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 Canali 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—The
Cross of Stephen Uroš—Silver Palissy-ware by a Ragusan
Master—Cappella delle Reliquie—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.
As we entered the harbour of Gravosa we passed on our left an enticing
watery gorge, which I am doubtful whether to call sea or river. This
is known as the Valle d’Ombla; and as it presents one of the most
extraordinary natural phenomena in the whole of Dalmatia, and is withal
a most favourite pleasaunce of Ragusan citizens, I did not omit to pay my
devoirs to it during my stay in the city of the Argosies.
For two miles and a half after leaving the harbour of Gravosa our boat
(for it is best approached by water) sailed up a broad and winding
channel of the most exquisite crystalline blue, reflecting on either side
rocky heights, and lower slopes covered with cypresses and olives, and
here and there dotted with white villas and cottages. About two miles
and a half from the point where this inlet debouches into the harbour of
Gravosa, the channel suddenly narrowed, and the boat had to be propelled
up the river proper, which is rapid and of considerable volume. Its whole
course was not more than a mile.
A little way beyond a church called Rosgiatto, rose before us a
precipitous limestone mountain, whose ridge forms the boundary of the
Herzegovina, and beyond which we heard distinctly the noise of an
engagement then going on between the insurgents and the Turks. At the
foot of this mountain the river Ombla springs from the bowels of the
earth, with sufficient energy to work a mill at its very source, and in
such volume that we may safely echo the words of the Ragusan poet, Elio
Cervino:—
Danubio et Nilo non vilior Ombla fuisset
Si modo progressus posset habere suos.
At the mill, which has several large water-wheels, we landed, and from
beneath the shadow of a fig-tree, then laden with golden fruit, surveyed
this stupendous spring.
The source itself is nearly forty yards in breadth, squaring off
against a wall of naked limestone rock which rises above it nearly
perpendicularly, some fifteen hundred feet. So untroubled is the pool, so
still is all around, that you can hardly realise that a river is welling
up from far below. Here and there, however, the glassy surface seems to
swell and heave, and in places the waters take a mysterious intensity
of sapphire that speaks of unfathomable depths. For centuries indeed
the sources remained unfathomed, and it needed a line eighteen hundred
feet long before the bottom was reached at last![320] The mystery of the
Ombla’s origin has been solved by observing the sympathy in ebb and flow
which it shows with an inland river, the Trebinjštica, on which lies the
old Herzegovinian city of Trebinje. This river is absorbed by Mother
Earth in two several places, and one of its swallow-holes is distant
about seven miles, as the crow flies, from the source of the Ombla. Thus
the river must pass right under a mountain chain, and accomplish many
miles of underground meanderings before it again emerges.
The Ombla appears to have been known to the ancients as the Arion, and
Virgil might well have given it a preference of immortality over the
Timavus, whose springs are too scattered and of too small a volume to
impress the spectator. Doubtless Arion had his nymphs, and certainly in
mediæval times they seem to have found their successor, even as the mossy
cell of nymph Egeria became the heritage of Santa Rosalia. Just above
the source, amidst a shady grove of fig-trees, I came upon the ruins of
a chapel with some fair fifteenth-century mouldings, and, carved over a
doorway, an angel and St. Mary with the inscription AVE GRACIA PLENA,
which would indicate the Christian Nymph of the Source to have been no
other than Our Lady.
But let us leave this pleasant resort, and resume our way to Ragusa
herself.
As we mounted upwards over the neck of land which separates the modern
port of Ragusa from the ancient city, a magnificent view of the
land-locked harbour of Ragusa, and the shipping anchored on its tranquil
waters, opened out behind us. The stern rocky heights which keep watch
and ward over this fiord of Southern sea, and shield it from the fierce
blasts of Bora and Scirocco, soften down perforce as they approach that
wondrous ultramarine margin. This old historic shore—it too has ‘espoused
the everlasting sea,’ and clothes itself in raiment worthy of the consort
that slumbers in its ample bosom! Luxuriant vines, pale olive woods,
and thickets of stately cypresses overspread the lower slopes; and this
Southern vegetation, with its alternating gloom and pallor, embosoms the
red-tiled roofs and white walls, of the pretty little villas, perfumed
by gardens where roses and verbenas mingle with the citron and myrtle of
a more tropical flora. Here and there was a less pleasing spectacle—a
foretaste of that melancholy flavour which will assert itself in the
Ragusa of to-day. Once or twice we came upon the deserted shell of
what had been the country seat of one of the merchant princes of the
palmier days of the republic, standing with ruinous walls and charred
rafters just as it was left seventy years ago, when the barbarous Black
Mountaineers and Russians sacked the suburbs of Ragusa.
The road by which we ascended was lined with laburnums and acacias. We
passed two exquisite rocky coves, revealing glimpses of blue sea far
below us, and now began to descend towards the city itself. We marvelled
to see amongst the rocks and gardens by the roadside, thickets of rosy
oleander, the spiry flowers of aloes, and here and there a palm-tree
flourishing in the open air. Then we passed an open public garden with
a brilliant array of flowers; and just outside the Porta Pille, the
land-gate of Ragusa, we discovered, in a pleasant grove of plane-trees,
a small hotel, the Albergo al Boschetto, where we settle down once more
into civilized life, in a room overlooking a beautiful gully of sea.
But how tenfold delightful are all these varying beauties of sea and land
to pilgrims like ourselves, fresh from the terrible limestone wilderness
of the interior! What balm in this tropical luxuriance of flowers and
foliage to eyes dazed with the pitiless glare of naked rocks! What
peace in the rhythmic murmur of the waves and ‘the unnumbered smile’ of
the ocean below us! And hardly less refreshing is it to the spirits of
those—who, like Childe Harold, have penetrated
From the dark barriers of that rugged clime,
Even to the centre of Illyria’s vales,
Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales,
—to find ourselves once more among associations as great as any that
ennoble the haunts of man.
Here, at last, after painfully exploring some of the turbid streams and
runnels of the mediæval civilisation of Bosnia, we take our seat beside
the fountain-head of Illyrian culture. This is the city which claims as
her proudest title that she has been ‘the Athens of Illyria.’ This is
the sweet interpreter between the wisdom of the ancients and the rude
Sclavonic mind, who acclimatized on Dalmatian soil the flowers of Greek
and Italian genius. This is the nursing mother of those enterprising
merchants who in the Middle Ages laid bare the mineral wealth of the
Bosnian mountains, and infused the spirit of commerce into their inmost
recesses. This is ‘the Palmyra between great empires,’ the City of Refuge
which received, within walls that never betrayed a fugitive, the hunted
remnants of Christian chivalry who, when Bosnia was trodden down beneath
the hoofs of the Infidel, preferred exile to renegation.
For her allotted part of interpreter between Italian and Sclave, Ragusa
was fitted by her very origin.[321] Her citizens can trace their lineal
descent from the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman Republic of Epidaurus.
When the Sclavonic barbarians, descending from the mountains of the
interior, destroyed the ancient city of Epidaurus, the Roman survivors
emigrated in a body to the present site of Ragusa, then a peninsular
rock. Ragusa thus stands to Epidaurus in the same filial relation in
which Venice stands to Aquileja and Patavium, and Spalato to Salona.
The site of the ancient Epidaurus, to exploring of which I devoted a day
of my sojourn here, lies on the south-eastern horn of the bay on which
Ragusa herself is situated. The site is covered by a small modern town
called, by a strange transference of names, Ragusa Vecchia; for the
same pride of origin which induced the citizens of mediæval Ragusa to
style their city ‘Epidaura,’ led them further to speak of their ancient
Epidauritan seats as ‘Old Ragusa.’
I took my place in the capacious _trabaccolo_ which fulfils the function
of ferry-boat between New and Old Ragusa, and a friendly Maestro filling
our lateen sail as we glided beyond the shelter of the Isle of Lacroma
and the haven of the Argosies, we had soon accomplished our eight
miles’ voyage, and were entering the harbour of Ragusa Vecchia. This
little town, in which most of the relics of the ancient Epidaurus are
discovered, lies on a small two-humped peninsula, and is so nearly an
island that at one point the two seas are separated only by a neck of
land some dozen yards broad, and raised not more than a foot or two above
sea level. This answers very well to the accounts of ancient Epidaurus
which have come down to us; for we read that the original city was on
an island till it was joined to the mainland by an earthquake; and
Procopius, writing in the sixth century, tells us that Epidaurus had two
harbours. Everywhere around one seems to trace the volcanic activity
which, to the Greco-Roman city as well as to her offspring Ragusa, was
ever the most terrible foe. The rocks that start up from the sea at the
nose of the present peninsula are but so many fragments from the wreck
of the old Epidauran site. Indeed, it is evident that Epidaurus covered
a much larger area than the site of Ragusa Vecchia can supply; besides
the remains on the peninsula, many, and amongst them the tomb of a P.
Cornelius Dolabella, have come to light on the plain to the east about
the modern village of Obod, which, I take it, preserves, in a Sclavonic
disguise, the first two syllables of Epidaurus. In the adjoining bay of
St. Ivan the walls of the Roman houses are, I was assured, distinctly
visible beneath the surface of the sea, which proves that here a great
subsidence of land has taken place within historic times.
At Ragusa Vecchia I found an intelligent peasant, who took me round to
show me all the old stones that were known of in the place; and as others
of the Ragusa Vecchian inhabitants showed a good-natured readiness to aid
my search, and nobody minded my entering their abode, I had soon seen
quite a museum of Roman antiquities scattered among old walls and cottage
yards, and was so far successful as to come upon some inscriptions
that have not been hitherto described,[322] and at least one piece of
sculpture on which the antiquary’s eye had never gazed. There were two
antique bas-reliefs walled into the houses of the quay—a Cupid, and a
female figure, by a chariot, perhaps intended for Amphitritè, but very
badly executed. On a column in another part of the town was a comic head
of good workmanship; and walled into a cottage yard a very fine effigy
of a Roman Signifer, holding an ensign, and coifed in a lion-skin cap,
like many standard-bearers on Trajan’s Column, which this figure much
recalled. Our soldier was shod in curious sandals, and wore at his side
a short sword with a curved handle, much resembling a modern Dalmatian
knife.
On the peninsula I also saw nine more or less perfect Roman inscriptions,
one of considerable interest, as it bore witness to the existence here of
an _Ordo decurionatus_ or municipal senate. Other inscriptions were to
be seen on the mainland towards the village of Sveti Ivan, and the owner
of some oliveyards here showed me some mortuary inscriptions engraved on
the huge scattered blocks with which the heights, which here rise above
the sea, are everywhere strewn. How terrible is the nakedness of this
land, where monuments stand ready for the graver!
[Illustration: Sculpture of Roman Standard-Bearer at Ragusa.]
Overlooking the bay of St. Ivan, and the peninsula of Ragusa Vecchia,
rises a rocky hill known as the Colle San Giorgio, up which I ascended to
investigate a monument which had accidentally been found there, not long
since, by a party of sailors belonging to the Greek communion. The way in
which in which it was discovered is interesting, as it was due to the not
altogether chance coincidence of two superstitions. Just below the hill
to the east is a Greek church, duly oriented; and the sailors, standing
against the wall at the west end, were gazing idly at the hill in front,
when a curious rock facing due east caught their eye; and climbing up
to examine it more closely, they found that an ancient bas-relief was
sculptured on it, which they presently laid completely bare by pulling
away some rocks which had fallen against it. Nobody could give me a
clearer account of the design than that it represented a man and a
bull; but on arriving at the spot, I found that it was, as I expected,
a Mithraic monument of a not unfrequent kind. The carving on the slab,
which was much mutilated and of very inferior art, represented Mithra, in
flowing mantle and tunic, sacrificing a bull, on which he was kneeling
in the usual attitude. To the left and right of this central subject was
an attendant—he to the left holding out one arm, apparently to hold the
bull’s horn. Below this device the slab seemed hollowed out, and though
the rocks in front were too large to remove without artificial aid, it
seemed quite possible that there might be a Mithraic cavern underneath.
