against Italy. The first fury of the storm threatens me,
after me the Hungarians and Venetians and other peoples must bend before
it, nor will Italy remain secure. Such are the foe’s designs. I have
learnt them, and therefore do I communicate to thee this intelligence
that thou mayest not lay drowsiness to my charge, nor say that these
things were not foretold. My father too had foretold to thy predecessor
and to the Venetians the fall of Constantinople. He was not believed, and
Christendom lost one city of the Cæsars, the Patriarch’s seat and the
pride of Greece. Of myself only do I now prophesy. Believest thou me?
then succour me, and I am delivered; otherwise I perish. O thou who art
the father of Christendom, give counsel and help!’
The Pope in reply recognised the truth of King Stephen’s warnings, and
promised to place the arms in Dalmatia at his disposal, to build the
desired cathedrals in Bosnia, and send the bishops. The consecrated
crown he held in readiness, but would not send it without the consent
of Mathias, Stephen’s suzerain, with whom he recommended him to make
friends. Let Stephen prevent Mahomet’s invasion by occupying the passes;
Hungary and Venice would fly to his assistance.
But while King Stephen Tomašević was pleading for new bishops from the
Pope, another negociation was being transacted between his oppressed
subjects and the Sultan. While the infatuated king was boasting that he
had purged his realm of the Manichæan heretics; these very sectaries
who, in spite of the expulsion of 40,000 three years before, still
formed apparently the large majority of the population, though forced to
dissemble their opinions, seeing themselves threatened on the one hand
by a new Romish influx, on the other by invaders indeed, but Puritans
at least like themselves, turned to the Turks. By the mouth of their
spiritual chiefs the negociation with Mahomet was successfully completed.
The Bogomiles promised to transfer their allegiance from their Romish
sovereign to the Sultan, Mahomet on the other hand engaging to insure
them free toleration for their religion, freedom from taxation, and other
privileges.[110]
In 1463 Mahomet crossed the Drina and poured into Bosnia an army, the
cavalry alone of which was exaggerated by the terror of the natives
into 150,000 horsemen. On June 14 a Turkish Pashà appeared at the
head of a large force beneath the walls of Bobovac, the ancient seat
of Bosnian Bans and Kings. The Sultan himself came up next day, and
the governor[111]—a ‘Manichee,’ we are told, ‘who had feigned to be a
Christian’—forthwith, with the consent of the garrison, who it is to be
supposed were equally disaffected against the Catholic rulers, opened
the gates to the Turk. Thus passed into the hands of Mahomet a fortress
of the greatest strength, and supplied with provisions for a two-years’
siege. The King of Bosnia, panic-stricken at the loss of his royal city,
and seeing himself betrayed by his own subjects, shut himself up with his
treasures in Jaycze, another royal city, as strong by its position and
fortifications as Bobovac; but feeling himself still insecure, at the
approach of the Pashà fled with his treasures to Clissa on the coast of
Primorie, where, after forty days’ siege, on condition of his life being
spared, he surrendered himself to Mahomet, together with his treasures,
the accumulated hoards of five kings, amounting, it is said, to a million
of ducats.[112]
The crafty Sultan utilized, we are told, the King’s authority to obtain
possession of the remaining strongholds of Bosnia. He extorted from
him writs to the governors of the different cities, ordering them to
give up their keys to the Turks. All obeyed. The Protestant population
of Bosnia did not need the royal mandate; they looked on the Turks
rather as deliverers than foes, and in the short space of eight days
seventy cities, ‘defended by nature and art,’ opened their gates to the
Sultan’s officers.[113] Then at last the Christians of Bosnia discovered
that they had betrayed one tyranny to make room for a worse. The King,
Stephen Tomašević, having served his turn, was barbarously executed by
his perfidious captor. Accounts differ as to the exact manner of his
death; but it matters little whether he suffered the fate of Marsyas,
St. Sebastian, or Charles I.; and poetic justice is satisfied, if we
may believe the statement that the parricide king met his doom on
the same field of Bielaj where he murdered his father.[114] The most
eminent nobles who had not escaped to Dalmatia were transported to Asia,
thirty thousand of the picked youth of Bosnia were taken to recruit the
Janissaries, and two hundred thousand of the inhabitants were sold as
slaves.
By a strange irony of fate the blow fell hardest on the cities, where
the Bogomilian faction lay.[115] How terrible was their calamity the
example of Jaycze, the chief city of the realm, and Clissa, the last
refuge of Bosnian royalty, abundantly display. The burghers of Jaycze,
relying on the Sultan’s pledge to respect their municipal freedom, their
ancient privileges and their property, had gone forth to welcome him
within their gates. But no sooner was the city in his possession than the
treacherous Osmanlì, not content with arresting the chief nobility of the
realm and the king’s brother and daughter whom he found within the walls,
seized on the children of the leading citizens for distribution among his
Pashàs and Agas, and enrolment in his new body-guard. The fate of Clissa
(or Kliuć) was still more overwhelming. The Turkish Beglerbeg divided the
townspeople into three parts. One of them he adjudicated to his troops
as booty; another portion, the youths and children, he set apart for
enrolment in the Janissary guard; and the remainder, but not, we may be
assured, either the young or the beautiful, he left to pay tribute for
their desolated homes.
That it was nothing but the sheerest intolerance that drove the Bogomiles
to welcome Turkish rule in Bosnia is conclusively shown by the different
attitude adopted by their co-religionists of Herzegovina. This can be
accounted for by no ties of personal loyalty to the reigning Duke.
Stephen’s whole career might well have inspired the most vehement
repugnance among subjects more tolerant to human weakness than is
the wont of Puritans. Stephen Cosaccia was by all accounts a selfish
voluptuary, careless of religion, described as fickle as the wind, and
reckless as he was ambitious. He had seized his son’s wife, a beautiful
Florentine, and when his son and the outraged Duchess saved themselves
from perpetual insult by taking shelter within the hospitable walls of
Ragusa, had brought disasters on the land by his insolent pretensions.
The Ragusans, indignant at his demand for the extradition of the
fugitives, his claims on part of their territory, his raising the
salt-tax, did not content themselves with impeaching their rebellious
senator of high treason, but invaded Herzegovina, took his treasure
castle of Blagai and ducal city of Mostar, and hardly needed the double
intervention of Pope and Sultan to reduce him to an humiliating peace
and the payment of a war indemnity. Stephen Cosaccia changed his creed
with as much facility as he changed his consort. In the beginning of his
reign, when Bosnian kings leaned to Bogomilism, it had suited his policy
to bid for Papal favour and raise his County into a Duchy by playing the
part of a faithful son of the Church. But when the King of Bosnia had
made his peace with Rome, when all hopes that he may have cherished of
placing the Bosnian crown upon his own head were finally dashed, when
further a Papal legate had presided at that diet of Coinica by which
his dependence on the Bosnian kingdom was formally cemented, Stephen
Cosaccia began to think that, after all, more might be gained by fishing
in the troubled waters of Puritan disaffection. He veered round once
more and henceforth poses as the protector of the oppressed Bogomiles
of Bosnia. When the persecutions of Stephen Tomašević drove 40,000 of
these sectaries from the kingdom, they found a refuge in the duchy;
and, neither for the first nor the last time in history, a tyrant and a
libertine became the acknowledged patron of Puritans and levellers.
Thus, when Mahomet turned his arms against Herzegovina, the Bogomiles
showed their gratitude to their ducal benefactor, by rising _en masse_
in his defence. They occupied the mountain passes, and while the craven
Stephen shut himself up in his capital Mostar, and drowned his anxieties
in his usual dissipation, his brave Puritan adherents kept the Turks at
bay on the frontier. One pass, however, had remained unoccupied. The
Turks burst through it and beleagured the ducal city. The Bogomiles,
however, still fought bravely, and made such successful sallies and flank
attacks upon the enemy that the Turk saw himself obliged to raise the
siege. The rest of the country, however, was overrun, many castles of
the Count of Popovo and Trebinje[116] taken, and this great magnate of
the duchy slain. The Duke saw himself forced to raise his tribute and
send his son Stephen as a hostage to the Sultan. Two years later, in
1466, Stephen Cosaccia died, and his duchy was shared by his two sons,
Ladislav, who inherited the ducal title, and Vlatko. But Herzegovina
had only gained a respite from complete subjugation.[117] Twenty years
after the overthrow of the Bosnian kingdom, in 1483, the Beglerbeg of
Bosnia fell upon the Duchy of St. Sava, the two Christian princes were
dispossessed, and the whole country incorporated in the Sandjakate of
Bosnia. A renegade member of the ducal house, that Stephen whom the first
duke had sent as a hostage to Mahomet, rose under the name of Ahmed Pashà
to be grand vizier, and is known in Turkish annals as Herzekoglu.[118]
Amidst the universal ruin, the wife of the last lawful king of Bosnia,
Stephen Thomas, is singled out by the grandeur of her misfortunes, and
I have been tempted to collect a few details which may shed some halo
of romance round the unhappy Catharine. After the murder of her husband
by his bastard son Stephen and her brother Radivoj, Queen Catharine
had lingered near his tomb in the Church of St. John at Sutisca, the
burial-place of Bosnian kings, sheltered in the adjoining convent which
her own and her husband’s piety had reared,[119] and doubtful whether
most to fear her husband’s murderer or the terrible Sultan, who was
advancing, avowedly, to avenge her. In the sacristery of the Convent
of Sutisca, the Franciscan monks still treasure an antique picture, in
which Christ appears in person to the kneeling king Stephen Thomas; and
legend says that it was in the monastery of his rearing that this vision
befell the husband of Queen Catharine. Here, amidst all these sad and
solemn memories, the widowed queen was engaged in embroidering some
sacred vestments, when the news of the rapid advance of Mahomet, perhaps
the sudden betrayal of the royal stronghold of Bobovac itself, only five
miles distant, startled her from her pious task. In the sacristery of
Sutisca, with the picture of King Thomas, the Franciscan monks showed
long afterwards[120] ‘a stole and a part of a chasuble embroidered in
gold threads by a needle in a wonderful way, and delectable to the sight,
which is said by immemorial tradition to have been the handiwork of Queen
Catharine, the wife of King Thomas, who sleeps at Rome, and which she
left unfinished when she fled.’
She, a woman of delicate health, the widowed Queen of Bosnia, the
daughter of the Duke of St. Sava, on her mother’s side[121] tracing her
lineage from the imperial race of the Comneni, fled away on foot through
the passes of the Dinaric Alps, down the valley of the Narenta, across
the inhospitable limestone desert that stretches, now as then, between
her father’s stronghold of Mostar and the sea, to Stagno, the old seaport
of Bosnia. There she found a small boat, which carried her across the
gulf to the hospitable haven of Ragusa. At Ragusa she seems to have
resided several years; but in 1475[122] she set forth on her pilgrimage
once more, and passed the closing years of her life in the shelter of a
Roman convent, distinguished by her charitable works, her meekness, and
the patience with which she bore her misfortunes,[123] but haunted even
there by the craven conduct of her son Sigismund, who had renegaded to
the creed of Mahomet. In 1477 Queen Catharine died, and was buried in
the Church of the Virgin of Ara Cœli, in which by her orders a monument
was reared to her memory.[124] There, beside the feudal escutcheons of
her husband’s kingdom and her father’s principality, on a foreign soil,
and in a Roman sanctuary, reposes, as is fitting, the effigy of the
exiled Queen of Bosnia, the last monument of the feudal kingdom, and of a
dynasty essentially alien to the people over whom it ruled.
