Chapter IX: Ragusa and Epidaurus (2)

Gregory IX. congratulates Coloman on ‘wiping out the heresy and restoring the light of Catholic purity,’[60] but the Pope was quick in discovering that these congratulations were premature. The Tartar invasion which in 1241 weakened Hungary was the strength of the Bogomiles of Bosnia. Nor, perhaps, did the slaughter of Ban Zibisclav and many of his bravest adherents by the horde of Khan Ugadai much affect the subjects whose creed and interests he had deserted. In 1246 Pope Innocent IV.[61] had to stir up a third Bosnian crusade, the conduct of which was entrusted to the Archbishop of Colocz—‘a man skilled,’ as was fitting in an archbishop, ‘in all the science of war.’ He received a cross from the Pope to fix upon his heart, and aided by the King Bela, of Hungary, renewed the pious work. Many heretics were butchered, others were cast into dungeons; and so great were considered the deserts of the archbishop, that the Pope transferred the church of Bosnia from Spalato to Colocz. But once more it was discovered that fire and sword had raged in vain. Heresy continued to be so rampant in Bosnia that from 1256 the episcopate of Bosnia, which had been renewed after the first crusade, lapses a second time.[62] The papacy next resorted to persuasion, the more so as during the last part of the thirteenth century the Hungarian suzerainty was becoming less and less binding on Bosnia. About the year 1260 the Minorite brothers of the order of St. Francis of Assisi were sent into Bosnia to aid the Dominicans, who had been already established here.[63] At the end of the thirteenth century Bosnia passed for a while under the overlordship of the Prince of Serbia, and Stephen Dragutine, who was favourable to the Roman church, allowed two Franciscan brothers to establish the Inquisition here in 1291.[64]

But at the beginning of the fourteenth century the Hungarians had once more recovered their ascendency in Bosnia, and the Pope eagerly seized the weapon of orthodoxy at his service. John XXII. directed two letters, one to Charles, King of Hungary, and the other to Stephen, Ban of Bosnia. The letters are almost identical in scope, and are interesting as showing that Bosnia was still the stronghold and asylum of European heresy, and as illustrating the peculiar character of these sectaries. The letter to the Bosnian Ban is dated Avignon, June 1325.[65] ‘To our beloved son and nobleman, Stephen, Prince of Bosnia,’—‘Knowing that thou art a faithful son of the church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate the heretics in thy dominions, and to render aid and assistance unto Fabian, our Inquisitor, for as much as a large multitude of heretics, from many and divers parts collected, hath flowed together into the principality of Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and to dwell there in safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old Fiend, and armed with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of Catholics by outward show of simplicity and lying assumption of the name of Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheeps’ clothing, covering their bestial fury as a means whereby they may deceive the simple sheep of Christ.’

The true believers still need to be warned against the apparent meekness and innocence of these men of the gospel! His Holiness seems almost to be repeating the description of the Bogomiles given by the Bulgarian Presbyter over three centuries before. ‘When men,’ says Cosmas, ‘see their lowly behaviour, then think they that they are of true belief; they approach them therefore and consult them about their souls’ health. But they, like wolves that will swallow up a lamb, bow their head, sigh, and answer full of humility, and set themselves up as if they knew how it is ordered in heaven.’[66] Hypocritical meekness has been a ready accusation in the mouths of opponents of puritanism in all ages; but we may be allowed to see, in the slanders of foul-mouthed popes and prelates, a tribute to the evangelic purity of the lives of those whom they persecuted and traduced.

Once more ‘the Lilies of the Field,’ as in their figurative parlance they loved to style themselves, are trampled under foot. In 1330 the King of Hungary and the Ban combined to assist the Inquisitor Fabian; many heretics were hounded from the realm, and the usual scenes of horror were repeated. In 1337, however, heresy is again as rampant as ever in Bosnia, and the Pope accordingly stirred up the neighbouring princes to another Bosnian crusade, which was only averted by the address of the Ban Stephen.

Sometimes the monks condescended to work miracles to forward the work of conversion. One, while addressing a congregation of heretics, ‘stepped,’ we are assured, ‘into a large fire, and with great hilarity stood in the middle of the flames while he recited the fiftieth Psalm.’ We hardly need the further assurance that many were turned from the error of their ways by miracles like this, especially when it is remembered that the heretics had the alternative of repenting, or repeating the experiment.

Nor were there wanting, we are told, miraculous tokens in the sky to manifest the displeasure of heaven itself at these scoffers at Catholic verity. The mountains whither the Bogomiles had been driven by the pious zeal of Ban Stephen were struck by celestial fire. ‘Upon the eve of St. Catharine, 1367, a mighty heavenly flame appeared in the East, with an intense light terribly apparent to the whole globe. At that time they say that the loftiest mountains of Bosnia, with all rocks, cattle, wild beasts, and fowls of the air, were miraculously consumed, so that they were reduced to a plain; and there dwell the Patarene Manichæans, and say that God burnt up those mountains for their convenience, because He loved their faith.’[67] In fact, neither the Bogomiles nor the new Ban Stephen Tvartko, who favoured them, seem to have been the least appalled by this phenomenon. Only two years after this miraculous conflagration, Urban V. writes to the King of Hungary to complain of the Ban of Bosnia, ‘who, following in the detestable footsteps of his fathers, fosters and defends the heretics who flow together into these parts from divers corners of the world as into a sink of iniquity.’[68] The Bans of Bosnia, even when Catholics themselves, seem to have been forced by the strength of national feeling into an attitude at least of toleration towards the Bogomiles, and their position in this respect has been aptly compared by Hilferding to that of the Bulgarian Czars.