From this hill were pointed out to me the traces of the ancient aqueduct
of Epidaurus, which ran right across the plain to the limestone mountain
beyond. Here out of the rock gushes a glacier-cool underground stream,
one of the effluents, it is supposed, of the Trebinjštica, which the
aqueduct once conveyed to the Greco-Roman city. The plain through which
it ran is still known as _Canali_ from this Roman work, and this whole
district was known to its early Sclavonic conquerors as the _Župa
Canawlovska_. Some remains of this work are to be seen where it abuts
on the rocky peninsula of Ragusa Vecchia, but there is nothing here to
remind one of the soaring arches of Salona.
The point where the aqueduct abuts on the rock of Ragusa Vecchia is,
however, remarkable for other reasons. It is just about here that
quantities of antique gems have been discovered, and one would suppose
that this was the lapidaries’ quarter of ancient Epidaurus. I have looked
through a great number of these, and have been so fortunate as to obtain
many, some here and some at Ragusa. It is remarkable that the habit of
wearing engraved gems has survived among the peasants who occupy the
modern site of Epidaurus. The Ragusa-Vecchians and Canalese take the
ancient intaglios that they from time to time pick up, and exchange them
with the jewellers of Ragusa for new gems of coarse Italian fabric! The
engraved stones found here are mostly carnelian, agate, sard, bloodstone,
onyx, and a few carbuncles. They are of various qualities and dates;
some, as can be told not only from their execution, but from the Greek
letters which appear on them, dating back to the Hellenic period of
Epidaurus; but most are Roman, and of inferior workmanship.
Nor, as I have already pointed out, does Epidaurus stand alone in this
fecundity of gems. The same phenomenon, to a greater or less extent,
characterises the remains of all the Roman sites in Illyria with which
I am acquainted. The sites of the ancient Narona, Salona, and Ænona are
equally prolific. From Salona there is a fine selection in the museum at
Spalato, and the Direttore, Signor Glavinich, showed me one there which
he believes to represent an early king of Illyria.
Yet, as stones adapted for these ornamental purposes are not to be
found on the Dalmatian shores, it seems difficult to account for their
abundance on the Roman sites of the coast-land. Whence were they derived?
The clue towards solving the mystery is, I think, to be found in the
abundance, in the interior of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, of just the
same stones engraved as Turkish amulets and talismans, to which attention
has been called already. In parts of the Herzegovina these stones are
accounted so cheap that they are worn for merely ornamental purposes.
Some of the rayah women, who had taken refuge in Ragusa from Nevešinje
and the neighbouring districts of the Herzegovina, wore broad belts
studded like ephods with suchlike stones. These were mostly, like the
antique gems of Epidaurus, carnelian and agate, but I also noticed a
few amethysts and one or two roots-of-emerald; they were rudely cut,
and none, as far as I saw, engraved. On enquiring whence they came, the
women told me that they picked them up in their own country, especially
in a valley near Nevešinje. Here, it seems to me, is the true clue to the
origin of the Roman intaglios. The raw material must have been gathered
in these inland valleys, and thence carried to Narona, Epidaurus, and the
other great coast cities, there to be engraved with the elegant designs
of classical mythology. That there was a regular manufacture of such
_bijouterie_ in the Roman cities of Dalmatia seems to be proved not only
by the great abundance of these gems on their sites, but also by the
fact that a very large proportion of these had evidently never been set
in rings and other articles of jewellery, which would certainly be their
ultimate destination. In those found near the head of the aqueduct in
Ragusa Vecchia, we have doubtless the stock-in-trade of some lapidary,
probably lost during one of the earthquakes from which the ancient city
suffered; and Signor Glavinich told me that he was convinced that Salona
had been the seat of a regular manufacture of Roman gems.[323] Doubtless,
were there sufficient evidence forthcoming, it would be found that Roman
Dalmatia was the seat of an export trade in such articles with other
provinces of the empire.
Some of the gems which I obtained from the site of Epidaurus bore
allusion to the Mithraic cult, the existence of which is witnessed to
by the monument on the Colle S. Giorgio. Two gems, one a bloodstone
representing Æsculapius with his serpent-staff; and another, a carnelian,
on which the same god of medicine stands side by side with his companion
Salus, were especially interesting as bearing allusion to another
Epidauritan cult of which we have historic evidence.
The Illyrian Epidaurus laid equal claim with her two Peloponnesian
namesakes to be the chosen seat of the god of healing, from whom the
inhabitants of this part are even said to have called themselves
_Asklepitani_. The temple of Æsculapius at the Saronic Epidaurus was
indeed of more world-wide celebrity among the ancients, and it was from
this that the cult was grafted on to Rome itself; but perhaps if we knew
more, it would be found that this Illyrian city could boast a greater
antiquity for her worship. Here, at least, this form of serpent-worship
seems to fit on to another, the Phœnician origin of which is beyond
question, and which is intimately connected with the earliest historic
traditions of this coast.
This district has been identified with that of the Encheleans, the
Illyrian people with whom Cadmus and his wife took refuge according to
the legend. Near here, according to ancient geographers, rose the rocks
of Cadmus and Harmonia, where was the sacred cavern in which they were
metamorphosed into dragons. Cadmus—whose very name is equivalent to ‘the
East’—was recognised by the Greeks themselves as of Phœnician origin,
and the whole myth is generally accepted as bearing reference to the
civilising influence of Phœnician colonies on the Hellenic border.
It certainly seems more than a coincidence that the mythic account of
Cadmus should connect him with this part of Illyricum, where we know not
only from historical sources, but from actual remains, that Phœnician
settlements existed in very early times. One account of the origin of
the neighbouring city of Narona or Narbona makes it a Phœnician colony;
the island of Meleda, whose ancient name is identical with that of the
Phœnician Malta, the island of Lagosta, and others contain Phœnician
inscriptions. What more natural than that the serpent-worship of these
coasts should have been derived from the votaries of Esmun?
At the present day the Canalese peasants who inhabit the district about
the site of ancient Epidaurus differ so essentially in face and form from
the surrounding Sclavonic races whose language they speak, and are so
Oriental in their appearance, that Appendini, the historian of Ragusa,
has recorded an opinion that they are nothing else than descendants of
the old Phœnician colonists of this coast. He would be indeed a bold man
who should accept this theory without reserve, but I can bear the most
emphatic testimony to the existence of a strikingly Oriental type in this
neighbourhood. In Ragusa Vecchia itself the countenances struck me as
of ordinary Serbian or Italian types. But in the market-place of Ragusa
I noticed three peasant women whose faces bespoke, as plainly as faces
can speak, an entirely different origin. On enquiring whence they came I
found them to be natives of the Golfo di Breno, a cove about three miles
distant from the site of Epidaurus. The faces were strikingly alike. They
were long and narrow, the nose thin and long, very finely chiselled,
and inclined to be aquiline, their eyes black, and their tresses to
match. The big gold beads of her necklace, and the brilliant red and
orange kerchief that coifs her head, are the same as those worn by her
Serbo-Italian neighbours; but, assuredly, the face of the girl I sketched
is that of a Syrian rather than a Serbian beauty!
[Illustration: Head of Brenese Peasant.]
But to return to Cadmus. The modern Ragusa-Vecchians and Canalese
cling with obstinacy to the tradition that a capacious cavern which
opens beyond the Pianusa Canalitana, on the limestone steep of Mt.
Sniesnica, is the very subterranean shrine where Cadmus and Harmonia were
metamorphosed into serpents, and where afterwards Æsculapius kept his.
It is still known as the _Grotta d’Escolapio_. Being four hours distant
from Ragusa Vecchia, I had not opportunity to visit it; but Appendini,
who explored it, has left a curious account of the cavern, which is very
beautiful. Most interesting is the way in which Sclavonic mythology has
appropriated the haunts of classical legend. The Vila herself, under a
thin Italian disguise, has taken up her abode in the cavern of Cadmus
and Æsculapius, and a religious awe falls on the Canalese peasant as he
points out the _Vasca della Ninfa_. This is a natural vase formed by the
stalagmite, looking into which, Appendini descried beneath the water
three coins—offerings, doubtless, made to the goddess of the grot by her
peasant votaries; but when this impious mortal would have put forth his
hand and taken them up, his terrified guide restrained him—_he knew_ that
the cavern would close its jaws on whoever should attempt to carry off
the Vila’s treasure.
I heard of another cave also associated with Æsculapius in the peninsula
of Ragusa Vecchia itself, and as there is a strange fascination about
caverns, with or without legendary associations, I hastened to explore
it. A corps of observation was soon organised among the natives, so that,
guided by a party armed with candles and torches, I presently found
myself at the opening of the cavern. To arrive at the actual entrance
you have to drop a few feet into a crevice of the rocks, which are
overgrown with a profusion of beautiful true maidenhair fern.[324] We
then penetrated through a narrow mouth, and the light of the torches
revealed a spacious rock chamber with a rapidly descending floor. The
descent was now rather risky; the men had to feel carefully every step,
as the slightest slip sets in motion a miniature avalanche, and pebbles
set rolling bound down to an unfathomed pool below, in which several
people have been drowned. We were not able to reach the water, but it is
quite possible that there exist other once accessible pools, the avenues
to which have been blocked up with breccia. If so, this may well have
been the cavern from which, in the fourth century, the Epidauritans
(whose aqueduct we may suppose had already been cut off by earthquakes
or barbarian foes) were wont to obtain their supply of fresh water.
In that case I had been exploring the haunts of another most terrific
serpent—this time of Christian mythology.
About the year of grace 365—St. Jerome be my witness!—Epidaurus and its
inhabitants were in a very bad way.
Now hard-by Epidaurus was a certain cave called _Scipum_, in which
they of that city were wont to draw water. And in this cave a grievous
dragon[325] called _Boas_ had taken his abode, and wrought much slaughter
both of men and cattle. And it came to pass that St. Hilarion entered
the city, and when he saw that they of that place quaked and feared,
for the dragon was of huge and monstrous size, he bade them be of good
heart, for that he would slay the fiend. Now Epidaurus was yet pagan.
Therefore St. Hilarion gat him to the mouth of the cavern, and having
made the sign of the holy cross, he cried with a loud voice and saith
unto the monster, ‘Come forth.’ But when the dragon Boas heard the voice
of the holy man, then quailed his heart within him, and he came forth.
Then saith St. Hilarion unto the dragon, ‘Follow me.’ And the dragon
followed him, and he went on foot till he came to a place called ‘the
mills,’ which is distant from the city three miles and fifty paces. And
when they were come there, St Hilarion saith unto them of Epidaurus that
went with him, ‘Make now a pyre that we may consume the monster and his
works.’ And the pyre being now made, St. Hilarion saith unto the dragon
Boas, ‘Get thee on to the pyre.’ And the dragon gat him on to the pyre.
Then was fire set to the pyre that the dragon was utterly consumed. But
they of Epidaurus, when they saw what salvation was wrought for them by
the holy man, rejoiced in spirit. And at that spot which is called ‘the
mills’ they built a temple to the honour and praise of St. Hilarion. And
once in every year, at a set season, there went thither much people from
Epidaurus, and offered worship unto St. Hilarion, singing pagan hymns,
and before sundown returned to their own city.
So much for the true and faithful legend of St. Hilarion; and if anyone
doubts its veracity, let him know that the mills are to be seen unto
this day, and that the village hard-by them, S. Ilarione, preserves the
name[326] of the saintly dragon-slayer, who, I may add, is still held
in great veneration by the Ragusan church. But how interesting is this
personified triumph of Christianity over the Cadmean and Æsculapian
serpent-worship of earlier Epidaurus!—how suggestive is this annexation
of local mythology by the new religion!
It may be believed that after this miracle the faith grew in Epidaurus,
especially when, twenty years afterwards, St. Hilarion followed up his
first success by once more appearing as saviour of the city. In the year
385, we are told there was a grievous earthquake, and the waves were
piled up like mountains, and threatened to engulf Epidaurus. But the
saint graved three crosses in the sand of the seashore, and the ocean,
which hearkened not to Cnut, obeyed Hilarion. Christian bishops of
Epidaurus are mentioned in the sixth and seventh centuries, and we hear
of one nine years before the final overthrow and transplantation of the
city. I did not notice any Christian monuments on the site of Epidaurus
of Roman date; but I was pleased to find in a cottage of Ragusa Vecchia,
built into the interior wall of an upper room, a very beautiful monument
of mediæval Christian art, which I have here attempted to represent. It
was known to the cottagers as the ‘Bambino,’ and represents the Mother
and Child; but the influence of classical art is strongly marked, and
though the tenderness of the whole design is Italian, the head of the
Virgin might have been mistaken for a heathen goddess.
