THE
PRINCIPALITY OF POLJICA*
From its
Mediaeval Inception to its Fall in 1807
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Journal of Croatian Studies,
XXVIII-XXIX, 1987-88 – Annual Review of the Croatian Academy of America, Inc.
New York, N.Y., Electronic edition by Studia Croatica, by permission.
All reserved by the Croatian Academy of America.
- - -
Among the many European mediaeval principalities, which after centuries of varying fortune went under, one after another in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Croatian principality of Poljica (pronounced Pol'yeetsa), with its special brand of rural democracy, occupied a special, indeed unique position. Its most conspicuous feature was that throughout its long and eventful history, unlike any other of its sister states, it never developed an urban centres on its territory. Its economy almost exclusive) depended on animal farming and agriculture. Although its territory included a good stretch of Adriatic coastline, shipping never played a significant part in its economy. Nor was there a concentrated effort to develop fishing. The reason for this, no doubt, was part) due to the absence of good natural harbours, where ships and small craft could shelter from weather, but also partly to the fact that the steep mountain ranges made access to the coast difficult. All the same, there did not seem to be a great deal of interest in the sea.
However, what set Poljica even
more apart from other European principalities was its political constitution,
which was in category of its own. For although throughout the principality
history, its social structure retained many distinctly feudal feature; the
sheer complexity of its political organisation, the two species of nobility,
the unusually large number of 'noble' families in proportion to the size of its
population[1],
with no single family ever gaining the position of dominance, and especially
the intricate system of tribal and individual property ownership, made Poljica
unlike any other community in feudal Europe.
In Poljica, it seems, there were
no serfs in the more extreme sense of this term. Instead, there were bonded
peasants, who were allowed to own property of their own, and could in principle
leave their masters if they so wished, provided they surrendered their master's
property. Moreover, it seems, it was accepted that the could leave their
masters even without the latter's consent if the had been maltreated in any
way.[2]
There were also independent tenant farmers and free labourers and herdsmen; the
last of these belonging mainly to the tiny minority of surviving Illyrian
tribesmen, descended from the pre-Roman and pre-Slav population of Dalmatia,
and occupying the bottom end of the social scale. Yet despite the social
differences, a general consensus in important decisions was a statutory
requirement. Thus a number of articles of the principality's statute begins
with the significant phrase 'All the men of Poljica together have resolved ...'
or words to this effect.[3]
The prince had to be a nobleman, but his office was not hereditary and both the
prince and the other main officials of the principality's government were
elected to their respective offices for a one-year term only.
THE
GEOGRAPHIC POSITION
The territory of the principality
- or, as local people often also called it, 'commune' or 'county'[4]
- occupied an area of approximately 100 sq. miles of mountainous land just to
the south of the town of split, between the rivers Žrnovnica and Cetina, and
except for a relatively short stretch of the ragged open terrain to the
northwest where its border was not marked by any distinctive natural features,
physically it was a fairly enclosed, easily identifiably entity; which is, no
doubt, why its name survives to this day as a geographic concept, even though
administratively it has long been parcelled out and divided among neighbouring
districts. The dominant physical feature of the area is the Mosor massif, which
stretches along the whole length of the principality and whose highest peak
rises to nearly 4,500 ft. The physical shape of the massif is such that it
divides thee area roughly into three distinct regions: Upper Poljica to the
north, between the main Mosor range and Cetina river; Central Poljica,
beginning in the west with a valley, almost at sea level, and rising to a high
plateau between the main mountain range and the Tatter's southern ridges; and
Littoral Poljica, representing a stretch of mostly terraced land, sloping from
the Perun, Vršina and Mošnjica hights down to the sea. For the most part, the
area consists of rocky, unhospitable terrain, with sparse vegetation, and,
except for the middle part and the coastal area, relatively little arable land.
Not surprisingly, the population of Poljica, until the very recent sharp rise
in number due mainly to tourism, remained always fairly small. One of the early
visitors to the county, the classical scholar and writer a geographical topics
Palladius Fuscus Patavinus, who in the second part of the 15th century
(probably not later than 1460), made a exploratory journey down the 'Illyrian'
coast, found that Poljica at that time was inhabited by about two thousand
people, who he noted, lived 'under their own laws and for a long time past ha
not been subject to any external authority.[5] Three and half centuries earlier, when
Poljica first emerged into being as a self governing commune, its population
was probably less than half that number. Gradually the rate of growth picked
up, but not by a large amount. Thus some three and a half centuries after
Fuscui in 1781, a census of Poljica's twelve katuni (villages, or
cluster of hamlets) revealed the population figure of only 6,813; and in 1806,
the French-appointed civilian governor of Dalmatia Vicenzo Dandolo recorded an
even smaller number: 6,566. A hundred and fifty years after this, in 1953, just
before the advent of the modern tourist boom, a census showed an increase to a
little below twelve thousand.[6] Clearly there were limits to the number of
mouths the county could feed with its modest resources.