During the troublous times of the Bosnian kingdom the Bogomiles increased in strength, and, what is extremely significant, the heretics of Bosnia begin to play a part in the revival of the Protestant movement throughout Europe. We do not know what part the Sclavonic heretics of Bosnia may have taken in preparing the minds of their Czechian brothers for the religious revolt of which Huss and Jerome of Prague were the leaders and exponents. But we do know that from the first intimate relations existed between the Bogomiles of Bosnia and the Hussites; in 1433 four Bogomilian or Patarene bishops made their way from Bosnia to the Council of Basil,[69] and shortly after, in 1437, the Romish bishop Joseph complains that Bosnia was swarming with Hussites and other heretics. We have, moreover, very strong indirect evidence that the movement in Bosnia was at this time directed by men of learning and ability. In 1462 Pius II., being much alarmed at the progress of heresy in Bosnia, and ‘hearing that there was a great want there of men skilled in philosophy, the sacred canons, and theology,’ sent thither ‘learned men from the neighbouring provinces,’ and especially the brother Peter de Mili, a native of Bosnia, and four fellows. These five ‘had studied in the best Cismontane and Transmontane Universities under the most learned doctors.’ The Pope, moreover, gave orders that some of the largest convents should be converted into schools for literary studies.[70] We may conclude with confidence that learning was required in Bosnia to cope with learning.

But the preparation of this polemic artillery was cut short by an event, the effects of which are even now distracting Christendom. In the year following that in which his Holiness laments over the continued progress of heresy in Bosnia, the whole country passed in the short space of eight days irrevocably under the dominion of the Infidel. The continued crusades, the persecutions of the Inquisition—fire, sword, exile, and dungeon—had done their work. The Protestant population of Bosnia had at last deliberately taken its choice, and preferred the dominion of what it believed to be the more tolerant Turks to the ferocious tyranny of Catholic kings, magnates, and monks. There never was a clearer instance of the Nemesis which follows on the heels of religious persecution. Europe has mainly to thank the Church of Rome that an alien civilisation and religion has been thrust into her midst, and that Bosnia at the present day remains Mahometan.

At the very moment when the Turks were threatening the existence of the Bosnian kingdom, the King, then Stephen Tomašević, and priests, aided by the magnates and aristocratic party in the State, were pushing the persecution of the Bogomiles to an extreme which perhaps it had never reached before. In the year 1459 King Stephen turned his feudal arms against the inoffensive Bogomiles at home, and hounded out as many, it is said,[71] as forty thousand, who took refuge in the Herzegovina, with their co-religionist, the Duke of St. Sava. Others he sent in chains to Rome, where it appears they were ‘benignantly converted’—whatever that means. But the expulsion of forty thousand did little to diminish the strength of the Bogomiles in Bosnia. In 1462, as we know from the Roman archives, heresy was as powerful as ever in Bosnia. Already, twelve years before,[72] the Bogomiles had invited the Turks into Bosnia as their deliverers; in 1463 the invitation was repeated, a successful negotiation was opened with the Sultan, and, on Mahomet II.’s invasion, the Catholic king found himself deserted by his people. The keys of the principal fortress, the royal city of Bobovac, were handed over to the Turk by the ‘Manichæan’ governor;[73] the other fortresses and towns hastened to imitate its example, and within a week ‘seventy cities defended by nature and art’ passed into the hands of Mahomet. Bosnia, which may be described as one vast stronghold, refused to strike a blow in defence of her priestly tyrants.

Perhaps enough has been said to show the really important part played by Bosnia in European history. We have seen her aid in interpreting to the West the sublime puritanism which the more Eastern Sclaves of Bulgaria had first received from the Armenian missionaries. We have seen her take the lead in the first religious revolt against Rome. We have seen a Bosnian religious teacher directing the movement in Provence. We have seen the Protestants of Bosnia successfully resisting all the efforts of Rome, supported by the arms of Hungary, to put them down. We have seen them offering an asylum to their persecuted brothers of the West,—Albigensians, Patarenes, and Waldenses. We have seen them connected with the Reformation in Bohemia, and affording shelter to the followers of Huss. From the twelfth century to the final conquest of the Turks in the sixteenth, when the fight of religious freedom had been won in Northern Europe, Bosnia presents the unique phenomenon of a Protestant State existing within the limits of the Holy Roman Empire, and in a province claimed by the Roman Church. Bosnia was the religious Switzerland of Mediæval Europe, and the signal service which she has rendered to the freedom of the human intellect by her successful stand against authority can hardly be exaggerated. Resistance, broken down in the gardens of Provence, buried beneath the charred rafters of the Roman cities of the Langue d’Oc, smothered in the dungeons of the Inquisition, was prolonged from generation to generation amongst the primeval forests and mountain fastnesses of Bosnia. There were not wanting, amongst those who sought to exterminate the Bogomiles, Churchmen as dead to human pity as the Abbot of Citeaux, and lay arms as bloodthirsty as De Montfort; but the stubborn genius of the Serbian people fought on with rare persistence, and held out to the end. The history of these champions of a purer religion has been written by their enemies, and ignored by those who owe most to their heroism. No Martyrology of the Bogomiles of Bosnia has come down to us. We have no Huss or Tyndale to arrest our pity. ‘Invidious silence’ has obscured their fame,

Illachrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.