[Illustration: Virgin and Child.]
As early as A.D. 550 the Sclaves had begun to annoy Epidauras, but it
was not till the year 656 that the city finally yielded, it is said to
a combined attack, on land by the heathen Narentines and Terbunians,
and from the sea by Saracen corsairs from Africa. Then it was that the
survivors of the Roman population fled to the rocky site on the other
horn of the gulf on which Ragusa stands. Every morning the same migration
from Old to New Ragusa takes place on a smaller scale. A bevy of bright
Canalese market-women, in their clean white crenellated caps, and
their more sombre husbands—who, with their black turbans, jackets, and
trouser-leggings, look like Turks in mourning—embark before dawn in the
broad _trabaccolo_, that they may sell their fruit and vegetables in the
Ragusan market. In their company I will return to Ragusa and her history.
The rock on which the refugees from Epidaurus laid the foundations of
what is now Ragusa, is said originally to have been an island, though
it is now only a peninsula. Ragusa herself owes her name, according to
Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[327] to the Greek word Λαῦ, signifying
‘rock,’ and the fact that the rock on which the original city was
built was known long afterwards as ‘Lavve’ is rather favourable to the
Byzantine etymology. Thus, both her name and origin are representative
of the rôle which the city was to play throughout her earlier history,
and to which she owes so much of her greatness. Like ancient Rome,
Ragusa began life as an asylum. She was at first a rock of refuge for
the survivors from the wrecks of Roman coast-cities of Dalmatia. The
fugitives from Epidaurus obtained citizen recruits from those inhabitants
of Salona who, when their city was destroyed, did not trust to the walls
of Diocletian’s palace for security, or could not find room there. Later
on, when the Roman cities that occupied the sites of the present towns
of Rizano, Cattaro, Budua, and other places on the Bocche di Cattaro and
the Albanian coast, were ravaged by the Saracen corsairs, a new influx of
Roman refugees set in to Ragusa.
Ragusa was thus originally Roman. Her necessities led her to ally with
the Eastern Empire against the Saracen corsairs, and, however little real
authority the Byzantine Emperors possessed within her walls, Constantine
Porphyrogenitus places Rausium among the imperial cities on the Dalmatian
coast. But this Roman coast-city, with her inheritance of ancient
civilisation, was already consummating that alliance with the ruder
energies of the Sclavonic mainland, to which her future eminence was so
largely due.
The barren mountain which frowns so abruptly over Ragusa on the
land-side, was once covered with an immemorial pinewood,[328] which
stretched over a large part of what is now included in the mediæval walls
of Ragusa. It was in this wood that a Sclavonic colony settled, outside
the Roman rock stronghold, and as in process of time the two populations
blended, _Dubrava_—which signifies ‘the wood,’ and had been the name
given by the Sclaves to their colony outside the walls—was attached to
the whole city, so that Ragusa is still known to the Sclavonic world as
_Dubrovnik_—the forest town.
For long the new rock asylum is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with
the Saracen corsairs, who desolated the Dalmatian and Albanian coasts.
Generally, still Roman Ragusa turns to the Byzantine Empire as her
natural protector; but for a moment we see dimly reflected in her saga
the influence of the revived Empire of the West; and one may, perhaps,
be allowed to see in it a witness to the authority which for a while the
great Carl succeeded in extending over the Illyrian Sclaves. We were
surprised to find in the more classic court of the Palazzo Rettorale
here, a colossal statue such as one meets with often enough beneath the
quaint gables of a North-German Rathhaus. It was, in fact, a Ragusan
Rolandsäule. According to the Ragusan annalists, Orlando, or Rolando,
the sister’s son of Carl the Great, and a brave Paladin, had heard in
Bretagne, where he was governor, that Saracen corsairs were ravaging the
Roman towns of the Adriatic. Orlando at once set out for Ragusa, embarked
on board a Ragusan galley, won a sea-victory over the Saracen pirates off
the island of Lacroma opposite, took their Emir Spucento captive, and cut
off his head in Ragusa. Thereupon the grateful Ragusans set up then and
there a marble statue of Orlando, which remains unto this day.[329]
Another time the treacherous Venetians prepare to surprise Ragusa under
the pretence of provisioning their ships. But St. Blasius, of Armenia,
appears to a priest in a dream and warns him of the danger to the
city. The priest gave the alarm, the walls were manned in time, and
Ragusa showed her gratitude to her preserver by choosing him as her
patron saint. A church was reared to St. Blasius, his effigy was placed
on the great seal, the banners, and coins of the Republic, and his
miraculous interposition was commemorated every year at the feast of the
Purification.
This is not the place to trace out all the ‘dim complicacities’ of
Ragusa’s earlier history. Ragusa was by birthright a City of Refuge,
and her rise was mainly due to the wise and heroic policy of defending
at any cost her rights of hospitality. Whether it be the children
of the rightful king of Serbia, or the widowed queen of Dalmatia,
or the Bosnians who had fled from the wrath of their Ban, all alike
obtain shelter from their pursuers within these hospitable walls.
Again and again Ragusa consented to see her territory ravaged and her
walls beleaguered for the protection which her Senate accorded to
the unfortunate. When Bodin, the Grand Župan of Serbia, Rascia, and
Bosnia, then at the height of his power, demanded the extradition of
the sons of the Serbian prince whose dominion he had usurped,[330] and
threatened in case of refusal ‘to fly his eagle to the destruction of
Ragusa,’ the Senate nobly replied ‘that it was the custom of their city
to refuse asylum to no man, but to protect everyone who fled to them in
misfortune.’ On this occasion Ragusa underwent a seven years’ siege.
Even those who had been the bitterest enemies to the Republic were glad
in less prosperous days to throw themselves on a hospitality that never
failed. Bogoslave, the king of Dalmatia, had besieged Ragusa with 10,000
men for sheltering the widowed queen, Margarita; but when, on his death,
his widowed queen and son were driven forth from their country, Ragusa
did not hesitate to give them shelter, too. Stephen Némanja, the Grand
Župan of Serbia and Rascia, who had twice laid siege to Ragusa, once
with an army of 20,000 horse and 30,000 foot, seeing himself likely to
be worsted in his struggle with the Byzantine Emperor, sent to ask the
senate of Ragusa if he, too, should be allowed to claim their right
of asylum, and obtained permission to retire here with his family if
defeated; and that, though his adversary was allied to the republic.
A city strong enough and generous enough to shelter the unfortunate
on either side could not fail to find many well-wishers among the
neighbouring peoples and princes; and though Ragusa suffered much in
defence of her privilege of asylum, she won more. Silvester, a king
of Dalmatia, who had found shelter within her walls, on recovering
power, testified his gratitude by presenting Ragusa with the islands of
Calamotta, Mezzo, and Giupan. Stephen, a former king, in return for
hospitality conferred on him as a voluntary guest, made over to the
Republic the neighbouring coast-lands from the Val-di-noce to Epidaurus.
The good relations which she cultivated with the Bosnians, and the
gratitude of the Némanjas, enabled Ragusa to lay the foundations of her
commercial eminence in the heart of Illyria; and in 1169 two Ragusan
merchants built a factory on the site of what has since become the
capital of Bosnia.
But Ragusa obtained one reward for hospitality to a royal stranger which
must claim an especial interest from Englishmen. Richard Cœur-de-Lion,
during his ill-fated voyage from the Holy Land, overtaken by a storm
in the Adriatic, vowed that he would build a church at the spot where
he should reach land in safety. He landed on the small rocky island of
Lacroma, which lies opposite the old port of Ragusa. But he was conducted
to the neighbouring city of Ragusa with great pomp by the Senate, and
entertained with such profuse hospitality and magnificent shows, that
he yielded to the prayers of the Ragusans, and obtained a dispensation
from the Pope, to build the promised church in Ragusa itself, though it
appears that his Holiness made him build a small church on Lacroma as
well. The church which was now built with English money (though Richard
had to borrow for the purpose), was the old cathedral of Ragusa. For
beauty it was unrivalled in Illyria,[331] but unfortunately no trace of
it now remains, as it was entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1667.
The year 1203 marks a new epoch in the history of Ragusa. In this year
the Rector of the Republic, Damiano Juda, endeavoured to prolong his
government beyond the year for which he had been elected. By the help
of the popular party he succeeded in retaining the supreme authority
for two years, and became so obnoxious to the nobles, that considering
the suzerainty of a foreign state to be preferable to the tyranny of a
fellow-citizen, they held a secret conclave in which it was decided to
invoke the aid of Venice. The Venetians, whose power from the recent
conquest of Constantinople was then at its zenith, accepted the overtures
of the Ragusan nobles. Damiano was decoyed on board a Venetian ship,
where, on finding himself a prisoner, he committed suicide; and Lorenzo
Quirini, the nominee of Venice, was introduced as Count of the Republic.
But Ragusa never sank like Zara or Spalato, and the other Dalmatian
cities, under Venetian domination. Quirini had only been received on
condition that Ragusa should preserve her ancient liberties. When the
Ragusans began to perceive an intention on the part of the Venetian Count
to violate this agreement they turned him out; and though they once more
received a nominee of Venice in 1232, the relation of the Ragusans to
Venice was rather that of a free ally than that of a dependent. It was
indeed stipulated that the Doge and a majority of the Venetian Senate
should nominate the Count of Ragusa, that her archbishop should be born
on Venetian territory, and that her citizens should swear fealty to
the Doge; but Ragusa retained the right of conducting her own affairs
by means of her Senate, of which the Count was only president; she was
still governed by her own laws; her own flag floated from her walls,
and she struck her own coins with the effigy of St. Blasius. The treaty
stipulates that both states are to have the same friends and foes; but
towards Venetian expeditions beyond the Adriatic, Ragusa was only to
contribute one thirtieth. So free indeed was Ragusa, that in fact she
never accepted Venetian archbishops; and in 1346 the Venetian _Conte_ was
forced to look on and see the republic transfer its suzerainty to the new
Serbian empire of Czar Dūshan.
Thus it was that Ragusa, though for a while under Venetian overlordship,
never, like the other Dalmatian cities, saw her native institutions
swept away by Venice. At the present day, at Cattaro or Spalato, along
the Dalmatian coast-land on each side of Ragusa, you hear the Venetian
dialect; at Ragusa the language is pure Tuscan. St. Blasius, and not the
lion of St. Mark, adorns the mediæval walls and gates of Ragusa. On the
other hand, in costume, manners, and the form of government, the Venetian
influence here has been very perceptible.
It is about the time of the Venetian suzerainty that the government
becomes finally fixed.
Ragusa had doubtless originally inherited her aristocratic-republican
institutions[332] from the _municipales_ of ancient Epidaurus. Her
Senate, which we hear of in very early days, is doubtless, like the
Senates of Arles, Nismes, Vienne, and the other great cities of Languedoc
and Provence, but a continuation of the Roman _Curia_, of whose existence
in Epidaurus we have both historic and epigraphic proof. Her patricians
could no doubt trace back their ancestry to the late Roman Honorati; they
were twitted, indeed, with tracing it back to Jupiter!
From the time of the Venetian suzerainty onwards, the government is
vested in three councils, and the city divided into three orders: the
Nobili or Patrizj, the Cittadini, divided into the two _Confraternite_
of S. Antonio and S. Lazzaro; lastly the Artigiani, who appear to have
stood to the Cittadini much as our craft-guilds to the merchant-guilds.
The government was entirely aristocratic; the Cittadini could indeed fill
some public offices,[333] but the appointments were reserved for the
Senate.
The body in which the sovereignty ultimately rested was the Gran
Consiglio,[334] including all the members of the nobility who had
reached the legal age of eighteen, and whose names were registered in
the _Specchio di Maggior Consiglio_, a Ragusan _Libro d’Oro_. This body
elected, every month, the Rector of the Republic, and, annually, all the
great magistrates, imposed the customs and ordinary taxes, confirmed or
abolished laws, and possessed the power of pardoning and passing sentence
of death.
The more ordinary functions of government were in the hands of two
smaller bodies. The Senate, or _Consiglio de’ Pregati_, composed of
forty-five members, drew up the laws and imposed extraordinary and
indirect taxes, appointed ambassadors and consuls, decided on peace or
war, treated of important state affairs, and acted as a court of appeal.