THE NAME
'POLJICA'
Yet the Poljicans tended their
meagre fields with meticulous care and clung to their land with prodigious
loyalty and pride than inspired many a romantic legend. There is a story about
the origins of the name of the county that perhaps owes something to this
romantic sentiment. According to the widely held view the name 'Poljica' draws
its root from the small, sometimes near-circular fields (field = polje) or
plots of fertile land, of which there are a great many in the mountains, and
which often have been reclaimed for cultivation only at great effort by being
labouriously cleared of stones, sometimes boulder-size, that had lain there
half buried in the soil and now can be seen heaped up in mounds or neatly
stacked up in dry walls that rim the fields. Yet plausible though it appears at
first sight, this explanation needs to be firmed up by more evidence if it is
to stand up to closer scrutiny. To begin with, the supposed etymology of the
name does not make an impeccable grammatical sense.[7] But quite apart from this, there are other
similarly named places elsewhere in Europe that point to different linguistic
roots, for example the town of Polizzi (the mediaeval Policium) in Sicily. Another
example is the town of Montepulciano in the province of Siena (the mediaeval
Castellum Politianum) whose citizens still refer to themselves as 'i
poliziani'.[8]
As to how exactly Poljica got its
name may never be established with complete certainty, but perhaps it is not
altogether unreasonable to suppose that its name derives from politia
(i.e. the Latin form of πολτεια) which in
the Middle Ages was a term often loosely applied to any kind of organized
community;[9] or, at any
rate, from the italianate versions of politia, such as polizza, policia,
polizia, all of which, incidentally, as well as politia, occur in mediaeval
documents as names of Poljica.[10]
What seems likely is that the
county was given its name by foreigners some time during the 12th, or possible
in the early 13th century, when, by all accounts, its ancient conventions and
legal practices were codified in its first written statute. In earlier times,
it was known simply as 'Mosor' (Massarum) or the 'parish of Mosor.'[11] Moreover the latter designation seems to
have been confined exclusively to Central and Upper Poljica. By contrast,
Littoral Poljica, for a considerable time, seems to have had something of a
special status. Thus in early Middle Ages, possibly as far back as the 8th
century, long before Poljica came into being as a sell governing commune,
Poljica's Littoral seems to have formed part of what was known as Parathalassia
(i.e. Littoral Region or County), which stretched on either side of Split and
included some islands; and which, according to the testimony of the Byzantin
emperor Constantine Porphirogenitus, was one of the eleven 'županijas' into
which Croatia was divided at the time.[12] Parathalassia, or Littoral County, whose
administrative centre was Klis[13],
survived as an administrative entity until well into the Middle Ages, albeit
with varying boundaries. This, added to the fact that Split patricians owned a
great deal of land in Poljica' coastal region, was responsible for the somewhat
ambiguous political status of the Poljica Littoral within Poljica proper. Thus
the heads of the three 'katuni' from this area (Duće, Jesenice and
Podstrana), along with the head of another 'katun' from Central Poljica
(Srinjine), where there was also a considerable number of bonded peasants working
the Split-owned land, were not eligible to stand for election as Prince or
judges, even though they all had full voting rights.
The centre of power in Poljica was
always in the mountain interior, where most of the principality's 'nobility'
lived. Annual open air electoral assemblies were held on St. Georges day (23
April) near the village of Gata in Central Poljica, in a place called
Podgradac. There the twelve 'katunari' or village headmen, a elected
representatives of their respective villages, together will all the nobility,
would gather to elect the new government of the principality. That a place near
Gata was chosen for this all important annual event was perhaps not entirely
accidental, for as a recent archeological discovery of the remains of a large
sixth century Byzantine church in Gata[14]
seems to suggest, this village must have been some kind of centre - perhaps the
administrative as well as market centre - of this region already a long time
before the arrival of the Slavs.
THE
EMERGENCE OF THE FREE COMMUNE.
CONFLICT
WITH SPLIT
Slav tribes migrating from the
north, began settling in the territory of Roman Dalmatia during the sixth
century, but the Croats did not arrive there, it seems, until the third decade
of the seventh century, probably between 625-630. They came from what is in
later sources described as 'White Croatia'[15] ('white' being the colour symbol for
'west'), a region comprising parts of modern southern Poland and eastern
Czechoslovakia. As they made their way to the coast, they engaged in fierce
battle with the Avars, whom they eventually subdued. A large number of the
Croats subsequently settled close to the old Roman towns such as Salona (sacked
by the Avars in 614), the neighbouring town of Split (which grew rapidly due to
the influx of Salona refugees), and the town of Zadar farther up the coast, all
of which at that time were under the jurisdiction of Byzantium. It was this
region that some two centuries later formed the nucleus of the Croatian
mediaeval state.
The territory of Poljica, or
rather its mountainous interior, it seems, did not at first attract many
settlers among the newcomers, and in early documents a significant proportion
of it was regularly referred to as terra regalis, the crown property. Some of
this land was donated by the various Croat princes to the Split Archdiocese,
partly no doubt in an attempt to secure the good will of the local hierarchy
and smooth out the often tense relations with a city which was still largely
populated by Latins, and partly as a means of enhancing their own prestige.
