The Slavonic-Latin Symbiosis in Dalmatia during the Middle Ages

Author(s): Viktor Novak

Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 32, No. 78 (Dec., 1953), pp. 1-28
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of
Slavonic and East European Studies
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 THE SLAVONIC

AND EAST EUROPEAN

REVIEW

The Slavonic-Latin
Symbiosis

in Dalmatia

the Middle
during Ages*

VIKTOR NOVAK

For a better understanding of the main part of this paper, it is

necessary to point out several historical features of the periods pre?
ceding the coming of the Slavs to the Balkans. First of all we must
bear in mind that during its history of two thousand years Dalmatia
has not always represented one and the same territory. Its name is
connected with that of the Delmates, an Illyrian tribe which peopled
the greater part of the present Yugoslav areas long before the Adriatic
islands saw the Greek colonists or the later Roman invaders of the
Balkans, who gathered all the Illyrian territory into one Roman
administrative unit, called Illyricum. It was under Roman rule that
Dalmatia was most extensive. It embraced not only the islands and
the coastal belt from Quarnero to Durazzo in Albania but also a deep
hinterland consisting of the present Yugoslav provinces of Croatia,
Bosnia and Hercegovina, Western Serbia and Macedonia. Dalmatia
was least extensive under Byzantine rule. From the beginning of the
9th century to the middle of the nth the Byzantines governed a
Dalmatia which consisted of only a few maritime towns together with
the neighbouring islands. The frontiers of the present Dalmatia are
quite different from those recognised under Venetian and afterwards
under Austrian rule.
From the beginning of the 4th century B.C., Greek merchant
colonists began to appear at the same time as the expansion towards
the Adriatic of Dionysius of Syracuse. Although the Greeks founded
* A paper read before the School of Slavonic and East
European Studies, University of
London, on 6 May 1952.

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2 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

colonies and towns with a highly developed economy and culture,

such as Isa (today Vis), Faros (the Old Town on Hvar), Korkira
Melaine (Korcula), Tragurion (Trogir), Epidaurus (Cavtat),
Epetion (Stobre6, near Split), the oldest part of Salona, etc., they
did not succeed at all in penetrating into the hinterland or in
hellenising the maritime districts. The Romans, on the contrary, in
their warlike expansion over the Balkans succeeded in subduing the
Illyrians, but only after a long struggle which lasted for two cen?
turies and a half, from the middle of the 3rd century B.C. up to the
year a.d. 9. It is not without significance to mention that Gaius
Asinius Pollio, the general and historian, obtained from his conquest
of the Illyrians (in 3 B.C.) a valuable booty which he used to build the
first magnificent public library in Rome.
From that time on a gradual romanisation of Illyrian Dalmatia
followed. It developed quite favourably and was very soon reflected
in a rather exuberant cultural and economic prosperity, which lasted
for centuries. To this day the visitor can note the numerous archae?
ological, architectural and artistic remains of the many towns which
the Romans either rebuilt or continued to develop after the Greeks.
Dalmatia gave Rome several famous emperors, including Diocletian
(whose name shows his Illyrian origin), popes and significant names
in culture and science. Among these is one of the four great teachers
of the Church, Hieronymus Dalmata, the Yugoslav St Jere, whom
the Croatians completely transformed into a Slav during the Middle
Ages and made, inexactly of course, the creator of the Glagolitic
alphabet. There is no doubt that the Roman culture in Dalmatia was
also a product of the Illyrico-Roman symbiosis and that it inherited a
good deal from the civilisation of the old Dalmatian inhabitants of
the times long before the invasion of Dalmatia. This, again, is rather
clearly shown by the names and place-names preserved in Dalmatian
latinity.
Dalmatia represents a special type of Roman province when com?
pared to others in the Roman Empire at the time of its fall. The
German Odoacer, who overthrew the last Roman emperor, Romulus
Augustulus, tookfully four years more to
conquer Dalmatia, suc?
ceeding in this only in 480. After the removal of Odoacer the East
Goths came to power in Dalmatia too, governing it until the victory
obtained by Justinian's fleet in the Bay of Salona (538). From that
time on, for a long period, Dalmatia's fate was that of an outlying
Byzantine province ruled by the prefect of Illyricum, whose residence
was far away in the centre of the Balkans, in Ulpiana (today Lipljan)
on Kosovo plain. During the various changes which shook Byzantium
in the 6th century, Dalmatia was subject to the imperial exarch in
Ravenna. The Avars and the Slavs swept in from the north, in dis-

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 3

organised, and later in organised bands, across the Danube frontier

and gradually infiltrated the country with new ethnical elements,
which at first weakened the aboriginal Roman and Greek elements
(in the east) and later drove them further and further towards the
south?the coasts of the Adriatic, Ionian and Aegean Seas.
We shall leave aside the important historical period of real crisis
which shook the very foundations of the Byzantine Empire at the end
of the 6th and the beginning of the 7th century. In the end the crisis
was happily overcome after Emperor Heraclius's victories over the
Avars (628) and the Persians (638). We shall also leave aside ques?
tions such as the part of the Slavs in the Avar invasions, their gradual
liberation from their recent masters or allies, and the Serbo-Croatian
migration into Dalmatia. It is certain that Dalmatia was heavily
damaged by these movements, that it was devastated and that the
majority of its towns were completely destroyed. Only a few were
preserved, such as Zadar and Trogir. It is certain, too, that after
devastating Roman Dalmatia, the Croats and Serbs were incor?
porated by Heraclius's masterly reconstructive plans as a construc?
tive element in the Empire.1 Therefore we are above all interested
in the early relations between the Slavs and the Romans, or Latins.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus called them 'Romanoi' in the 10th
century and the chronicler, Archdeacon Thomas of Split, called them
'Latini5 in the 13th.
The first of the Romans to inform us about these Slavs was Pope
Gregory the Great himself. His statements about the Slavs are not at
all flattering. In 592 he congratulated Jovinus, the prefect of Illyri-
cum, on having been able to recover Dalmatia from the barbarian
attacks, obviously meaning by 'barbarians' not only the Avars but
the Slavs.2 Gregory also rejoiced in the news of the victories won by
Kalinik, the exarch of Ravenna, over the Slavs.3 And as the Pope
rejoiced in the defeat of the Slavs in 599, he was in the next year,
600, grieved to hear about their victories. The Pope was very sad and
troubled, as he informed the Salonitan Archbishop Maximus?sad,
because of the Dalmatians who were exposed to such sufferings, and
troubled, because the Slavs had already begun to cross the frontiers
of Italy from Istria.4
And indeed, the ethnic frontier between the Slavs and the Romans,
1 See G. Ostrogorski, Slovena na drustveni
'Uticaj preobrazaj Vizantije', Istoriski
Zasopis,I, Belgrade, 1948, pp. 12-21; 'Agrarian Conditions in the Byzantine Empire in the
Middle Ages,' CambridgeEconomicHistory,I, 1942, pp. 194-223; Istorija Vizantije,Belgrade,
1947, PP- 60 sq.
2 F. SiSic, Enchiridion
fontium historiaeCroaticae,Zagrabiae, 1914, p. 172.
3 'Quod mihi de Sclavis victorias nuntiasti
magna me laetitia relevatum esse cognoscite
. . .' Cf. F. Kos, Gradivoza zgodovinoSlovencevv srednjemveku,I, Ljubljana, 1902, p. 167.
4 'Et
quidem de Sclavorum gente, quae vobis valde inminet, et affligor vehementer et
conturbor. Affligor in his quae iam in vobis patior; conturbor quia per Histriae aditum
iam ad Italiam intrare coeperunt. . .' Cf. F. Sisic, Enchiridion,p. 173.

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4 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