The Senate met four times a week, and on occasions of emergency. The
members were elected for life from its body by the Gran Consiglio, but
were confirmed in their office every year by this greater council, and
sometimes a Senator was suspended by it from his functions.
Lastly, the Minor Consiglio, consisting of seven senators and the Rettore
of the Republic, acted as the executive of the greater council, exercised
judicial authority on greater cases, received ambassadors, and treated
with foreign Powers.[335] The Rettore of the Republic, who presided over
this body, held office only a month, during which time he was bound to
reside perpetually in the Palazzo Rettorale, only leaving it on public
occasions.[336] He was clad in a long red robe, with a black stole over
his shoulders as a sign of supreme authority, kept the keys of the city,
the archives of the Republic, and convoked the Gran Consiglio and Senate.
As a further constitutional precaution, thoroughly Venetian, three
magistrates, called Provveditori della Repubblica, were chosen, who were
superior to all but the Senate and Greater Council, and who possessed the
right of suspending laws and decrees, and their execution till the Senate
had re-examined them.[337]
Truly, from a constitutional point of view, Ragusa deserved her title
of _Piccola Venezia_! But the aristocratic government at Ragusa worked
with even greater smoothness than at Venice. Though the rule of the
Ragusan patricians had endured for nigh seven centuries before the
time of Damiano Juda, and was prolonged for over five centuries after
his date, it was only broken by this solitary revolution.[338] Take
into consideration the small size of the city, and the stability of
the Ragusan constitution becomes the more remarkable. Here there was
no room for feudal lords living on their own domains, amidst their own
retainers, protected and secluded by moats and castle walls. The nobles
of Ragusa elbowed their fellow-citizens in the same narrow streets; and
these fellow-citizens, far from being ignorant serfs, were often their
equals in education and their superiors in wealth. Yet the Cittadini
and Artigiani of Ragusa were content to leave the reins of government
in the hands of an aristocratic caste, and that caste was so exclusive
that during eight hundred years there is no single instance recorded of a
_mésalliance_ with the bourgeoisie.
The secret lies in the sober genius of both the nobles and people of
Ragusa, and in that elevated conception of patriotism which linked
it with their religion. A judicial gravity presides over the whole
constitutional history of Ragusa. The governing classes looked on their
authority, not as a mere prize of birth, but as a sacred trust. The
prayer for the magistrates of the Republic, which opens the Ragusan
_Libro d’Oro_, breathes that exalted spirit which animated all classes of
Ragusan citizens from first to last. ‘O Lord, Father Almighty, who hast
chosen this Commonwealth to Thy service, choose, we beseech Thee, our
governors according to Thy will and our necessity; that so, fearing Thee
and keeping Thy holy commandments, they may cherish and direct us in true
charity. Amen.’[339]
Turn where we will among the pages of Ragusan history, we find ourselves
amongst a grave and sober people—a people who are never carried away
with success, and who support adversity with calm endurance. The
heroes of Ragusa are of the majestic Roman type, and her greatest is
a second Regulus. Her peculiar genius reflects itself in her arts
and sciences, which are severe and practical. Her Senate forbids the
erection of a theatre. The fine arts here fall into the background, and
mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy take the lead. Ragusan nobles
are mathematicians, and her poets are also merchants; the masterpieces
of her muse are stately epics. Her sympathies are with the dignified
spirit of the East, and the noblest homage of her bards is rendered to a
Turkish Grand Signior. But Ragusa nowhere displayed the severe gravity
of her manners more conspicuously than in the education of her children.
Palladius,[340] writing in the middle of the fifteenth century, says of
the Ragusans: ‘To make manifest how great is the severity and diligence
of the Ragusans in the bringing up of their children, one thing I will
not pass over, that they suffer no exercises to exist in the city, but
literary. And if jousters or acrobats approach they are forthwith cast
out, lest the youth (which they would keep open for letters or for
merchanding) be corrupted by such low exhibitions.’ Truly, in mediæval
Ragusa, Jack must have been a dull boy!
The same sober and religious spirit asserts itself in the laws, and the
philanthropic and industrial institutions of mediæval Ragusa. Few indeed
were the towns which could boast of a City Police and Sanitary Board in
the middle ages! There was a ‘Curates’ Augmentation Fund’ here in the
fourteenth century;[341] this city lays claim to having possessed the
first foundling hospital[342] and the first loan-bank in the civilised
world, and the annual revenues of the pious institutions of Ragusa
amounted to 800,000 ducats. If we except the early English legislation
which put a stop to the human exports of Bristol, Ragusa was the first
state to pass laws abolishing the slave trade. In the year 1416 the great
council of Ragusa, hearing that several Ragusan merchants residing on the
Narenta were in the habit of selling those under them as slaves, passed
a law—by a majority of seventy-five in a house of seventy-eight—that
anyone who henceforth sold a slave should be liable to a fine and six
months’ imprisonment: ‘Considering such traffic to be base, wicked, and
abominable, and contrary to all humanity, and to redound to the no small
disgrace of our city—namely, that the human form, made after the image
and similitude of our Creator, should be turned to mercenary profit, and
sold as if it were brute beast.[343] During the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries, large sums were left by philanthropic citizens
of Ragusa to be spent in purchasing the freedom of slaves.
Perhaps the stability of the Ragusan government is due as much to her
peculiar situation as to the sobriety of her citizens. Ragusa is well
described by mediæval writers as a ‘Palmyra between great empires.’ She
had to preserve her independence in turn from Byzantine Cæsars, the
pirate state of the Narentines, the queen of the Adriatic, the Serbian
Czar, the kings of Hungary, and finally from the Turks and Spaniards.
She had to be perpetually on her guard against the ambitious designs
of the most powerful states of the mediæval world. When her neighbours
quarrelled, she was continually placed in the most difficult position,
and the ramifications of her trade put her at the mercy of the most
remote assailant. Thus it was that in her government foreign affairs
were of supreme importance; there was constant necessity for secret
discussion, prompt decision, and the wisdom of a hereditary caste of
statesmen. A state whose empire is mercantile must be mighty indeed
to afford the luxury of popular government. Ragusa was too small, too
closely bordered by powerful empires; and the sterling sense of her
citizens acquiesced in the necessity of an aristocratic constitution.
Nothing, indeed, is more wonderful in the history of the Republic than
the tact with which these hereditary diplomatists conducted foreign
affairs. In an earlier stage of her history, and a ruder state of
society, we have seen the obstinacy with which the Senate clung to the
Ragusan rights of asylum. In a later and more diplomatic age the City
of Refuge becomes the champion of the rights of neutrals. We are lost
in wonder at the skill with which the Republic preserves its neutrality
between Venice and the Greeks, Venice and the Narentines, Venice and the
Hungarians; between the Serbian Czar and Byzantine Cæsar, between the
Turks and the Hungarians, the Turks and the Venetians, the Turks and the
fleets of Charles V. It appears to have been a secret of Ragusan policy
to yield a certain suzerainty to that Power which was strong on the
mainland. While Venice is omnipotent in Dalmatia, Ragusa recognizes the
overlordship of the Doge; Czar Dūshan stretches the Serbian empire to the
sea, and Ragusa transfers to him her homage. The Serbian empire breaks
up; the Hungarian flag floats on the walls of the Dalmatian cities in
place of the lion of St. Mark; and from 1358 to 1483 Ragusa accepts the
suzerainty of the kings of Hungary. But with admirable perception the
statesmen of Ragusa turn towards the rising sun; and already, in 1370,
when the rest of Eastern Europe was hardly conscious of the existence of
its future conquerors, the Ragusans sent an embassy to Broussa, in Asia
Minor, to the successor of Orchan,[344] Emir of the Turks, in which, in
return for a yearly payment of 500 sequins, they obtained a firman of
trade privileges, still preserved in the archives of Ragusa, and laid the
foundations of a friendship which afterwards saved the small Republic
when the empire of Byzantium, the despotates of Serbia and Albania, and
the kingdoms of Hungary and Bosnia, were swept away. The treaty was
renewed with Bajazet, and on his final conquest of the Herzegovina in
1483, Ragusa, true to her policy, transfers her suzerainty to the Porte.
It was the vast commerce of Ragusa with the interior of the Balkan
peninsula which made her government so sedulous in securing friendly
relations with the dominant power of the mainland. The citizens were
repaid tenfold for their deference to the ruling caste by the benefits
which their trade reaped from the keen foresight and the marvellous
powers of negotiation displayed by their government. The friendship
of Serbian, Bosnian, Hungarian, and later on of Turkish potentates,
enabled them to plant their factories throughout the Sclavonic lands
that lie between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. At the time of the
Turkish conquests the Ragusans possessed mercantile colonies at the Serai
in Bosnia, Novipazar in Rascia, Novibrdo and Belgrade in Serbia, at
Bucharest and Tirgovisce in Wallachia, at Widdin, Rustchuk, Silistria,
and Sophia in Bulgaria, and in the original capital of Turkey-in-Europe,
Adrianople. To these colonies the Turks conceded a special jurisdiction,
and even the right to build cathedral churches. Ragusan caravans passed
without let or hindrance throughout all these lands; and the Pope
himself granted the Ragusans permission to trade with the infidels. An
astounding monument of the industry of these colonists is found in a
treaty between George Branković, despot of Serbia, and the Republic, by
which the Ragusan government leased the working of the three gold mines
of Novibrdo, Janovo, and Kratovo, for a yearly rent of 300,000 ducats—an
enormous sum for those days.
Besides this trade with the Sclavonic interior, Ragusa conducted a
maritime traffic with the Levant, and as early as the beginning of the
fourteenth century had concluded treaties of commerce with the sultans
of Egypt, Syria, Iconia, and Bythinia. Ragusan factories existed in the
great Italian cities of the Romagna, the Marches, and Abbruzzo, and
throughout Sicily and Naples, and much of the transit trade between those
countries and the Levantine ports was conducted in Ragusan bottoms. Of
these commercial colonies in Italy, the most important was that which
gave the name _Strada de’ Ragusei_ to a street of Florence, and the
Messinese, established at Syracuse, which gave the name of Ragusa to a
castle that rose above the ruins of Camarina. Her merchants penetrated
not only to France and Spain, but even to our shores, whence they
transported English wares, especially cloths and woollens, to the south
and east.[345] Ragusan merchants were settled in England in the sixteenth
century, and later on Cromwell granted the Ragusans trade privileges
in English ports. The mighty merchantmen of Ragusa ‘with portly sail,
like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,’[346] have added a word
to the English language. Our ‘argosy,’[347] once written ‘_Ragosie_,’
meant originally nothing but a Ragusan carrack. Nor was it only in the
peaceful paths of commerce that our forefathers made acquaintance with
the stately vessels of Ragusa. As the price of many trade privileges, the
Republic was forced to recruit the navies of Spain with her ships and
take part in her enterprises. The loftiest carracks in the Spanish Armada
sailed forth from the old harbour of Ragusa, and in 1596 twelve Ragusan
three-masters fought the English in the Indian Ocean.
By the end of the fifteenth century the commercial bloom of Ragusa
had reached its prime, and the city must have been amongst the most
flourishing in Europe. As early as 1450 the merchant navy of Ragusa
consisted of 300 vessels. ‘There is no part of Europe,’ says the
contemporary Palladius, ‘so hidden or so hostile to strangers that you
will not find there merchants of Ragusa.’ And this commercial prosperity
abroad was supplemented by manufacturing enterprise at home.
In 1490 a Florentine weaver was called in to instruct the Ragusans in
cloth-weaving. Mills were built, a Neapolitan constructed a conduit to
aid the dyeing, machinery was set in motion by water-power, and in five
years a new manufacture was in full operation. A few years later[348]
the silk manufacture was introduced by an enterprising citizen of Ragusa
from Tuscany. Besides these and such minor industries as supplied the
neighbouring Turkish provinces with wax, hides, salt, and sandals, there
was the cannon foundry, the powder mill, the docks, the coral fishery,
the glass manufactory, and the production of that filagree work of gold
and silver, in which the Ragusans excelled, to divide the energies of
the citizens. At the end of the fifteenth century the population of
Ragusa is reckoned at 40,000, the treasury of the Republic is said to
have contained a reserve of seven million sequins, and the merchants of
a single quarter of the city, called Prieko, were possessed of capital
amounting to two hundred million ducats.