This, however, later became a constant source of friction and hostility between
the Poljicans and the Split Church, especially after repeated attempts were
made by the Archdiocese to extend its possessions in Poljica on the basis of
forged title deeds. Violent clashes were a frequent occurrence, and in one
tragic incident that took place in August 1180, the Archbishop Rainerius, who
came to Poljica to repossess some disputed land, was attacked and stoned to
death by local peasants.[16]
This conflict over land was exacerbated by the fact that the Split Church represented the powerful Latin culture, which with its enormous prestige and superior literacy was increasingly penetrating into all aspects of social life, and was feared by the Slav population as a threat to their own identity. This was the main reason why, for example, there was a continuing and stubborn resistance, notably in Poljica itself, to the Church's attempts to replace the Croat vernacular by Latin in church liturgy. This was also the reason why the Croats insisted on retaining their own Glagolitic script. The Glagolitic, and later the specifically Croatian version of the Cyrillic, became important instruments of cultural self-assertion in face of the Latin 'threat'. The Church, for a long time, tried unsuccessfully to break this resistance, particularly where liturgy was concerned, and it was not until 1750 that the Split Archdiocese, no doubt with a tacit agreement of the Vatican decided to come to terms with the situation and establish the first 'Glagolitic' Seminary for training of young priests in the Poljica village of Priko. It should be mentioned at this point that the statute of Poljica was itself written in Croatian Cyrillic. This version of the Cyrillic, described in the statute itself as 'Croatian' but more widely known as Bosančica, remained in use in parts of Southern Croatia until the 19th century, when it increasingly began to yield ground to the Latin alphabet and soon all but vanished. The Glagolitic too slowly went into a decline, and was eventually dropped by church authorities as a liturgical script, even though old Glagolitic texts continued to be used by individual clergy for some time afterwards. In 1927 the old paleo-Croatian (Old Church Slavonic) Roman Missal written in Glagolitic characters, that ha been in use hitherto, was re-issued for the first (and only) time is a Latin transcription, and since then no new liturgical books have been printed in Glagolitic. This transcribed Missal remained in us until the Second Vatican Council when the paleo-Croatian, as well as Latin, were finally abandoned in favour of modern vernacular.
The term Bosančica indicates
a connection with Bosnia, an in Poljica in particular the ties with Bosnia are
deeply rooted in history. The local tradition in Poljica links the origins of
the commune with the arrival there, probably in 949 AD, of the three son of the
Croatian king Miroslav - Tješimir ('Tišemir' in the local dialect) Krešimir and
Elem[17]
- following the murder of their father at the hands of the Bosnian banus
(governor) Pribina during the civil war that flared up, it seems, over the
rights of succession and the question of regional autonomy, shortly after the
death of Krešimir I. who had died four years previously.[18]
It was these princes and their families that, according to the local tradition,
were the originators of the three ruling clans of Poljica, which are mentioned
by name in Article 3 of the oldest surviving copy of the Statute. They were
Poljica's old gentry, the didići as the Statut calls them (did
= grandfather).
THE TREATY
OF ZADAR OF 1358 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR POLJICA
The commune increasingly asserted
its internal autonomy, and for the next four hundred years or so it was
effectively ruled by the didiči, even though during lengthy periods
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was formally under the jurisdiction
of the Priors (or Princes) of Split. Later on, the didići were
joined by a second species of nobility, the so-called vlastela. The
arrival of the vlastela can be traced to the ascendancy of the Hungarian
power around the middle of the 14th century under Louis of Anjou, king of
Hungary and (from 1370) of Poland. Croatia had been formally united with
Hungary in a personal union in 1102, following the expiry of the Croatian royal
line after the death of Zvonimir. The Hungarian claim to the Croat throne arose
from the circumstance that Zvonimir's wife was a Hungarian princess. The union
of the two countries was eventually set up, but not before the Hungarians had
waged a military campaign against the anti-unionist forces in Croatia and
managed to defeat them in a decisive battle on Mount Gvozd in 1097. The
opposition to the Hungarian rule, however, continued to simmer under the
surface, and this was perhaps nowhere more so than in Poljica itself. On one
notable occasion the Poljicans with a deliberate display of defiance gave their
full support to their arch-enemy, Split, when the city fathers decided to deny
sanctuary to king Bela IV, who had fled to Dalmatia during the Tartar invasion
in 1242.
However, there were other powers
who competed with the Hungarians for the control of Dalmatia, and chief among
them was Venice. Whereas in northern Croatia the Hungarians gradually succeeded
in consolidating their rule, southern Croatia, what with continuing local
resistance, the constant incursions of Venice and the devious political
machinations by the Byzantium (later to be replaced by the Turks), remained
very much a disputed territory.