which was drawn thirteen and a half centuries ago, was to remain
unchanged, as is shown by the thousand-year-old Slavonic place-
names.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Archdeacon Thomas describe
the fall of Salona, the principal town of Dalmatia, in great detail, and
the former says that it was half the size of Constantinople. It is not
difficult to explain in detail the naturally hostile feelings of the
original inhabitants against the invaders of Dalmatia. A fair number
of traces of this remained in Roman tradition. Like Salona, many
other towns and settlements were destroyed. The majority of their
inhabitants fled to the neighbouring islands, where they remained
until conditions became somewhat more settled. Returning to the
mainland, they were able to found new settlements, which later grew
into large towns. The inhabitants of Salona found shelter within the
walls of the old palace of Diocletian, and those of Epidaurus founded
Ragusium (Dubrovnik). All these things considered, it seems that
after the successful intervention of the Byzantine emperor more
peaceful and settled relations developed between the Latins and their
Slav neighbours, who lived
immediately under the walls of the old
and new Roman on the Adriatic coast. Such intervention,
settlements
however, was possible only under favourable conditions. It could not
take place, for instance, soon after the fall of Salona in 614.
Economic and social elements were factors which paved the way
for better relations between the neighbours. Thanks to the need of
finding a modus vivendi with regard to the necessities of life, towns
well-advanced in material and spiritual culture developed in the
course of the Middle Ages. Their civilisation was created both by the
Slavs and the Latins, the descendants of the Dalmatian Romans.
These changed, almost friendly, relations are reflected in the 13th
century writings of Thomas of Split, who otherwise was not favour?
ably inclined towards the Croatians and was a rugged representative
of the few surviving descendants of the old Latins. He tells us that
after the action of the inhabitants of Split themselves, an imperial
rescript of Heraclius was addressed to both sides, as a result of which
peace between the Latins and the Slavs was established. From that
time on the people of Split started a lively traffic with the Slavs,
especially the Croatians, making trade agreements and ultimately
intermarrying with them.5 Doubtless the gradual development of
such economic and social conditions led to ethnic changes in the
towns themselves, which had been exclusively Roman haifa century
before. On the one hand, the new family relationships made the
Roman urban families accept more and more Slav elements, and on
5 Thomas archidiaconus Spalatensis, Historia Salonitana. Ed. F. Racki (Monumenta
pectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, vol. XXVI), Zagrabiae, 1894, p. 33.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 5
the other hand the increasing economic demand for labour could not
be satisfied from among the citizens, but had to be supplied by the
numerous Slavs who lived on the outskirts. In this way the Slavs
too were introduced to all kinds of craftsmanship. And the Slavonic
element was to influence the biological and social process, with the
result that the Dalmatian-Roman gradually towns
changed their
ethnic character. This was the case with
Split and other places on
the coast. Meanwhile, these changes were hastened by another fact.
Extant historical records, which were known to Thomas of Split,
allow us to conclude that the already diluted native organism was
almost entirely exhausted by the time of the Gothic, Avar and
Slavonic migrations. Already then there existed no resistant force,
eitherphysical or moral, which could stand up against the invaders.
The natives had not the capacity, for instance, of the inhabitants of
Spain and Gaul, for assimilating invaders and creating new languages
and new nations. Here in Illyricum and also in Dalmatia a quite
different lineof development was followed in linguistic symbiosis.
Whereas in Western Europe the invaders were in the minority and
the old inhabitants much more numerous, in Illyricum, it was the
other way about from the very beginning of the settlement. Accord?
ingly, neither a new language nor a new nation could spring out of
the Slavonic-Latin symbiosis. Very soon the slavicised hinterland,
with its great numbers and vitality, had its effect on the process of
change in the ethnic structure of the former urban population. The
penetration of the Slavs into the towns, in which the original element
was growing scarce and disappearing as the Slavonic element was
growing stronger, became still more intensive when religious differ?
ences between the old inhabitants
the Slavs vanished.
and The
supreme Slavonic divinity Perun, was who
worshipped on the top of
Mosor hill, above Split, had to withdraw before the might of Christ,
just as in the earlier Split Diocletian's Jupiter had had by the end of
the 8th century to cede his temple to the Christian worship. And when
the refugees from Salona came back to the mainland and settled in
part of Diocletian's palace, there were very few of them, as Thomas
of Split confirms, who considered the fall of Salona and its inhabitants
as God's punishment for their heathen and immoral lives.6
As conditions became more settled, a Frankish-Roman action
began?that of the Roman curia and of the Frankish ruler Charles
the Great, who included Dalmatia in his plans for expansion. These
were in most cases realised, in Dalmatia as well as in a part of Pan?
nonia, in the regions between the rivers Sava and Drava. During the
9th century the greater part of the so-called Dalmatian Croatia and
of the Croatia of the Sava basin was dominated by the Franks, and
Ibidem,p. 32.

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D THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

only the smaller part, the towns and islands, were under Byzantine
rule. By the end of the 8th century then the Balkan Slavs, especially
those in Dalmatia, had already made some progress in the organisa?
tion of the regions they had invaded in the 7th by abandoning their
clan-tribal system for a type of West European state organisation.
Christianity also played its part in all this. There were two streams of
christianisation: the first, the weaker and smaller, came from Rome
via Ravenna and probably Aquileia at the end of the 8th century,
and the second was Slavonic and appeared a hundred years later,
led by pupils of St Cyril and St Methodius.
The two previous centuries are poor in historical material and are
very obscure.7 But by the end of the 8th century history becomes
clearer and more definite. From that time there are both written
documents and extant archaeological remains. The first Latin con?
version of the Slavs coincided with the action of Archbishop John of
Ravenna, who in the name of Rome restored the old Salonitan
hierarchy in Dalmatia, this time in Split, which thus became heir to
the old Salonitan ecclesiastical organisation.8 To that time, besides
numerous remains of early Christian church-building, belong two
written memorials, one palaeographic and the other epigraphic. Both
of them bear witness to the peculiar character of the Latin-Slavonic
symbiosis. The epigraphic memorial is an inscription on the font of
the Croatian prince Viseslav of Nin, at the end of the 8th century.
It stands today in the atrium of the Yugoslav Academy in Zagreb.
The other memorial is the wonderful semiuncial MS., Evangeliarium
Spalatense, written in the first large scriptorium in Split. On the font
from Nin the Croatian Viseslav and the Latin presbyter Johannes,
who is doubtless identical with John of Ravenna, are mentioned
together. In the Evangeliarium Spalatense there are also a number of
symbiotic elements, especially in the later records of certain Croatian
bishops?their Latin oaths of loyalty to the archbishop of Split as his
suffragans. The Gospel of St John shows most strikingly how weak
Greek influence was in this town, which was to come under Byzan?
tine rule. The text is Greek, but it is transcribed phonetically in
Latin characters, for a Latin in 8th-century Split did not know how
to write Greek characters.9 This Gospel was sung in Greek even in the
Latin church at Christmas.
After receiving Christianity from Latin missionaries at the end of
the 8th century, the majority of the inhabitants were far from having

7 C. Jirecek, Die Romanenin den StadtenDalmatienswahrenddes Mittelalters.Denkschriften

derK. Akademieder Wiss. in Wien, Phil.-hist. Classe, vol. XLVIII, Vienna, 1901, p. 32.
8 V. Novak, Titanje pripadnosti splitske nadbiskupije u vrijeme njezine organizacijV,
za arheologijui historijudalmatinsku,Split, 1923, pp.
9 V. Novak, Najstariji dalmatinskirukopis.Evangeliarium89-127.
Vjesnik
Spalatense.I. Prilog Vjesniku za
.arheologiju i historiju dalmatinsku, Split, 1923.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 7
been completely converted. But, on the other hand, the higher ranks
of converts, especially princes and other tribal chiefs and grandees,
showed great devotion to the Latin church and its head in Dalmatia.
Many indications of benefactions are preserved in the charters of
these princes, and later in those of the kings (from 925) and they tell
us that very close relations existed between the church and the state
authorities. This is acknowledged by Thomas of Split and shown by
the foundations established by Croatian princes as early as the 9th
century. It is also shown by the considerable number of Benedictine
monasteries, founded not only in the towns but outside them.10
Cultural life displays a fine flowering, mostly, of course, in a religious
direction. The Latin language became dominant not only in the
public life of the towns but at the courts of the Croatian
princes, in all
public and private legal documents?exactly as in the rest of Europe.
This was the case not only in Split, Trogir, Zadar, Ragusium and
other towns, where it had its ancient tradition, but in the new seats of
the Croatian princes, such as Klis, Nin, Knin, Bijaci and later
Sibenik. Latin was used in the church, in ecclesiastical literature, and
in law and administration, and it already had a tradition of more
than a century among the Croatians.
There is no doubt that before learning to read and write Latin and
Greek, the Croatians had used Greek and Latin characters in an
attempt to express themselves in their own language. But there were
not enough of them to represent all the sounds which this language
contained. It is certain that a fair number of Croatian priests learned
Latin in order to be able to read the service and to preach, or to carry
out the duties of Benedictine monks, which involved a knowledge of
reading and writing. Perhaps it was these educated men who tried
to put their Slavonic words in Latin letters. Doubtless, they felt all
the difficulties resulting from a lack of signs for sounds unknown to
Greek and Latin. We have two certain proofs that this was so. One
dates from the beginning of the 10th century, and the second from
the end of the same century. In the first case, the monk Chrabr from
the neighbourhood of Ochrida (Ohrid) knew the followers of Metho?
dius and was himself an enthusiastic cglagoliast'. In his study 'On
Letters', Chrabr pointed out that before they became acquainted
with the Greek and Latin alphabet, the Slavs had used special signs
of their own 'crte i reze' (similar to Ogam writing), in fact Slavonic
runes, which had not the character of an alphabet. Chrabr, this first
Slavonic philologist, pointed out the difficulties met by Cyril and
Methodius, not in adopting the Greek letters, but in inventing a new
alphabet in which all Slavonic sounds could be written. He mentions
particularly the sounds dz, Z, s, c, *>,for which there are no signs in
10Thomas archidiaconus Spalatensis, HistoriaSalonitana,
p. 35.