At this time an additional lustre is shed over the ancient City of Refuge
by the nobility of those who sought refuge within her walls. After the
fall of Constantinople and the overthrow of the Sclavonic kingdoms of the
interior, Ragusa was thronged with fugitive princes of Eastern Europe.
Scions of the imperial houses of Byzantium, the families of Lascaris and
Cantacuzene, the Comneni and Palæologi, the wife of the Despot of Serbia,
the widowed Queen of Bosnia, with a host of lesser rank, sought and found
a haven in these hospitable streets; and the name of Stephen, duke of St.
Sava, is still to be seen inscribed on the roll of Ragusan nobility in
the Specchio del Maggior Consiglio.
But the greatest glory of Ragusa lies neither in her wealth nor her
princely hospitality, but rather in the civilizing influence which she
exercised over the most barbarous European member of our Aryan family.
It is the literature of Ragusa that lives still in the minds of men in
days when her commerce has deserted her, and her own nobility has been
extinguished with her liberty.
We have seen Ragusa by her very birth partly Roman and partly Sclave. Bit
by bit the ‘city of the rock’ becomes fused with the forest-town outside.
In her vast and varied intercourse with the Sclavonic interior Roman
Ragusa becomes Serbian Dubrovnik. From the beginning of the fourteenth
century the Serbian language, so vigorously proscribed by earlier laws,
may be considered the mother-tongue of Ragusa. In 1472 the Sclavonic
language became so dominant that even the Senate had to pass a law
enforcing Italian as the language of their deliberations. Thus Ragusa
became a Sclavonic city at the very moment when her extended connection
with the rest of Europe, and especially with Italy, brought her into the
full current of the Western Renascence. She had become Sclavonic, but
she never lost the Italian side to her character. Her wealthy citizens,
though they spoke the Serbian dialect of Dubrovnik in their family
circles, sent their children to the Florentine schools, and, just as
educated Irishmen and Welshmen often speak the best English, so, to this
acquired knowledge of Italian, is largely due that purity of accent which
has preserved the Italian of Ragusa from the Venetian and Dalmatian
barbarisms of the other cities of this coast, and which makes it still
the _lingua Toscana in bocca Ragusea_.
Ragusa was thus fitted by her very composition to be the interpreter
between the Italian and Sclavonic minds, and to give birth to that
literature which has won for her the title of ‘the Sclavonic Athens.’
The magistrates of the Republic, true to the same wise policy which had
founded her schools, invited hither the most learned men of Italy, and
towards the end of the fifteenth century many were enticed to Ragusa
as professors, chancellors, and secretaries. Nascimbeno di Nascimbeni,
the celebrated philologist, was invited here as rector of the school,
and Demetrius Chalcochondylas deserted Florence herself to accept the
chair of Greek at Ragusa. For Ragusan culture was something more than a
mere reflection of the Italian Renascence, and the exiled scholars of
Byzantium flocked hither as to a city which had held literary communion
with their own, centuries before the days of its captivity, and whose
inhabitants were in some sort their fellow-citizens. As early as the
year 1170 the Ragusans had been admitted citizens of Constantinople
by Manuel Comnenus, and the Imperial Chamber had undertaken to defray
the expense of educating a certain number of Ragusan youths in Greek
learning. By the beginning of the fourteenth century Ragusa herself had
become a school of Greek for the Serbian mainland. Sclavonic Kings and
Czars sent hither the young barons of their realms to be instructed in
learning and manners; and the Serbian Czar, Stephen Dūshan, presented the
city with a precious collection of codices, Greek and Latin, discovered
in the Illyrian interior.[349] Thus the citizens of Ragusa were in every
way well fitted to play a leading part in the revival of letters in
Western Europe; it is said that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
there was not one of her families but could boast its man of letters;
her scholars toiled eagerly at the new learning, and emended the texts
of Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and other classical authors. It is extremely
significant of the position held by Ragusa in the world of letters at the
end of the fifteenth century, that Aldus Manutius sent his son Paolo here
for his classical schooling.
But this erudition was but the prelude to an outburst of original genius
such as has been paralleled by few cities of the globe. Perhaps, indeed,
no other people had brought before them so vividly every stirring aspect
of the most romantic age that the world has seen. The Ragusans had sat at
the feet of Byzantine masters in days when learning was their insolent
monopoly; they had already been familiarised in the schools of Florence
with the masterpieces of Italian genius; they had caught from Virgil
and Ovid an inspiration of antiquity; and the dramas of Sophocles had
been translated by a fellow-citizen into their Serbian mother-tongue. To
these creations of exotic fancy they added, what they had never lost,
a heritage of Serbian poetry, enshrining a mythology that had felt in
some mysterious way the spell of Arabian genii—a mythology still so
real that, to the last days of the Commonwealth, effigies of fantastic
Serbian deities, and amongst them the ‘flowery-kirtled’ Vila, were borne
in procession at Ragusan carnivals.[350] The merchant-citizens of the
Republic had already enlarged their sympathies with the acquaintance of
every European people. They had now seen the boundaries of the Old World
broken through, and sailed forth to explore the New. They had rounded the
Cape in the wake of the Portuguese; their argosies had touched at the
port of Goa, and trafficked in the Persian Gulf. They had sailed with
the Spaniards to Peru and Mexico; they had marvelled with the followers
of Cortes at the temple-pyramids of the Aztecs, and plucked roses in the
gardens of Yucay. Nearer home, their imagination had been kindled by the
overthrow of an empire which Julius had founded. They were surveying from
their very walls the tragedy of nations, and their streets were thronged
with discrowned sovereigns. The most beautiful creations of the Hellenic
muse had sprung Aphroditè-like from the spray of the self-same sea that
sparkled in the havens of Ragusa.
Living in this poetic world, one can hardly wonder that Ragusa caught
the inspiration of her surroundings; that she ‘awoke to ecstasy the
living lyre,’ in the tones of her mother-tongue; that, surveying the
catastrophe of the Serbian race, she created a Serbian drama. From the
commencement of the last quarter of the fifteenth century onwards,
Ragusa produces a long succession of poets and dramatists,[351] who
are great and valuable almost in proportion as they are unknown to the
West. For their pre-eminent value lies in their having composed in a
Sclavonic tongue. Amongst the most celebrated works of Ragusan poets
may be mentioned the ‘Dervishiade’ of Stephen Gozze, a comic epos;
the ‘Jegyupka’ or gipsy-woman, a satiric poem by Andreas Giubronović;
and the lyrics of Dominico Zlatarić, also known as a painter, and as
translator of Tasso and of some plays of Sophocles. Nor was Ragusa
wanting in poetesses to rival her poets; the epigrams of Floria Zuzzeri,
who wrote in Italian as well as Sclavonic, are still of renown. But
the most celebrated names in the long annals of Ragusan literature are
those of Junius Palmotta and Giovanni Gondola.[352] It is a high merit
of Palmotta’s dramas that the subjects are taken from the history of
Southern-Sclaves.[353] The master-work of Gondola is the ‘Osmanide,’
an epic poem recording the prowess of Sultan Osman against the Poles.
This is a strange witness to the Turkish sympathies of the Republic, and
the noblest monument of Ragusan genius. The poems of Gondola are still,
among all South-Sclavonic peoples, ‘familiar in their mouths as household
words;’ and though Ragusa has lost her wealth and liberty, her most
golden memories live still in the bard—
Whose tuneful lyre,
Resounding sweet from Save to Drave,
Forbids Illyrian nations to expire,
Vibrates immortal airs, to kindle patriot fire.[354]
Ragusa also produced Latin poets, and a race of historians, among whom
may be mentioned Cervario Tuberone, Nicolas Ragnina, and, greatest of
all, Anselmo Banduri, whose name is of European renown. The breadth of
the Ragusan genius is illustrated by the fact that her additions to
the exact sciences are as splendid as the works of her imagination.
Her citizens Gazoli, Antonius Medus, Ghetaldi, and at a later period
Boscović, rank among the patriarchs of astronomy and mathematics.
Marino Ghetaldi, born at Ragusa in 1566, anticipated Descartes in the
application of algebra to geometry, and lays a claim to the invention
of the telescope. Amongst other feats he tested the experiment of
Archimedes, and is said to have consumed a boat with his burning-glass.
On the shore of a bay to the south of Ragusa is still pointed out the
fern-valanced cavern where Ghetaldi loved to pursue his discoveries; and
such was the impression wrought by the man of science on the popular
mind, that to this day the sailor, as he passes the mouth of Ghetaldi’s
cave, invokes St. Blasius to frustrate the incantations of the magician.
The literary and commercial bloom of Ragusa continued to the middle
of the seventeenth century, little abated by a plague, which in 1526
destroyed twenty thousand of the population in six months; or by the
loss of many ships in the Spanish service. But Ragusa had already
received warnings of a more tremendous catastrophe, such as had befallen
her Roman ancestress Epidaurus. In 1520, 1521, 1536, and 1639, the city
had suffered from shocks of earthquake.
It was half-past eight o’clock on the morning of April the 6th, the
Wednesday in Holy Week, 1667. The Maggior Consiglio was about to hold
a session, for the purpose of according grace to delinquents, and the
Rector of the Republic, Simeon Ghetaldi, and some of the councillors,
were already preparing to take their places. The inhabitants of Ragusa
were mostly at home, or in the churches at morning prayer, when, without
a moment’s warning, a tremendous shock of earthquake overwhelmed the
whole city and entombed a fifth of the population in the ruins. The
Rector of the Republic, five-sixths of the nobles, nine-tenths of the
clergy, a Dutch ambassador with his suite of thirty, then on his way
to Constantinople, and six thousand citizens, were buried. Marble
palaces—the accumulated embellishments of ages of prosperity—valuable
libraries, archives, irreplaceable manuscripts—all alike perished. The
sea left the harbour dry four times, and rising to a mountainous height,
four times threatened to engulf the land. The ships in the port were
sucked into the vortex of the deep, or dashed to pieces against each
other or the rocks. The wells were dried up. Huge cliffs were split
from top to bottom. The sky was darkened by a dense cloud of sand. The
earthquake was succeeded by a fire, and a strong gale springing up spread
the flames over every quarter of the ruins. Finally, to complete the
catastrophe, the wild Morlachs descended from the mountains and pillaged
what remained.
Ragusa never recovered from the blow. Her commerce was for long reduced
to the coast-traffic of small _trabaccoli_. Her literature, indeed,
partly revived; and during the early years of the French war the
neutrality of Ragusa secured for her once more much of the Mediterranean
carrying trade, and by the end of the last century her population
amounted to 15,000. But, in 1806, Napoleon seized Ragusa, and two years
later an adjutant of General Marmont announced that the Republic of
Ragusa had ceased to exist. It yet remained for the diplomatists of the
Allied Powers to consummate in cold blood what Buonaparte had perpetrated
in the frenzy of his ambition; and at the Congress of Vienna an English
plenipotentiary set his signature to a document by which the ancient
Republic was handed over to what was then the most brutal and despotic
government in Europe. Since that date Ragusa has been the head town of
a ‘circle,’ and the stately palace of her Rectors has sunk into the
‘_bureau_’ of an Austrian ‘_Kreis-chef_!’
And yet how fascinating is Ragusa still! It far surpassed our most
sanguine expectations. We entered the once sovereign city by the
Porta Pille, one of two gates which form the north and south poles
of the little town, and are the only public openings in the circuit
of its massive walls. From a niche above this portal the old saviour
of the Republic, St. Blasius, looked down upon us benignantly, with
finger raised aloft in the act of benediction; and the same figure
of his saintship occurs at intervals all round the walls, which have
been likened to a girdle of amulets. The Porta Pille passed, we found
ourselves in the _Stradone_ or _Corso_, the main street of Ragusa, and
the finest and widest in Dalmatia.