After her death two of her family appeared before Pope Sextus IV., and
presented to him her will, in which she bequeathed her kingdom of Bosnia
to the Holy Roman Church; adding, however, the condition that if her son
should return from the Turks, ‘and the vomit of Mahomet,’ he should be
restored to his father’s throne. As a token, her representatives handed
over the Sword of the Realm, and the Royal Spurs, ‘which the Pontiff
benignantly received, and ordered them to be placed, with the will, in
the Apostolic archives.’[125]
Meanwhile Mathias Corvinus was taking more effectual measures to recover
at least a part of Bosnia for Christendom and Hungary. Within three
months after the execution of Stephen Tomašević he had taken the field,
and in a short time recovered twenty-seven cities with almost the same
rapidity as that of Mahomet’s conquest. The whole of lower Bosnia,
including what is now Turkish Croatia, the valley of the Verbas, the
Bosnian Possávina, the old Bosnian Banats of Ussora and Podrinia, were
for a while recovered.[126] In Jaycze the spirit of the citizens had not
been utterly crushed out even by the rigour of Mahomet and the Janissary
tribute. Wifeless and childless for the most part, her burghers had not
lost the hopes of vengeance and recovered liberty: they called on the
Magyars to deliver them, and after a seventy days’ siege the Turkish
garrison yielded to the combined efforts of the besieging army and
the citizens within. The great stronghold of the realm now received
a Hungarian governor, and was forthwith made the capital of the new
Banat of Jaycze, or as Mathias called it, to preserve the _jus_ of the
Hungarian Crown, the titulary kingdom of Bosnia.[127]
The ancient city of Jaycze, which now for many years becomes the Ilion
of Turk and Hungarian, and the bulwark of the Christian world, derives
its name, it is said, from its resemblance in form to an egg, the Bosniac
word for which is _Jaica_,[128] and it has thus been compared with the
Neapolitan fortress Castello del Ovo, reared by the Normans. Its high
walls are still to be seen, rising on a rocky height at the confluence of
the Pliva and Verbas; and during the days of the Bosnian kingdom it was
recognised as the capital of the realm, sharing with Bobovac the honour
of being the favourite residence of the Bosnian kings. Nor did Jaycze
owe this royal preference solely to an almost impregnable position. As a
pleasance the site is equally alluring, being environed by some of the
most romantic mountain and forest scenery in the country, and overlooking
not only the one Bosnian lake, but a waterfall which may compare with
those of Norway. Here rose the Minorite convent of St. Catharine,
enriched by many indulgences, obtained from Rome by the namesake of the
saint, the Queen whose melancholy fortunes we have just been tracing;
and here, after the fall of Constantinople, the body of St. Luke (the
greatest glory of Bosnia’s latter days!) had found shelter till the
invasion of Mahomet, when pious hands succeeded in transporting it to
Venice. There it was deposited by the Doge Cristoforo Moro in the Church
of St. Job: to the no small scandal of the neighbouring city of Padua,
which possessed a rival trunk of the Evangelist.
The history of Bosnia now centres around the fortifications of Jaycze.
The city was again and again besieged by Mahomet and Bajazet; but the
citizens, amongst whom we learn were a large number of Bogomiles,[129]
showed that, when under the inspiration of a sovereign like Mathias,
they knew how to fight, and, while the town held out, Hungarian armies
inflicted disastrous defeats on the Turks under its walls. In 1520 two
generals of Sultan Solyman II., the Bey of Semendria and the Pashà of
Turkish Bosnia, inflicted the severest blow on the Banat of Jaycze that
it had yet experienced. The great stronghold of Zvornik, the key of the
Podrinia, fell into the hands of the Turks, owing to the carelessness of
the governor, who had failed to provision it; and two other important
fortresses yielded to the panic, one Sokol, the other the rock citadel
of Tešanj,[130] the key of the province of Ussora. Jaycze, however, at
that time had for governor a stout old soldier, Peter Keglević, who had
received wounds at Terentzin, and the successful defence of this city
under his guidance is the last and perhaps the most romantic episode in
the annals of Christian Bosnia.
The Turks, finding all their efforts to take the city by open assault
futile, had planned a night surprise, and, to disarm the suspicions of
the governor, had retired out of sight of the city, as if to raise the
siege. But Keglević, who perhaps obtained his information from renegades
in the Pashà’s army, was made aware by means of his spies that the Turks
were constructing a large number of ladders. The governor accordingly
doubled the watch on the walls, lining them, where they were too low,
with foot soldiers; and was shortly made aware, by the same secret
sources of information, that the retreating Turks had doubled round, and,
making their way by stealth among the mountains and under cover of the
forest, were encamped in a retired gorge not far from the town, intending
to assault the walls by a sudden escalade in the hours before dawn. Peter
showed himself quite equal to the occasion, and told off immediately
a picked body of a hundred men to take their stand in the rear of the
Turkish ambush, with orders to fall on the infidels at a signal given
from a gun-shot.
Nor were Keglević’s resources exhausted by this stratagem. It happened
to be the eve of a feast-day, when the women and maidens of the town
would in times of security go forth, as they still do through the length
and breadth of Bosnia, to dance and sing on the forest lawns. Old Peter
called the girls and merry wives of Jaycze around him, and bade them
at earliest dawn to go forth, as if no foe were nigh, into the King’s
Mead,[131] as the meadowland about the town was known long afterwards,
and sing and play their shrillest—disarming their fears by telling them
that he would be at hand to help them.
Meanwhile the Turks, astir before sunrise for their planned attack, were
shouldering their ladders for the escalade—when the distant sounds of the
festal songs, and the Sclavonic dance-music, the plaintive note of the
Ghuzla, and the shrill piping of the Svirala, broke the silence of the
still morning air; and peering down between the forest trunks they espied
by the first faint light of dawn the maidens of Jaycze tripping the
light fantastic toe right merrily on the green slopes opposite. This was
enough! Down fall the ladders from their backs, and forwards scurry the
warriors, forgetful of everything but the sirens across the valley. Old
Keglević saw his opportunity, and sallying forth from the city, attacked
them with a picked body of men, while the ambushed horsemen, true to
the signal, swept down upon their rear. The Turks, in utter confusion,
distracted by the double onslaught, surprised, perhaps scarcely armed,
offered no resistance, and were cut down almost to a man.
The Pashà, furious at this disaster, attacked Jaycze shortly afterwards
with an army of 20,000 men, a long train of siege material, and eight
cannon of large calibre;[132] but Keglević held out, and Frangepani
advancing with an army of 16,000 men, defeated the Pashà and compelled
him to raise the siege. Seven years, however, after his splendid
defence of Jaycze, the brave old governor resigned his command, and
his successor, a careless and unwarlike man, lost the fortress almost
immediately. On the surrender of Jaycze in 1527 the remaining towns of
the Banat opened their gates to the Turks, and the whole of Bosnia to the
Save passed irrecoverably into the hands of the Sultan.
That the change was much regretted even by the Catholic population of
the country may be doubted. The history of the Hungarian Banat of Jaycze
is indeed less stained with religious persecutions than that of the
earlier kingdom, but much of that feudal tyranny which had contributed
in no unimportant manner to the conquest of Mahomet was still at work to
alienate the wretched Bosnian peasants. We have the convincing testimony
of an eyewitness, and a Doctor of the Roman Catholic University of
Bologna, that the rule of the Moslem was at this time looked upon as
less oppressive than that of the petty Christian Bans and Barons. ‘The
Bosniacs,’ says Montalbano, ‘are not so badly treated by the Turks, but
that those subject to Christian rule are not worse oppressed by their
own lords. And I myself have often seen no small multitude of country
people, having burnt their own houses in their despair, flee with their
wives and children and cattle and all that they possessed, to the country
under Turkish rule, for as much as the Turk extorteth little, save the
tithe. And therefore has it happened oftentimes that our armies in the
last Hungarian wars, when they have crossed the Ottoman border, find not
the Christian countrymen who, as they supposed, would be their friends
and helpers; or if so be they found them, they were hid in nooks, or
intent upon their flight; for no sufficient prohibition against outrages
and robberies is possible with the army. They think themselves well
off if haply their property and the honour of their women be left them
uninjured; whereas with the Turks, by reason of their great obedience,
these securities can be readily obtained.’[133]
Several desultory attempts have since been made on the part of the
Hapsburgs to recover it: by the Markgrave Ludwig of Baden, in 1688; by
Prince Eugene, in 1697, who pushed on as far as Bosna Serai itself, but
gained nothing by his hasty dash; and again in 1736 by the imperial
troops under the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen, which ended in the utter
rout of the Austrian army, amounting, it is said, to 80,000 men, and such
complete discomfiture, that Ali Pashà could boast that ‘not a hoof of
them was left behind.’[134] In 1790 Marshal Laudon took a few places in
Bosnia, but the French Revolution put a stop to these operations, and all
the towns captured in Bosnia were restored by the peace of Sistov.[135]
These later efforts may show that though the Emperor-King had resigned
his claim over Bosnia by the peace of Passarovitz in 1718, Austria, in
the last century at all events, had not resigned all hopes of recovering
the old fief of the Hungarian Crown.
There are very few materials[136] at hand for the history of Bosnia
after the Turkish conquest, and we have little but theories to explain
the extraordinary process of renegation which immediately set in, and
which has given us a Sclavonic race of Mahometans. From the earliest
days of the conquest the Turks inaugurated the policy of allowing all
those natives who would accept the religion of Islâm to retain their
lands and belongings, and we hear at once of a son of the King of Bosnia
and another of the Duke of St. Sava turning Mahometan. It is certain
that though the Catholic faction among the nobility was still powerful,
a large number of even the highest rank in Bosnia were infected with
the Bogomilian heresy; and it is probable that many rightful heirs of
ancient houses had been dispossessed for heretical opinions by the
dominant Romish caste, and were willing to recover their honours by at
least nominally abjuring their religion. By most, perhaps, the renegation
was intended to be only temporary; they ‘bowed in the house of Rimmon’
merely to retain their honours. Not a few of these renegade families have
preserved even to the present day many of their old Christian and perhaps
heretical observances; and it is whispered that there are still members
of the old Bosnian aristocracy only waiting for a favourable opportunity
to abjure Islâm. With the bulk of the people the desire of lording it
over their former Romish oppressors would often outweigh every religious
consideration. It has been hinted already that the Puritans of Bosnia
might find little repugnant to them in the service of the mosques, and
we may perhaps suspect that the Manichæism which looked on Christ as one
Æon, might accept Mahomet as another. Certain it is that a large part of
the population of Bosnia went over to Mahometanism, and those who would
deny that the majority of the converts belonged to the persecuted sect of
the Bogomiles, must account for the curious diminution since the Turkish
conquest of the heretics who immediately before it formed, as far as we
can judge, the majority, certainly the most influential portion, of the
population.
Strange as seems the comparative disappearance of the Bogomilian
religion since the Turkish conquest, throughout a large part of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, the more minutely we enquire into Bosnian history the
less insoluble does the problem appear. On the whole, the disappearance
of the Bosnian Protestants was not so much due to voluntary renegation,
though that played its part, as to a cause which I have already hinted
at. In the days of the Bosnian kingdom the strength of these sectaries
lay in the towns; and it was on the towns that the hand of the Turk
fell heaviest. The citizens of Jaycze, and Jaycze was then a peculiar
stronghold of the Bogomiles, like those of Kliuć, and like those of the
other fenced cities throughout the land, saw their children snatched from
them, to be forcibly converted to Islâm, and to return as Janissaries
and Mahometans to claim their heritage. Nay, more, we have the direct
evidence of an eyewitness and contemporary that the Janissaries were
largely recruited from the children of the Bogomiles.[137] At the end of
the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century there were still Bogomiles
in Bosnia; but how many of them were wifeless and childless! We have
historic proofs that the Bogomiles who existed in Jaycze in 1478 had
lost their heirs; their children were already Moslemized;—how many, we
may ask, outlived that generation? and how few could have survived the
consequences of the second captivity of Jaycze in 1527! In Herzegovina,
where at the moment of Turkish conquest the Bogomiles were proportionally
more numerous, and where their attitude, in contradistinction to their
Turcophile manifestations in Bosnia, had been one of open defiance to the
conqueror, their calamity must have been even more overwhelming; and if
the Turks bore so hardly on their Jayczan benefactors, what mercy could
have been meted to the Bogomilian defenders of Mostar?[138]
Whatever were the favouring causes of this wide-spread renegation, its
effect has been to afford us the unique phenomenon of Mahometan feudalism
and the extraordinary spectacle of a race of Sclavonic Mahometans.
This must be borne in mind at the present moment, for nothing is more
liable to confuse the questions at issue than to look on the Mussulman
inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina as _Turks_. Conventionally,
perhaps, one is often obliged to do so, and I must plead guilty in this
respect in the course of this work. But it should always be remembered
that, with the exception of a handful of officials and a certain
proportion of the soldiery, the Mahometan inhabitants of Bosnia and the
Herzegovina are of the same race as their Christian neighbours, speak the
same Serbian dialect, and can trace back their title-deeds as far. It is
a favourite delusion to suppose that the case of Bosnia finds a parallel
in that of Serbia; that here, too, an independent Christian principality
could be formed with the same ease, and that the independence of Bosnia
has but to be proclaimed for the Mussulman to take the hint and quit the
soil, as he has already quitted the soil of Serbia.
But, as I have said, the cases of the two provinces are altogether
different; in Serbia the Mahometans were an infinitesimal minority of
Osmanlì foreigners, encamped; in Bosnia, on the contrary, they are native
Sclaves, rooted to the soil, and forming over a third of the population.
Under whatever government Bosnia passes, it is safe to say that the
Mahometans will still form a powerful minority, all the more important
from having possession of the towns.
Nor must we omit another characteristic which marks off the Christian
Bosniacs from their Serbian neighbours. As Bosnia of old was the
debateable ground between the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, so,
to-day, she is distracted between the adherents of the Eastern and
Western Churches, who hate each other more cordially than the infidel.