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 8 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

either Greek or Latin. In fact, as early as the loth century, Chrabr

indicated a problem which was to puzzle all western Slavs who had
adopted the Latin alphabet (e.g. the Czechs up to Hus at the begin?
ning of the 15th century and the Croatians up to Ljudevit Gaj in the
19th). Chrabr is at the same time the first apologist of Glagolitic and
its phonetic advantages over all other alphabets.11 The fact that the
Slavs had begun to use the Latin alphabet very early is proved by
the well-known Freising Fragments (Brizinski Spomeniki) of the end
of the 10th century, which show the most various combinations of
letters to represent one Slavonic sound. Indeed many other non-
Romance languages using the Latin alphabet experience the same
difficulty and have to resort to combinations of letters to symbolise
one phoneme. The authoritative edition of the early Slavonic text,
edited in Ljubljana by Fran Ramovs and Milko Kos, gives the earliest
examples of bilingualism, Latin and Slavonic, on the same page.12
Another such bilingual document is an old inscription from Valun
on the island of Cres, which has recently been discussed by Yugoslav
slavists. Whereas some of them think that it is only a little older than
the so-called Baska Tablet (Bascanska ploca) from Krk, the oldest (late
11th-century) Glagolitic inscription in Croatia, my opinion is that
this bilingual inscription dates from the early 10th century. An
almost identical text, which mentions the names of the ctitors of the
Valun church, is incised on a stone slab in Glagolitic letters and in
badly formed andirregular Latin semiuncials.13 These are not the
only examples of Latin-Slavonic graphic parallelism. They exist in
almost all the succeeding centuries of the Middle Ages. One charac?
teristic inscription is to be found on the fibula of Prince Peter of
Hum, the brother of the famous Prince Miroslav of the end of the
12th century. This bilingual inscription is in Cyrillic and Latin
characters on exceptionally finely engraved gold and it is one of the
treasures of the National Museum in Belgrade.14
One which
inscription has been preserved
in three languages,
Latin, Greek andSlavonic, to the south of Lake Prespa in present-
day Albania, refers to two personalities, St Vladimir and Kosara,
well-known in the history and legends which constitute the oldest
elements in the Slavonic literature of the Balkans.15 It is an echo
from an area where the three streams of culture met as early as the
beginning of the nth century, and where they remained until the
14th century (when, in 1381, this inscription was made). Streams
11 Rukovet 6-12.
J.
12 F. Vajs, hlaholskipaleogrqfie,Praha, 1932, pp.
Ramovs-M. Kos, Brizinskispomeniki,Ljubljana, 1937, pl. 9.
13B. Fucic,
'Izvestaj o putu po otocima Cresu i Losinju', LjetopisJugoslavenskeakademije,
knj. 54, Zagreb, 1949, pp. 31-76 (with the facsimile).
14 Lj. Kovacevic, 'Zapon humskog kneza Petra', Starinar,I,
15 St Novakovic, Prvi osnovi slovenskeknjizevnosti Belgrade, 1884, pp. 110-18.
medjubalkanskimSlovenima,Belgrade,
1893, pp.225-8.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 9

flowing from
opposite directions are shown in a recently discovered
inscription at Boka Kotorska, in a small Orthodox church of the end
of the 14th century. It is a Roman-Cyrillic inscription, relating to the
foundation of the little church of St Basil (Vasilije) in Stoliv and is
made more interesting by the iconographic and hagiographic sym?
biosis displayed in fresco paintings of saints belonging to both the
Eastern and Western churches.16
These bilingual examples, in a striking way symbolise
which the
Slavonic and Latin symbiosis during three successive centuries, point
to another peculiar phenomenon which has not been noticed up to
now by either foreign or Yugoslav scholars. This phenomenon, ex?
clusively confined to the Dalmatian cultural zone and its immediate
hinterland, is Latin-Slavonic polygraphy, which is not to be found
anywhere in the West of Europe. First, as regards the development of
the Latin script in Dalmatia from the Roman epoch to the end of the
Middle Ages, we may say that it followed the same course as in Italy
itself. All kinds of majuscules and cursives are represented in well
authenticated examples. The same process can also be traced in
documents of the cultural renaissance period at the end of the 8th
century and, later, on every kind of material used for writing in the
Middle Ages. Thus, in addition to the capitals used for inscriptions
and for the titles of works in various manuscripts, the later Roman
cursive script and the semiuncial were used in Dalmatia by the end
of the 8th century, and these were two sources of the development of
the mediaeval Latin minuscule hand. First came the Beneventana and
the Caroline which existed simultaneously in Dalmatia for fully five
centuries giving place subsequently to the Gothic script, which in its
turn was superseded by the littera humanistica in the 15th century. By
the end of the 9th century the Slavs in Dalmatia undoubtedly used
the Glagolitic alphabet, at first of the round type and afterwards of a
new andunique pointed type, which gradually developed in Dal?
matia. After the Glagolitic alphabet, the Cyrillic soon appeared and
was also used in Dalmatia, so that again a special type developed,
particularly marked in the Croatian district of Poljice (south of
Split). But here we must say that so great a number of different
types of Latin and Slavonic script, of a calligraphic and cursive
character, appeared within such a narrow space only because of the
symbiosis. Thus I have been able to establish that the appearance of
the pointed, Croatian Glagolitic is connected with the Latin pointed
Beneventana, as slavists have begun to admit,17 and I am on the way
to proving that even the shape of the Cyrillic letters in the 'Miroslav
16 It is to be
published in SpomenikSrpskeakademijenauka,CHI, 1953.
17 V. Novak,
Scripturabeneventana
s osobitimobziromna tip dalmatinskebeneventane,
Zagreb,
1920, pp. 62, 66. See also the chapter 'Slavizmi u dalmatinskoj beneventani', pp. 45-50.
Cf. J. Vajs, Rukovithlaholske"paleografie,
p. 136.

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 IO THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Gospel' originated in a scriptorium which was under the influence of

the Beneventana script and the Monte Cassino art of illumination.
Artistic production in Dalmatia, of which we shall speak more at the
end of this paper, is also the fruit of the symbiosis and alternation of
influences, conscious and unconscious, direct and indirect. There is
no doubt that this diversity of scripts was also the result of the creative
genius of the Slavs, who knew how to take their share in the general
process of the development of writing. It is at the same time charac-
istic of the contribution of the Southern Slavs to the development of
European culture in general, a contribution which up to the present
has hardly been admitted at all. Although the Glagolitic and Cyrillic
alphabets were used by large numbers of Serbs and Croats, a con?
siderable number of educated Dalmatian Croats later adopted the
Latin alphabet, in spite of all the above-mentioned unavoidable
difficulties. The Church was one of the most influential factors. The
use of Latin characters in the early Slavonic religious texts was in fact
not only a reflection of the Slavonic-Latin symbiosis, but a clear echo
of the compromise which was forcing itself upon the opposing and
mutually exclusive Glagolitic and Latin elements, which were in
essence national opposites. There are many examples of this, though
it is true that the earliest ones preserved are only of the 14th century.
Slavonic religious texts then began to
be written in the Latin
character, in the Caroline and the Gothic scripts and finally in the
humanistic, all of them of two types, the calligraphic and the cursive.18
The humanistic script was to remain as the most vital in modern
times as well. With the Slavs it underwent various transformations
and by resort to diacritic signs replaced the former combination of
letters for one and the same spoken sound.19
Slavonic illuminated codices, Cyrillic and Glagolitic, reflect the
same closesymbiosis. But it can also be noticed in Latin manuscripts
produced by Slavonic scribes and illuminators. One can see in them
the powerful influence of all the artistic tendencies then dominant
in Italy. These artistic tendencies had their representatives in Dal?
matia as well as in the rest of Europe.20
Numerous Dalmatian Latin codices, which are to be found in
Yugoslav libraries, ecclesiastical and secular, and also abroad, prove
that the Dalmatian artist kept in step with his colleagues, the calli?
graphers of the best Italian scriptoria and illuminators' studios.
18 I.
Milcetic-J. Milosevic, 'Sibenska molitva XIV vijeka pisana latinicom', Starine,
XXXIII, Zagreb, 1911, pp. 572-92 (with two facsimiles). F. Fancev, Vatikanskihrvatski
molitveniki Dubrovackipsaltir. Djela Jugoslavenskeakademije,XXXI, Zagreb, 1934.
19 T. Maretic, Istorija
hrvatskoga pravopisalatinskijemslovima.Djela Jugoslavenskeakademije,
IX, Zagreb, 1889.
20V. - -
Jagic L. Thalloczy F. Wickhoff, Missale glagoliticumHervoiae duds Spalatensis
Vindobonae, 1891 (with facsimiles); I. Milcetic, 'Hrvatska glagolska bibliografija',
Starine,XXXIII, Zagreb, 1911, pp. 33-5.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA II

When in the Cinquecento this art began to be superseded by printing

and was on the verge of disappearing, two Slavonic names appeared
as those of first-rate artists. These are the illuminator Felicijan of
Dubrovnik, who worked for
humanistic the
library of the Hun?
garian King, Matthias
Corvinus,21 and the even more famous
Julije Klovic of Grizani, whom Italian historians of art were to adopt
under the name of Giulio Clovio as an Italian artist, and whose works
are the pride of many galleries and libraries all over the world, in?
cluding some in England.22
Mutual cultural exchanges between the eastern and the western
sides of the Adriatic were as lively as the exchange of material goods.
The sea united the two
sides of the Adriatic much more than it
separated them.
During the Middle Ages numerous ecclesiastical
and civil personages from Dalmatia acquired their knowledge in
Italy and transplanted it to their motherland. From the 9th to the
13th century the particularly industrious Benedictines were such
transporters and mediators, being very actively connected with the
chief centre of their order, Monte Cassino. There is no doubt that
many Dalmatian monasteries, the oldest of which were founded with
the direct participation of Benedictines from Monte Cassino, often
entertained brothers from Italy. On the other hand the Dalmatian
Benedictines certainly often visited
their headquarters. On the
bronze gates of Monte Cassino an inscription bears witness to such
relations between Dubrovnik and Monte Cassino in the time of the
great Abbot Desiderius in the 1 ith century.23 It should be mentioned
here that in this respect it is of no small importance that Kotor was
subordinate to the Archbishopric of Bar, which had been on intimate
terms with the Dalmatians since the earliest times.24
While we are dealing with written matter we should not neglect
a considerable number of documents which elucidate the economic
relations obtaining between the Dalmatian towns and their hinter?
land. These also show to some extent traces of the dual influence in
writing. They point, at the same time, not only to our symbiosis, but
also to the penetration of Slavdom into the Roman Dalmatian towns.
The transformation of the old Roman Ragusium into the Latin-
Slavonic and ultimately into the purely Slavonic Dubrovnik is a very
instructive example. And it is Dubrovnik indeed, at the beginning of
21C. Fiskovic, JVasi
primorskiumjetniciodg do ig stoljeca,Zagreb, 1948, p. 258. (Reprinted
from Hrvatskokolo, no. 2, 1948.) Idem, 'Dubrovacki sitnoslikari', Prilozi povijestiumjetnosti
u Dubrovniku,Split, 1950.
22British Museum. from IlluminatedManuscripts,Series IV, London, 1928,
Reproductions
pp. 17-18; J. O. Westwood, PalaeographiaSacra Pictoria, no. 35, London, 1843-5. The
Soanen Clovio MS.: 'On a small slab, at the foot of the picture, is inscribed: Marino
Grimano cardinali et legato Perusino, Patrono suo, Julius Crovatapingebat'.
23 E. A. Lowe, The Beneventan
Script, Oxford, 1914, pp. 60-3; V. Novak, Scriptura
Beneventana,pp. 4-13.
24 C. Jirecek, Die Romanen,I,
p. 47; IstorijaSrba, I, Belgrade, 1922, p. 161.