From the student of Ragusan history this street claims a peculiar
interest. Originally it was nothing else than a narrow channel of
sea—the ‘silver streak’ that moated off the Roman rock asylum of Lavve
from the more rustic dwellings of Serbian Dubrovnik, scattered among
the pine-trees on the rocky steep of the adjoining mainland. But in
the thirteenth century, when the antagonism between Serb and Roman had
already ceased, and the Serbian language had become the mother-tongue
of the descendants of the Epidauritan refugees, the channel was filled
in and the site levelled to make room for an airy piazza,[355] where,
in the succeeding age, stately palaces of four or five storeys rose on
either side, and rivalled those of Venice in their magnificence. Thus
what had originally been a barrier between two hostile nationalities,
has since become a bond of union, as the favourite meeting place and
social promenade for all classes of Ragusan citizens. The lofty palaces
of the original Piazza were overwhelmed by the great earthquake, and
their loftiness made them terribly destructive of life, so that when the
Senate rebuilt this part of the city the height of the new houses was
limited to two, or at most three, storeys. The Piazza itself shrank into
the present Stradone, in sympathy with the straitened circumstances of
New Ragusa; but, shadow as it is of its former majesty, it still forms a
noble thoroughfare.
Every building on either side, as indeed throughout the town, is of fine
stone, and the street—like all other streets of Ragusa—is paved with
large deftly squared slabs, which take the polish of marble, and caused
us to slip more than once. Immediately on entering we passed on the
right a fifteenth-century cistern[356] decorated with quaint heads of
dragons; it is from this that Ragusa derives her water supply, brought
hither by a conduit from a mountain source fifteen miles off. Opposite
is the _Chiesa del Redentore_, in classic Venetian style, the elaborate
carvings of its façade thrown into exquisite reliefs by the golden
colours of the stone; and above its portal an inscription recording the
building of the church (legend says that the matrons of Ragusa brought
hither the material) after the earthquake of 1536—_ad avertendam cœlestem
iram in maximo terræ tremore_. Alas! it averted not a greater ruin,
though by some strange irony of fortune it survived the earthquake of
1667, to stand a monument of disregarded piety. Next is the Franciscan
convent in several tastes, and then, on either side of the road, a
vista of solid stone houses, built with great regularity in a plain but
dignified style, with classic cornices.
A five minutes’ walk—such a little place is this!—brought us to the
other end of the city, the street terminating abruptly in the Porta
Plocce, the sea-gate, and otherwise the south-pole of Ragusa. But just
before reaching this, the Stradone opens on the right on to a small
Piazza, where the most beautiful and interesting edifices in Ragusa are
congregated.
Everywhere around is something which takes us back to the most glorious
days of the Republic. Opposite is a living monument of that mechanical
genius which shines in the great works of Ghetaldi and Boscović. This is
the Torre del Orologio, with a domical cupola containing a wonderful
clock, in which a revolving globe shows the moon’s age, and two bronze
figures of men in armour strike a bell to tell the hours. Upon the bell
are the Latin lines:—
Acta velut Phoebus distinguit tempora cursu
Terrigenis, peragens signa superna poli;
Sic sonitu nostro numeratur civibus hora
Nocte monens requiem, luce, laboris opus.[357]
To the left is a beautiful Moresco-Gothic building, the Dogana and
Zecca or Mint of the Republic—at present serving as the _Ricevitoria
principale_ of the Emperor and King. From here issued forth those half
Byzantine pieces with their saintly Blasius and ‘_Tuta Salus_’ scroll,
of which we had seen so many examples on the former sites of Ragusan
industry in Bosnia. The Mint, which is behind the Dogana, I visited in
company with Signor Vincenzo Adamović, who is one of the representatives
of numismatics in modern Ragusa, and who, besides possessing a
considerable collection, has published some interesting essays on
the medallic history of the Republic. The coins of Ragusa date back,
according to Signor Adamović, at least to the ninth century. The earliest
coin is of brass, bearing the Byzantine name ‘_Follaris_’ or ‘_Obolus_,’
and displaying on the obverse a laureated head, evidently, like some
of our Anglo-Saxon monetary effigies of the same date, copied from the
fourth-century coinage of the Roman Empire. The earliest silver coin, the
_Grosso_ or _Denaro_, dates from the end of the thirteenth century,[358]
and is the first coin on which St. Blasius makes his appearance. The
Mint is at present converted into a granary for oats, so that there is
little to remark inside the building except an inscription over the
massive arch of the standard office of weights and measures:—
Fallere nostra vetant et falli pondera, meque
Pondero dum merces, ponderat ipse Deus.
The present Zecca and Dogana were built in the year 1520, and are among
the few buildings which by their massive construction withstood the shock
of the great earthquake of 1667. But there is another building hard by,
of greater antiquity and more absorbing interest, which has also happily
come down to us uninjured. The Palazzo Rettorale, the residence of the
old Rectors of the Republic, whose rich colonnade faces the Piazzetta on
the left, is a monumental epitome of Ragusan history—the grandest relic
of the ancient commonwealth. An inscription on the exterior records
that it was founded in 1435 ‘by the nobles and most prudent citizens
of Ragusa, under the divine auspices of Blasius, martyr and most holy
priest, being patron of this city of Epidaura Ragusa.’[359] The date of
its completion, 1452, takes us back to the period when the commerce and
literature of Ragusa were first bursting into bloom. The style of the
architecture, Florentine, and not Venetian, is typical of the Tuscan
source whence Ragusan literature drew its earliest inspiration, and bids
a kind of architectural defiance to the Lion of St. Mark. This is not so
huge a pile as the palace of the Doges, but neither has it that element
of barbaresqueness. These massive arches and the backbone of iron girders
within, which enabled the building to withstand the terrific ordeal of
the earthquake, characterise well the sober sense and heroic endurance of
the citizens who reared it.
This is the _Lararium_ of the Republic. Within are the effigies of her
greatest heroes and benefactors, the archives of her history,[360] the
rolls of her nobility. This is a treasure-house of the associations of
every age of Ragusan story. The stone benches in the porch beneath the
spacious arcade are the same on which the senators and patricians of old
used to discuss the gravest affairs of state. The massiveness of the
Roman arches and that classic colonnade may well be taken to betray the
spirit of that race to which the ancient rock of asylum owed her first
foundations; the too imaginative patriotism of Ragusa has even gone
farther, and claims the capitals themselves to have been transported
hither from the Epidauritan mother-city. On one of these is carved an
alchemist, seated book in hand amidst his crucibles and alembics, and
a Latin inscription[361] of apparently the same date as the sculpture,
informs the spectator that he is viewing the inventor of medical
arts—Æsculapius, ‘the glory of his birth-place, Ragusa.’ At least it
records the pious devotion of mediæval Ragusa to her Roman _penates_;
and though the Cupids that sport amidst the acanthus-leaves of the other
capitals were certainly never carved at Epidaurus, we may yet see in
them an interesting tribute of Ragusa to the beautiful paganism of the
Renascence.
[Illustration: Palazzo Rettorale and Torre del Orologio, Ragusa.]
In a corner of the fine columniated court within the palace lies the
monument of Orlando, whose exploits in slaying the Saracen Emir have been
already recorded. Near it stood of old the banner of the second saviour
of the Republic—San Biagio. In the middle of the court is a patinated
bronze bust of a man with peaked beard and somewhat careworn expression,
and, on the pedestal, the inscription ‘Michaeli Prazzato benemerito
Civi ex S.C. MDCXXXVIII.’ Michael Prazzato was a well-deserving citizen
indeed! He left no less than 200,000 Genoese doubloons to the Republic—a
sum equivalent to 600,000_l._ of our money—but the actual equivalent
of which in the present day would have to be reckoned in millions.
Such were the merchant princes of Ragusa! But the monument, curiously
enough, recorded the catastrophe as well as the prosperity of the city.
On the back of the pedestal was a further inscription commemorating the
overthrow of the bust by ‘the great earthquake,’ and its setting up anew.
The head had been seriously caved in behind.
In the ‘Mother Church’ of the neighbouring, formerly Ragusan, island
of Mezzo, is another memorial of Michele Prazzato, a napkin which once
belonged to Charles V. At a time when Spain was desolated by a famine,
Prazzato earned the gratitude of her sovereign by transporting there
large cargoes of grain in his huge carracks. Hearing of Prazzato’s
presence, the Emperor called him in, it is said, while he was shaving,
and offered him a large sum of money,—titles, and office under his
government. ‘Sire,’ replied our merchant prince, ‘if I am satiated with
riches it is that I never took them as a gift; if I am king on board my
carracks, it is that I never sought for honours; if I am a free citizen
of my fatherland, Ragusa, it is that I have never sought for titles. As a
remembrance of your sovereign favour, grant me rather this napkin.’[362]
Charles V., struck at such greatness of soul, took what was asked for
from beneath his beard and handed it to Prazzato.
But walled into a doorway at the side of Prazzato’s monument is another
inscription recording patriotic devotion of a still higher order. Nicola
Bunić[363] has well deserved the title of the Ragusan Regulus. It was
after the great calamity of 1667, when Ragusa was beginning a new start
in life, that Kara Mustapha, intent on strangling her new birth, sent
in a monstrous claim for 146,000 dollars. The senate and citizens of
Ragusa, who knew the personal animosity of Mustapha against the Republic,
were in despair. At this critical juncture two citizens, who had already
rendered themselves eminent by their efforts in remedying the effects
of the earthquake and in repulsing the Morlach incursions, volunteered
to risk their lives in averting the storm. One was Marino Caboga[364]
and the other Nicola Bunić. On their arrival the Grand Vizier attempted
to extract from them a treaty surrendering Ragusa to the Turk. They
refused, and were thrown into noisome dungeons. Caboga, after languishing
several years in captivity, was enabled to return to Ragusa and receive
the acclamations of his fellow-citizens. This slab was the only homage
which the Republic could offer to Bunić. The inscription, Englished, is
as follows:—‘To Nicola Bunić, a Senator of singular discreetness, who,
in the most perilous times of the Commonwealth, undertook of his own
accord a most perilous embassy to the neighbouring Pashà of Bosnia, and
being sent on by him by way of Silistria to the Turkish Sultan, there,
after long imprisonment, died in chains for the liberty of his country,
and who by his death and constancy of soul hath earned an immortal name
through all posterity; to the honour and memory of whom this monument is
by decree of the Senate set up, in the year 1678.’[365]
Near the Palazzo Rettorale rises the Duomo of St. Mary—but alas! except
the foundations on which the present building rests, not one stone has
been left upon another of Cœur-de-Lion’s original cathedral. In the
present eighteenth-century Italian edifice there is little to arrest the
attention; but the Reliquiario[366] is wonderful! When Ragusan commerce
was at its acmè, ‘the merchants of the Republic,’ we read, ‘collected
the precious relics of the saints from all parts of Thrace, Bulgaria,
Bosnia, Albania, and Greece, where they had business, following the
promptings of their piety; sometimes at their own expense, sometimes at
the expense of the Republic, rescuing them from barbarism and ignorance.’
Hither, too, when the Infidel overran the South-Sclavonic lands, pious
votaries carried for safety what was more precious to them than worldly
goods or life itself. Here, in the City of Refuge, are gathered together
the penates of the Serbian people. Among the most interesting of these
national relics was the silver cross of Czar Dūshan, which is double,
like the Hungarian. It is set in front with crystals, and covered with
volute filigree work; at the back with vine ornaments. As to St. Blasius,
there seemed enough relics of the patron saint of the Republic to make
several originals, if pieced together! An Oriental crown enclosing
a piece of his cranium, brought hither from the East in the eleventh
century, is a master-piece of Byzantine art. Then there is a very choice
fragment of John the Baptist’s arm, which was added to the collection
in 1452; under, to say the least of it, remarkable circumstances. The
Ragusans had taken care of it for a sick Bosniac, who had promised his
precious relic to the Florentines. The Bosniac recovered his health; but,
as neither Papal thunders nor Tuscan threats availed him to recover the
smallest fraction of St. John the Baptist, he turned for help to Bajazet.
Bajazet referred the matter to one of his Pashàs, and the Turk, no doubt
richly bribed by the Ragusans, cut the matter short by observing to the
claimant that if he was in want of Christian bones he might pick up
plenty on the field of Kóssovo!
Although as Englishmen we could get up no particular enthusiasm for
St. Blaze’s collar bones, the cases were magnificent, and the ancient
filigree work of Ragusa particularly struck us. In general appearance
the later specimens of the Ragusan silversmith’s art resemble Maltese
work, and effloresce into the same flowers and foliage. But the taste
for the natural, which followed on the revived study of antiquity,
displays itself here still more conspicuously in the development of a
kind of silver Palissy-ware by the hands of a great Ragusan master.