This situation changed in 1358,
when Louis managed to gain control over the whole of Dalmatia by a treaty
concluded with Venice and signed on February 18 that year in Zadar. By his
marriage, five years previously, to Elizabeth Kotromanić, daughter of the
Bosnian banus Stjepan Kotromanić, Louis had secured for himself a wide
measure of support throughout Croatia, and in 1358 even the independent
republic of Dubrovnik, in a gesture of solidarity, voluntarily placed itself
under his suzerainty.[19]
Having forced the Venetians out of
Dalmatia, Louis immediately proceeded to make a number of new administrative
appointments, one of which was that of a royal commissioner for Poljica, The
commissioner - a man by the name of Juraj Rajčić - arrive there, it
seems, in June of the same year. Since he was in the king' service and came
from a region in the north that was officially regarded as part of Hungary,
even though himself ethnically Croat he became known locally as 'the
Hungarian'. It was his descendants, who eventually settled in Poljica and
largely inter-married with the then most prominent Poljican family of
Dražoević,[20] that
represented Poljica's second species of nobility - the so-caller vlastela.
The arrival of the vlastela
entailed some constitutional change in the internal political structure in the
county, and this inevitably caused a great deal of friction. The relations
between the vlastela and the ancient 'tribal' nobility, the didići,
were never easy especially since the vlastela tended to insist on their
superior rank and demanded for themselves the positions of power in the
commune. Eventually a power-sharing formula was devised whereby the didiči
chose the prince from the ranks of vlastela, while the vlastela
chose the duke, or vojvoda, from the ranks of didiči. The vojvoda
was in charge of military matters, and was responsible in particular for law
and order. In addition, the magistrates and the procurators were also elected
from the ranks of didiči. This arrangement, with the exception of
the periods during which the commune was forced to accept the prince of Split
as their titular ruler, remained in force until the late eighteenth century,
when the didići finally re-established their position of dominance
and restored their right to stand for prince, as well as the other offices in
the principality.
THE
RELATIONS WITH VENICE
Louis died in 1382, and the period
that followed was market by a power struggle and political turmoil, as a result
of which the Hungarian influence, especially in littoral Croatia, went into a
sharp decline, from which it never entirely recovered. For a short period
Bosnia, under king Tvrtko (who was a nephew of Stjepan Kotromanić and Queen
Elizabeth's first cousin) filled the power vacuum and assumed the dominant role
in Balkan politics. In 1385 Poljica readily recognised Bosnian suzerainty,
whereas notably Split, at least initially, declared its allegiance to the
German/Roman emperor Sigismund, who in March of that same year succeeded to the
Hungarian/Croatian throne.
Sigismund was never much liked, however, and he had an uphill struggle trying to establish his authority. In southern Croatia, in particular, such support as he was able to drum up for himself, even after Bosnia's influence in the region had waned, was patchy and short-lived. The local magnates opposed him, naturally enough, primarily because they resented his interference and wanted to protect and expand their own fiefdoms, but their opposition found a wider echo among the local population, who nursed a long standing grudge against the enforced tutelage by the meddlesome northern neighbour.
However, the opponents of
Sigismund, though fairly numerous, were not strong enough to unseat him, and
they appealed for support - with ruinous consequences, as it turned out - to
Ladislaus of Naples, who was a distant relative of Louis I. Eventually,
Ladislaus was persuaded to come to Zadar, where on 5 August 1403 he was crowned
by the rebels as king of Croatia and Hungary. It was a political gesture that
many of them soon had a cause to regret. For when a few years later Sigismund's
luck turned, Ladislaus decided that it was not worth his while to pursue his
doubtful claim to the Hungarian throne and withdrew from the conflict, having
sold, in 1409, his Dalmatian possessions (the towns of Zadar, Novigrad and
Vrana, and the island of Pag) together with all his rights to Dalmatia to
Venice for one hundred thousand ducats. This unsavoury deal was to remain for a
long time in the memory of the local people as a supreme act of treachery. It
enabled Venice, almost exactly fifty years after the Treaty of Zadar, to return
to Dalmatia, and to entrench itself firmly along most of the Croatian Adriatic
coast (the only significant exception being Dubrovnik) where it remained in
continuous occupation for the next four hundred odd years, until its own demise
in 1797.
The Venetians did not move in
unopposed, however, and it took them some time before they were able to crush
the armed resistance they encountered in various parts of the country. They
first occupied major towns, from which they mounted military expeditions into
the surrounding territory. At the end of 1443, their navy invaded littoral
Poljica, and the following January the neighbouring town of Omiš, one of the
last remaining free strongholds, surrendered to their forces. This placed
Poljica in an impossible position, and, after much heart-searching, the
Poljica's leaders decided they had no option but to agree to accept Venetian
suzerainty in exchange for a recognition of their ancient privileges. A deal to
this effect was struck in Split on 29 January 1444, and was officially
approved, with minor alterations, by the doge on March 3rd. It is generally
believed that the oldest surviving manuscript of the Statute of Poljica was
prepared specifically for the purpose of these negotiations, although this
cannot be established with certainty.[21]
The relations with Venice,
initially, were extremely uneasy with the Poljicans jealously guarding their
internal autonomy, and looking for possible alternatives to the Venetian
connection. However, with the Turkish menace drawing ever nearer, the Poljicans
found themselves increasingly relying on Venice, both for arms supplies and
such protection as the Venetian diplomacy was able to afford them. A major
Turkish detachment crossed the river Cetina into Poljica for the first time in
1500, taking one hundred and fifty people prisoner. From then on incursions and
acme clashes were a daily occurrence. Often Poljicans were forced to fight
beyond their borders, chiefly but not exclusively in surrounding Dalmatian and
Bosnian districts, as part of the Venetian troupe to which they were obliged by
treaty to contribute five hundred men.