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12 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

the 15th century, which best illustrates the Slavonic-Latin symbiosis

as an harmonious whole. Dubrovnik, not only the town but the pat?
rician republic which possessed considerable territories outside the
town, linked in a strong and vital relationship the immediate and
more distant regions of the hinterland, which, in their turn, gravi?
tated towards Dubrovnik commercially and politically. Thus Dub?
rovnik connected the hinterland not only with the Dalmatian coast
but with the whole Mediterranean, to which its considerable fleet of
merchant ships had access. Many sidelights of economic, legal,
political and cultural importance may be gained from the rich store
of documents preserved in the famous archives of Dubrovnik, of
which the slavist Milan Resetar, has truly said, that they are as old
as the town itself.
Dubrovnik was the intermediary between the
Mediterranean and the Serbian and Bosnian states throughout the
Middle Ages. This wider symbiosis is clearly shown by numerous
documents of a legal and diplomatic character written at first entirely
in Latin, then in Latin with the signatures of the contracting parties
in the Serbian language and characters, in the two languages,
then
and at last entirely in Serbian. Although in the Republican Chan?
cellery of Dubrovnik mediaeval Latinat first dominated, then
Italian, introduced by the foreign notaries in the service of the
Republic, the need for using the Slavonic language and script was
gradually becoming more and more urgent. So the symbiosis is most
evident in the very offices in which Serb and Latin worked together
for the Republic. Undoubtedly the Serbs soon came to know Latin
as well as their own language. The many-sided activities of the chan?
cellery gradually became so extensive that an independent Serbian
office was formed to attend to all necessary legal business in Serbian
and exclusively in the Cyrillic alphabet. Cancellarius linguae slavae was
a reality of the 14th century which had its roots in previous phases
of development going back a full three centuries.25 A mere glance at
the written aspect of the commercial contracts between Dubrovnik
and Serbian rulers such as Stevan Nemanja, his brother Prince Miro-
slav of Hum, the Bosnian ban Kulin (1189) and the Serbian Tsar
Dusan, discloses clearly the same phenomena, but of course only in
25 For literature on the State Archives and Office in Dubrovnik, see St
Stanojevid,
Studijeo srpskojdiplomatici,XXVI, Glas Srpske akademije nauka, 169, 1935, p. 52, fn. 3;
Istorijasrpskognarodau srednjemveku.I. Izvorii istoriografija,Posebna izdanja Srpske akademije
nauka, CXXI, 49, Belgrade, 1937, p. 17, fn. 1. M. Resetar thinks that by the end of the
12th century there was need of a Slavonic chancellery. At the beginning of the 13th cen?
tury, at any rate since 1238, the government of Dubrovnik not only received Serbian
writs but gave its answers in Serbian. (Cf. ArchivfurslavischePhilologie,XVI, 1894, p. 328.)
By the end of January 1364 the Consilium Minus, i.e. the Government, concluded as
follows: '. . . cap tum fuit et firmatum quod omnes litterae sclavicae mittendae a communi
Ragusii, quae videbuntur domino Rectori et parvo consilio registrandae, quod debeant
registrari in uno quaterno.' Cf. V. BogiSic - C. Jirecek, LiberstatutorumcivitatisRagusii
compositusanno 1272, Monumenta historico-juridica Slavorum Meridionalium, 9, Zag-
rabiae, 1904, p. 351.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 13
territories such Slavonic-Latin
in which symbiosis was possible and
where vital
necessities made it indispensable.26
In view of what has been said, it may seem to some that after the
7th or 8th century, when Latins and Slavs settled down to peaceful
relations, this symbiosis continued in idyllic peace and harmony. In
point of fact, however, there were conflicts and hostilities, periodical
and of varying and even permanent duration. There were conflicts
even among homogeneous towns in Dalmatia, as that between Split
and Trogir, which are described in considerable detail by Thomas of
Split in the 13th century. More serious conflicts arose particularly
during the periods bi which Dalmatian towns were the victims of
invasion by Venice, which ever since the 9th century had aspired to
conquer Dalmatia, so as to have a base against the Croatians, who
hindered Venetian navigation in the Adriatic and threatened
Venetian commercial ascendancy not only in the Adriatic but in the
Levant. The great rival of Venice was Dubrovnik. The periodical
invasions of the Dalmatian towns had their repercussions on their
relations with the Croats of the interior, who had defended their
positions most vigorously ever since the 9th century, courageously
resisting all Venetian attempts at conquest. In defending themselves,
the Croats also defended the Dalmatian towns, in which they had
represented a considerable part of the population from early times.
In the towns which Venice succeeded in annexing for a certain time,
she created, partly through her officials, a party of her own, which
in. the more or less autonomous Dalmatian communities was always
inimically disposed towards both the urban and the rural Slavs.
Through her supporters Venice introduced elements of discord, and
not infrequently of conflict into the Slavonic-Latin symbiosis. And by
her military campaigns in Dalmatia Venice left deeply rooted
antagonisms which could not be erased even by time, because they
involved interests active through the centuries. Very often the Slavs
either damaged or destroyed Venetian fleets; more than one doge
lost his life during these campaigns in Dalmatia; and even the
Venetian victories were won with heavy losses. All this created a per?
manently hostile atmosphere which, especially through the sup?
porters of Venice, was extended to the Slavonic-Latin symbiosis.
Social and political relations became more and more strained, par?
ticularly in the religious sphere. The clergy, who used the Glagolitic
alphabet and advocated the use of the Slavonic language in the
religious services, were almost constantly at war with the Latins, who
26 Lj.
Stojanovic, Staresrpskepoveljei pisma, I, Zbornik za istoriju i knjizevnost srpskog
naroda. Srpska Kraljevska akademija, I odeljenje, knjiga XIX. Belgrade, 1929 (with fac?
similes T.I-III). A. V. Solovjev, Odabranispomenicisrpskogprava od XII do kraja XV veka,
Belgrade, 1926, p. 6.

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14 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

considered their aspirations heretical. They were supported in this by

the highest authorities in Rome. There could be no compromise
between the Latin and the Glagolitic parties, and this age-old con?
flict often made Slavonic-Latin relations very difficult. It goes with?
out saying that in this religious-national conflict Venice was on the
side of the Latins as representing the pure Italian idea; on the other
hand, glagolism was the strongest defence of the Croats against
romanisation.
More than any other Dalmatian town, Zadar resisted the domina?
tion of Venice. Venice attempted in all possible ways to overcome it.
From 1115 to 1202 the people of Zadar fought eleven battles against
Venice before yielding to her mercenaries. These were Crusaders on
their way via Venice to their fourth invasion of Palestine. Zadar fell
a victim to the bargain between these Crusaders and the Venetian
Doge Enrico Dandolo and was destroyed and plundered and a large
part of its inhabitants was put to the sword. The people of Zadar
brought out their ancient cross and set it up on the town walls,
hoping the invaders would spare them, but without avail. It was a
barbarous destruction of a Christian town?'Jadres en Esclavonie',
as it was called in the chronicle of one of the participants in this
Crusade, the chronicler and marshal Geoffroi de Villehardouin, who
faithfully described it. The Crusaders soon justified their shameful
deed to Pope Innocent II and went on to seize Byzantium. The Pope
did not excommunicate them 'because he knew very well that it was
not possible to serve God without the army'.27 Presently it was the
turn of Dubrovnik, which remained under Venetian rule from 1205
to 1358, while retaining its internal republican order. Whenever
favourable circumstance permitted, the towns would throw off the
hated Venetian yoke, only to be subdued again. Such vicissitudes
are recorded up to 1409, when the Neapolitan King Ladislav, who
was a pretender to the Hungarian-Croatian throne, relinquished his
claim on Dalmatia to Venice during the struggle against King Sigis?
mund. From that time on Venice gradually acquired other towns
and parts of Dalmatian territory and ruled there until her fall in 1797.
During that time she took care to stay, as far as possible, the natural
process by which the chief coastal towns were becoming increasingly
Slavonic. Ever since the 12th century the Latin-Roman element
there had been in the minority, although it was favoured by the
27
Geoffrey de Villehardouin, La conquetede Constantinople. See the edition of P. Skok in
Tri starofrancuskehronikea ?adru u godini 1202, Zagreb, 1951, p. 84: 'Li rois de Ungrie si
nos tost Jadres en Esclavonie,qui est unes des plus forz citez del munde. . .' These are the
words of the Doge Enrico Dandolo, who clearly says that Zadar is Slavonic. Thomas
Spalatensis in his Historia Salonitana (p. 83), speaking about the occupation of Zadar,
considers this act as God's punishment, because the people of Zadar had given shelter to
the Bogumils, who were in a great majority in the neighbouring Bosnia and had begun to
influence the patricians of Zadar.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 15