The most wonderful objects in the Reliquiario are a silver basin and
ewer, wrought in the fifteenth century by a Ragusan artist, Giovanni
Progonović,[367] in a style so original, that I doubt if anything at
all resembling it has even been attempted elsewhere. These are covered
with all kinds of shells, creeping things, flowers, and foliage—elegant
lizards, not like those that the great potter moulded at his best, but
perfectly animate—such as the Neapolitan casts from the living creature.
Nay, more, the most perfect mechanism is added to perfect art, and if
water be poured into the basin the little creatures move as if they were
alive! Everything is enamelled of its natural colour, and though now
somewhat diminished in brightness, you have actually to touch the plants
and animals to realize that they are not real lizards or fern-leaves
preserved in some way. In the vase is a nosegay of silver grasses, each
delicate thread, each minutest seed, perfectly reproduced and coloured;
among them I recognised a beautiful three-spiked grass that I had noticed
growing in the neighbourhood of Ragusa—so true, so indigenous, is this
art!
The kindness of Signor Adamović enabled me to see the Reliquiario of the
Dominican monastery here. Chief amongst the relics was the silver cross
of another Serbian monarch, Stephen Uroš, son of his greater namesake and
father of Czar Dūshan, with remains of angular ornamentation, and the
following inscription:—[368]
‘_Isus Hristos Nika._’
‘_This venerable cross was made by the Lord King Stephen Uroš,
for the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul: that it
may be unto him for a safeguard and for remission of sins. And
the bishop of Rascia, Gregory II., made this venerable cross
in like manner as that widow who gave her two mites. Whosoever
shall presume to carry off this cross, let him be accursed of
the holy Apostles and of the venerable wood. Of this Cross am
I defended; I oppose myself to demons, fearing neither their
toils nor their deceits, even as the proud was made foolish and
crushed beneath the force of Christ crucified._’
Such is superstition!
There were also many early specimens of filigree work with floral
tendencies, and a head—I dare not call it unique—of St. Stephen of
Hungary. There was one arm the attribution of which was unknown to the
monks, but having succeeded in deciphering a mediæval inscription at the
base, I was pleased to be able to inform them that they were the happy
possessors of St. Luke’s arm! In the Dominican church and adjoining
chapels are many interesting monument of Ragusan citizens, amongst others
the tomb of Ghetaldi. There are many family vaults of the Ragusan nobles
with _Jure hereditario_ inscribed on them; but one slab inscribed in
Italian as ‘the Common Sepulchre of the Confraternity of the Carpenters,’
was peculiarly interesting as a memorial of the guild-brotherhoods of the
old Artigiani, which formed such a prominent feature in the early history
of the commonwealth.
One may spend days in wandering about Ragusa—exploring her streets, her
churches and monasteries, her palaces, and the private houses of her
citizens—and always lighting on some interesting memorial of the past.
In the meanest houses, in the old walls, in the pavement beneath your
feet, you stumble against fragments of sculptured marble—waifs from the
wreck of Ragusa as she existed before the earthquake. Of the clean sweep
wrought by that terrible calamity, the streets themselves, laid out at
right angles, are an eloquent witness; and yet it is surprising how many
vestiges of the mediæval city are still to be traced. Not one of the
narrow side streets but has its sculptured doorways and mouldings—its
ogee window-arches, and luxuriant, half classical, half Gothic foliage.
Here and there you pass one of the palaces of the old nobility—the _Case
Signorili_, as they are called—with the family scutcheon carved over the
portal, and dignified projecting balconies. So marvellous is this climate
that the most beautiful garden and hothouse flowers grow wherever there
is a chink in an old wall. In the narrowest alleys the stately shadows
of bygone magnificence are lighted up by hanging gardens of scarlet
geraniums, golden zinnias, balsams, and fragrant carnations clinging
to the crevices of ancient palaces and houses, while here and there a
vine-spray joins the opposite sides of the street.
On the landside of the _Stradone_ or high-street the city extends in
terraces on the lower flank of the limestone mountain which dominates it.
The streets here are prolonged flights of steps, of the usual slippery
marble, up which we made our way with difficulty, to obtain a bird’s-eye
view of the city from the upper wall. The view was well worth the pains.
The whole of Ragusa lay below us, circled on three sides by a sapphire
ring of sea. To the north was the fine rock of Fort Lorenzo, whose very
foundations saved the infant Commonwealth from the Venetians, and,
beneath it, the narrow cove of sea which almost threatens to cut off the
land gate of the city. To the south opened the old port of Ragusa, the
haven of the Argosies; beyond, rose the gardens and convent of the isle
of Lacroma, where Cœur-de-Lion landed, and from whose western precipices
malefactors were cast headlong into the sea in the days of the Republic.
The colours were simply marvellous—the roofs, the walls, the domes, the
campaniles, of the city below, took the rose and orange hues of a ripe
apricot; the sea beyond was of the most wondrous ultramarine—and Ragusa
with her lofty Oriental walls, rose from its now tranquil bosom like
Jerusalem the golden from some crystal sea above. But it is the smallness
of Ragusa that strikes one almost more than anything. It seems almost
impossible to realize that this little town below should have maintained
its independence for centuries amidst surrounding empires; that the
wealth of what is now Turkey-in-Europe was once hoarded beneath these
closely huddled roofs; that the mightiest carracks of the Spanish navy
sailed forth from this petty haven. Ragusa looks the mere plaything of
the ocean; and indeed they say that in storms the sea surges up these
narrow gorges, and flings its spray right over the cliff-set walls on to
the house-tops within, frosting roofs and windows with crystalline brine.
Ragusa is still, as ever, a city of asylum. At the present moment a
number of houseless Christian refugees from the Herzegovina have sought
shelter here. A colony of these is domiciled outside the Porta Plocce,
or sea-gate, in some stable-like buildings which once served as the
Lazaretto. On our way there we passed the Turkish market, where a number
of Turks were purchasing salt, corn, and fodder for the starving troops
of the Sultan in the revolted districts.
The condition in which we found the refugees did great credit to the
hospitality of the Ragusans.[369] We had expected to find a set of
half-starved miserable wretches, clad in rags and worn with anxiety for
absent fathers, husbands, sons. Quite the contrary! They were well fed;
they did not seem at all forlorn, and with their light white kerchiefs
and chemises they presented a picture of cleanliness which would have
put to shame the squalor of many an Italian-Dalmatian. Among the Bosnian
refugees of the Save-lands were to be seen many able-bodied men. Here
it was far otherwise. The Herzegovinians are made of sterner stuff, and
we noticed among the refugees no boys over thirteen, and no men, except
one cripple, under seventy, and there were few enough even of these.
The women, too, showed something of the spirit of the matrons of old.
They had sold their silver trinkets to buy arms for their husbands.
Most of them were already stripped of the coins with which they love to
bespangle their fez—of the silver brooches of their belt, shaped like
two convolvulus leaves—of the broad girdle studded like an ephod with
rudely cut carnelians, agates, amethysts, and roots-of-emerald, set like
the mediæval gems in the neighbouring Reliquiario. One woman who still
possessed this superb _ceinture_ offered it me for twenty gulden—rather
less than two pounds. The gems came, she told us, from the Herzegovinian
valleys about Nevešinje—she did not know that the agates and carnelians
of these prolific sites were exported of old to the sea-ports of Roman
Dalmatia, there to be set, as now, in rings and trinkets, and carved with
classical devices![370] Attire so neat and graceful needed not, however,
the embellishment of barbaric jewellery; the bright crimson fez, the
light white kerchief drawn over it and falling about the shoulders in
artistic folds, the dark indigo jacket harmonising with the deep reds
and oranges of the apron—these were amply sufficient to make the little
groups highly picturesque as they sat or leant before their new homes,
plying their spindles most industriously. Little children were playing
before the women—such frank pleasant faces!—many with hair as fair as
ever that of young Angles.
There were about sixty families on this spot, as we found out on
distributing a small largess of ten kreutzers a family; and there is
another colony of fugitives at Gravosa. The Austrian Government allows
each family on an average twenty kreutzers a day, and the commune
of Ragusa makes up the amount to thirty-six kreutzers—not more than
eightpence of our money, but sufficient to support life out here. To-day
(September 3) there is a three days’ truce between the Turks and the
insurgents, and a proclamation has been issued by the Turkish governor
of the Herzegovina, in which the Pashà promises full indemnity and
freedom from molestation to any of the refugees who may consent during
this period to return home. Very few, however, have accepted the kind
invitation, and for one very good reason—that they have no homes left
them to return to.
We were very anxious to secure some memorial of the fugitives; so
bringing down the photographer of Ragusa to their colony, we induced the
Herzegovinians, by promises of largess, to form a series of groups. As
may be easily imagined, there was great difficulty in getting them to
keep quiet. The children kept moving about, the women always wanted to
set their caps a little differently at the last moment, and one gentleman
was very particular about the posture of his wooden leg. However, we
succeeded at last, and for a glimpse at the Herzegovinian refugees, as
we saw them at Ragusa, I can refer the reader to the frontispiece of this
work.
The turbaned figure to the right of the illustration, and the elegant
damsel with whom he is walking arm in arm, are not refugees, but peasants
from the immediate neighbourhood of Ragusa. The man’s costume, so closely
approaching the Turkish, is an interesting example of the influence
wrought by the peculiar relations in which, of old, Ragusa stood to the
Turks.[371] Nowhere else in Dalmatia does the costume of the peasant so
nearly approach that of the true-believer. Here we have not only the
same jacket and vest with their gorgeous gold embroidery, the same sash
and schalvars, but even a turban on the head; and were it not for his
white stockings and a certain preference for crimson jackets, the Ragusan
peasant might easily be mistaken for a Moslem. This habit of dress is
not confined to the peasants; it is still to be seen among the servants
and lower classes in Ragusa itself, and was doubtless originally adopted
by the Ragusan merchants to avoid raising the susceptibilities of the
infidels with whom they traded, by appearing in the garb of a Giaour.
In the seventeenth century, as may be gathered from the relation of
an English traveller, the Ragusan merchant who travelled in Turkey in
European costume did so at his peril. Blunt, who voyaged himself ‘clad
in Turkish manner,’ tells us,[372] in his quaint style, how ‘foure
Spahy-Timariots’ met his caravan, ‘where was a Ragusean, a Merchant of
quality, who came in at _Spalatra_ to goe for Constantinople, he being
clothed in the Italian fashion and spruce, they justled him: He not yet
considering how the place had changed his condition, stood upon his
_termes_, till they with their Axes, and iron Maces (the weapon of that
_country_) broke two of his ribs, in which case, we left him behinde,
halfe dead, either to get backe as he could, or be devoured of beasts.’
‘If I appeared,’ says Blunt a little farther on, ‘in the least part
clothed like a Christian, I was tufted like an Owle among other birds.’
Be pleased to observe the elegant pose of the Ragusan damsel who has
condescended to visit these unfortunates arm in arm with our turbaned
signior! There is a marked contrast between these refined peasant
gentle-folk—these ‘_Nostrani_,’ as the Ragusans call all those who dwell
within the limits of the old Republic—and yonder ‘_Morlacchi_’—the ruder
sons and daughters of the Herzegovinian mountains. Ragusa, even in her
days of mourning, has inherited something of her former civilization;
a peculiar refinement, both in her peasants and citizens, not to be
met with anywhere else throughout these lands, must strike the most
unobservant traveller. Not here the rude stare, the pestering beggary,
the meanness and mendacity—the painful relics of that barbarous Venetian
policy which condemned Dalmatia to perpetual poverty and ignorance. The
lion of St. Mark has never weighed like an incubus on Ragusa. It needs
to have visited Spalato and other Dalmatian cities to appreciate the
extraordinary exception in favour of cleanliness and good manners that
presents itself here.
The language here, not counting the German spoken by the Austrian
soldiery, is partly Italian and partly Sclavonic, but the bulk of the
population speak only Sclavonic. Here you hear the Serbian language at
its best; it, too, seems to have felt the influence of the literary
Italian which was once the official and scholastic language of the
Republic, and falls from the lips of Ragusan citizens with Tuscan
elegance and softness. The two elements of which Dubrovnik-Ragusa was
originally composed, the Serbian and the Roman, blend to form the typical
Ragusan features—now and again separating themselves in all their
individuality. In the streets of Ragusa the turquoise eyes of the true
Sclave peep out often enough from beneath the raven locks and lashes of
the Italian.