It might have been thought that the disappearance of Bogomilism would
have resigned the country to the Catholics and Mahometans, for the
orthodox Greek element is conspicuous by its absence in the general
current of mediæval Bosnian history. But it was there nevertheless, and
in the eastern parts of the country was even then the dominant creed.
The conquest of Rascia by Tvartko I. brought a Greek province under the
Bosnian sceptre, and though the Bosnian hold on Rascia was slight, the
Greek Metropolitan appears at the Conventus of Coinica among the great
magnates of the realm. Since the Turkish conquest the Sandjakate of
Rascia or Novipazar has been incorporated in the Vilajet of Bosnia, and
by this means alone a large Greek-Church element has been added to the
present province. Nor, if we consider the history of Bosnia since the
Turkish conquest, is it difficult to trace the process by which even
in Bosnia proper and the Herzegovina, the Eastern Church has risen to
a dominant position. The Roman Catholics of Bosnia have at different
times during the last three centuries migrated in large numbers into
Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, where they found shelter among their
co-religionists, and it appears that the Greek population to the
South and East, who had less temptation to cross the borders of Latin
Christendom, have largely colonized the country thus vacated.[139] The
Roman Catholic population who remained, their ecclesiastical organization
broken up by these migrations, must in many cases have been absorbed in
the congregation of the intrusive Serbs, and indeed, as has been already
pointed out, the Roman Church in Illyria was to a great extent only Roman
in its higher organization.
The extraordinary phenomenon that presents itself in the history of
Bosnia under Turkish rule, is that till within the last few years it
has been simply the history of the feudal Kingdom, under altered names
and conditions. A Mahometan caste has tyrannised in place of a Popish—a
Turkish Vizier has feebly represented the Suzerainty of the Osmanlì Grand
Signior, just as of old we find Hungarian Bans or Kings representing the
Overlordship of a Magyar King. The survival of the feudal nobility has
been perfect. The great Bosnian lords, now calling themselves Begs or
Capetans, resided still in the feudal castles reared by their Christian
ancestors; they kept their old escutcheons, their Sclavonic family
names, their rolls and patents of nobility inherited from Christian
Kings; they led forth their retainers as of old under their baronial
banners, and continued to indulge in the chivalrous pastime of hawking.
The common people, on the other hand, have clung to their old Sclavonic
institutions, their sworn brotherhoods, their village communities, their
house-fathers; and have paid, and pay still, the same feudal dues to
their Mahometan lords as they did to their Christian ancestors.
But though in political affairs, language, and customs, so much of the
Præ-Turkish element has survived—though there are still to be found
many secret observances of Christian rites among Mahometans in high
places,—it would be a grievous error to suppose that the influence of
Islâm is superficial in Bosnia, or that their religious convictions are
not deep-rooted. On the contrary, the Sclavonic Mahometans of Bosnia,
occupying an isolated corner of the Sultan’s dominions, have not been
so liable to those external influences which at Stamboul itself have
considerably modified the code of true believers. The Bosniac Mussulmans
have had their religious antagonism perpetually roused by wars with the
unbelievers who compass them round about; they, more than the Levantine
Moslems, have borne the brunt of the long struggle with Christendom.
Add to this what the reader will have already perceived, that in Bosnia
fanaticism is an inheritance from Christian times; that the renegaded
Bogomiles have inherited the hatred they bear to the Christian rayah
both of the Eastern and Romish Churches, from the days when these rival
sectaries persecuted them without mercy.
Thus it is that Bosnia is the head-quarters of Mahometan fanaticism,
and that when, at the beginning of this century, Sultan Mahmoud II.
endeavoured to introduce his centralising innovations and reforms into
Bosnia, which also promised the Christians a certain amount of religious
liberty, he found himself opposed here not only by the feudal caste,
who rallied round the Janissaries, but by a race of Mahometans whose
religion had assumed a national character of a more fanatical hue than
was fashionable in the capital. The wars between the Giaour Sultan, as
the Bosniac Mussulmans contemptuously called the head of their faith, and
his refractory vassals, have been described by Ranke,[140] and need not
be dwelt on here. It was not till 1851 that Omer Pashà finally succeeded
in breaking the resistance of Mahometan feudalism in Bosnia, and
re-subjugated the country for the Sultan. Since that date the privileges
of the native nobility have been greatly curtailed, and Sclavonic
Mussulman and Sclavonic Christian alike have bowed before a new Osmanlì
bureaucracy.
That the state of the country has not improved since that date may
perhaps be gathered from the following pages. That at the moment of
Omer Pashà’s conquest some good was done by breaking the strength of
Bosnian feudalism, and setting a limit on the exactions of the native
Mahometan landholders, is undeniable. The most turbulent of the native
aristocracy were proscribed; the most galling of their feudal privileges
were taken from them, and the Christians who had helped the Osmanlì
in this second Turkish conquest of Bosnia received at the moment some
partial compensation at the expense of their former lords. But when the
Osmanlì ceased to garrison the country and prolonged his occupation
in a bureaucratic form, it lay in the very nature of things that he
should conciliate as far as possible those whose opposition was most
formidable to him, his co-religionists, namely, the Bosniac Mahometans.
Thus it is that since the period immediately succeeding Omer Pashà’s
conquest the state of the Christian population has suffered a relapse,
while in the Herzegovina, more especially, as I have shown elsewhere,
the tyranny of the old feudal caste has recrudesced, and the _misera
contribuens plebs_ of those countries has to bear a double burden of
extortion, from the landowner who represents the old régime and the
Turkish officials and middle-men who represent the new; so that now the
Christian rayah sees himself forced to serve two masters where he served
one before. The present Government of Bosnia consists of a small body of
foreign Osmanlì officials, speaking, in many cases, a language which is
unintelligible to the native Sclaves; ill educated, totally unable to
check the malpractices of their agents even when they themselves have
honest intentions. Though often, let it be said to their credit, less
bigoted themselves, they are altogether unable to place a restraint on
the fanaticism which is the sad characteristic of the native Mussulman,
and are well aware that, were they to attempt to introduce those reforms
which look so well on paper, the native Mussulmans would hound them out
of the country.
The more we examine the character of the Osmanlì government in Bosnia,
the more unstable, artificial and mischievous does it appear. The
centralization introduced by the ‘New Turks’ has struck at the roots
of many of the most promising elements which Bosnia had inherited from
the past, and the substitution of the authority of Osmanlì _préfets_, in
the place of the old municipal councils of the towns, may be cited as
a single example of the mischievous tendency of these innovations. The
chief argument of those who wish to see the rule of the Osmanlìs upheld
in Bosnia is that they act as a police to keep the peace between the
warring elements of the native population. It would not be difficult to
cite isolated instances where the Osmanlì has acted this part, and some
will be found in the following pages; but it will be found, as a rule,
that the Turkish rulers in Bosnia never put themselves out to control
the Mahometan element of Bosnia, except when under the surveillance of
European Consuls, or in their dealings with Franciscan monks, who are
virtually Austrian officials. On the whole, it would be more true to
say that the Osmanlì has prolonged his rule in Bosnia by playing on the
jealousies of castes and creeds.
The Osmanlì government in Bosnia is, and has been, a government of
_finesse_. It has no elements of stability about it, and nothing has
been more prominently brought out by the present insurrection than its
utter impotence. The foreign bureaucracy in Bosnia has seen itself
haughtily thrust aside by the native Mahometans. Its manœuvres have
utterly failed to conciliate the one class whose affections they were
designed to seduce, and at the present moment there is one point on which
the Mahometans and Christians of Bosnia are both agreed, and that is in
abhorrence of the rule of the Osmanlì. Nor should it be overlooked that
two of the greatest evils that at present afflict Bosnia are intimately
bound up with the continuance of Turkish rule. One is the use of the
Osmanlì language in official documents and in the law-courts; the other
is the direct contact into which Bosnia is brought with the corruption of
Stamboul. It is impossible that the rayah should secure justice in the
law-courts, or at the hands of the government officials and middle-men,
when his case or the contract into which he enters with the tax-farmers
must be drawn up in a language utterly unintelligible to him, and by
the hands of those who are interested in perverting the instrument of
the law to injustice and extortion. It is impossible that the material
resources of Bosnia, magnificent as they are, should be developed to
the good of her civilization, while the enterprise of Europe has first
to satisfy what is insatiable—the avarice of the Divan. The Bosniacs
themselves are still blessed with many of the virtues of a primitive
people, and left to themselves might secure honesty and justice in their
public officers. At present the Bosnian _employés_ must first learn their
Osmanlì language, and imbibe the secrets of Osmanlì government, at the
source and seminary of Turkish demoralization; and the alien bureaucracy
which results, acts in Bosnia as a propaganda of corruption.
Why not then sever a connection as malign as it is artificial? Why not
divorce Stamboul from Bosnia, and erect an independent State under an
European guarantee? The democratic genius of the people would suggest
a Republic as the best form of government, but the divided state of
the country would preclude such a government to begin with, and a
Principality after the model of free Serbia might combine Parliamentary
government with the coherence of a monarchy.
When it is recognised by what an extremely precarious tenure the Porte
holds Bosnia at present, and it is remembered that the chief aim of
the native Mahometans, as of the native Christians, is Provincial
Independence, even Englishmen may be inclined to accept the conclusion
that the present connection between Bosnia and the hated government
of the Osmanlì must be severed; the more so as the geographical
configuration and position of Bosnia—a peninsula connected only with the
rest of Turkey by a narrow neck—make it almost impossible to hold out
against a serious invasion, and put it always at the mercy of foreign
agitators.
Such a revolution may seem an Utopian dream; but when the purely
artificial character of the present government of Bosnia is realized,
it would be an impertinence to the confederate statesmanship of Europe
to suppose that it was unable to effect it. For the moment, however,
the ultimate form of Bosnian government is a question of secondary
importance to the paramount necessity of re-establishing order in that
unhappy land. At the moment that I write this, nearly 3,000 Bosnian
and Herzegovinian villages and scattered hamlets are blackened ruins,
and over 200,000 Christian refugees are starving among the inhospitable
ravines of the Dalmatian Alps. In the interests of humanity, as well as
of European peace, in discharge of responsibilities which no adroitness
of European statesmanship can disavow, an armed occupation of Bosnia by
civilized forces has become indispensable. When the Christian population
of Bosnia have been rescued from the grave that yawns before them, when
the robber bands of fanaticism have been disarmed, and the remnant of the
refugees enabled to return to what were once their homes; then it will be
time for the governments of civilized Europe to turn their energies to
securing the necessary reforms, and to re-establishing the administration
of the country on a sounder basis.
Discordant as are the political materials in Bosnia, fanatic as are
the Christians as well as the Mahometans, I feel convinced that there
exist elements of union in that unhappy country which might be moulded
together by wise hands. The wrongs of the Christians in Bosnia have
been intolerable, and I have shown my abhorrence of the present tyranny
with sufficient emphasis in the course of this book; but I may take
this opportunity of deprecating any sympathy with those who propose to
deal with the Mussulman population of Bosnia in a spirit of Christian
fanaticism. The whole history of Bosnia from the beginning has been
one long commentary on the evils of established religions. Whatever
terms the Great Powers may wish to impose on Bosnia and the Turks, let
England at all events exert her influence against any setting up of an
ecclesiastical tyranny. In the interests of all the warring creeds which
distract the country, let the secular character of the future government
be beyond suspicion. Let an European guarantee secure to the Mahometan
minority of Bosnia the free exercise of their religion and complete
equality before the law, and half the battle of conciliation will have
been won. But let it once be supposed that Greek popes under the tutelage
of Russia, or Franciscan monks under the patronage of the Apostolic
Monarchy which still sets at nought, in Tyrol, the first principles of
religious liberty, are to be allowed to lord it over the true believers;
once encourage the hopes of Christian bigotry and the fears of Islâm, and
the miserable struggle will prolong itself to the bitter end.
So far indeed from the sway of Christian denominationalism being in
any sense possible in Bosnia, it must be frankly admitted, distasteful
as the admission may be to some, that if an autonomous or partially
autonomous state be established, a preponderating share in the
government, saving European control, must for many years remain in the
hands of the Mahometan part of the population. True that much of the
present oppression is due to them; but they are the only class in Bosnia
at present capable of holding the reins of government; they are more
upright, and certainly not more fanatically bigoted, than the Christian
Bosniacs. The weight of hereditary bondage cannot be shaken off in a
day, and the majority of the Christian population are still too ignorant
and cringing to govern their hereditary lords. True, that the Bosniac
Mahometans are a minority; but it must be remembered that the Christians
are divided into two sects, the Greek and the Latin, each of which
regards its rival with greater animosity than the Moslem; nor can there
be any reasonable doubt that, in the event of the establishment of a
representative Assembly, or Bosnian ‘_Sbor_’, the Mahometans would secure
the alliance of the Roman Catholic contingent, and would by this means
obtain a working majority.