Venetian authorities. So it was too late to do anything. Slavdom was

so deeply rooted in the towns that even the rude hand of Venice
could not uproot it. At last Venice had to content herself with the
most general exploitation not only of Dalmatian raw materials but
of man-power and military power, which, in the Venetian galleys,
maintained Venice's political and commercial control of the sea.
Or, as the old writer Mijo Koludrovic of Split says in his manuscript
'The Vendetta', the glory of the war belonged to the Venetians, but
the wars (he was thinking of the wars with Turkey) were won by the
Dalmatians, who protected themselves and Italy from Ottoman
aggression.28 As a reward Venice forced on Dalmatia a cruel system
of exploitation.
The Latin urban
culture, as we have said, could not be isolated
from its background. For almost every Dalmatian town it is possible
to reconstruct a picture of Slavonic penetration into essentially
Roman towns simply from evidence based on personal and family
names.29 As soon as this penetration began, whether in the 7th cen?
tury or later, i.e. when the neighbouring Slavs, according to Thomas
of Split, became for the Latins 'paccati et familiares', Slavonic
blood began to dilute Latin blood. Slavonic women were the first
to bring their language and customs into the Latin home. The
mother, playing the dominant part in bringing up the children she
had borne her Latin husband, would teach them her language and
imbue them with the sentiments associated with it. So very early a
new phenomenon, unknown to Italian towns, appears in these Dal?
matian towns, i.e. a Slavonic-Latin bilingualism, first in the family
and afterwards, in the course of centuries, in the whole town. The
Latin and later the Venetian dialect remained, however, the official
medium of communication, whereas in private life bilingual speech
was becoming more and more common. The Latin language in
Dalmatia and its gradual disappearance and vulgarisation have been
the subject of many scientific works. After Jirecek and M. Bartoli,
P. Skok has dealt with this problem in numerous studies and has
arrived at conclusions which prove these facts, though Italian
scholarship, especially that of the fascist period, has opposed them
with political 30 It is at rate for the
arguments. any very significant
28 C. Fiskovic, NaH
primorskiumjetnici,p. 244.
29 G. Novak, ProUostDalmacije, I, Zagreb, 1944, pp. 175-80. One has
only to open
certain digests of materials published by the Yugoslav Academy of Science in Zagreb and
the Serbian Academy in Belgrade and turn over the pages of the Indicesnominumperson-
arum,in which names of scholars of Dalmatian origin are mentioned, to get a fair picture
of the ethnic structure of those towns. Among these names we find F. Racki, T. Smiciklas,
J. Gelcic, J. Radonic, G. CremoSnik, M. Dinic and A. Mayer.
30 M. Bartoli, Das Dalmatische,I?II, Vienna, 1906; P. Skok, Pojave vulgarno-latinskoga
jezika na natpisimarimskeprovincijeDalmacije, Zagreb, 1915; Dolazak Slovenana Mediteran,
Split, 1934; 'O simbiozi i nestanku starih Romana u Dalmaciji i na Primorju u svijetlu
onomastike', Razprave. . . IV, Ljubljana, 1928; Slavenstvoi romanstvona Jadranskimotocima.
Toponomasticka ispitivanja,I-II, Zagreb, 1950.

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l6 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

linguistic transformation in the Dalmatian towns that the Dalmatian

Romans took from the Slavs system, their pet-names
their onomastic
and their suffixes. The
Slavs, on the
hand, took from the
other
Romans their Christian names and gave them their own forms, so
that we can hardly recognise their Roman origin. It is difficult for
one who is not familiar with this problem to realise that, for example,
the Croatian 'Dinko' came from the Latin 'Dominicus'.31 The dis?
appearance of Latin in the Dalmatian towns was not simultaneous.
In some places the language disappeared earlier, in others later, and
in others it lasted till very late. It has been established that Latin
could still be heard on the island of Krk at the end of the 19th cen?
tury, spoken by a man who was doubtless the last descendant of the
old Romans. The Venetian authorities imposed a quite different
language. Such mediaeval epidemics as the plague weakened the ori?
ginal population of the towns, and but for fresh blood from the
Slavonic hinterland, it would have completely died out.
As thelegal documents of the Dalmatian towns were written
mostly in Latin, some have tried to conclude that in the later cen?
turies, from the 13th onwards, life there was pervaded by Roman
speech and spirit. But these same legal documents show some of the
peculiarities of the vulgarised Latin language, as was quite accurately
remarked, in the case of the Latin used in Dubrovnik, by the Italian
humanist and director of the municipal school in Dubrovnik,
Philippus de Diversis; and as regards the penetration of Slavonic
elements into
Dalmatian legal terminology, by Johannes Lucius of
Trogir, the historian of the 17th century. What is more, municipal
councils were obliged as early as the 13th century to announce their
decisions in both Latin and Slavonic.32
The Slavonic transformation of these towns did not proceed at the
same rate everywhere and the Slavs were not always accepted gladly.
For example, Zadar was among the first towns to show the trans?
formation, and that very early and from the lowest to the highest
31 P. Skok, Dolazak Slovenana Mediteran,
32 Ph. de Diversis de p. 124.
Quartegianis lived in Dubrovnik from 1434-40 and wrote Situs
politiae at laudabiliumconsuetudinum
aedificiorum, inclytaecivitatis Ragusii (Ed. V. Brunelli,
Zara, 1882, p. 70). A new edition is being prepared for the publications of the Historical
Institute of the Serbian Academy under the editorship of J. Tadic and I. Bozic. Johannes
Lucius (Ivan Lucie), De regnoDalmatiae et Croatiaelibri sex, Amstelodami, 1666, 1. VI, c.
II (De moribusDalmatarumrecentioribus).Lucius was the first to point out Slavonicisms in
Latin legal terminology. He gives several characteristic examples from the statutes of
Dubrovnik and Zadar in Memorieistorichedi Tragurioora dettodi Trail, Venetia, 1674, p.
192, in the chapter headed 'Delle leggi, statuti e quante sorti di lingue fossero in uso in
Dalmatia', pp. 190 sq. InTrogir all public decisions of the Council had to be announced to
the people in both Latin (not Italian) and Croatian, as we may see from a document
dated 26 October 1325: 'Caveconus Preco Communis Traguriensis fcanivit et publicavit
sub Logia Communis in lingua Latina et Slava in omnibus prout in ipsa commissione
plenius continentur'. (Ibid., p. 203). Of course, in the northern Adriatic zone, from Pula
to Zadar, where the Glagolitic alphabet was used, legal documents were written in
Slavonic.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 17
social strata.
Documents show that in 918 the first-known prior
Andreas had a daughter Dobrusa (Dobrosia) with a typical Slavonic
non-Christian name.33 At the end of the ioth century (986) the
tribune of the town was Crneka, which is again a Slavonic name, and
his brother was Dobro.34 In the nth century the priors of Zadar
were again persons with obviously Slavonic names, such as Grubisa,
Drago, Vitaca,Desinja, and it was the same with other municipal
dignitaries.35 Of course, the names of the lower classes of citizens,
of craftsmen and other workers and farmers, seldom appear in the
documents, and when they do, they are all Slavonic. That they were
in the majority is indicated in a contemporary account, which relates
that in the 12th century (1177) Pope Alexander III, when travelling
via Zadar to Venice to meet Frederic Barbarossa over some contro?
versial questions, was welcomed by Slavs in Zadar. Pope Alexander's
biographer, in Acta Alexandri pontificis, speaking of the Pope's four
days' sojourn there, says that he was welcomed by its citizens in the
cathedral of St Stosija (Anastasia), 'immensis laudibus et canticis
altissime resonantibus in eorum lingua'.36Sclavica
And yet Italian
historians entertain doubts about
testimony, such
although it comes
from their own countryman Romualdo di Guarna, Archbishop of
Salerno, and ultimately from the second chronicle of Cardinal
Bosone Breakspear, both of them confidants of Pope Alexander III
himself.37
However, the Venetians themselves, more than anybody else, give
proofs of a completely Slavonic Zadar. Thus, the already mentioned
Doge Dandolo told the Crusaders, before the invasion of Zadar, that
it was in Slavonia ('en Esclavonie'). And Thomas of Split, also a
Latin, says that all the nobles of Zadar received and protected the
Bosnian heretics, which means the Slavs. And when Venice, with the
help of the Crusaders, took Zadar, she had a lot of trouble ahead.
There were constant
uprisings, and the subjugation of Zadar had to
be undertaken over and over again. Thus, when in 1243 Venice finally
subdued Zadar and the numerous population fled from the town,
the Venetian government called Venetians to settle in the houses of
the people who had fled. Some of them tried to do so, but they had a
difficult life among the people who remained in Zadar. Moreover,
the intruders were fiercely attacked by the old owners of the houses
which they had occupied. Venice could not solve this problem by
force and at last she had to allow the emigrants to return home. In
order to protect herself as much as possible from the dissatisfied and
33 F. Racki. 34 F.
35 G.
Documenta,p. 17. Racki, Documenta,p. 22.
Novak, ProUostDalmacije,I, p. 178.
36 D. Farlati,
37 V. Brunelli,Illyricumsacrum,III, Venetiis, 1765, p. 197.
Storiadella citta di Zara->
dai tempipiii remotisino . . . al MCCCCIX,Venezia,
a., pp. 344-9-