Protestant historians, fearful of claiming relationship with heretics whose views on the Origin of Evil were more logical than their own, have almost or entirely ignored the existence of these Sclavonic Puritans. Yet of all worn-out devices of _ad captandum_ argument this assuredly is the most threadbare, to ignore the transitions of intervening links, and pointing to the extremes of a long concatenation of causes and effects, to seize upon their differences as a proof of disconnection. In the course of ages the development of creeds and churches is not less striking than that of more secular institutions. Bogomilism obeyed an universal law; it paid the universal tribute of successful propagandism; it compromised; or, where it did not compromise, it was ruthlessly stamped out. The Manichæan elements, most distasteful to modern Protestants, were in fact the first to disappear.[74] In its contact with the semi-pagan Christianity of the West, the puritanism of the Gnostic East became, perforce, materialized; just as, ages before, Christianity itself, an earlier wave of the same Eastern puritanism had materialized in its contact with the undiluted heathendom of the Western empire. To a certain extent Bogomilism gained. It lost something of its dreamy transcendentalism, something of its anti-human vigour, and by conforming to the exigencies of Western society, became to a certain extent more practical. Thus by the sixteenth century the path had been cleared for a compromise with orthodoxy itself. The Reformation marks the confluence of the two main currents of religious thought that traverse the middle ages, in their several sources, Romish and Armenian. No doubt, from the orthodox side, which refused to reject all that was beautiful in the older world, which consecrated Greco-Roman civilization and linked art with religion, the West has gained much; but in days of gross materialism and degrading sacerdotalism, it has gained perhaps even more from the purging and elevating influence of these early Puritans. The most devout Protestant need not be afraid to acknowledge the religious obligations which he owes to his spiritual forefathers, Manichæan though they were; while those who perceive in Protestantism itself nothing more than a stepping-stone to still greater freedom of the human mind, and who recognize the universal bearings of the doctrine of Evolution, will be slow to deny that England herself and the most enlightened countries of the modern world may owe a debt, which it is hard to estimate, to the Bogomiles of Bulgaria and Bosnia.

After the Turkish conquest of Bosnia the history of the Bogomiles in those parts becomes obscure. That they still existed in the revived Banat of lower Bosnia we may gather from a passage in the ‘Annals of the Minorites,’[75] to the effect that in 1478 the city of Jaycze was ‘polluted by heretics and schismatics.’ Many who had resisted the propaganda of Rome appear to have found in the iconoclastic puritanism of Islâm a belief less incompatible with their own. We have direct evidence that it was the Bogomiles who chiefly swelled the ranks of the renegades.[76] Many, doubtless, when they found how hard were the masters they had called in, were provoked to their old attitude of resistance, and perished for their obstinacy. They are generally said to have died out, and the Bosnian monks of the order of St. Francis, who, in 1769, supplied the author of ‘Illyricum Sacrum’ with an account of the present state of that country, declare that there are no traces left of them. This, however, is not the case. During the recent insurrection, over 2,000 Bogomiles from Popovo, a single district of the Herzegovina, took refuge in the hospitable territory of what was once the Republic of Ragusa.[77]

To return to the more secular aspects of Bosnian history. Much still remains to be elucidated by Sclavonic historians with regard to the inner government of the country, the rise of the semi-feudal nobility, and the complicated relations of parties. Here it would be hopeless to attempt anything more than the merest outline, giving prominence only to a few episodes of general interest. The Hungarian overlordship is occasionally broken by a Serbian, and Stephen Dūshan, who, in the middle of the fourteenth century, revived the Czardom among the Balkan Sclaves, seized the pretext of a claim on the Principality of Chelm to overrun Bosnia, and add its dominion to his titles. For an interesting monument of this period I may refer the reader to the account of the Book of Arms of Bosnian Nobility, drawn up in the year 1340 by order of the Serbian Czar, which we saw in the Franciscan Monastery of Foinica.[78]

But this Serbian suzerainty vanishes with the dreams of Stephen Dūshan. Shortly after his date the Bans of Bosnia become so powerful that they are able to annex the two important Serbian provinces of Rascia and Zenta, which answers to the modern Montenegro, and to proclaim themselves virtually independent both of the Serbian and Hungarian monarchies. In 1376 the Ban, Stephen Tvartko, was strong enough to extort from his uncle, King Louis of Hungary, permission to assume the royal style—the King of Hungary only reserving the _suprema dominatio_.[79] After half a year spent in preparations, Tvartko, accompanied by his lords spiritual and temporal, and by four representatives from each important town, progressed from his residence of Sutiska to the Monastery of Mileševo, the foundation and burial-place of his uncle and predecessor, but the greater glory of which was that it contained the tomb of the Serbian Apostle, St. Sava. There he was crowned by the hands of the Metropolitan, and assumed the title of Stephen Tvartko, by the grace of God King of Rascia, Bosnia, and Primorie.[80]

Stephen Tvartko distinguished his rule by his wisdom and toleration. Though himself leaning in his belief alternately to Greek orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, he displayed a generous toleration of the Bogomiles; he did much to encourage trade and commerce, and was indeed, after Culin, the first Bosnian prince who struck coins.[81] He succeeded in quelling the insolence of his great nobles who had burst out into rebellion, under the leadership of his brother, and the attendance at his coronation of four representatives from each of his great cities would alone be a striking proof that Bosnia was advancing on the path of constitutional liberty, and was not by any means alien to the civic and industrial impulses of fourteenth-century Europe. Nay, it is certain that, in spite of the prevalence of Bogomilism among the masses, and of the artistically blighting influence of an iconoclastic religion on a rude society, arts of a more æsthetic kind were penetrating among the Bosnian mountains. Nor was it only in the illuminations of heraldry, the embellishment of gold and silver work, and the superb embroidery of sacred vestments that these more refined influences asserted themselves. That munificent patron of South-Sclavonic Art, the present Roman Catholic bishop of Bosnia, has collected in his palace of Diakovar, a series of paintings by Bosnian artists of this and the succeeding century, which reflect the Giottesque revulsion from the wooden Byzantinism which preceded it, and show that Bosnia bade fair to produce a school of artists who might hold a place in the galleries of Europe.[82]