European surveillance is in any case an absolute necessity for securing
the introduction of reforms, but there are no other conditions more
favourable to its successful working than those above indicated. To
reinforce the government of the Osmanlì would of all solutions be the
most deplorable. It would be to give a new lease of life to all that
is worst in the present state of Bosnia. It would be a gage of future
anarchy and a perpetuation of corruption. I have far too much confidence
in the shrewdness of the Oriental mind to suppose for a moment that the
desired reforms would not be temporarily introduced under the eyes of
Europe. But the instant that supervision was removed, the instant that
the forces necessary for the enforcements of the reforms were withdrawn,
the Osmanlì government in Bosnia would relapse into what it is at
present,—a foreign bureaucracy, which, powerless to support the Sultan’s
authority against the Conservative opposition of native Mussulmans, is
reduced to pander to it. The old game of playing with the antagonisms of
castes and creeds would be revived, the reforms would disappear one by
one, and the smouldering elements of Christian discontent would once more
burst forth in a conflagration, which might eventually light up the ends
of Europe.
The great difficulty that statesmen have to contend with at the present
moment is how to obtain certain elementary securities for the honour and
property of an oppressed class of ignorant peasants, in the teeth of a
haughty and oppressive ruling caste. To reverse the positions of serf
and lord would be impossible. To bolster up a Christian government in
the country, and after depriving the dominant caste of what it considers
its hereditary dues, and stripping it of part of its possessions, to
place it forcibly beneath the yoke of those whom it despises as slaves
and abominates as idolaters, would need more supervision than Europe
would be willing to accord; nor is it likely that anything short of
perpetual armed occupation would succeed in enforcing such reforms, or in
preventing the prolongation of an exterminating civil war.
It is then of primary necessity to conciliate the Mahometan caste of
landlords and retainers, still hungering for abolished feudal privileges,
and the Mahometan bourgeoisie of the towns, who in days of bureaucratic
centralization sigh for their municipal privileges suppressed by the
Osmanlì. And such a means of reconciling the Mahometan population of
Bosnia to the new order of things can be found,—by sacrificing the
Osmanlì. Turn out the sowers of Bosnian discord. Do not prevent the
Mahometan gentry from taking that position in the country to which by
their territorial possessions, according to English ideas, they are
entitled. Let a native magistracy succeed the satellites of a foreign
bureaucracy; revive the civic institutions of the towns, and the
native Begs and Agas, as well as the descendants of the old municipal
_Starescina_, will be only too glad to come to terms with the Great
Powers.
The dominant caste in this way compensated, European supervision,
of whatever kind, would work with at least a possibility of success
in introducing the necessary reforms; nor, the period of probation
concluded, and European control removed, is there any need for taking
the pessimist view that the government of Bosnia would lapse into the
‘autonomy of a cock-pit.’ In the very nature of things the present
difficulties have brought the worst and most fanatical elements of Bosnia
to the surface, and in face of the ferocious deeds of Bosnian Ahmed Agas
and their feudal train of murderous Bashi Bazouks, the more sensible
and kindly side of Bosnian Mahometanism is liable to be overlooked. I
have already observed that it is wrong for Christians to build too great
expectations on the fact that many of the Mahometan nobles of Bosnia
still preserve some of their old Christian practices, and on occasion
take Franciscan monks as their ghostly advisers. Still the fact remains,
to show that from some points of view they are not irreconcilable, and
that the gulf between Christianity and Islâm is not so wide among the
more educated classes as it is no doubt among the town-rabble. The most
influential Christian in the whole country, Bishop Strossmayer, whose
liberalism commands European esteem, stands on a most friendly footing
with many of the leading Mahometan families in Bosnia, and when he visits
his Bosnian diocese has the satisfaction of seeing true-believers flock
to hear his sermons.[141] The brutal contempt of the Mahometan lord
for the rayah is by no means universal, and even in Herzegovina, he at
times so far conforms to the kindly democratic usage of the race as to
address his Christian serf as _brat_ or brother.[142] A few years ago
the native aristocracy of Bosnia showed by its secret negotiations with
the Serbian government that at a pinch it was not altogether averse to
making common cause with the Giaour. In the rural districts of Bosnia and
the Herzegovina religious animosity has never been so embittered as in
the towns. I have myself seen the tombs of the departed Christians and
the departed Moslems of a Herzegovinian village gathered together in the
same God’s acre, and separated only by a scarcely perceptible path. In
many parts the Mahometan peasants have suffered almost as much oppression
as their Christian neighbours, and during the present insurrection
there have been instances in which they have made common cause with the
Christian rayah.
If this religious antagonism can once be overcome, there seem to be
many hopeful elements left us even in Bosnia. The temperament of the
Southern Sclaves is preëminently kindly and easy-going, and nothing
but the interested wiles of the Osmanlì, to whom Bosnian union meant
his own expulsion, could have checked the development of a spirit of
toleration. We have in Bosnia a common language and a common national
character born of the blood; and that national character, whatever may
be said to the contrary, is not prone to revolution. It is slow, it is
stubborn, it is not easily roused, and it possesses a fund of common
sense which has led a keen French observer to compare the Serbian genius
with the English.[143] The Bosniacs are of a temperament admirably fitted
for parliamentary government, and what is more, owing to their still
preserving the relics of the free institutions of the primitive Sclaves,
they are familiar with its machinery. In their family-communities, in
their village councils, the first principles of representative government
are practised every day. Orderly government once established by the
commanding influence which powerful neighbours could exercise for
pacification if they chose, the development of the natural resources of
the country would follow as a matter of course. I have elsewhere alluded
to the fact that, besides supplying the Romans and the Ragusans in the
Middle Ages with incalculable wealth of gold and silver, the Bosnian
mountains are known to contain some of the richest veins of quicksilver
in Europe; that iron and other ores are abundant, and that the valley of
the principal river is one vast coal-bed. All these sources of wealth
and prosperity, and consequent civilization, are at present, as I show
elsewhere, inaccessible, owing simply to the corruption of Stamboul.
Besides such decentralizing reforms in the provincial constitution as
connect themselves with the discontinuance of the direct government of
the Osmanlì, it may be well to cite some of the more obvious measures
necessary to secure the order and well being of Bosnia. The present
insurrection, as I have been at some pains to point out, was in its
origin mainly agrarian, and no reform can be satisfactory which does
not secure the tiller of the soil a certain portion of it for himself.
The intolerance of all classes of the Bosnian population is the natural
offspring of the gross ignorance in which they are steeped, and it must
be confessed that the want of education is largely due to the clerical
character of the schools where they exist and to the malign teachings
of _odium theologicum_. ‘The result of the present system,’ says a
recent observer, ‘is evident and it is fatal. The Greek children under
the Higumen, the Catholics under the Franciscan priest, the Mussulmans
under the Ulema, go to school to learn to hate each other, and in fact
this is the only lesson which as men they take care to remember.’[144]
That a certain part of the revenues of the province should be set apart
for education of a purely secular kind is a crying necessity, and the
establishment of high schools at Serajevo, Travnik, Banjaluka, Mostar,
and other large towns under the auspices of the University of Agram,
but equally secular in their character, might be suggested as a good
way of remedying the want of higher culture. For the moral, as well as
the material, elevation of the rayahs of the Greek Church it is of the
highest importance that they should be liberated from the corrupt rule
of the Fanariote hierarchy, and it might be well to revive the national
Sclavonic patriarchate, not at Ipek but at Serajevo. To foster the
development of the great resources of the country, greater facilities for
obtaining concessions of mines should be accorded to foreign capitalists;
the completion of the Bosnian railway, and its junction with Roumelian
and Serbian lines, should be secured; and measures should be taken to
overcome the selfish financial policy of Austria, which shuts off Bosnia
and Herzegovina from the only two seaports, the narrow enclaves of Klek
and Sutorina, which still remain to them.
A few vigorous strokes like these levelled by the united strength of
Europe at the ignorance, bigotry, and industrial depression of this
unhappy land, could not long be without their result. It is a mistake
to suppose that Islâm really opposes itself to culture; and were the
means of obtaining a liberal education, free from the taint of Christian
bigotry, placed within the reach of the Mahometan Begs and burghers,
there is no reason to suppose that they would refuse their sons the
benefit of it.
On the whole, however, it is safe to assume that the influx of Western
civilization into Bosnia would tend to strengthen the Christian
element. The fatalistic temper of the Mahometan dominant caste cripples
their commercial energies. As the natural resources of the country
were developed, wealth would fall more and more into the hands of
the Christians, and the balance of political power would infallibly
incline in their favour. In the course of a generation they might
assume the reins of government, which, as I have pointed out, in
spite of their numerical superiority, they are at present incapable
of holding. The way would thus be paved for a closer union with the
Christian border-provinces of kindred blood, Serbia and Montenegro,
and Bosnia might ultimately form a province of a great South-Sclavonic
confederation, extending from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, which should
act as a constitutional bulwark against the encroaching despotism of the
North.
To suppose that the freedom of the Sclaves of the South, of the Bosniacs,
the Serbs of Old Serbia, and Bulgarians, will, when accomplished—and
sooner or later there is no doubt that it must be accomplished—add to
the strength of Russia, because in language they are somewhat similar,
is as if anyone should have opposed the liberation and unity of Italy on
the score that it would be aggrandizing France. If the French ever had
designs on Rome they are infinitely less likely to arrive at them now
than when an Austrian Archduke governed in Lombardy, and Bomba ruled at
Naples. Granted that the Russians have designs on Constantinople, are
they more likely to gain it from a decrepit Power which can scarcely hold
its own provinces, or from a new Power or Powers endued with all the
vigour of young nationality? To leave a country like Bosnia, isolated
from the rest of Turkey, surrounded by free States, to perpetuate
agitation within its borders, is only to weaken what remains of Turkey,
and to play into the hands of Russia. Cousinship is not always a gage of
amity; and the day, perhaps, is not far distant when the Sclavonic races
of the Balkan Peninsula will look upon Russia as their most insidious
foe.
BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGÓVINA.
CHAPTER I.
AGRAM AND THE CROATS.
Slovenization in Styria—Regrets of a Prussian—Agram—Her
Sclavonic Features, Hero, Art, and Architecture—Flowers
of the Market-place—Croatian Costume—Prehistoric Ornament
and Influence of Oriental Art—South Sclavonic Crockery,
Jewelry, and Musical Instruments—Heirlooms from Trajan or
Heraclius?—Venice and Croatia—Croatian Gift of Tongues—Lost
in the Forest—A Bulgarian Colony—On to Karlovac—The Welsh of
Croatia—Croatian Characteristics—Karlovac Fair—On the Outposts
of Christendom.
As the train from Vienna descends into the valley of the Drave a change
becomes perceptible in the scattered cottages and hamlets that fly
past us. The dark wooden chalets of the Semmering valleys, that recall
Salzburg and Tyrol and more distant Scandinavia, give place to meaner
huts, less roomy, lower, paler, more rectangular. Rich maroon-brown beams
that seem to have grown up with the pines around, dark projecting eaves
that overhang the time-stained fronts as the shadowy fir-branches the
primeval trunks—all these give place to wattle and daub and chilling
whitewash. The eaves are now less prominent; but if the houses are
comparatively browless, there is a pair of window eyelets under the
trilateral gable, and their physiognomy is recognised at once. These
are the huts you have seen far away on the Sclavonic outskirts of
Hungary. You have seen them dotted about Bohemia and the sandy plains
of Prussia; you have seen them magnified and embellished into the old
palaces of Prague. As we approach Marburg we are entering in truth
on another world—a Sclavonic tongue begins to be heard around. Those
mountain-chalets were the high water mark of the Germanic sea.
For the tide has turned. Marburg, a few years ago reckoned a German
town, is now almost entirely Slovenized. The tradesmen—nay, the
well-to-do classes themselves—speak Slovene in preference to German.