UNDER
TURKISH SUZERAINTY
However, as the military situation
deteriorated, it soon became obvious that Venice was unable to offer any
effective protection and the Poljicans came reluctantly to the conclusion that
the only way to save their country from total destruction and secure some
semblance of peace was to place themselves formally under Turkish suzerainty.
It was a traumatic change of policy, which, as it turned out, did not produce
the results they had hoped for. Very little is known about the actual
negotiations they conducted with Turkish representatives, or the contents of
the final treaty. However, from a report submitted to the Venetian Senate by
the prince of Split in February 1514, it transpires that by that time the
Poljicans had already agreed terms with the Turks, involving, among other
unspecified, conditions, a payment of an annual tribute. In return the Turkish
Sultan apparently gave orders to his military commanders in the area to treat
with civility his newly acquired subjects.[22]
The agreement never worked, and
for the next two hundred odd years Poljica led a precarious existence, often
fighting at the edge of extinction. This was without a doubt one of the most
difficult periods in its entire history. It was not until 1699, when the Treaty
of Karlovac was concluded, that Poljica was able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Following the heavy defeat of their armies at the hands of the Austrians at
Zenta on the Tisa two years previously, the Turks were forced to agree to peace
terms, involving, among other things, a re-drawing of the borders in Dalmatia,
whereby the territory of Poljica reverted to the Venetian jurisdiction. From
the Poljicans point of view, a complete independence would have been
preferable, but the Venetian rule was definitely lesser of the two evils.
There was no question that the
Turks, mainly because of their sheer physical proximity and notorious ferocity,
were regarded as the main enemy. The extreme severity of the penalties that the
principality's statute decrees for anyone who might be tempted to collaborate
with them, testifies to the strength of the feeling in the community on this
issue. The battles that the Poljicans fought with the Turks were numerous and
savage. Often the Poljicans themselves provoked armed clashes by refusing to
pay the heavy tribute imposed on them by their masters. They tended to use any
political or military reversal that the Turks suffered elsewhere as an excuse
to stop payment of the tribute, whereupon the Turks would mount a punitive
expedition and there would be a bloody battle, with numerous casualties on both
sides. Most of these clashes occurred in Upper Poljica close to the
north-eastern approaches to the county, but skirmishes and even full-scale
battles in the interior of the county were not uncommon. On these occasions
many acts of prodigious heroism were performed, later to be sung about and
recounted in countless folk songs and folk tales. One such act of heroism due
to a young woman by the name of Mila Gojsalić ingrained itself
particularly deeply on popular memory and is celebrated to this day as a symbol
of Poljica's spirit of resistance in numerous poems, plays, and at least one
modern opera.[23] When in
1530 a large Turkish force invaded Poljica, Mila Gojsalić, by all accounts
a striking local beauty, walked into the Turkish camp on the pretext of wishing
to offer herself to the Turkish commander, and used the occasion to set the gun
powder alight, whereupon the Poljicans launched an attack and routed the
invaders. A life-size statue of Mila by the sculptor Ivan Meštrović was
erected close to the place where these events took place as recently as 1967.
THE LAST
HUNDRED YEARS
The Treaty of Karlovac of 1699
liberated Poljica from the Turkish dominion, but the Turks remained in the
neighbourhood and one more savage round of fighting was still to come. The
Turkish resentment at the humiliating terms they were forced to accept at
Karlovac finally came to the boil in 1715, when they launched a new offensive
against the Venetian-held territory in Dalmatia and elsewhere. Initially they
scored some successes, but then the campaign ran into severe trouble,
especially after they became en broiled in an additional war with Austria the
following year. At the end, mainly through the mediation of England and Holland
a peace agreement was signed in Požarevac in 1718, with Turkey once again being
compelled to give way and relinquish some of its previously held territories.
It was on this occasion that the line separating the Turkish occupied Bosnia
from the Venetian-held Dalmatia was finally settled. This line, with minor
alterations, still marks the border between the two provinces.