_Dîs aliter placitum!_ Already, through the passes of the Balkan the storm was howling nearer and nearer that was to annihilate the budding gems of culture and free government in Bosnia. In 1353,—five years before Tvartko’s accession to the Banat,—under Suleiman, the son of Orchan, the Turks had first set foot in Europe. In twelve more years their ravages had spread to Attica, the Palæologi had pawned their crown jewels, and the Turkish Sultan had transferred his residence from Broussa to Adrianople. The tide of invasion poured along the Pontic shores, across the plains of Thrace, and was bursting through the iron gates of Hæmus. The Crescent already floated on the holy city of Bulgaria, the Marica had run red with the blood of Serbian chivalry, and turbaned warriors had scaled the salt steppes of Albania; the people, in the plaintive words of their heroic poetry, ‘were scattered abroad like the fowls of the air,’ and Macedonia was resigned to wolves and vultures. Meanwhile, Bulgaria, already half conquered, was split up into the two rival Czardoms of Tirnovo and Widdin; Serbia, by the death of Czar Dūshan, had lost the one man capable of restraining anarchy at home, or of marshalling the forces of the nation against the Turkish invaders, and the great empire of the Némanjas had shivered into a hundred fragments.

Thus it was that in the hour of disunion and despair Serb and Bulgar alike turned to the new and rising kingdom that their Bosnian kinsmen had established in the Illyrian West. Tvartko was now at the height of his power, and included under his sceptre more extensive dominions than any Bosnian Ban, or King, before or after. He had seized the land of Chelm, the later Herzegovina, which had belonged to former Bans of Bosnia, till exchanged for Primorie with the King of Hungary; and added to it the two old Serbian Župas of Canali[83] and Tribunja; he had extended at least a suzerainty over the Principality of Zenta or the Black-Mountain; and by 1382 appears to have reduced the whole of Dalmatia, with the single exception of the city of Zara. Tvartko ruled already from beyond the Drina to the islands of the Adriatic, and from the Save to the lake of Skodra, but his ambition aimed at nothing short of re-establishing the empire of the Balkan Sclaves under a Bosnian sceptre, and of ruling, it might be, over wider realms than the greatest of the Némanjas. For these mighty schemes not only did he seem qualified by his personal abilities, but by connection and descent. His first wife, Dorothea, was the daughter of the Bulgarian Czar, Sracimir of Widdin; on his mother’s side he traced his descent from Stephen Dragutin; and, on the extinction of the Némanjids, claimed to be the rightful heir of the Serbian Kings and Czars.[84] In Croatia he had allied himself with the nobility in their opposition to their Hungarian suzerain, with the object of incorporating that province in his own dominions, and extending his frontier to the Drave.[85] Thus the appeal of the Sclavonic princes, Serbian and Bulgarian, who felt themselves powerless to repel the Turks, not only roused the Bosnian King to a sense of his own impending danger, but flattered his ambition. He hastened to respond to the appeal, by gathering an army of 30,000 men and advancing in person against the Infidel. For a moment that fatal spell of isolation which had held Bosnia so long aloof from the fortunes of neighbouring and kindred people is broken through, and she stands forth against the Turks at the head of a great confederacy of the Southern Sclaves, whose members were scattered from Silistria to Durazzo, and from Thessalonica to Belgrade. Joining his forces to the Serbian host collected by the ill-starred Knez Lazar, King Tvartko took advantage of the absence of Sultan Amurath in Asia, to fall upon his army near Pločnik on the Toplica, and inflicted on it such an annihilating defeat that scarce a fifth escaped the sword or captivity.

Amurath was furious, and hurried from Asia to avenge the disaster. Tirnovo fell, and the sight of a captive Czar struck terror into the Bulgarians. Tvartko despatched an army under his brave General, Vlatko Hranić, to the aid of the Sclavonic confederates, and for the last time Bosniac, Serb, Croat, and Bulgarian, joined their forces against the Infidel. Only two years after the rout of Pločnik, on June 15, St. Vitus’ day, 1389, on the ill-omened field of Kóssovo was fought one of the great battles of the world, decisive even in its indecisiveness.

Nothing but a brilliant victory could have galvanized into unity the ill-compacted alliance of the Sclaves. We need not dwell upon the incidents of the fight.[86] How the hero Miloš met the wassail taunts of treachery by rushing to his doom and stabbing ‘the Turkish Czar Murad’ in his pavilion; how the head of the Serbian Knez Lazar was held aloft by its grey hairs to glut the glazing eyes of the Turkish Sultan; how the Bosnian Voivode, metamorphosed into his Herzegovinian successor,—‘ducal Stephen,’ struck down nine Pashàs and sank himself before the tenth; of the lightning charge of Bajazet, the thunder-stroke of his iron mace, the crowning treachery of Vuk; or how, long afterwards, the Serbian wayfarers on the Field of Thrushes found the body of their sainted King, and Knez Lazar was borne at last by priestly hands ‘to beauteous Ravanica in the mountain forest,’ there to lie amidst his kindred in the convent of his rearing: all this, with many a legendary aftergrowth, lives as fresh in the minds of the Southern Sclaves as if it were of yesterday. There is not a name in that heroic muster-roll which is not a household word wherever the Serbian tongue is spoken. Epic lays of the fatal day of Kóssovo are still sung every day to throngs of peasant listeners by minstrels of the people, whose rhapsodies, set to the dolorous strains of the ghuzla, resound in a great national dirge along the willowed banks of Save and Danube, through the beechwood glens of Bosnia, the dark recesses of the Balkan, the mountain strongholds of the Czernagora, till, far away across the Illyrian desert, they find an echo in that caverned waste of rock that frowns above the blue waters of the Adriatic. The battle of Kóssovo has grown and grown on the imagination of oppressed peoples who only realized its full significance long afterwards. Tragic and romantic as were the actual incidents of that great contest, they stand out against the disastrous twilight that succeeded, in fantastic and supernatural relief, lit up by the lurid conflagrations of after ravages. At the time, we have the most direct evidence that the battle was regarded by one at least of the principal actors as a great victory for Christendom. Amurath was slain, the Turks had retired from the field of battle, and the brave Bosnian General had returned to his sovereign with unbroken forces. Tvartko wrote word to the citizens of Traù and Florence that he had once more triumphed over the Infidel, and Te Deums of thanksgiving for the success of the Christian arms were celebrated in the cathedral of Notre Dame and in the presence of the king of France.[87] Yet the death-knell of the Serbians and Bulgarians had already sounded, the last confederacy of the Southern Sclaves was broken up, the imperial aspirations of the Bosnian King were dashed for ever, and the doom of Bosnia itself was but postponed.