A fellow-traveller told me that since the Austro-Prussian war Slovene
instead of German had become the language of the schools. Cut off from
her German aspirations, the Austrian Government has seen the necessity
of making friends with the Sclavonic Mammon; and, as she distrusts those
members of the race who, like the Czechs and Croats, cherish memories of
independent kingship, her statesmen have cast about them for a Sclavonic
race free from any misguiding ‘Kronen-tradition,’ and have consequently
been exalting the horn of the Slovenes, who inhabit Southern Styria and
parts of Carinthia and Carniola, at the expense of the Germans of the
towns, and partly even of the Carniolan Wends, whose language is akin to
the Slovene. The painful impression produced by this turn of the tables
on the Germans—who look on Austria as a mere warming-pan for themselves
in Eastern Europe—is amusingly betrayed by a recent Prussian traveller,
Maurer, who visited Marburg in 1870. ‘Another ten years,’ says he, ‘and
Marburg will be as Slovenish as its immediate surroundings.... It was
extremely painful to me (äusserst peinlich) to see the children at
Steinbrück going to or coming from school with books in which the text
and objects were Slovene; although these little ones, even the smallest
of them, had our language at their fingers’-end so completely that they
seemed never to have spoken any other.... We must not spare ourselves
the realisation of the bitter truth that the greater part of Styria and
Carinthia, and the whole of Carniola, Gorizia, Gradisca, and Istria, with
the avenue to the Adriatic, are lost to us. Even supposing the whole
of Southern Germany to have been fused with Northern, and the German
element in Austria either under compulsion or of its free will to have
followed the already torn away Bohemia and Moravia’—(the Berliner looks
on the annexation of the Czech kingdom as a mere work of time)—‘even
then we should have neither the might nor the right—though it matters
less about the right (!)—to break forcibly through Illyria to the
Adriatic. And yet our dreaminess and disregard of the facts before us
made us look on Trieste and these former lands of the German Bund as our
inheritance.’[145]—These poor Prussians!
But the Slovenes are left behind—as the train hurries along the willowed
valley of the Save we find ourselves among a population less European
in its dress, and soon arrive at Agram, the capital of Croatia, where
we discover a fair hotel in the High Street. The aspect of the town at
once strikes the stranger as other than German. What are these long, low,
rectangular houses but slightly enlarged reproductions of the Sclavonic
cottage? Here is the same pervading pallor, the twin eyelet windows,
circular here, and pierced in the trilateral gables like owl-holes in an
old barn. The gables themselves—more modest than the generality of those
in Teutonic towns—seem to shrink from facing the street. Outside some of
the older houses is to be seen a wooden gallery, festooned perhaps with
flowers and creepers, on to which the room-doors open—it strikes one as
an approach to the Turkish verandah, the Divanhané. The headings over the
shops are almost entirely Sclavonic. Brilliant, quite Oriental, are the
stores where the gay Croatian costumes are hung out to tempt the passing
peasant. Picturesque are the windows, shut in by foliated bars and
gratings of efflorescent ironwork; strange, too, the doors and shutters,
crossed diagonally by iron bars of really artistic merit, decked at the
point of intersection by a heraldic rose, and the limbs of the Maltese
cross terminating in graceful fleurs-de-lys. Not that the object of all
these is primarily ornament. These quadruple bolts and locks, these
massive hinges and the holdfasts by them inside, which fit into sockets
as in our safes, and so prevent the door from being burst open by hacking
through the hinges from without—all these tell a different story. They
speak of times when the streets of Agram were not so secure as at present.
[Illustration: Croatian Clothes-shop, Agram.]
On an eminence rises the cathedral and spacious palace of the bishop,
enclosed, like so many churches of Sclavonic lands, in old walls with
round, cone-peaked towers—a southern Kremlin. Just below it is the
market-place, and in its centre the equestrian statue of the national
hero, the Ban Jellachitj, the poet-warrior who in the days of the Magyar
revolution led his Croats against their national enemy, and saved the
Austrian police-state when its fortunes were at their lowest ebb. He is
dressed in the picturesque hussar uniform of his country, with flowing
mantle and high-plumed cap, riding northwards on his pedestal, and
pointing his sword forwards towards the scenes of his triumphs over the
Magyars.
The town is divided into three parts, the lower town in which is the
market-place and main street, the height on which the cathedral stands,
and the upper town on which rise many large houses inhabited by the
resident bureaucracy, where is the Diet-hall, the Ban’s house and the
Museum, and looking down from whose airy terraces you see the lower town
stretched out like a straggling village below you, and are reminded
of the view of Buda from its Acropolis. The cathedral, in spite of
its bulwark of fortifications, has suffered much from the Turks, who
destroyed it, they say, three times; and inside from its own bishops,
who have defaced the gothic nave and aisles with whitewash and monstrous
Jesuitic shrines. Its exterior is, however, still partly fretted with
old stone panel-work, which recalls the Tudor ornamentation on the
schools of Oxford. From the top of the square tower expands a beautiful
panoramas—the silvery Save and its rich valley—the distant Bosnian
mountains fading into the blue sky; and in the other direction the dark
forest-covered heights of the Slema Vrh, which have given Agram her
Sclavonic name Zagreb—‘beyond the rocks.’ Except the cathedral, and
the finely-carved façade of the Marcus church, there are no buildings
of beauty or interest. The Ban’s residence was so completely devoid of
architectural pretensions, and so indistinguishable from the houses
round, that we should not have noticed it, but for a large black flag
thrust forth from one of its windows in honour of old Kaiser Ferdinand
the ‘good-natured.’ As is too generally the case in Hungary, the people
of Agram are far behind in æsthetic culture; the pictures in the Academy
here are few and curiously bad, and the one good painting was not by
a native, but a Czech artist. The Agramers, however, seem to have the
good taste to appreciate this, and photographic copies are to be seen in
the shop windows; rather, perhaps, owing to South Sclavonic patriotism,
than to respect for high art. The picture represents the funeral of a
Montenegrine Voivode or leader, whose body is being borne along a gloomy
mountain gorge from the battle-field; and the grandeur of the lifeless
hero, the dark, almost Italian look of the weeping clanspeople, are
executed with great fidelity to Czernagoran nature.
But living pictures, more artistic than the bronze statue of the Ban,
more graceful than the weeping Montenegrines, are around us here. The
market-place is a spacious studio. The beauty of the Croatian peasant
costume is almost unique in Europe—possibly only rivalled at Belgrade.
Seen from above, when the market-place is thronged, it looks almost
like a bed of red and white geraniums; it is these prevailing colours
which give the peasant groups a lightness and brilliancy which I have
seen nowhere else. What is remarkable is, that this brightness should be
shared in such equal proportions by men and women alike. In Serbia—even
in Turkey—the men are not so gay. The head-dress of the Serbian women
is perhaps at times more elegant—the colours of their dress are often
more varied; but what, after all, is a nosegay without a sufficiency of
white flowers? In the Agram market-place, not only the colours, but the
very materials, might have been chosen by an artist. What, indeed, is
the tissue of these diaphanous chemises and undulating kerchiefs, but
the mull muslin of our lay-figures? The women are, moreover, possessed
of such a faculty for throwing themselves into picturesque attitudes
that one would think they had a drop of Gipsy blood in their veins. In
such drapery, with such instincts, such taste in colours, what need have
they of novel modes?—they who have not yet improved away their form by
cuirasses of millinery—they who have none of the heavy shrouds of colder
climes to muffle them—whose simple fashions every breath of wind has
an art to change! The faces, too, are rarely vulgar; these are not the
coarse hoydens of a North-German market-place—on their features, in
their demeanour, one would fancy that many of them have inherited the
refinements of an older civilization; some soft Italian element, come
perhaps by way of Venice, descended perhaps from the old Roman cities of
these parts.
The head-dresses of these village ladies are varied, for every hamlet
has its speciality of costume. On some, from St. Ivan, the transparent
white kerchief falls about the bust and shoulders lightly as a bridal
veil; on others it takes a rosier hue, and is known as the _Rubac_. On
others, again, as those from Zagoria—who will have it that they are
great grand-daughters of Avars—it is drawn backwards over a long silver
pin, stuck horizontally across the hair, and depends over the back till
its variegated border and long fringe sweep the girdle. Seen from the
front this coiffure recalls that of the _Contadine_ of the Romagna.
In the summer months these peasants rarely put on their fur-fringed
mantles, which resemble those of Serb and Slavonian; sometimes they
wear a scarcely perceptible vest, but usually the sole covering of arms
and torso is simply a light homespun tunic with loose flowing sleeves
confined towards the wrist and then expanding again. In place of a
skirt they generally wear two wide overlapping aprons, one before and
one behind, which in a gale of wind may afford occasional studies for a
Bacchante! and over the front one of these hangs a narrower apron starred
with red asterisks, crossed by little zigzagging patterns, or by light
transversal bands of rose and lilac. But enough of such pallid hues! The
pride of their toilette is a brilliant crimson scarf, the _Pojas_, wound
round the waist, some of the folds of which are at times loosened and
hang down over the front apron in a graceful sling or outside pouch. Nor
does a single kirtle content them, magnificent as this is. Amongst all
the Illyrian Sclaves, south as well as north of the Save, I have noticed
this peculiarity, that they wear the two kirtles of classic antiquity.
Besides the zone round the waist, a bright scarlet fillet—the _Strophion_
of ancient nymphs and goddesses—is wound just below the bosom, and is
fastened with a bow in front as on the Thalia or Euterpè of the Vatican.
[Illustration: Croat Woman in the Agram Market.]
Round their necks hangs an array of what politeness would have me call
coral necklaces. Occasionally they wear silver ear-rings, silver
pendants on their breast, and rings on their fingers; but of gold and
silver jewelry they possess less than their neighbours beyond the Save;
the reason of this being the general absence of specie in the country,
which prevents them from studding their hair and tunic with glittering
coins—a habit which in Serbia alone withdraws some three-quarters
of a million from the currency. Many of them, especially the girls,
divide their hair into two long plaits, the ends of which they tie up
with brilliant ribbons; for the twin pigtails of maidenhood are far
more characteristically Sclave than German, and may be traced among
the Russians far away to the White Sea—indeed, this may well be one
of the tokens which betray the Sclavonic origin of so many soi-disant
Germans. For boots the Croat ladies either wear a curious kind of
sandal called _Opanka_, common to the men as well throughout the whole
Illyrian triangle, and not unlike the ancient Egyptian, made of gay
leather, red and yellow; or, must it be confessed?—they sometimes buskin
themselves in high-heeled Wellingtons! and though their aprons—one cannot
conscientiously speak of skirts—do not reach much below the knees, these
martial casings can hardly be looked on as a concession to prudery, for
after all they generally prefer to go about with feet and ankles in the
most graceful costume of all—that of Eden!
[Illustration: CROATIAN TYPES.
ST. IVAN. VLACH WOMAN FROM SLUIN. WOMAN AND CHILD FROM DRAGANIĆ. ZAGORJA.
VLACH MAN FROM SLUIN. SISZEK. MAN FROM NEAR AGRAM. LITTLE GIRL FROM
DOROPOLJA.]
To mention such very gorgeous gentlemen after the ladies really seems to
require some apology. Imagine some exotic insect—how else can the subject
be approached?—with forewings of dazzling gauzy white and underwings
of scarlet. The white tunic expands like wings about the arms, and
flutters from them in folds of gossamer; the bright scarlet vest—the
_Laibek_—studded like some butterfly with silver stars, is lightly closed
over the abdomen. These bright metallic knobs are generally arranged
crozier-wise in front, and on one side of the vest is a small pocket just
big enough to catch the corner of a rosy handkerchief—the same with which
the women are coifed—which on highdays hangs down and floats like a sash
about the flanks. A belt of varied leather-mosaic, called the _Remen_,
quaintly patterned like the Wallack belts, but not so broad, grasps
the tunic round the waist; and below this the tunic opens out again in
flowing petticoats, which often reach below the knees, but hardly to the
ankles, as those of some Syrmian peasants. A similar but narrower strip
of leather round the shoulder serves to suspend a woollen wallet of the
brightest scarlet tufted over with tassels; this supplies the want of
pockets, and is the inseparable companion of the Croat, insomuch that
every little boy is provided with a miniature _Torba_, as it is called.
Below the tunic expand loose trousers of the same homespun muslin,
flowing as those of the Phrygians of old or the Dacians of Trajan’s
Column, and sometimes terminating in a handsome fringe. The feet are
either shod with _Opankas_ or with Wellingtons, as the women’s, but are
more rarely bare.
When the weather is chilly, or when they are particularly desirous of
showing themselves off, a superb mantle—the _Surina_—is cast over the
shoulders, of a light yellowish ground-colour, decked with red, green,
or orange embroidery, sometimes of the most artistic devices. Sometimes
they are brown relieved with brilliant scarlet; but the real red mantles,
ground and all, occur only in the western regiments or divisions of the
Military Frontier, models of which are to be seen in the interesting
collection of national costumes in the Agram Museum, so that the old
German name for the Croats, _Rothmäntel_—‘Red-mantles’—is hardly
applicable to the whole race. There is another word to which Croatian
costume is said to have given birth with still less apparent foundation.