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l8 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

rebellious Slavs and to strengthen her own countrymen in Zadar,

Venice issued orders that the people of Zadar were not to marry
Croatian girls, except in special cases and with the permission of the
Doge himself. In this agreement between the people of Zadar and
the Venetian government, there was also a clause prohibiting the
people of Zadar from giving lodgings to the Slavs from the surround?
ing countryside, who were not citizens.38 Meanwhile, in spite of
these actions, the slavicisation of Zadar and other towns could not be
checked. There is evidence to show that the transformation was com?
plete in the 13th and 14th centuries, viz. the names of commoners and
nobles in contemporary and later
of citizens,39 and the
registers
testimony of foreigners who Croatian
without
knowing could not
understand the citizens (1482).40 The Venetian G. B. Giustiniani was
certainly disagreeably surprised in 1553 when he had to inform his
government that not only in Split, Trogir, Sibenik and Dubrovnik
but in his beloved Zadar all the common people spoke 'la lingua
schiava'. Thus he says of Split: 'All the customs in Split are Slavonic,
and their mother tongue is so sweet and gentle that it is the first
among all the Dalmatian dialects as the language of Tuscany is the
fine flower of Italian speech. It is true that all the people speak
Italian, too, and what is more some of them dress in the Italian way,
but the women speak only their mother tongue, though some of them
are dressed in the Italian way'.41 A still more eloquent document is
an appeal sent to the Pope from Dalmatia in 1604, requesting him to
appoint bishops who were not Italian and who would know the
language of the people of Dalmatia. For only a small number of
Croats know Italian, and they are mostly merchants or noblemen,
'but the common people, the young people, nuns, noblewomen and
monks cannot utter one word of Italian'.42
It is difficult to determine the order in which the ethnic trans-
38 ?. Ljubic, Listineo odnosajihizmedju
JuznogaSlavenstvai Mletackerepublike,I. Monumenta
spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, I. Zagreb, 1868, pp. 70, 107.
39 Not only are their Christian names Slavonic, but their
patronymics end in -ic. See
the enormous number of such names in various documents preserved in the State Archives
of Zadar and published by I. Strohal, Pravnapovijestdalmatinskihgradova,I, Zagreb, 1913,
pp. 67-79. For similar onomastic material on other parts of Dalmatia, see Strohal,
op. cit. pp. 81-7 (for Split), pp. 87-97 (for Dubrovnik), pp. 97-103 (for the islands). See
also G. Novak, ProUostDalmacije,I, p. 177.
The cultural level of the average citizen, the merchant class for example, can be seen
from the heritage left in 1389 by the merchant Damjan, who had a small library of
ecclesiastical and secular literature consisting of books in litteraLatina and in litteraSclava.
'Item unus liber Alexandri parvus in littera Sclava.' Cf. C. Jirecek, 'Eine slavische
Alexandergeschichte in Zara 1389'. Archivfur slavischePhilologie, XXV, 1893, pp. 157-8.
40 I. Strohal, op. cit., p.
125; M. Kombol, Povijesthrvatskeknjizevnostido narodnogpre-
1945, p. 21.
41 ?. Zagreb, Listine,VIII,
poroda,
Ljubic, pp. 197, 205, 208, 215, 222, 250, 262.
42 'Non negamus quidem linguae Venetae usum esse aliquem apud Illyricos vel mer-
catores propter commercia vel nobiles propter elegantiam; verum plebs, iuventus, virgines
sacrae, nobiles feminae, monachi, linguae Venetae ne apicem quidem norunt.' Lj.
Karaman, Dalmacijakroz vjekoveu historijii umjetnosti,Split, 1934, p. 132, fn. 2.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA ig
formation of the Dalmatian towns took place. All things considered,
it seems that it happened much earlier and more completely in
Zadar, Trogir and Split, probably on Rab too, on Krk and the other
islands, and somewhat later in Dubrovnik. Trogir had certainly
been slavicised by the middle of the 13th century. When the Tatars
besieged the town they sent emissaries calling upon the citizens in the
Slavonic language to deliver up King Bela III, to whom they had
given shelter, and promising to spare them if they betrayed the
king. We learn this from Thomas of Split, a contemporary witness of
the Tatar invasion of Dalmatia.43 Dubrovnik had quite changed its
ethnic physiognomy by the 14th century. Desiring to please the King
of France, the people of Dubrovnik sent him (1383) some of their
national garments, which were of purely Slavonic origin. Such were
valjenica ('baretta schiavona'), opanci (plaited shoes), zupa ('giupa'),
kosulja sa osvama (shirt with embroidered bands?'oscve'), and
podvezace (stockings with garters?'con le podvesaze').44 Benedetto
Ramberti (1503-47), secretary to the Venetian Senate, when passing
through Dubrovnik on his way to Turkey on a diplomatic mission in
1553, said that all the women in Dubrovnik spoke Slavonic and their
husbands Slavonic and Italian.45
The second half of the 15th and the first half of the 16th century
already show considerable results of an enthusiastic humanism in the
field of literature, which is more markedly Slavonic than Latin. In
Dubrovnik and Split, on Hvar, in Zadar and other places, literature
begins to appear, proving that the Slavonic spirit was predominant,
if stimulated to new efforts by Italian humanism. Certain writers
were still
the living representatives of the old Slavonic-Latin sym?
biosis and they wrote in both Latin and Slavonic. One of the brilliant
figures who represented the connection between Latin and Slavonic
humanism was Aelius Lampridius Cerva-Cervinus of Dubrovnik
(1463-1520), whose name appears in Croatian documents as
Crijevic, or Crijevic. He had made his name in Rome as a poet and
had belonged to the Academy of Pomponius Laetus, where he won
his laurels, and now as poeta laureatus he celebrated his native town,
which was among the first in Dalmatia to give a warm welcome to
the humanistic muses.46 At the same time the foundations of Croatian
literature were laid. The father of this literature, a contemporary of
the famous poets of Dubrovnik, Sisko Mencetic, Dore Drzic and
Andrija Cubranovic, was Marko Marulic of Split (1450-1524),
whose very personality represents the most harmonious form of the
humanistic symbiosis of the Latin and Croatian elements. Marulic
43 Thomas archidiaconus, op. cit., p.
44 I. Strohal, 176. 45 I. Strohal, op. cit.,
cit., op. 140.
46 B. Vodnik, op. p. 127.
Povijest hrvatskeknjizevnosti,Zagreb, 1913, p. 73; M. Kombol, op. cit.,
pp. 63-74.

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20 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

was known all over the world by his philosophical and ethical works
in Latin, which went through numerous editions and were translated
into Italian, German, Portuguese and French. This shows what a
wide interest was aroused among his contemporaries by Marulic's
works. But Marulic was also the first poet in Split who wrote in
Croatian, although he was enthusiastic about humanism and the
classical languages and had translated the Slavonic chronicle of
Pope Dukljanin into Latin, so that the outside world might learn
something about the past of the Southern Slavs. Certainly, this period
of early humanism in Dalmatia gave the clearest indication of the
the Slavonic-Latin symbiosis in the field of culture and provided a
sound basis for vernacular literature.47
This period also gave the most remarkable manifestation of artistic
creation in Dalmatia. Architecture, painting and sculpture all had
old and deep roots, having developed both independently and in con?
nection with Roman influence on the frontiers of the Roman world.
It is difficult even for an expert to struggle through the mass of
contradictions, inconsistencies and hesitations of certain foreign his?
torians of art who have dedicated their knowledge and research to
the study of Dalmatian mediaeval art, architecture, sculpture and
painting. Besides these historians there are others whose work is
dominated by their political attitude and anti-Slavonic prejudice.
These of course completely deny even the slightest participation of
the Slavs in the building up of this branchof mediaeval culture in this
zone of the Mediterranean. According to them, everything that has
been preserved from
the earliest Middle Ages to the end of the 15th
century, is in fact the result of the ideas and efforts either of men who
came from the Italian side of the Adriatic, or of such Dalmatians as
did not feel themselves to be Slavs. With good reason Miroslav
Krleza, the most impressive contemporary Yugoslav writer and
scholar, who has an excellent knowledge of the Yugoslav cultural
past, wonders somewhat bitterly in his essay on the art of Zadar:
'what could we possibly say in our own defence before a Western
Europe which denies us from the beginning? The very fact that we
appeared in these regions and that we did not disappear, is one of the
proofs of our guilt. We are guilty, because Roman civilisation on the
eastern Adriatic coast became Slavonic, which meant for Rome that
it was destroyed. These have been the arguments of the Lateran, the
Vatican, Byzantium, Venice and Italy up to this very day. These
were the arguments of Carolingian and Habsburg feudalism, of
German and Austro-Hungarian bourgeois imperialism, as well as of
Italian, Hungarian and Nazi fascism.'48 We neither intend to develop