The battle of Kóssovo was the turning-point in Tvartko’s fortunes. His intrigues in Croatia, and a victory obtained over the Hungarian arms in Dalmatia, roused the Magyar King, Sigismund, to vengeance, and Tvartko, prevented himself by bodily weakness from taking an active part in the hostilities, saw his allies defeated, his province of Ussora overrun,[88] and himself reduced to renew his homage.

In 1391 Tvartko dies, of vexation, it is said, at these reverses, and is succeeded by Stephen Dabiscia, otherwise known as Tvartko II., and he again in 1396 by Tvartko III.[89] The greater part of the long reign of this King, which lasted forty-seven years, is distracted by perpetual wars, connected with the disputed succession of the Hungarian crown. It is extremely difficult to trace out the aims of the different parties who are now disputing for mastery in Bosnia. At one time Tvartko III., who seems, like his father, Tvartko I., to have aimed at Croatian annexations, appears at the head of an insurrection of Bosnian and Croatian magnates against Sigismund of Hungary, and in 1408 is defeated and captured under the walls of his historic Castle of Doboj,[90] where the conqueror executed 180 Bosnian and Croatian nobles. Tvartko, though forced to resume his allegiance, was suffered to retain his crown, and for many years we find him maintaining his position in league with the party of Sigismund among the Magyars, and generally by the support of the Bogomiles, and the popular party who seem to be identical with them. When the Magnates and their auxiliaries of the Neapolitan and Dalmatian faction sought to oppose him and set up a rival king, Tvartko carried out his national policy still further by sending a message to Vladislaus Jagellon, the Polish claimant of the Hungarian throne, in which he offered him his homage and begged for assistance on the plea of the common origin of the Poles and Bosniacs.[91]

In this universal confusion the Turks first make good a footing in Bosnia. Already in the reign of Stephen Dabiscia, Bajazet had advanced into the county of Chelm and established stationary quarters at a spot become memorable in the most recent times as the scene of the first outbreak of a revolt which has shaken Turkish dominion in Bosnia to its foundations—Nevešinje.[92] But in the factious contests which distracted the reign of the third Tvartko, each of the competitors for dominion outbade the other for Turkish help, and it was by the direct invitation and under the actual leadership of a turbulent noble that the Turks first gained sufficient footing in Bosnia to establish there a Sandjakate. The whole story is worth repeating, as it singularly illustrates the state into which this unhappy country had fallen. At the time there were two kings in Bosnia; Tvartko, who had now made his peace with Sigismund and ruled over the parts of Bosnia along the Drina and the Serbian frontier, and Ostoja, who owed his elevation to the Neapolitan faction of Ladislaus, and whose territory embraced the maritime parts and a tract roughly answering to the later Herzegovina. Between the Eastern and the Western kingdom lay a more or less neutral wedge of country which had been carved out by King Sigismund and formed into a Hungarian Banat under the great Croatian noble Hervoja Horvatić, whose dominion included the city of Jaycze, and anticipated in its extent that Banat of lower Bosnia which, at a later time, Mathias Corvinus recovered from the Turkish conqueror. Hervoja, who assumed the title of Chief Voivode, and even Prince, of Bosnia,[93] and who shifted his allegiance, as the whim seized him, from Tvartko and Sigismund to Ostoja and Ladislaus, happened on one occasion to have honoured King Sigismund with his presence at his court. Hervoja, who added a bullying manner to a body of bovine dimensions, was haranguing the assembled magnates, Hungarian and Bosnian, in his usual tones, when a certain Paul Chupor, Ban of Slavonia, broke in upon his lordship by bellowing like a bull. This was too much for the gravity of court ceremonial, and King Sigismund himself could not help joining in the general laugh. But Hervoja, in a frantic rage, left the court, and hurried back to his Banat, vowing vengeance against the Hungarian King, his Bosnian liegeman King Tvartko, and every baron who followed their banners. Seizing the opportunity when both of them were away in Germany, he called in the Turks and took the command of the invading horde in person. In the absence of the two Kings, the magnates of the country, with his mortal enemy, Paul Chupor, at their head, united their retainers to oppose him. Hervoja defeated their army, and having the luck to take his old insulter prisoner, had him sewn up alive in a bull’s hide and thrown into the river, with the characteristic jest, ‘When thou wert a man thou didst speak with a bull’s voice; take now thy bull’s hide as well!’

The Turks after devastating the country, destroying Varch Bosna near the site of Serajevo and penetrating into the district of Sala in lower Bosnia, refused this time to content themselves with plunder, and established their first Sandjakate in Bosnia. Hervoja, seeing himself thrown over by the Turks, who found him no longer useful as a cat’s-paw, and deserted by his own adherents, shut himself up in his family castle at Cattaro, and worn with vexation, perhaps remorse, died the same summer. The two Kings, Tvartko and Sigismund, succeeded on their return in gaining a victory over the Turks, slaying the Sandjak Ikach, and freeing Bosnia for a while from the occupation of the Infidel. But the anarchy within continued, and in 1430 culminated in the spectacle of three rival princes, each of them claiming to be King of Bosnia! In 1435 the death of his two rivals left Tvartko III. once more sole king; but shortly after that date the part of his dominions which answers to the modern Herzegovina separates itself from the rest of Bosnia, and forms for a while an independent principality.