You may search the market-places in vain for anything approaching a
‘_cravat_,’ which is usually derived from _Krabaten_ or _Kravaten_, a
broad-Dutch word for Croats. But the high collars of these Croat mantles
may well have originated the word, though the signification from the
first seems rather to have been a bandage round the collar, or in place
of the collar, than the collar itself. For the fact that the word really
was taken from the Croats we have the evidence of Ménage, who lived at
the time of their first introduction into France. He says: ‘On appelle
_cravate_ ce linge blanc qu’on entortille à l’entour du cou, dont les
deux bouts pendent par devant; lequel linge tient lieu de collet. Et
on l’appelle de la sorte à cause que nous avions emprunté cette sorte
d’ornement des Croates, qu’on appelle ordinairement Cravates. Et ce
fut en 1636 que nous prismes cette sorte de collet des Cravates par le
commerce que nous eusmes en ce tans-là en Allemagne au sujet de la guerre
que nous avions avec l’Empereur.’ They are first mentioned in England
by Skinner, who died in 1667, who speaks of them as a fashion lately
introduced by travellers and soldiers. In Hudibras they are made to serve
as halters.[146]
Certainly the most European part of the present Croatian costume is the
black felt-hat, which oscillates between our broad-brim and what is
vulgarly known as a ‘pork-pie;’ but then the brim is used as a receptacle
for vasefuls of flowers, and is often surmounted by waving plumes, so any
such work-a-day resemblances are soon forgotten. Then there is another
variety of hat made of straw, with a conical peak, which recalls a more
distant parallel. When a Croat wears one of these, and perchance, as he
often does,[147] having doffed his belt, goes about in his long flowing
tunic and broad petticoat-like breeks, an uncomfortable feeling comes
over you that you have seen him before; and when you have searched the
remotest crannies of Europe in vain for his like, it suddenly flashes
upon you that it is no other than John Chinaman who stands before you!
Yes; there are the very peaks to his boots; there is the beardless face,
the long pendulous moustache, and in old days, when—as you may see by a
picture in the Museum—the Croat wore a pigtail, as his Dalmatian brothers
do still, a Celestial meeting him might have mistaken him for his double!
The patterns on these various articles of attire are striking in
character; they are hieroglyphics, hard to decipher, but long household
annals are written in them. I take it that pure ornament, as opposed to
imitation of natural forms, has gone through two stages of development,
which may be called the ‘Angular’ and the ‘Curved,’ of which the angular
precedes the curved, and stands to it in much the same relation as Roman
letters stand to current writing. During the Stone Age in Europe this
angular ornamentation seems universally to have prevailed. It continued
during the earlier Bronze Age, but towards its close the second phase
of ornamentation began to develope itself in some countries, and we of
the Iron Age have seen the old angular ornamentation almost supplanted
by its offspring. At the present day, one European people—the Lapps of
the extreme north—may still be said to remain almost in the first stage
of ornament; the hardness of their materials, the bone and wood on which
they mostly work, their little employment of metals and pottery, their
seclusion from the current of European civilization, have conspired to
keep them back. But it is more remarkable that a people of a more central
European area, and a more prolific land, should still linger on in the
transitionary stage between the old and new styles of decoration. Yet,
as far as my observation goes, this is the case with the Croats, and
generally with the Sclavonians of the south. They seem to be acquainted
with the beauty of the new style, but to cling with a peculiar fondness
to the angular ornamentation of their ruder forefathers. Thus, in the
women’s clothes, at least, nearly the whole of the embroidery is of
this prehistoric kind. The high collars of the Croat mantles, which
resemble those of the Lapps in form, resemble them also in pattern.
Many of the Croat women’s girdles are almost identical in pattern with
those I have seen among the Lapps of Lake Enare. In the Museum is to be
seen a large and curious collection of Croatian needlework, all of this
angular pattern—crosses, and lines, and zigzags. Here are also to be seen
carpets of rude character wrought by the homely looms of Slavonia, which
are curious illustrations of the perfection of the old style—complex as
the patterns are, they are all square or angled, and might any of them
be models for a mosaic pavement; their colours are green, red, yellow,
and white, less usually purple, and dark blue. But what is strange,
is to find side by side with these rude shapes the secondary form of
decoration in a highly developed state. The curved style of embroidery,
as it appears on some of the men’s mantles—and it is noteworthy that
it is confined almost exclusively to the men’s attire—is often a real
work of art, and the elaborate pear-shaped forms which it frequently
takes suggest the rich tendrillings of a Cashmere shawl. So abrupt is
the leap from the ruder kind of ornament generally used, that these
_chefs-d’œuvre_ of curvature seem to be rather importations from without,
than flowers of home growth. Nor does it seem difficult to trace their
origin, for they are very often reproductions of the decorations which
appear on the costly vests and jackets of the Turks. They are seedlings
from Stamboul—less directly, from Byzantium.
As in ornament so in general character, the Croatian dress resembles
that of all the Southern Sclaves, including the Roumans of Transylvania
and Wallachia, who, for ethnological purposes, may be looked on as
a Latinized branch of the family. In parts, indeed, it has been
Orientalized by the Turks; and it is noteworthy that just as the men’s
costume in Croatia shows the Oriental influence in ornament, so in
Serbia, Dalmatia, and the lands beyond the Save and Danube, it is the
men’s costume that makes the chief advances towards the Turkish. It is
possibly a symptom of the almost Oriental seclusion of those who have
to dread Oriental license. Often, when the husbands dress in completely
Turkish fashion, the wives preserve almost unaltered the old national
costumes; and it is owing to this, that throughout the whole South
Sclavonic area, enough of the original dress has survived to show the
common sisterhood of all. And of all, the Croat costume seems to be
the best representative of the old Serb—of the Sclavonic costume as it
existed in the days of the great Czar, Stephen Dūshan. Almost everywhere
else the men’s costume, at least, has suffered from Turkish influences.
Here, far better than in free Serbia, is the description applied to the
Serb laity in the old laws—the ‘dressers in white,’ still applicable to
the Croat men. At Belgrade it would be a meaningless epithet; at Agram
it is still true. The Croats, too, with their fine mantles and flowing
trouser and tunic, approach nearer to the primitive type of all—to the
soldiers of Decebalus—to the sculptures on the Column of Trajan—if indeed
we are to believe that the old Dacians were of Sarmatian stock.
The same South Sclavonic unity is apparent if we examine the pots and
pans which these old-world peasants are selling in the market-place.
There is hardly a form here which I do not remember in Wallachia,
in Bulgaria, in Serbia. But it may reasonably be asked, whether the
barbarous Serb races who settled in the Danubian basin in the fifth and
succeeding centuries could have brought with them such an array of highly
finished crockery as we see before us here? These narrow lofty necks
and luxurious handles are surely not an inheritance from fifth-century
savages. We do not find such among our Anglo-Saxon remains, nor even
among the relics of the more polished Franks. We must search amongst
Roman sepultures if we could find such in our own island, and indeed
this gives the clue to their origin even here. They have come to the
Sclaves of the South from a common source—the Eastern Roman Empire. Like
the coinage, like the rich architecture of the old Serbian Empire,
they betray Byzantine influences. The most conspicuous instance of
this is the _Stutza_ or _Stutchka_, as the Croats call it. This I have
seen myself nationalized and adopted by Wallacks, Bulgarians, Serbs,
Bosniacs, and Turks, over an area extending from the mouths of the Danube
to the Adriatic, and from the mountains of Bosnia to the Carpathians,
varying slightly at times in hue or form, but essentially the same. In
parts, even the original Roman word seems to have been preserved. In the
Bosnian mountains I found them still called _Testja_—doubtless the Roman
_Testa_.[148] This survival of the Roman vessel is shared by the western
part of the empire. The same shaped pot turns up in Spain and Portugal.
It is common to South Italy, and to this day large quantities of these
vessels are manufactured in Apulia and exported to the coast cities of
Dalmatia. I have seen Roman pots of this type dug up near Bucharest, at
Salona in Dalmatia, and at Siszek in Croatia, almost identical in shape
with those sold every day in the market-places of the respective modern
towns; and perhaps the best proof I can give of their likeness is, that
on showing a picture of one from Roman Siscia to a Croatian countryman,
he recognized it at once, and exclaimed ‘Stutza! Stutza!’ a name confined
here to this peculiar kind of vessel. A kind of earthenware drinking-cup,
which occurs in still ruder forms in Wallachia, is known here as _Scafa_,
which is almost identical with the Greek word for a bowl, σκάφη. To
call a _scaphé_ a _scaphé_, was the Greek equivalent for calling a spade
a spade; so the Croats at any rate can hardly be accused of not doing
that. _Scaphé_ is allied to another Greek word, _Scyphos_, signifying a
cup, and common to the Latins, insomuch that one felt inclined to quote
Horace’s lines to too bibulous Croats:—
Natis in usum lætitiæ Scyphis
Pugnare Thracum est.
[Illustration: Roman and Croatian Pottery.]
The other name by which this cup is known to the Croats and Illyrian
Sclaves, _Scalica_, is equally classical, and will recall at once the
Latin _Calicem_ and the Greek κύλικα. In form it has indeed degenerated
from the goblets of Olympus! but one need not despair of tracing its
pedigree from their graceless Roman corruptions. As to the Chalice of our
own and the Romance languages, though it is more like the classic _Calix_
in shape, it is not like these a living popular development, but, with
its name, a mere church introduction, a fragment of antiquity mewed up
for us in ecclesiastical reliquaries.
The other vessels to be found in the Croatian crockery-markets, if they
do not both in shape and name so obviously betray Roman influences, at
least in nearly every case bear witness to the common character of South
Sclavonic civilization. There is hardly a shape in the Agram market which
may not be found again at Belgrade or Bucharest.
[Illustration: Croatian Pottery.
1. Lónac (black-ware milk or water jug). 2. Péhar (reddish-yellow, for
wine, &c.). 3. Dúlčec (green glazed ware, for water, &c.). 4. Tégel
(brown with white bands). 5. Vessel used in Slavonia for slow boiling
(black ware). 6. Cylindrical jar, Slavonia. 7. Zamaclo (bright green
glaze). 8. Lid of same. 9, 10. Svična, or Čereapac, lamp and candle.
11. Whistle in form of a bird. 12. Scafa, or Scalica, drinking-goblet.
13. Dish, or plate (Zdillica, reddish ware with patterns inside). 14.
Earthenware sieve. 15. Raindl, or Raina, for cooking (red ware). 16.
Croatian glass. 17. Flašica. 18. Earthenware hand-stove (Rengla).]
If we pursue this science of the market-place and examine the rude
jewelry which the Agram maidens are wearing, or the musical instruments
which the countrymen have stuck into their belts or slung round their
shoulders, we are again struck by this double evidence of South Sclavonic
solidarity and the influence of Greco-Roman civilization. There are some
ancient Croatian brooches in the Museum at Agram on which is to be seen
the same filagree-work—the pyramids of grains, the spiral tendrillings,
which turn up again on other gold and silver ornaments—Frankish, Norse,
and Anglo-Saxon—and proclaim the common late-Roman origin of all. Like
those of our old English barrows, these brooches are bossed with gems set
in raised sockets. But here, unlike in England, this kind of work seems
never to have died out; it is perpetuated still in the ear-rings, studs,
and brooches of the modern Croats. The same Byzantine style reappears
among Serbs and Roumans, and we shall find it again among the Bosnian
mountains.
But how strangely classic are the musical instruments of the Croats!
What visions of bucolic shepherds, of fauns and dancing satyrs; what
memories of idyllic strains do they call up! Can it be merely that we
are overlooking the same Arcadian kind of life that the Greek poet might
have surveyed when he strolled forth beyond the walls of Syracuse? Is
‘the oaten stop and pastoral song’ the same, simply because the Croat
shepherd of the Save-lands is in the same stage of civilization as
was the rural Greek? Or are the pipes and lutes before us actually
heirlooms from the very shepherds of whom Theocritus piped on the thymy
pastures of Hybla?—the same with which Thyrsis and Corydon contended
on the green banks of the Mincius? It really almost seemed so. I asked
a countryman the name of his pipe, and to my amazement his reply was
_Fistjela_. The man did not understand a word of Latin, but this seemed
a very good attempt at _Fistula_, the pastoral pipe of the Romans, the
very instrument which Thyrsis vowed to hang on the sacred pine. The
old Pan’s pipe,[149] however, was a series of reeds waxed on to a stem
in decreasing order, while this was a single reed, though more often a
wooden pipe. It was also known as _Fuškola_.[150] Then there are the
double pipes, the Roman _Tibiæ_. A slight development has indeed taken
place. Instead of being held separate in the mouth, their ends are joined
by a mouth-piece. The V has become a Y, that is all. They are also
like the double pipes of classic times in being, as the ancients have
it, ‘male and female,’ for the number of holes being uneven in the two
branches—four in one and three in the other—one barrel is shriller than
the other, and their blended notes may still be called, as they were by
the Greeks, ‘married piping.’[151] Their name is _Svirala_, but in parts
of Serbia _Diplé_, which is evidently Greek; and yet if their origin can
be traced back to Hellenic times, it can be traced further back still to
the double pipes of the Theban monument, on which the Egyptian ladies of
Moses’ time are seen playing to their God Ptah.