Although most of the fighting on
this occasion took place we outside Poljica's own territory, the Poljicans took
part in some of the fiercest battles as part of the Venetian army. As always
when fighting the Turks, they fought with bravery and distinction, which earned
them much praise, but very little else. Once the fighting was over, there were
still the Venetian taxes to be paid, which, in view of the total impoverishment
of their county as a result of the ravages and devastations of continuous wars,
represented a heavy burden. In 1705 the taxes were set at three hundred
Venetian gross per every property owner per year, payable in four quarterly
instalments. Moreover the Venetians decreed that everyone who owned land in
Poljica, however small the possession, had to pay the same amount, even if the
owner had long left the county and had settled elsewhere.
Yet what with the general feeling
of war weariness and the desire to rebuild their commune, the Poljicans were
not in a mood for a new fight, and the relations with Venice actually improve
in the remaining decades of the century. The Venetians, provide they received
their taxes, were happy to let the Poljicans order the: lives as they pleased.
As a result, as years went by, the economy of the county began to show real
signs of improvement. Fields were tilled again, houses were rebuilt, and the
Poljicans began to build up an increasingly profitable export trade with their
wine, olive oil and fruit, especially the small black 'maraschino' cherry,
which grew there in abundance and was sold mainly as a raw material, for the
world famous liqueur of the same name produced at Zadar.
However, no sooner they had begun
to enjoy a taste of modest prosperity than the threat of a new war suddenly
appeared on the horizon. The French Revolution broke out in 1789, and as its
shock waves began to spread throughout Europe, in Dalmatia, as elsewhere, there
was a great deal of agitation, especially by the Church, against the 'godless
Jacobins'. Napoleon's victorious Italian campaign propelled the fears of the
conservative establishment to a new pitch, and when Venice herself came under
threat, there was a frantic attempt by the local administration and some
sections of the clergy to whip up support for her by portraying her as a
defender of the faith against the French 'Antichrist'. This did not fail to
make an impression on God-fearing Poljicans, who immediately offered to send
voluntiers to Venice, even before the official recruitment campaign got under
way. As it happened, it all ended in a farce. The ruling oligarchy of the
'Serene Republic' realised that time was up, and gave in without a fight, and
Venice as a state ceased to exist.
Following the fall of Venice, most
of its former possessions in Dalmatia were annexed by the Austrians, but when
in 1805 Napoleon routed the Austrian armies at Austerlitz, they were forced to
surrender Dalmatia to France, and in February 1806 the first French military
contingent arrived in Zadar, the administrative centre of Dalmatia. For a great
many local people, but especially for the ruling nobility, the arrival of the
French was a traumatic experience. The Poljicans, in particular, had a good
reason to be apprehensive about their future. Suddenly they found themselves at
the mercy of a new master who was much more powerful than any of the others
they had to contend with in the past. But more worrying still was the fact that
the French had brought with them the new revolutionary ideas, which the
spectacular victories of their armies gave a powerful impetus throughout
Europe. A confrontation at the social as well political level was inevitable.
The French looked at Poljica, at first, with wry amusement, but soon lost
patience when the Poljicans began to insist on their privileges. The new
administration set about introducing new judicial and fiscal measures, as well
as launching a recruitment drive for the army, without paying much attention to
local interests and local sensitivities. This inevitably caused a great deal of
alarm and resentment among the population. Before long, the whole of Poljica
was astir.
Changes were very necessary, but
the habits were centuries old. Unhappily the manner in which the new
administration went about implementing the new measures was such that they
upset more people than they otherwise might have done. To make things worse, the
Russian warships, which had been cruising off the Dalmatian coast, keeping an
eye on French military movements, and, whenever the opportunity presented
itself, harassing French garrisons, suddenly turned up off the coast of
Poljica. A contact was established with the local leaders, and the Russian
admiral Sinyavin lost no time in trying to encourage the Poljicans to rise
against the French, promising help in men and material. Eventually, after a
stormy meeting of Poljica's leaders in the Glagolitic Seminary in the village
of Priko, it was decided to begin armed resistance against French troupes. In view of the circumstances, it
was a hopeless and futile gesture, as the Russians, in particular, must have
known.
The dissenters were very much in a
minority. According to an eye-witness report, one of the dissenters, the
'Glagolitic' priest and professor at the Seminary Marko Kružičević,
who had travelled through Italy and happened to be in Venice when the French
troupes marched into that city, apparently made valiant efforts to persuade his
compatriots to change their mind, but to no avail. The plan went ahead, and,
predictably, ended in disaster. Admiral Sinyavin, at first, made a show of
support by landing some of his marines,[24]
but when a large detachment of French infantry came on the scene and began
attacking him from the surrounding mountain heights, he quickly withdrew his
men back to his ships and sailed off. The French suppressed the rebellion with
extreme savagery, wreaking terrible vengeance upon the local population. The
Russians, for their part, disembarked most of the rebels who fled with them on
the neighbouring island of Brač, and after some more unsuccessful attempts
to encourage anti-French resistance further down the coast they eventually
sailed for home, taking with them the last prince of Poljica. He died in St.
Petersburg in 1816.
The rebellion lasted seven days.