The County of Chelm, variously designated as the Banat of Zachlumje and the land of Humska, had been originally incorporated in the Banat of Bosnia by the Ban Stephen[94] in 1326. We have seen it exchanged for Primorie with the King of Hungary, and re-annexed by the first King of Bosnia, who granted it as a fief to his brave general Vlatko Hranić. His grandson, who from his birthplace Cosac, was known as Stephen Cosača, or Cosaccia,[95] took advantage of the weakness of Tvartko III. to transfer the immediate suzerainty of his county to the Emperor Frederick IV., who in 1440 created him Duke, or, as his Sclavonic subjects who had borrowed the German word expressed it, _Herzega_, of St. Sava.[96] This, and the further title of ‘Keeper of St. Sava’s Sepulchre,’ he derived from the tomb of the patron saint of Serbia in his monastery of Mileševo.

The Herzegovina, or Duchy, as this country now begins to be called,[97] included, besides the old county of Chelm, the coastland district known as Primorie, and extended from the borders of Rascia to the neighbourhood of Zara.[98] Stephen Cosaccia fixed as the seat of his government the important point where the old Roman bridge still spans the river Narenta, and the City of Mostar still looks back to Radivoj Gost, his _Curopalata_ or ‘Mayor of the Palace,’ as its founder.[99]

During the last years of Tvartko’s reign Bosnia enjoyed the peace she so much needed. The King who had inherited many of the good qualities, though not perhaps the martial ardour and masterful ambition of his father, the first Tvartko, won the hearts of his people by his even-handed justice. He heard complaints himself, sitting in the gate, as the Prince of Montenegro does at the present day, and decided the cases set before him with wisdom. Before punishment could be inflicted on anyone judgment had first to be pronounced by the Starosts or Elders of the realm, and the verdict had first to be submitted to the approval of the people. Business of state was conducted by the King in Council, and his chief advisers were the Bans of Jaycze and Bosna. In Tvartko’s days, we are told, no flatterer dare approach the Court. The Bogomiles enjoyed toleration, and Tvartko himself and the chief barons of the realm, including the Count of Popovo and Trebinje, the despot George of Serbia, and Sandalj Hranić were adherents of the sect. The Franciscan Missionaries, to whom directly or indirectly a very large share of the troubles of the Bosnian kingdom was due, were confined to the districts where they were already settled, and compelled to limit their exactions to a more restricted sphere; Tvartko even profited by a quarrel that broke out between them and the superior of their order, to place them under his direct jurisdiction.[100]

Stephen Thomas succeeded Tvartko ‘the Just’ on the throne of Bosnia in 1443. He was an illegitimate son of Ostoja and a Ragusan lady, Voiacchia, and was raised to the throne by the Bogomiles to whose communion he belonged. True to the policy which prompted the Puritan population of Bosnia to seek a counterpoise against Catholic Hungary in their fellow Puritans, the champions of Islâm, King Stephen Thomas began his reign by promising a yearly tribute to the Sultan. But the Papal party had rightly reckoned on the weakness of Thomas’s character; and the subtle genius of the Apostolic legate, Thomasini, whom the Pope had sent to effect his conversion, knew only too well how to play upon his fears and cupidity. Stephen Thomas was illegitimate; the lawful son of Ostoja, Radivoj (or Gaudenzo) had returned from Turkish exile and put in a claim on the Bosnian crown; the Papal party had powerful weapons at their command in the Duke of St. Sava, then a staunch Catholic, who refused allegiance and invaded Thomas’s territory, and in the King of Hungary, who as suzerain, declined to recognize the title of a heretic prince. Thomasini offered to legitimate Thomas and his heirs, to obtain for him a consecrated crown, to reconcile his rivals and his suzerain. The King of Bosnia yielded, abjured his Bogomilian heresy, and was baptized into the Catholic fold. Thomas, who had hitherto hesitated to take the style of King in his official acts,[101] was formally crowned in 1444. His homage was accepted by the Hungarian King Ladislaus, and his rival Radivoj was pacified with the grant of the Banat of Jaycze.

In Bosnia itself this abjuration of the national faith produced the most deplorable effects. The Inquisition raised its head, the Franciscans were again rampant. The Bogomiles saw themselves betrayed by the King of their own creation. The great vassal of the Bosnian crown, Stephen Cosaccia, Duke of St. Sava, who in the first blush of Thomas’s conversion had been induced to return to his allegiance, and whose goodwill had been further courted by Thomas taking his daughter Catharine to wife, now began to find it politic to cut himself adrift from the Papal party, and to bid for complete independence of the Bosnian Crown by posing as the protector of the Bogomiles. Meanwhile, beyond the border, the great battle of Varna had been fought, the Hungarians routed, and their King slain. As the danger of Turkish conquest drew nearer and nearer, the most bigoted champions of the Roman Church might see the danger of throwing the Protestant population into the arms of the invader; and the most sanguine of the Christian Puritans, viewing the fate of their brothers in Bulgaria, might shrink from accepting the dominion of their Mahometan counterparts. In the Diet, or Great Council of the Realm, which King Stephen Thomas assembled at Coinica, we may see a last effort to check the growing anarchy, and unite the discordant elements of the realm. I have given an account of the great charter of King Stephen Thomas while describing the scene of the ‘Conventus’ of Coinica.[102] In it the constitutional relation of the Duke of St. Sava will be found defined, and the clause which enacts ‘that the Manichæans build no new church nor restore the old,’ but which omits to prescribe any further penalties or to fulminate any of the usual anathemas against them, seems to me to imply that even the Bogomiles were to be accorded comparative toleration.[103] But passions ran too high, anarchy was too inveterate in Bosnia, for this attempt at internal pacification to succeed. In the Papal legate, Thomasini, King Stephen Thomas had ever at his side an evil genius, who inclined him more and more towards the path of persecution. With the Turk at the door King Thomas, who was known to the Roman Catholics as the ‘pious,’ once more lent the support of the civil arm to the Inquisition. The Bogomiles turned for protection to the Turks, their only possible ally, and, four years after the ‘Conventus’ of Coinica, invited them into the country. Stephen Thomas, a tyrant towards his own subjects, showed himself a craven before the foe, and purchased an ignominious peace from Amurath by agreeing to pay him 25,000 ducats a year. But the Turkish suzerainty became more and more galling, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 finally roused him from his lethargy. Four years after that event he issued from his Palace of Sutisca, near the Castle of Bobovac, an appeal to the whole Christian world for help against the Infidel.[104] This was addressed to the Pope, the King of Arragon, the Doge of Venice, the Duke of Burgundy, and other Christian princes. But the days of the Crusades were gone by, and the appeal of the King of Bosnia met with no response, save that the Pope sent him a consecrated standard and a cross.