Next, the Croats have a rude kind of flute possessed of the same Romance
name _Fluta_, the Wallachian Flaute, the Italian Flauto; and lastly,
the favourite instrument of all—the _Tamburica_, a simple form of lute
with a straight neck and oval body, and four strings, or rather wires.
Its name seems connected with the Persian drum or Tambûr; though in
form, but for its extra chord, it is almost an exact reproduction of the
three-stringed lute, the Nefer, which Thoth, their Mercury, is said to
have given to the Egyptians, which dates back at least to the time when
the Second Pyramid was built, which was handed on by the Egyptians to the
Phœnicians and Greeks, who knew it as Nafra and Pandoura, under which
name they gave it to the Romans.[152] Among the Latin peoples of the
West, at least, it never died out, and though at times changing its form
it has given the Italians their Pandora, the French their Mandore, the
Spaniards their Bandurria and Bandole,[153] and even to us our Bandoline
and—horresco referens!—the Banjo. Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s description of
the Egyptian Nefer will almost answer to describe the Croatian Tamburitza
of to-day. It had, he tells us, ‘a long flat neck and hollow oval body,
either wholly of wood or covered with parchment, having the upper surface
perforated with holes to allow the sound to escape. Over this body and
the whole length of the handle were stretched three strings of cat-gut,
secured at the upper extremity either by the same number of pegs or by
passing through a hole in the handle.’
[Illustration: Outlines of Croatian Musical Instruments.
1, 2. Fistjela, or whistles. 3, 4. Svirala. 5, 6, 7. Tamburica. 8, 9.
Fluta.]
It would be easy to show that the conical-shaped baskets, the _Corpa_,
which the Croat countryman on p. 4 has in his hand, is as like the Roman
_Corbis_ in form as it is in name, and may claim sisterhood with the
_Corbella_ of the Campanian peasant of to-day. Some even of the windows
of Agram have a Roman air, for in several upper-storeys and outhouses, to
save glass, they are provided with a heavy unglazed plate tracery of an
angular kind, which is an exact reproduction of the Roman tracery, to be
seen, for example, in the Amphitheatre of Pola in Istria.
[Illustration: Outline of Tracery.]
It is hard to say how far these various reproductions of antique forms
may be due to the earlier Roman or more Byzantine empire; how far they
may be waifs from the wrecks of Siscia or Sirmium; how far filtered in
from that later Constantinople which gave the old Serbs their religion
and the model of their empire. We know that the traces of the more purely
Roman empire, which embraced the old Dacia, Pannonia, and Illyricum,
have not entirely perished, for its language lives still among the
Roumans of the Carpathian and Danubian plains, among the Tzintzars of
Mount Pindus, and never died out in the coast cities of Dalmatia. The
Latin population, though reduced to the condition of shepherds, may yet
have prevailed to introduce some of their arts among their Sclavonic
conquerors. To this day the Tzintzars of the Macedonian mountains assert
their technical superiority to the races round in the practice of the
art of wood-carving. Considering the preservation of such Latin words as
Testja, or Fistjela, or Korpa, we may perhaps be justified in assuming
that many of the homely arts we see before us are rather the direct
inheritance from Trajan than from Heraclius. Nor must the influence of
the Venetians in Croatia be forgotten; for these kept open, in mediæval
and later times, the old trade-route between the Adriatic and the Danube,
opened out long before by their prototypes the Aquilejans.[154] To
them probably is due the small wooden cask, the Croatian _Baril_, the
Italian _Barile_; but one evident trace of Venice is to be found in the
glass-works which exist at Samobor in Croatia, and in the heart of the
deep oak forests of Slavonia. The name _Flašica_, of the glass bottles,
may be formed from the Italian _Fiasco_, _Flascon_, and the forms of
the rude beakers and the prettily rippled Croatian flasks are true
Venetian—light, roughly blown, and of Roman bottle-green. In Dalmatia the
importation of similar rude glass vessels still continues from the small
Venetian island of Murano—the seat of the famed glass-works of old. But
even these Venetian forms are, less directly, but another inheritance
from Rome.
In modern times we must not forget the activity of the new Queen of
the Adriatic, ‘la bella Trieste,’ the Austrian successor of the great
republic, nor the Italian seaport of Hungary, Fiume, connected now
with the interior by rail as well as by the magnificent Louisa-way; so
that, with the old Venetian influences, we have plenty to account for
the presence of a considerable Italian ingredient in the population
of Agram and Croatia generally. For anyone here unacquainted with
Croatian, Italian, not German, is the best means of communication. The
Styrian mountains seem to form a shed between the areas of German and
Italian influences, and besides, the Croats, like the Czechs, feel a
certain jealousy of the German language which they do not experience
of the Italian. Many of the high officials here show, by their names
or features, an Italian descent. The military governor of Croatia is
a Signor Mollinary; the director of telegraphs, whose acquaintance we
were pleased to make, has an Italian, or rather a thoroughly Roman
physiognomy, and speaks Tuscan by preference; the more civilized race
seems to climb over the shoulders of the ruder Croats.
However, it must be remembered that German is still the language in use
among the officers and bureaucracy of the monarchy, and that many of them
reside here in Agram, so that the result is that nearly everybody in the
town can speak three languages—Croatian, Italian, and German—and many
of them speak French as well, which is more learnt here than formerly,
as jealousy of the Germans becomes stronger with rising national
aspirations. Even the military speak less German than they used to do;
and here, as in Slovene Styria, the national tongue has now supplanted
German as the school speech, and even to a certain extent as the official
language. Among the Likaner and western _regiments_ of the Granitza, as
one approaches the Adriatic and Dalmatian frontier, Italian is known even
by the peasants, and in the other parts of Croatia there is an itinerant
Italian-speaking population, chiefly from Dalmatia, who gain their living
as builders, and are esteemed better workers than the natives. It is
natural that the Croats, lying between two more civilized nationalities,
should be well practised in foreign tongues; but it must be allowed that
they have a natural aptitude for learning them. They themselves are quite
conscious of possessing this faculty, and there is nothing that a Croat
prides himself on more than his gift of tongues.
A Croatian merchant with whom we were talking grew quite eloquent on this
subject. ‘A Croat, sir,’ he said, ‘will learn any language under the
sun in three months!—a German takes twice the time. Look at me! Besides
my native tongue I know German, I know French, I know Serbian, I know
Latin, I know Hungarian, and I picked up Italian in a month. To know a
dozen languages is quite an ordinary accomplishment in Agram. Why, one
of the members elected here to-day for the Diet, speaks fourteen. Just
look at our philologists. Gaj was a Croat; Vuk Karadjić was a Croat;[155]
Jagić, the greatest philologer living, was born at Agram. You English,
you have your powers; you make railroads, you build bridges; but the
faculty of learning languages is God’s gift to _us_!’ I do not know
whose gift exaggeration may be; but, making every allowance for our
friend’s patriotism, it must be acknowledged that the Sclavonic races
have produced a large number of eminent philologers, and it may even be
questioned how far the German superiority to us in this respect may not
be due to their Sclavonic blood. In Agram this same faculty is shared in
a humbler degree by the peasants of the market-place, who show quite an
Italian aptitude for understanding a foreigner, and are remarkably quick
in taking in the meaning of signs. This faculty does not stand alone;
this power of attitudinising, the very dress of the peasants, all are
symptoms of a common quality. It is a certain subtle adaptiveness, common
to the whole Sclavonic race.
I had noticed in the market, sitting apart from the light Croat country
people, a man selling vegetables of a different kind to the others, with
vestments of a duller hue, and on his head a black conical sheepskin cap,
which recalled to mind the head-gear of the Bulgars of the Lower Danube,
and sure enough a Bulgar he turned out to be. On enquiring I found that a
small Bulgarian colony had settled near the Archbishop’s Park of Maximir,
to tracking out which I devoted my last afternoon at Agram. Passing
through the park, I pursued a path which seemed to lie in the direction
given me, and, after meandering awhile among maize fields, found myself
presently alone in a beautiful oak forest. Through this I wandered on,
now and then emerging on breathing glades which reminded me of the New
Forest, enlivened too with the same brilliant fritillaries, and once a
lightning glimpse of the purple emperor of butterflies himself, swooping
down from his oaken eyrie. Only one thing appeared to be wanting, and
that was a path; but I heard in the distance a tinkling of kine, and
making my way towards the sound, espied some of the mild-eyed cows of the
country grazing among the gnarled oak trunks, and under a tree beyond, a
party of peasant women and maidens, towards whom I directed my footsteps.
But hardly had I opened my lips, than, with a cry of alarm, they
scampered off, and plunged into the thick of the forest like startled
deer! The combined effect of an Indian helmet and Norfolk coattee is in
these parts quite appalling. Only this morning as L⸺ was strolling along
a street of Agram, an old woman, mistaking him, as it would appear, for
the devil, drew herself up, and having crossed herself and muttered
sundry spells, felt greatly comforted. But the cows, though they took
my appearance on the sylvan scene very coolly, maintained an impassible
silence, and meanwhile
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita;
E quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura,
Questa selva selvaggia et aspra e forte,
till happily a distant grunting fell on my ears, and groping my way
through the trees I lighted this time on two swineherds and their charge;
but the boys, though not so timid as the womankind, could not help me,
and I must wander on till I found a woodman in a Croatian costume of
darker hue—the bright red vest supplanted by one of funereal black, as
befitting the sombreness of the woods—with whose help I found my way out
of the forest, and finally to the Bulgarian settlement on the skirts of
Maximir, which before I had overshot.
The colony consisted of two very rude straw-thatched sheds, which seemed
all thatch and no wall, insomuch that on approaching them I at first
mistook them for two long, irregular haystacks. One of the hovels was
for dwelling-house and the other as a shelter for vegetable stores,
filled with gherkins and onions, and overgrown by a vine-leaved pumpkin.
The dwelling-house had a kind of porch or atrium; that is to say, the
thatched eaves, supported by two poles, projected almost as far in front
of the door as the one room extended behind it. Under this canopy were
seated two Bulgars, hard at work tying up bundles of onions, clad in
their dark national costume—the brown tight-sleeved jacket embroidered
with black, the dull red sash, the brown trouser-leggings which are
equally Turkish and Tartar, and on their head the black sheepskin cap
which had at first attracted my attention; while on a peg behind hung one
of their heavy mantles of the same black, shaggy sheepskin.
[Illustration: Bulgarian Settlement.]
It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast to the Croatian
costume than was presented here. The dress of the Croats is light and
airy, as if they had strayed from a land of perpetual sunshine. The
Bulgars are armoured against the elements—you would fancy they were
fresh from some hyperborean land of frost and storms—not yet acclimatised
to the sunny South. The flowing tunics of the Croats invite the slightest
breeze; the brilliant red and white hues seem to tell of a land where the
roses bloom all the year round. But the heavy mantles of the Bulgars,
the woollen coats, the close sleeves and leggings, are made as if to
exclude the wind and frost; the cold dark colours shadow forth a sky to
match. Yet the climate of the modern Bulgaria, in its widest sense, does
not differ in any considerable degree from that of the Croats, except
that parts of the Bulgarian area are hotter. Both are lands of vines and
fig trees. Yet the language is almost the same. The modern Bulgar can
talk with the Croat without an interpreter. Whence, then, this startling
divergence of attire? The reason is to be sought far away in the dim
twilight of history. Originally the Bulgars were not a Sclavonic people.
Their kinship lies with mysterious Huns and Tartars. The fatherland
whence they wandered forth lies on the shores of the Caspian and the
mounts of Turkestan or more northern Altai. Since their arrival in Europe
they have been lost, as it were, in a great Sclavonic sea. They have
been Sclavonized by the multitude of their subjects, just as the Mantchu
Tartars have within the last two centuries been Celestialized by the
Chinese they subdued. But it is the northern nomads who have formed the
backbone to this large unwieldy body. It was the Ugrian dynasty that
erected in the tenth century the Bulgarian Czardom, as civilized as any
state in contemporary Europe; that humbled Byzantine Cæsars in the dust
with their own weapons, and planted the standard of the crowned lion at
the gates of Constantinople. It was the Ugrian dynasty that took the lead
in the first great Rouman-Sclavonic revolt against Byzantium, that ruled
for awhile from the Ægean to the Danube, and from the shores of the Black
Sea to the Adriatic. But much as the Mantchus, though lost among their
subjects, have given the Chinese their bows and pigtails, so the Bulgars
have given their tails and dress, at least in part, to their Sclavonic
subjects; and these shaggy sheepskin mantles, and close-fitting woollens,
still remain to tell of the chill Central-Asian plateau whence their
forefathers migrated.