The first shots were fired on 4 June 1807, when an attack was made on a small
detachment of French soldiers escorting a shipment of supplies from Split to
Omit. Seven days later, on June 11, it all ended in ignominy when the Russians
turned tail and made off. On that same day the French administration issued a
public statement announcing the abolition of Poljica's old privileges and statutes,
and its full integration into the French legal and fiscal system. In addition,
Poljica's territory was to be split up and divided between the three
neighbouring districts. This decision was given the force of law on 21
September of the same year, and the political history of Poljica as an
autonomous principality, going back seven centuries, was thereby brought to an
end.
Within only a few months, the only
other free Croatian principality on the Adriatic, the republic of Dubrovnik,
suffered a similar fate. After a year and a half of occupation, and de facto
abrogation of its sovereignty, the French formally abolished it on 31 January
1808. It is interesting to compare these two principalities. Although situated
only about a hundred miles apart, they could not have been more dissimilar in
their political organization and style of life. One was typically city-based,
very much like the majority of western European principalities at the time; the
other was exclusively rural. In its heyday Dubrovnik was renowned for its
extraordinary achievements in literature, art, science and architecture, as
well as for its wealth and commercial acumen. By contrast, Poljica was poor,
little known beyond its borders, and could hardly boast a similar record of
achievements in the field of culture. Living as they did, in a geographically
and politically highly exposed position and having to fight daily for bare
existence, the Poljicans had no time to build fine cathedrals or write leasurly
verse. Yet they were by no means culturally inactive, and their mediaeval monks
in particular initiated a tradition of education which was kept alive even
during the darkest periods of Poljica's history. The Benedictine abbey of St
Peter of Gumay established in the eleventh century in the village of Selo (the
present day Sumpetar), the cartulary of which survives to this day[25]
played an important part in promoting general education in the area during the
two and a half centuries of its existence. However, it was Poljica's
'Glagolitic' clergy and the religious, who were mainly responsible for
continuing the educational effort and maintaining the tradition of indigenous
culture. Throughout its history Poljica identified itself closely with the
'Glagolitic Movement', fostering and furthering the 'Glagolitic' tradition as
an instrument of national self-assertion in the face of the powerful Latin
culture, and it was in Poljica that the majority of 'Glagolitic' priests
working in this part of Dalmatia received their training. The famous illuminated
'Glagolitic' Missal of Hrvoje was in all probability designed and executed by
Poljican monks around 1404.
But the most remarkable and
unusual document to come out of Poljica is its statute. In its surviving
version it represents a collection of rules and regulations spanning several
centuries. It provides a fascinating record of the fortunes of a small
community of peasant farmers, who tried to organize their lives as best they
could in uniquely adverse circumstances, and survived on little more than the love
of their country and faith in each other.
* This paper was presented at the 19th National
Convention of the American Association for Advancement of Slavic Studies
held in Boston, November 5-8, 1987.
[1] A document
from 1799, prepared at the behest of the new Austrian administration, following
the fall of Venice, for the purpose of settling the dispute over ancient titles
and privileges, lists 79 such families, plus a number of other living outside
Poljica, but descended from its gentry.
[2] For a bondsman to leave his lord 'secretly', or
without going through the prescribed procedure, was a punishable offence, but
not, it seems, if there was a good cause. Thus the article 89c of the statute
of the principality states explicitly: … different cases should be treated on
their merits. A man is free to flee from evil if he can.
[3] Cf. articles 21, 23a, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29 of
the Statute.
[4] The
Croatian terms used were općina (commune) and župa (in its older sense,
which was indistinguishable from that of županija, i.e. 'county', rather
than in its more restricted modern sense of 'church parish'), as well as knežija
(principality).
[5] 'Ea [Poljica -
E.P.) vicatim tantum habitata ad duo millia virorum continet, qui suis iuribus
viventes nulli externo diu paruerunt'. See Palladius Fuscus Patavinus, De situ orae llyrici, reprinted
in Thesaurus Antiquitatum, ed. Joannus Georgius Graevius, Leyden 1725,
p. 454. Fuscus, who taught rhetoric at Justinopolis (the Istrian town of Koper)
is said to have 'floruit in humanioribus' around 1445, and 'claruit' cca. 1470;
and it would seem that he made his journey some time between these two dates.
His reference to the Poljicans not being subject to 'any external authority' is
particularly interesting, since it seems to indicate that the Venetian
suzerainty which - if other sources are to be believed - Poljica was acknowledging at the time was little more than a
business arrangement whereby Venice undertook to provide such protection as she
could from external enemies in exchange for a suitable annual tribute or tax;
with Poljica enjoying full autonomy in internal matters.
[6] 6 cf. Ivo Rubić: Poljica, in Poljički
Zbornik, Vol. II, Zagreb 1968, p. 29.
[7] The
diminutive form of the Croatian word 'polje' is 'poljence' or 'police'; which
yields the plural 'poljenca'/'poljca' - never 'poljica'.
[8] The famous
15th century humanist and poet Poliziano (1454-1494) came from this town.