Meanwhile the death of the brave John Hunyadi, and the paralysing civil war in Hungary, left the Bosnian King without his one ally. The Turkish ravages now extended to the heart of Bosnia. Already, in 1449, Turks were settled in the country between the Drina and Ukrina stream,[105] on the main line of communication between Bosnia and Hungary; now, the neighbouring Pashàs and Agas begin to drive a regular traffic in Bosnian slaves. A half mythical atmosphere surrounds the last days of the Bosnian kingdom. It is said that the craven Thomas, fearing to resist the Turks, entered into a secret league with them. We are told by contemporary writers that Mahomet himself, disguised as a Morabite, made his way in company with two real members of that order, into the royal palace of Sutiska,[106] that King Thomas showed him all honour, and solemnly entered with him into that sworn brothership so hallowed amongst the Southern Sclaves, the _Pobratimstvo_. Whether such a meeting actually occurred, or whether the whole story was the invention of domestic enemies, there can be no doubt that the poltroonery and tergiversation of Thomas had alienated even that Catholic faction on which since his abjuration of Bogomilism he had relied. Signs of defection already appeared, and the King turned the arms that he should have employed against the national enemy, to reduce a refractory Croatian vassal. It was while besieging his castle, encamped on the field of Bielaj, that King Stephen Thomas was assassinated, if report spoke truly, by his step-brother Radivoj and his illegitimate son Stephen.

The parricide Stephen Tomašević at once usurped the throne, though Stephen Thomas is often regarded by Bosnians as their last king. The Catholic and anti-Turkish party were now triumphant, and the new King began his reign by an appeal to the feudal nobility of Bosnia to meet him with their retainers equipped for battle against the Infidel, on the field of Kóssovo. This summons is dated Pristina, June 3, 1459, and is one of the last records of feudal Bosnia. The Barons, Prelates, Nobles, Voivodes, and magnates of the realm,[107] are summoned by name. The Župans[108] of Rascia and of Serbia, with their banners and retainers, the Ban of Jaycze, the Ban of Ussora, the Duke of St. Sava, and the lesser nobles, are marshalled before us on parchment. The King appeals to their orthodox bigotry, and seems to take an illustration from the fire-drakes of Sclavonic folk-lore. ‘What faithful Christian,’ he asks, ‘and zealous lover of the orthodox faith can restrain his tears when considering the capture of Constantinople?’ He calls on the Barons aforesaid ‘to meet us on the field of Kóssovo in June, for we ought in a body to advance against the dragon, lest he spit forth over us his venom.’[109] But King Stephen Tomašević inherited his father’s poltroonery, with more than his father’s bigotry. We do not know that he ever met the Turks at Kóssovo; but we know that this same year he turned the arms of his orthodox Magnates against his unoffending Bogomile subjects, and hounded 40,000 of them from the realm. His brave generals, Paul Kubretić and Tomko Mergnjavić, defended severally the line of the Drina and the Rascian frontier with success, but the surrender of Semendria which the Hungarians had intrusted to his safe-keeping, to the Turks, had irritated Mathias Corvinus and the powerful Hungarian faction among the Magnates, and this dissatisfaction was intensified by Tomašević throwing himself and his kingdom at the feet of the Papacy, which, however, wisely refused to accept it. Meanwhile it was no secret that Mahomet was preparing for his great invasion of Bosnia.

The King of Bosnia who had already secured the alliance of the Venetians and Scanderbeg, turned once more to the Pope, if not to gain him fresh allies, at least to sanctify his efforts, and to breathe into his followers the enthusiasm of a new crusade. The ambassadors of Tomašević appeared at Rome in 1463, and were received in solemn conclave by the Pope. They read to him and the spiritual senators assembled an appeal drawn up by the Bosnian King’s own hand. The speech, for it is nothing less, has been preserved, and is the last monument of Christian Bosnia. In turns it is argumentative, insinuating, and solemn; selfish personal ambition is blended in a remarkable way with a real appreciation of the gravity of the situation, and the far-reaching consequences of a Turkish conquest of Bosnia to Hungary and Christendom; and the King as he warms with his harangue forgets the official plural of a royal style and lapses into the impressive individuality of a prophet.