47 B. Vodnik, cit., pp. 99-113; M. Kombol, op. cit., pp. 75-87.

48 M. Krleza, op. i srebro
?lato ?adra, Zagreb, 1951, p. 5.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 21

these thoughts nor to indulge in apologies or polemics and shall

content ourselves merely with drawing attention to certain facts
which willspeak for themselves. Nevertheless, let us observe pre?
liminarily that Western scholarship has lately been almost bewildered
and certainly surprised by the tremendous mass of material which
was to be seen at the great exhibition of the mediaeval arts of the
Yugoslav people, organised in Paris in the Palais de Chaillot two
years ago. It consisted of four cultural-historical sections: (a) the
Serbo-Macedonian, from the 12th century to the Quattrocento; (b)
the Adriatic (Old Croatian), from the church of St Donat in Zadar,
i.e. from the beginning of the nth century, to the master-sculptor
Juraj the Dalmatian in the 15th century; (c) the Bosnian, from the
period of the anti-Roman movement of the Bogumils until the fall of
Bosnia and its subjugation by the Turks (1463); and (d) the Slo?
venian, or the Alpine-Gothic component. Taken together as well as
separately, all these elements spoke most impressively to cultured and
learned observers of an extraordinary historical wealth, whose logical
sequence and excellent reproductions drew a picture as vivid as real
life in situ. The Dalmatian section gave an answer to many obscure
and inaccurate hypotheses of earlier historians.
First of all there is the much neglected old Croatian ornamental
art as seen on numberless extant stone tablets from the 8th to the end
of the 11 th century from all parts of Dalmatia. And this characteristic
ornamentation of interlaced sculpture, so rich and varied, on all
kinds of ecclesiastical objects in Dalmatia, has been represented by
many foreign historians as of Lombard origin, whereas, on the con?
trary, it came into full bloom in Dalmatia at a time when the Lom?
bards no longer existed.
Among leading foreign authorities, Professor
Jozef Strzygowski, of Vienna, was doubtless an exception, for he was
courageous enough to oppose this traditional and widespread theory
in his work 'On the Development of Old Croatian Art. Supplement
to the Discovery of North European Art' (Zagreb, 1927). The hypo?
thesis enunciated in this work was preceded by the author's lectures,
delivered in London under the title 'Early Northern-European
Church Art and Wood Architecture'. Speaking of pre-Roman build?
ing, Strzygowski described the building of churches in Croatia at the
time of the conversion of the Croats to Christianity and later. Quite
correctly he began by putting the question whether the Croats, like
all the Southern Slavs on their conversion to Christianity, were
limited to what could be offered them by Rome or Constantinople.
In his witty and thoughtful speculations he favoured the idea of the
self-development of the Slavonic element in the work of building
started by the new church. Of course, the Slavs would apply the
knowledge and experience they had acquired as pagans in building

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22 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

their wooden temples and decorating them with carved geometrical

figures with, at first, neither zoomorphic nor anthropomorphic
details. This technique was applied in Dalmatia to stonework with
the favourite interlaced ornament, at first in a simple form and
subsequently in double and triple interlacement. The similarities
in style between Dalmatian and Lombard archaeological finds are
the result of their common source, the common heritage which both
Croats and Lombards brought with them from the North. Both
transferred their well-known technique of wood-carving to stone and
so created a new technique of stone-carving independently of each
other. That is why Strzygowski is quite right when he reproaches all
those who have studied this problem with not being able to free
themselves from the preconceived idea of Roman, Byzantine or Lom?
bard influence. These investigators have also overlooked a peculiar
feature of the Dalmatian cultural area in which the Slavonic-Latin
symbiosis existed. This is the building with vaulted roofs on square
foundations, which was brought by the Slavs from their original
habitat, where they used to build so-called brvnare (log cabins), par?
ticularly their heathen temples.
Accordingly, we may draw the conclusion that on penetrating into
the Dalmatian towns, the Slavs brought with them their old artistic
heritage. It is therefore here in Dalmatia and nowhere else that we
first find cupolas and stone vaultings based on the walls in quatrefoil
and hexafoil forms. And here too, earlier than elsewhere according to
Strzygowski, the vault developed, long before the appearance of
Romanesque architecture, and it was only very much later that it be?
came the rule in the West. This is, without doubt, a Slavonic cultural
anticipation. Investigators can, indeed, find a not inconsiderable
amount of archaeological to support
evidence Strzygowski's thesis.
This material is at hand only not
in the towns and in the coastal
region but in the hinterland. The so-called miniature architecture,
with the exception, perhaps, of the magnificent Cathedral of St
Donat at Zadar, represents masterly sketches for later foundations,
which were to be planned and carried out on a monumental scale
and which would require much more favourable financial conditions
than those obtaining in 8th- and gth-century Dalmatia. In any case
the Slavs of that period did not escape the influence of the ancient
heritage, which was more apparent and suggestive in the towns than
in the hinterland. In the architectural field the development of the
Slavonic-Latin symbiosis also had its positive consequences, especially
in the later centuries. There is no doubt that the Slavs profited by
certain artistic and cultural achievements on the western Adriatic
coast, but they never lost their independence, any more than other
countries did in accepting new architectural ideas from abroad. That

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 23
is why many a specialist, and still more the layman, passing through
Dalmatia, has had the impression that the Romanesque buildings
were a purely Italian creation, without noticing that the Romanesque
forms contained in themselves the essence of Slavonic
participation
in their development. Modern research, however, supported by new
documentary sources, amply confirms the by no means negligible
contribution of the Dalmatian Slavs in this sphere of artistic pro?
duction.
One has only to examine a little closer and with knowledge the
period when the Slavonic transformation was almost reaching its
conclusion, when the ethnical structure of the towns had been com?
pletely changed in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries?in
spite of the Serenissima which would have checked this process by
introducing its bureaucratic, commercial and even feudal elements
into the towns?one has only to recall these facts to realise what a
great contribution the Dalmatian Slavs made to the development of
mediaeval culture. An
ever-increasing number of documents have
been recently discovered in the dust of archives. They tell us very
vividly that all the buildings we admire today were, in great part,
erected from the material contributions of the Slavs themselves, and
not only of those who lived in the towns, but of those living outside
as well. Many an inscription on some magnificent building or noble
coat-of-arms, which boastfully extols the supposed merits of certain
persons in the building of a palace or a church, is today refuted by
the historical fact that the building was made possible by the finan?
cial contributions of the Slavonic commonalty?the farmer, the
fisherman and the craftsman.49 It is a fact which should not be for?
gotten when speaking about the culture of a people.
Thus, quite harmoniously, the Dalmatian artist kept abreast of
all the artistic developments of the West of Europe. His contribution
was large and varied in the building of churches, artistically carved
and sculptured portals and brilliant cloisters, before the advent of the
Romanesque style, during the Romanesque period and from the be?
ginning to the full flowering of the Gothic style. Then, also, he partici?
pated in the building of the numerous splendid belfries which adorn
the Dalmatian coast. And in the Quattrocento Dalmatia was to pro?
duce painters who could rival the best masters in the West. Our know?
ledge of these will be substantially enriched by Professor Jorjo Tadio's
work on the artistic school of Dubrovnik from the 13th to the 16th
century, which is sponsored by the Historical Institute of the Serbian
Academy. About twelve hundred documents tell of the work of a
hundred and fifty different Yugoslav artists, each of them a native
of Dubrovnik or its hinterland from Hercegovina to the Monte-
49 Cv. Fiskovic,
op. cit., pp. 244-5.

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24 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

negrin coast. All this will prove once more the theory of Slavonic
creative power on the one hand and, on the other, the general need
for the artistic adornment of buildings, public and private, which is so
completely illustrated in all the Dalmatian towns. Such a number of
artists in such a small country certainly shows the cultural level of
its inhabitants.
The door of the cathedral in Split, which is a great work of art,
was carved in wood by the Croatian master Buvina in 1214. He was
doubtless one of the exponents of the same tradition as that displayed
by the fine ornamental interlacements in stone work. Even in the
13th century Buvina was not free from their influence, because he
used them as the framework for his twenty-eight panels. These and
their interlaced border, seen at close quarters, give the impression of
a skilfully transported miniature from the codex which inspired the
master in his modelling.50 Buvina had an entire school, and the
traces of its work survive in various articles of church furniture,
especially in the finely carved seats for ecclesiastics in Split and in the
neighbouring monasteries. This kind of art was much cultivated, as
is also shown by the extremely numerous wooden seats of later
centuries. Already in the 15th century masterly proof of this was
given in Trogirby 'magister Johannes Budislavich intagliator, incisor
et habitator Tragurii'.51
There in Trogir, in 1240, the sculptor Radovan won fame as 'the
best of all in this art', as the inscription on his work reads, the portal
of the cathedral, that marvellous work of art, a museum in itself,
full of precious artistic detail, which so roused the enthusiasm
of the well-known architect T.
G. Jackson.52 There is no critic
who be so unjust as to deny the value and the beauty of the
would
kind of work done by the Croat Radovan. And at that time there
were very few works of this sort even on the other side of the Adriatic.
Radovan's carvings reflect the abundant joy of life which he knew so
well in his native country. Although he worked in the Romanesque
style, he was fully himself, as was realised by Lj. Karaman and Cv.
Fiskovic, two excellent connoisseurs of Radovan's art, which had a
great influence both on his contemporaries and on later genera?
tions.53 Buvina and Radovan, however, are not alone in this century.
There were artists, some of them anonymous, who went even to Italy
to show their worth and their skill. Such was Simon of Dubrovnik,
who was responsible for the beautiful portal of the cathedral of Bar-