[9] Any kind of
'regimen' or 'administratio' seemed to have qualified as 'politia'. (Cf. Du
Cange). Palladius Fuscus, incidentally, says explicitly that Poljica was called
Politia by the natives ('ab indigenis Politia vocatur'). Op. cit.
(See footnote 5).
[10] See Ivan Pivčević: 'Nekoliko poljičkih
isprava iz XV. stoljeća'; Supplement to 'Bulletino di archeologia e storia
dalmata' 1908.
[11] One of the earliest references to 'Massarum' occurs
in an endowment deed by the Croatian duke Trpimir in 852. 'Massarum' is also
mentioned in a similar deed by king Zvonimir in 1078, and again in the
Cartulary of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter of Gurney 1080-1187; cf.
English edition (ed. E. Pivčevič, Bristol 1984) p. 75. The Split
historian Archdeacon Thomas (1200-1268) in his Historia Salonitana (cf.
facsimile reprint with translation by V. Rismondo, Split 1977, pp. 46
and 236) in an eleventh century context speaks only of the 'parish of Mosor'
parochia Massarum). It is only when recounting some events that took place in
1239 that he seems to make an oblique reference to Poljica, viz. by briefly
mentioning a certain Tollen Polizian(us), who, it transpires, was an
'implacable enemy of the Split people' and who, to the latter's evident relief,
suddenly died that year (see pp. 112 and 330).
[12] See De Administrando
Imperio, Greek and English, Greek text edited by Gy Moravcsik. translation
by R.J.H. Jenkins, Budapest 1949, p. 145.
[13] A fortress
in a mountain pass between the Mosor and Kozjak mountains controlling the
access to Split from the interior.
[14] See Frane
Mihanović: 'Arheološka istraživanja oko crkve i u crkvi sv. Cipri jana u Gatima', in Poljica, No. 1(10),
1985, p. 51. See also J. Jeličič: 'Ikonografiji ranokrščanske
lunete iz Gata', in Prilozi Povijesti Umjetnosti u Dalmaciji, Vol. 25
Split 1985.
[15] See De
Administrando Imperio, chps. 30 and 31.
[16] This
incident is recounted by Archdeacon Thomas in his Historia Salonitane
(see footnote 11) p. 68.
[17] The last of
these was probably a nickname derived from 'Velimir' or 'Velemir'.
[18] The murder of
Miroslav by banus Pribina is referred to by Constantine Porphirogenitus in his
account of Croatian history. See De
Administrando Imperio ch. 31.
[19] The humiliating withdrawal of the Venetians from
Dalmatia imposed on them by the Treaty of Zadar - although, as it turned out,
their withdrawal was only temporary, for they came back fifty years later - was
celebrated at the time throughout the land as a great national event, and Louis
and his Croatian Queen were feted as national heroes. Louis came to Zadar for
the signing of the Treaty, and his entry into the city is depicted in a relief
on the silver sarcophagus of St Simeon, the patron Saint of Zadar, which was
specially commissioned by Queen Elizabeth from local craftsmen. The sarcophagus
was completed in 1380.
[20] For more
details about the Dražoevič family see: Rafo Ferri, 'Prilog ispitivan ju
porijekla osnivača Poljičke republike', in Poljički zbornik,
Vol. II, Zagreb 1971 pp. 35-41. See also: Tomislav Heres,
'Poljički knez Žarko Dražoević u povijesti književnosti', in Poljica,
Vol. IX, Gata 1984, pp. 25-43. According to these writers the family of
Dražoević belonged to the 'Tišemir' clan of the didiči-nobles.
[21] The
manuscript has suffered some damage, and in particular one of the letter
symbols indicating its date of origin appears to be missing. Only the letter
symbols signifying the year 1400 are clearly visible. According to V. Jagić, the
missing letter symbol was probably M (40), which would mean that the manuscript
originate in 1440. However, if this conjecture is correct, then (contrary to Jagić's
own speculation) the connection between this particular copy of the statute and
the negotiations with Venice becomes extremely tenuous, for it is not clear why
the Poljican needed to prepare a copy of the statute for the negotiations which
did not take place until four years subsequently. The manuscript, incidentally,
contains in its heading an explicit reference to an earlier, unfortunately
lost, version of the Statute. Cf. V Jagić, Poljički statut, in
'Monumenta historico-juridica slavorum meridionalium' Vol. IV, Zagreb 1890.
[22] Cf. Ivan
Pivčević, Povijest Poljica, Split 1921, p. 61.
[23] The opera,
by the composer Jakov Gotovac, was first performed in 1952.
[24] According to the French military governor of Dalmatia
Marshal Marmont (cf. 'Memoirs du duc de Raguse de 1792 a 1832', Paris 1857), Sinyavin landed a thousand men, but Marmont, who came
to Poljica to take personal charge of the French military operation, is clearly
exaggerating in order to magnify his own victory in forcing the Russians to
beat a hasty retreat, without himself suffering any serious losses. Local
sources put the number of Russians at five hundred, which is probably closer to
the mark.
[25] See footnote 11 for details of the English edition.