Is the time, one asks oneself, to arrive once more when Ragusa
shall take up anew the work for which by her very birth she is so
eminently fitted—will she once more take her place as the pioneer of
South-Sclavonic literature and civilisation? Her ‘gift of tongues,’ her
sober industry, her position, still remain. Though the old haven of the
Argosies has become too small for the leviathans of modern days, she has
at hand in Gravosa the finest harbour on the Dalmatian coast—the nearest
port to the point where the Narenta debouches on the sea after cleaving a
path through the Dinaric Alps towards the Drina and the commercial basin
of the Danube. The old trade route of Ragusan merchants only waits for
the demolition of artificial barriers to be opened out anew. Already we
hear of the improvement of the navigation of the lower Narenta, and a new
steam service is planned between Stagno and Ragusa.
Ragusa is the natural port of the Illyrian interior—the born interpreter
between the Italian and Sclave. Those only who have traversed the
barbarous lands between the Adriatic and the Save can adequately realise
how intimately the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina is bound up with the
future of Ragusa. The plodding genius of the Serbs needs to be fanned
into energy by these fresh sea-breezes—their imagination languishes for
want of this southern sunshine!
Here at last, after groping among the primeval shadows of the mighty
beech and pinewoods of the Bosnian midlands, we take our ease in one
of the gorgeous rock-girt coves which beautify the environs of Ragusa.
Overhead are hanging groves and gardens of rosy oleander, ferny palms,
myrtles, and creepers with flame-coloured trumpets. On the steep, a
spiry aloe leans forward, stretching towards the south; beneath us the
cliffs sink precipitously into the blue-emerald waters—intensified in
the deeper pools into a vinous purple—stretching away to the horizon in
marvellous ultramarine—on either side of the cove, fretting in a silvery
line of foam against walls of orange rock whose natural brilliance is
glorified now into refined gold by the setting sun. This is not the light
of common day!—it stands to it as some gorgeous mediæval blazoning to a
modern chromo-lithograph. It dazzles our dull northern eyes. We are on
the borders of another world. We catch an inspiration of the South. The
waters of the next sea-bosom lap the ruins of Hellenic Epidaurus.
But the gold on the rocks melts into more sombre browns and greys; the
western steeps of the cove lose their outlines in vague shadow; the
intense azure of sea and sky dies into a dark sapphire; the plashing of
the waves below asserts itself in tones more solemn with the gathering
twilight, and the darkness deepens into night.
FOOTNOTES
[1] This is not the place to discuss the question of earlier Sclavonic
immigrations.
[2] _De Administrando Imperio_, capp. xxx., xxxi., xxxii.
[3] Chorvat, one of the supposed Croatian leaders, is evidently the
eponymus of the whole race of Croats, whose own name for themselves,
Charvati or Hrvati, seems to signify ‘mountaineers,’ and to be connected
with the name of the _Carpathian_ mountains, and the Carpi of Roman
historians. Hilferding points out that of the names of Chorvat’s four
brothers, as given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, two are equivalent
in meaning to ‘Delay’ or ‘Tarrying,’ and Chorvat’s two sisters bear the
Sclavonic names of ‘Joy’ and ‘Sorrow.’ The names are perhaps allegorical
of the gradual character of their conquests, and of defeats sustained as
well as victories won.
[4] This seems to me far more probable than the poetic derivation of Župa
from the same word in the sense of ‘sunny land.’
[5] Presbyteri Diocleatis, _Regnum Slavorum_ (in Lucius, _De Regno
Dalmatiæ et Croatiæ, libri sex_. Amst: 1676: p. 291.)
[6] See _Codex Diplomaticus Regni Croatiæ, Dalmatiæ et Slavoniæ_, p. 188
(u Zagrebu, 1874). Sub Anno 1100. The seven Bans appear in the following
order:—1, the Ban of Croatia; 2, the Ban of Bosnia; 3, of Slavonia; 4, of
Posega; 5, Podravia; 6, Albania; 7, Syrmia.
[7] According to the Presbyter of Dioclea, Basil subdued the whole of
Bosnia, Rascia, and Dalmatia, including what is now Herzegovina. But this
subjection, if it was ever effected, must have been of the most temporary
character. From 1018 to 1076 the diadem of the Croatian Prince was
received from Byzantium.
[8] The allied Serbian troops, under Dobroslav and Niklas, overwhelmed
the army of Michael the Paphlagonian’s general in the gorge of Vranja
in Zenta, and, subsequently, that of Michael the Logothete, Governor of
Durazzo under Constantine Monomachus, in the defiles between Cattaro and
the lake of Scutari, which form at present the heart of Montenegro. See
Maximilian Schimek’s _Politische Geschichte des Königreichs Bosnien und
Rama_. Wien, 1787, p. 21.
[9] See p. 317. Perhaps this stream once formed the boundary of Croatia
in this direction. Evidently the name must first have been applied to
Bosnia by _Dalmatian_ borderers. The name Rama at first comprised the
territory between this river and the Adriatic.
[10] Hilferding, _Serben und Bulgaren_, p. 150.
[11] The Ban Borić. The passages relating to Bosnia in Cinnamus are in
his _Historiar._ lib. iii. c. 7 and 19.
[12] See pp. 220, 241, 403.
[13] At Novibrdo, in Serbia, the most flourishing of the Saxon colonies,
spoken of rapturously by an old Serbian writer as ‘a city of silver and
gold,’ the Teutonic word for ‘Burgher’ became naturalised, and a letter
of the Ragusans is extant addressed in 1388 to the Captain and Burghers,
_Kefalii i Purgarom_, of the town. See Jireček, _Gesch. der Bulgaren_, p.
401.
[14] See the _Synodic_ ‘written in the Bulgarian language by command
of the Czar Boris in the year 1210,’ a translation of which from the
original manuscript is given by the Russian historian Hilferding (in the
German translation of his History of the Serbs and Bulgarians, part i. p.
118).
[15] Excerpted in Sam. Andreæ, _Disquisitio de Bogomilis_.
[16] Recent Sclavonic writers accept the Bulgarian traditions as to
the Pope Bogomil; but they seem to me not to allow sufficient weight
to Byzantine evidence. It is right, however, to note that ‘Bogomil’ is
a possible Bulgarian personal name, and exactly answers, as Jireček
observes, to the German ‘Gottlieb.’ It is remarkable that the heretics
never called themselves Bogomiles, but simply ‘Christians,’ as did the
Patarenes and Albigensians of the West. By the orthodox Sclaves they were
called Bogomiles, _Babuni_, _Manicheji_, and in Bosnia also _Patareni_,
and, apparently from a corrupted form of that word, _Potur_.
[17] According to the Armenian Chronicle of Acogh’ig (iii. 20-22) the
Czar Samuel himself embraced the Manichæan religion. According to the
legend of St. Vladimir his son Gabriel and his wife were Bogomiles. See
Hilferding, op. cit.
[18] Cited in Hilferding, op. cit.
[19] Alexiados, lib. xv.
[20] Though she afterwards admits that the heresy had infected high
families.
[21] One, _Slovo na Eretiki_, against the heretics; and the other, _Slovo
o Cerkovnom Cinu_, on church government. The works of Cosmas are the only
monuments of Bulgarian literature dating from the epoch of Czar Samuel.
The passages relating to the Bogomiles are excerpted in Hilferding.
[22] Hilferding, op. cit. i., identifies this original sect with a
division of the Bogomiles known as ‘The Church of Dregovišce,’ and the
later with ‘the Church of Bulgaria.’ These two Churches are among the
thirteen Churches of the Cathari reckoned by the Italian Reniero Sacconi,
a renegade member of that sect, in the thirteenth century. The two
divisions are traceable in the Western heresies.
[23] The statements of Cosmas with reference to the existence of these
dualistic tenets among the Bogomiles are attested by the ‘Synodic of Czar
Boris,’ already referred to; by Euthymius Zygabenus, _Panoplia_; and, as
regards the Bogomiles of Bosnia, by Raphael of Volaterræ, _Geographia_;
and by the recent researches of Raški.
[24] Euthymius Zygabenus, _Panoplia_.
[25] It is remarkable that the only Bogomilian version of the Gospels
which has been preserved, a Bosnian Codex written in 1404, contains,
in spite of its late date, most primitive forms of speech; proving the
care with which the Bogomiles copied from their older manuscripts. See
Daničic’s account of the Bosnian Chval Codex in the _Starine_ of the
South-Sclavonic Academy, III. 1-146. Cited by Jireček, op. cit. p. 177.
[26] τελειοῦν.
[27] Cosmas, corroborated by the ‘Synodic’ and Harmenopulos.
[28] For their aversion to the cross see also Euthymius, _Panoplia_, Anna
Comnena, and Harmenopulos. See also p. 176.
[29] Cosmas. Their aversion to images, churches, and a hierarchy, is
borne out by the testimony of Euthymius and Anna Comnena.
[30] So too Anna Comnena and Euthymius.
[31] Rački (in Jireček, op. cit.)
[32] Thus Pope Gregory XI. writes in 1376: ‘Cum Bosnenses uxores
accipiant cum condicione, si eris bona, et intentione dimittendi, quando
sibi videbitur’ (MS. of the South Sclavonic Academy, cited in Jireček,
op. cit. p. 183).
[33] Cosmas is again slanderous when he says that the Bogomiles begged
from door to door.
[34] Jireček, op. cit. p. 180.
[35] Jireček, op. cit. p. 181.
[36] So Cosmas, ‘At the fifth time, however, they have the door open.’
According to Euthymius, who also bears witness to the Paternoster being
their only form, they prayed five times during the day and seven at
night. Euthymius (see also Epiphanius) says that they prayed also to
demons to avert evil, and that Basilius, their heresiarch, declared
that in their gospels was the text, ‘Worship demons, not that they may
do good to you, but that they may not do you harm.’ On this charge of
devil-worship, however even Cosmas is silent.
[37] This is illustrated by the missionary work of St. Sava in that
century. At the end of the ninth century the Narentines, living in the
immediate neighbourhood of Spalato and Ragusa, the two focuses of Roman
Christianity, were still unconverted, and their country, according to
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, was still known as Pagania. See p. 367.
How much more must this have been the case with the inland districts of
Bosnia!
[38] I find that this explanation of the rapid advance of the Manichæan
heresy among the Sclaves has suggested itself, quite independently, to
Herr Jireček in his recent history. He says (_Gesch. der Bulgaren_, p.
175): ‘Es war für Bogomil keine schwere Aufgabe, das unlängst erst dem
Heidenthüme entrückte Volk für eine Glaubenslehre zu gewinnen, welche,
gleich dem alten slawischen Mythus von den Bosi und Bêsi, lehrt, dass es
zweierlei höhere Wesen gebe, nämlich einen guten und einen bosen Gott.’
Herr Jireček, however, seems to forget that Armenian missionaries were at
work in Bulgaria considerably before even the reputed date of Bogomil.
If we remember that at the time when Manichæism first sought a footing
among the Bulgarians a great part of the nation was still pagan, these
considerations become still more cogent.
[39] See Schimek, _Pol. Gesch. des Königreichs Bosnien u. Rama_, p. 36.
[40] This is Hilferding’s conclusion.
[41] Or Spalato. Ragusa also laid claim to be the Metropolitan Church of
Bosnia in Culin’s time.
[42] Culin had married a sister of Stephen Némanja of Serbia, whose
Bogomilian opinions were notorious before her marriage. See Schimek, op.
cit. p. 48.
[43] This we learn from a letter of the Apostolic Legate of Alexander
III., then in Dalmatia, directed ‘Nobili et potenti viro Culin Bano
Bosniæ.’ The Legate writes to say that he is in very good favour with the
Pontiff; that he would like for himself a couple of slaves and a pair of
martens’ skins; and ‘if you have anything to signify to the Pontiff we
will benignantly listen to it.’ (!)
[44] Farlati, Episcopi Bosnenses. (In his _Illyricum Sacrum_, t. iv. p.
45.)
[45] The German word ‘_Ketzer_’ is derived from ‘_Cathari_,’ another name
for the sect.