50 Lj. Karaman, cit., pp. 105-6.

51A. Schneider, op.
'Ivan Budislavic', Hrvatskaenciklopedija,Zagreb, 1942, p. 454.
52 T. Dalmatia, the QuarneroandIstria, II, Oxford, 1887, pp. 108,*sq.
53 Lj.G.Jackson,
Karaman, Portal majstoraRadovanau Trogiru(RadJug. akad. znanosti i umjetnosti
262, Umjetnicki razred 3), Zagreb, 1938; Cv. Fiskovic, Portal katedraleu Trogiru, Zagreb,
I950-

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 25
leta.54 This art, moreover, exhibited itself in the
interior, Serbian
where there are several wonderful examples of it, such as the monastic
churches of Studenica and Decani, foundations of the Serbian rulers.
Studenica, founded by Stevan Nemanja (1183), offers a syn?
thesis of Roman and Byzantine, West and East, the Slavonic-Latin
symbiosis, and Decani is the foundation of King Stevan Uros III,
built from 1327 to 1335 by the architect Vido of Kotor and the
master Gjorgje with his brothers Dobroslav and Nikola.55 To the
same period belongs the genius of Miha of Bar (Antivari), who was
obviously the Montenegrin from the coast who built the glorious
Franciscan cloister in Dubrovnik.56 This harmonious quadrangle is
in no way inferior to the most beautiful of its time in Italy.
The Slavonic-Latin symbiosis in art which gave such fruitful
results, was supplemented by foreign artists, in the first place by
Italians who found employment in the Dalmatian towns. We find a
considerable number of them in the 14th and 15th centuries. They
went all over Europe as far as Russia to earn their living and stayed
only at such places as afforded the cultural and material conditions
for their work. And Dalmatia indeed did not lack these. Let us
mention only Nicolo Corbo of Venice, Giovanni da Siena, Bonino
da Milano, Onofrio of Naples, Pietro Martini of Milan, Nicolo
Fiorentino and others. But the stream of foreign artists did not
lessen the activity of the local artists from Dalmatia and the Slavonic
hinterland, as is convincingly shown in the above-mentioned pub?
lication of Professor Tadic. The waves of Slavonic newcomers from
the Dalmatian hinterland were started especially by the Turkish
invasions, and the more gifted boys were employed in the workshops
of the Dalmatian stone-cutters, jewellers, carvers, painters and other
artisans. Out of the numerous members of this auxiliary artist-
artisan force the more capable and more gifted would be sorted out
and would
appear as independent artists of greater or less import?
ance. would take part in building
They town walls and towers, town
halls, granaries, arsenals, wells, churches, belfries and palaces, they
would carve architectonic details and sculptured ornaments, portals,
colonnades, court-yards and balconies and they would build houses
for merchants and prosperous citizens, which are today to be seen in
the picturesque streets of many Dalmatian towns.
In the 15th century Georgius Dalmata, Juraj the Dalmatian from
Zadar, reached a high degree of artistic achievement as an architect
and sculptor working on the more important buildings in Sibenik
(the cathedral), Split and Dubrovnik. His works show a skilful artist
54
Gj. BoSkovic, 'Simeon Dubrovcanin'. Srpskiknjizevniglasnik, 1938, pp. 144-8.
65 M. Vasic,
56 M. Zica i Lazarica.Studijeiz srpskeumetnostisrednjegveka,Belgrade, 1928, pp.5-7.
Vasic, Arhitekturai skulpturau Dalmaciji od pocetkaIX dopocetkaXV veka,Belgrade,
1922, pp. 244-9.

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 26 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

in the Gothic style. His influence may be seen in his followers, Ivan
Pribislavic and Petar Brcic of Sibenik.
In the 15th and 16th centuries the works of Ognjanovic, Ugrinovic,
Bozidarovic, Dobricevic, Hamzic, Milovic and many others were
greatly appreciated in Dubrovnik, though they are less well-known
abroad. But foreigners, on the other hand, know more about the
Dalmatian artists who flourished in Italy, where they were regularly
numbered among Italian artists as schiavoni or dalmate, for they
never hid or denied their origin, any more than the Italians who
worked outside Italy did theirs. But foreign scholarship has accounted
them Italians. Such was Nicolo delPArca, called Dalmata and
Schiavone, given by his contemporaries in the 15th century the
sobriquets of fantasticus et barbarus and
hailing from Bar in Monte?
negro. His 'Lamentation over in Bologna
Christ' seems as if it had
been inspired by the Montenegrin national songs of mourning
(narikace). There is an idea that he was Michelangelo's teacher. Then
there was Giovanni Dalmata, Giovanni da Trait, i.e. Ivan Duknovic
of Trogir (died 1509), who became famous in Italy because of his
cenotaph for Pope Paul III. Francesco and Luciano de Aurana are
Franjo and Lucijan Vranjanin (died 1482), the former a well-known
painter and the latter an architect, who worked in Italy and France.
The drawings and designs for the princely palace in Urbino have
notes written in the Glagolitic alphabet. Yet they have also been
appropriated by Italian art. Georgius Sclavonus, Dalmaticus,
Squarcioni discipulus or Scholaris is none other than Juraj Culino-
vic of Skradin (died 1505), whose pictures adorn many galleries,
including the National Gallery in London. In the Cinquecento there
were also Slavonic artists of considerable importance in Italy. One
of these was Andreas Schiavone, Andrea Meldolla detto Schiavone,
who was none other than Andrija Medulic of Sibenik, whom the
historian and painter Marco Boschini called 'terribile Andrea, quel
gran Schiavon' in his work La carta del navegar pittoresco, displaying
an allegorical ship of Venetian painters, in which Medulic was given
the helm of the ship of which Titian was the captain, while other
famous masters were below Medulic and, including Tintoretto him?
self, only members of the crew.57 Another was the celebrated Giulio
Clovio (died 1578), whose art of illumination won him fame as
an artist for whose work many European feudal potentates com?
peted. He was a Croat?Klovic?from the Grizani coast in Vino-
dol.58
All these artists working outside Dalmatia are doubtless another
proof of the age-old artistic tradition cultivated in Dalmatia, which
enabled her sons to produce works of value and significance extend-
67A. Uvodic, 58 See fn. 22.
AndrijaMedulicnazvanSchiavone,Split, 1934, p. 70.

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 THE SLAVONIC-LATIN SYMBIOSIS IN DALMATIA 27

ing far beyond their narrow local sphere. Therefore, M. Krleza says
quite rightly that Avignon and Bologna, Sicily, Rome and Naples
would be without numerous buildings and sculptural masterpieces
but for the Slavs. 'Our artists were not Slavs only in origin or
because as Slavs they signed their names in Glagolitic characters, but
because their contemporaries called them and considered them
Slavs, because these artistic geniuses stood out from among the
common run of their times by their Slavonic creative style.'59
Unfortunately the great creative ardour, manifested so clearly in
Dalmatia during the Quattrocento and Cinquecento in art and
literature, did not continue and was almost extinguished. Historical
conditions explain this well enough. Venice, together with Dalmatia,
was constantly at war with the Turks. And in armis silent musae.
Venice needed only soldiers and sailors. As for writers and artists, she
had enough of her own. What is more, in order to have this reservoir
of fighting men always full, it was necessary to maintain it with as
little education as possible. It is no wonder, then, that the Venetian
Paolo Sarpi wrote to his government from Dalmatia in the first
half of the 18th century giving this cynical and inhuman advice: 'If
you want the Dalmatians to be faithful, you must keep them ig?
norant, without education.'60 And Venice followed this advice
closely. Thus all that was done in the domain of culture from that
time on was entirely the result of efforts made by the Dalmatians
themselves. A national poet explained the break in cultural creation
during those painful centuries of war when he lamented: 'S krvi
rucak, a s krvi vecera, Svak krvave zvace zalogaje, Krvavim se
rukam umivamo.'61
But in spite of the unceasing and obstinate struggle with the now
quite unfriendly Latin element, which had no genetic relation with
the Dalmatian towns, as in the early and later Middle Ages, but
which was represented by Venetian despotism, the Slavonic con?
sciousness was preserved, as well as the forces which fostered talents
that were to wake again in the 19th century, simultaneously with
the Italian Risorgimento which was to unite and save Italy. Venice,
which was largely protected, like the rest of Europe, by the Bal?
kan antemurale Christianitatis, i.e. the antemurale civilisationis euro-
peanae, ungratefully emphasised her superiority over the Dal?
matian 'barbarians', for this was the name she gave to the Slavs
who had made her undisturbed cultural development possible.
59 M.
Krleza, GalerijaJugoslavenskeakademijeznanostii umjetnosti,'Jugoslavia', Belgrade,
1948, p. 78.
60 'Se vole te i Dalma ti fedeli, teneteli ignoranti.' Cf. I. Dizdar, 'Kratki pregled pucke
nastave u Dalmaciji kroz minulih pet decenija', Narodnilist, Zadar, 1 March 1902.
61 'Blood with our
dinner, Blood with our supper, All the food we eat Is soaked in blood.
When we wash our faces, Our hands are covered with blood.' Cv. Fiskovic, Nasi primor-
ski umjetnici,p. 259.
B

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28 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

The reproachful line of a great Croatian poet of the Renaissance

period, Ivan Mazuranic?'While you were
dying, they called you
barbarians'?is a serious warning to all those who are unjust in their
historical studies to a nation which, under the most difficult con?
ditions, has won by its own efforts a place in the culture of human?
ity.62
62 I. Ma?urani6, SmrtSmail-ageCengiji6a,I, ed. 1846.

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