[Illustration: Bulgarian Profile.]
But the Bulgars before me had other proofs of their origin even more
unmistakeable than their attire. Their pedigree is written on their
faces. These are not Sclavonic. They are of that type, more easily
recognised than described, Mongolian in its widest sense, which extends
from the White Sea shores, among Lapps and Samoyeds, Beormas and Voguls,
to the Tartars and Chinese. Here are the curiously prominent cheek-bones,
the broad and otherwise flat face, the small sunken eyes, the nose flat
at top and inclined to be globular below; their eyebrows are strong and
relieved; their complexion is dark, their head shaven save one black tuft
or tail; these are true Ugrians, the ogres of our nursery stories. The
purity of their breed, as evinced by this strangely Asiatic physiognomy,
was partly explained by the locality of their home. They had come, so
they said, from Ternova, the holy city of the Bulgarians, the destination
of their pilgrimages, the seat of their old metropolitans. This was the
last stronghold of the national dynasty, and to the last the original
Ugrian nucleus of the race may have clustered round it—nay, who knows?
even these poor peasants may have been descendants of Bulgarian Czars!
They had come all the way up the Danube and Save to scrape together money
by their superior agricultural industry among the lazier Croats, and
having brought with them some of their native seeds, were able to expose
for sale gherkins of peculiar forms, and finer kinds of onions, in the
Agram market. While I was there two more of the party came up; and one
of them, a fine young fellow, dressed in European costume, I did not
suspect to be a Bulgarian till he told me in German that he belonged to
the settlement, and had come with them for a still more laudable purpose,
namely, to obtain a good education. They had been here now three years,
and, having scraped together some earnings, proposed to return this
autumn. The savingness of the race was noticeable in their clothing,
which was the same they had brought with them from Bulgaria; but I do not
think that any amount of patching and mending could make it hold together
much longer. The good humour which also distinguishes their race beamed
forth from their every feature; they were evidently very pleased to see
a visitor, were delighted to let me sketch them, and one sat quietly
while I took his profile. They invited me to visit the inside of their
hut, whose thatch was partly eked out with vine leaves and fir branches.
Inside it was very dark, the only light coming through the door, itself
overshadowed, and from a low-burning wood fire placed in a semicircular
bay of brick which formed a chimney above. Over the fire was suspended
a copper caldron, in which their homely supper was then brewing, and
this was hung up by a hook such as I have seen in Wallachia, made of
two pieces of wood instead of iron. Round the room ran a low wooden
platform or daïs, such as throughout the barbarous lands of Eastern
Europe serves as seat by day and bed by night, and on which the Turks
spread their gorgeous divan. Hung round the wall were several more of
the black sheepskin mantles, which imparted an additional gloom to this
poor earth-floor den; and from another peg was suspended the national
guitar, so that they could sing their own songs in a strange land. This
is not the same as the Croatian Tamburitza; it is larger, and resembles
the Serbian Ghuzla, by which name it was known to the Bulgarians. Unlike,
too, the Croatian instrument, which is twanged by the fingers, this
was played by a bow. This had not been brought from Bulgaria, but was
made here by one of the settlers, who, seeing me examining it, took it
out into the porch, and seating himself on a low three-legged stool,
played an air which was meant to be lively. It was a dance tune, and
much like those to which I have seen the Roumans dance one of their
stamping _Can-cans_; it was the Bulgarian Igraja, Croatian Igrati, but
better known by its Serbian equivalent the Kolo, or Sclavonic waltz. The
plodding Bulgars, however, did not waltz, but plied their work harder,
with a smile of inward enjoyment on their faces, which I imitated with
difficulty, as the tune was wofully monotonous, there being only three
strings to the instrument, all told; nor can I imagine any one who could
tolerate such strains long—unless he wear a kilt. When the serenade was
ended I took leave of the party, who most affectionately pressed on me
a large nosegay of zimnias and rosemary, the ornaments of their little
garden.
_Aug. 6._—Next day, having heard that there was to be a large market
at Karlovac,[156] about twenty-five miles south-west of Agram, towards
the Bosnian frontier of Croatia, we hurried thither by rail, through
fine oak forests and maize-covered champaign. On arriving we found the
whole town swarming with country-folk, and the streets lined with varied
booths. Several new features appeared in the costumes, and, above all,
the greater propinquity to the Dalmatian frontier asserted itself in
brilliant fezzes, such as are worn by the Morlachs and Uskoks of the
Adriatic coastlands. They are of brighter scarlet than the Turkish,
covered with rich embroidery or minute tassels of brilliant silk, like
the tufts on some gorgeous caterpillar, and culminating in a peak. Some,
however, wore varieties of the Agramer’s ‘pork-pie,’ which seemed to
have been taken from patterns in the ‘Nuremberg Chronicle,’ and are very
fashionable still in Sclavonic Istria. Some of the men wore blue vests
or sleeveless jackets in place of the red of Agram; their belts were
broader, and often displayed aching voids, in which outside the walls
they carry arms; for within the towns here this is forbidden to all but
Turks, who have managed to associate the practice with their religion,
and are allowed to wear pistols and daggers under a conscience clause.
[Illustration: Sluin Woman.]
But the most curious costume belonged to a people whose jet-black hair
and physiognomy suggested Zingar relationship. The colours of their
dress were as much darker than those of the surrounding Croats as their
tresses than the prevailing tint of hair. The women wore over their black
tunic and apron-skirt two black aprons, one before and one behind, with a
long fringe attached; both sexes had satchels of black slung over their
shoulders, and great black or dark blue mantles. On enquiry we found that
they were called Wallacks, or in its Croatian form, Vlach. This curious
word, used by Teutonic races[157] under different forms to characterise
Roman strangers, is also used among the Southern Sclaves to qualify
strangers of Latin blood such as the Wallacks of Roumania; besides, as a
term of contempt for any strangers, and especially strangers in religion.
Thus the Sclavonic Mahometans of Herzegovina apply it to Christians
generally, the Croats of the Latin Church apply it to the members of the
Greek communion, while the Serbs of the interior, who are mostly Greek,
call their brothers of Dalmatia, who are mostly Roman Catholics, Morlachs
or Mor-vlachs—that is, sea-Welsh. In the case of these peasants in the
Karlovac market it simply meant, not that they were Roumans or Tzintzars,
but that they belonged to the Greek Church, and the explanation of this
is found in their tradition that they migrated hither in former times
from Serbia. Now, however, they speak the Croatian dialect and call
themselves Croats. Their homes are about Sluin, twenty-five miles south
of Karlovac, on the Bosnian extremity of the Military Frontier.
[Illustration: Croat Man.]
Excepting the gypsy-like faces of these Sluin folk, the features of the
Karlovac Croats agreed with those of the Agramers, to such an extent
as emboldens me to delineate certain main characteristics. The nose is
finely cut, but flattens out towards the forehead, between which and it
runs a deep furrow, which I recollect noticing among many Roumans. The
face is hairless save for a moustache on the upper lip, sometimes twirled
into ferocity; and scanty whiskers under the cheek-bone, as in Serbia,
Bosnia, and Dalmatia. The hair is often light, in the children sometimes
quite auburn; the eyes are of varying shades of grey and blue, lurking,
as so frequently among the Illyrian Sclaves, in a pan-like socket.
Hence shadow surrounds the eyes below as above, which gives a peculiar
character to South Sclavonic beauty from the Bocche di Cattaro to the
Lower Danube. So deep at times is the surrounding shade that a poet of
the race might compare his mistress’s eyes to turquoises chaliced in a
setting of ebony! But the deepset roving eyes of the Croat, on which he
prides himself so highly, are often at first sight repellent, suggesting
suspicion and cruelty, though redeeming lines of good-humour eddy round.
Taken as a whole, the face is wanting in the power and massiveness of the
Teutonic. Contrasted with the Serbs, the Croats are neither so tall nor
so finely proportioned; their countenance is less open, beauty rarer. The
Croats bitterly lamented to us over the idleness of their peasants; their
neighbours, Italian and Slavonian,[158] were much better workers. They
are incorrigible drunkards; indeed we saw enough intoxication at Karlovac
Fair, and all the wine shops of the town were filled to overflowing;
wine, not _slivovitz_ or plum-brandy, being here the drink. But with all
their faults the Croats are kind and good-humoured, and certainly neither
at Agram nor at Karlovac had we any reason to complain of a want of
friendliness. The hospitality of a Karlovatzer was quite overpowering. We
were passing his house during a slight shower, when he literally dragged
us in and forced on us his native wine—on which for politeness’ sake, I
will express no opinion—diluted with flat Seltzer-water from Croatian
springs, till we begged for mercy. The Croats make flat Seltzer-water
effervesce with a small wooden instrument rejoicing in the name of
‘_Didlideilshek_.’
But to return to the market, which was on a very large scale, embracing
nearly the whole town and suburbs, and a scene of exceeding gaiety. The
booths for similar wares were ranged together; here were mighty piles
of crockery, the _stutzas_, the _scalicas_, and all the varied throng;
there a store of glass ware from the Slavonian forests, light, hand-made,
Venetian. Then the vegetable market embarrassed us with a choice of fine
figs, peaches, pears, water-melons with salmon-coloured slices ready cut,
rosy and beautiful apples, and delicious yellow plums like small Orleans;
further on we saw what might be mistaken for row on row of gigantic
black-beetles hung up like vermin in a wood, but on coming nearer they
turned out to be black _opankas_, of which the peasants were laying in
great stocks. At other shops you might procure wondrous leather wallets,
or Turkish knives, from the famed Bosnian forges of Travnik or Serajevo;
and beyond we came to the crowning glory of all—the clothes stalls, and
the gold-embroidered Dalmatian fezzes glittering in the sunshine. But the
chief attraction, for the peasants at all events, was the cattle-market
in the field outside the town, where might be seen herds of small Arab
horses, long-haired Merino-like sheep with spiral procerity of horn,
soft-eyed strawberry-coloured cows, innumerable pigs, and throngs of
brown long-haired goats, butting each other and pushing at each other
as if they were playing the Rugby game of football! Over which animals,
collectively and individually, the peasant farmers were shaking hands in
the most orthodox manner, as each bargain was struck. The goats and sheep
were driven in by Bosnian Rayahs from the distant mountains of Turkish
Croatia, and the way in which they expended the profits of their sales in
buying powder and bullets was anything but reassuring to those about to
trust themselves to their tender mercies.
Of Karlovac and its inhabitants proper there is little to chronicle
except that the inhabitants possess a certain gift of inventiveness;
for a report spread through the town in no time that we had walked from
Rotterdam for a bet, and the report did all the more credit to the
fertility of the Karlovatzan imagination in that it had no particle of
foundation whatsoever. The town is divided into the citadel and fortified
part, containing the churches, official houses, and a chilling square;
and the Varoš or suburb, which comprises the bulk of the houses. There
is nothing here of interest; the churches are bare, with the usual
bulbous spires; the houses are devoid of ornament, and guiltless of
architectural pretensions. They are mostly wooden; but here there
are none of the mediæval survivals of an old German town—none of the
elaborate carvings that speak of ancient civilization and the taste of
old merchant princes. Such relics one does not find in the Sclavonic East
of Europe. Karlovac is situated well for trade. She lies on the Kulpa,
which connects her with the Savian and Danubian commercial basins, and
into which, hard by, debouches the Korana, opening out a valley route
into the mountains of North-West Bosnia; while a little above the town
the river Dobra performs the same service in the Dalmatian direction.
She is situated on the chief pass over the Dinaric Alps, just where the
watershed between the Adriatic and Black Sea is lowest. Karlovac is, in
fact, the meeting-place of the three high roads which bind the interior
of Hungary and Croatia with their seaports—the Carolina-, Josephina-,
and Louisa-ways; and a new railway has opened out steam communication
with Trieste and Fiume. But despite these advantages Karlovac has no
commercial past, and her commercial present, if we except a little timber
transport and rosoglio distilling, is confined to the petty huckstering
of these peasant gatherings. Her very origin was military. She owes her
name and foundation to the Austrian Archduke Charles, chief lieutenant of
the Emperor Rudolf in the Croatian military frontier, who began building
the town in 1577, and finished its walls in 1582. He planted here a
colony of soldiers, for whom, ‘whether German or Hungarian or Croat, or
of any other nation,’ he gained certain privileges and immunities from
the Emperor,[159] the chief of which was the right to hold in perpetuity
any house built here. It was peopled chiefly by refugees from Southern
Croatia, then annexed by the Turks, against whom in 1579 the still
unfinished town was successfully defended. For we are now on the borders
of the Military Frontier, the nine-hundred-mile-long line of battle
prepared by the Hapsburgh Cæsars against the Infidel.