‘Most Holy Father, we, Stephen Tomašević, King of Bosnia, send this embassy unto thee, for that Mahomet hath conceived this summer to fall upon our realm. Already hath he gathered together his array of war; nor is our strength sufficient that we should stand against him. In our grievous necessity we have turned to the Hungarians and the Venetians for succour; and George, the Prince of Albania, hath promised us his help. Now, therefore, have we also turned to thee, O most Holy Father. No mountains of gold do we ask of thee, but this alone, that our enemies and our true friends should know that we have thy protection. If so be that the Bosnians know that they fight not alone, then will their courage be the keener; whereas the Barbarian will fear to attack our land, the passes wherein are difficult, and the fenced cities well nigh impregnable. Eugenius, thy predecessor, promised our father the throne, and that he would establish some bishoprics in Bosnia; but our father refused to accept this treaty, lest peradventure he should magnify the hatred of the Turks against him; for that he himself was newly converted, and the Manichæans were not yet pursued the realm. But I was christened in the true faith, I learned Latin in my childhood, and have remained steadfast in my Christian belief. I fear not therefore what my father feared, and therefore do I entreat thee that thou wouldest send me a crown and the holy bishops. Let this be for a monument that thou wilt not forsake me or my realm. If the enemy breaks in, a crown received from thy hands will be unto my friends as an earnest of victory, and for a terror to my foes. In my father’s lifetime, thou didst issue thy commands that the Crusaders, assembled in Dalmatia under the overseeing of the Venetians, should help him, but this pleased not the Venetian Senate. Bid them now that they come to my aid, if haply thou shalt find more obedience, forasmuch as they have turned from their former designs, and they shall make war against the Turks. This moreover do I pray, that thou send thy legate unto Hungary, that so he may set before the King my grievous necessity, and may spur him on to join his arms with mine.

‘By such means the realm of Bosnia may yet be preserved; otherwise it falls to pieces: for insatiable ambition knows no bounds. But if so be that I am subjugated, the hereditary foe will fall upon the Hungarians, and having subdued the Dalmatians, Istrians, and Carinthians, will turn his arms also against Italy. The first fury of the storm threatens me, after me the Hungarians and Venetians and other peoples must bend before it, nor will Italy remain secure. Such are the foe’s designs. I have learnt them, and therefore do I communicate to thee this intelligence that thou mayest not lay drowsiness to my charge, nor say that these things were not foretold. My father too had foretold to thy predecessor and to the Venetians the fall of Constantinople. He was not believed, and Christendom lost one city of the Cæsars, the Patriarch’s seat and the pride of Greece. Of myself only do I now prophesy. Believest thou me? then succour me, and I am delivered; otherwise I perish. O thou who art the father of Christendom, give counsel and help!’

The Pope in reply recognised the truth of King Stephen’s warnings, and promised to place the arms in Dalmatia at his disposal, to build the desired cathedrals in Bosnia, and send the bishops. The consecrated crown he held in readiness, but would not send it without the consent of Mathias, Stephen’s suzerain, with whom he recommended him to make friends. Let Stephen prevent Mahomet’s invasion by occupying the passes; Hungary and Venice would fly to his assistance.

But while King Stephen Tomašević was pleading for new bishops from the Pope, another negociation was being transacted between his oppressed subjects and the Sultan. While the infatuated king was boasting that he had purged his realm of the Manichæan heretics; these very sectaries who, in spite of the expulsion of 40,000 three years before, still formed apparently the large majority of the population, though forced to dissemble their opinions, seeing themselves threatened on the one hand by a new Romish influx, on the other by invaders indeed, but Puritans at least like themselves, turned to the Turks. By the mouth of their spiritual chiefs the negociation with Mahomet was successfully completed. The Bogomiles promised to transfer their allegiance from their Romish sovereign to the Sultan, Mahomet on the other hand engaging to insure them free toleration for their religion, freedom from taxation, and other privileges.[110]

In 1463 Mahomet crossed the Drina and poured into Bosnia an army, the cavalry alone of which was exaggerated by the terror of the natives into 150,000 horsemen. On June 14 a Turkish Pashà appeared at the head of a large force beneath the walls of Bobovac, the ancient seat of Bosnian Bans and Kings. The Sultan himself came up next day, and the governor[111]—a ‘Manichee,’ we are told, ‘who had feigned to be a Christian’—forthwith, with the consent of the garrison, who it is to be supposed were equally disaffected against the Catholic rulers, opened the gates to the Turk. Thus passed into the hands of Mahomet a fortress of the greatest strength, and supplied with provisions for a two-years’ siege. The King of Bosnia, panic-stricken at the loss of his royal city, and seeing himself betrayed by his own subjects, shut himself up with his treasures in Jaycze, another royal city, as strong by its position and fortifications as Bobovac; but feeling himself still insecure, at the approach of the Pashà fled with his treasures to Clissa on the coast of Primorie, where, after forty days’ siege, on condition of his life being spared, he surrendered himself to Mahomet, together with his treasures, the accumulated hoards of five kings, amounting, it is said, to a million of ducats.[112]

The crafty Sultan utilized, we are told, the King’s authority to obtain possession of the remaining strongholds of Bosnia. He extorted from him writs to the governors of the different cities, ordering them to give up their keys to the Turks. All obeyed. The Protestant population of Bosnia did not need the royal mandate; they looked on the Turks rather as deliverers than foes, and in the short space of eight days seventy cities, ‘defended by nature and art,’ opened their gates to the Sultan’s officers.[113] Then at last the Christians of Bosnia discovered that they had betrayed one tyranny to make room for a worse. The King, Stephen Tomašević, having served his turn, was barbarously executed by his perfidious captor. Accounts differ as to the exact manner of his death; but it matters little whether he suffered the fate of Marsyas, St. Sebastian, or Charles I.; and poetic justice is satisfied, if we may believe the statement that the parricide king met his doom on the same field of Bielaj where he murdered his father.[114] The most eminent nobles who had not escaped to Dalmatia were transported to Asia, thirty thousand of the picked youth of Bosnia were taken to recruit the Janissaries, and two hundred thousand of the inhabitants were sold as slaves.