Protestant historians, fearful of claiming relationship with heretics whose views on the Origin of Evil were more logical than their own, have almost or entirely ignored the existence of these Sclavonic Puritans. Yet of all worn-out devices of ad captandum argument this assuredly is the most threadbare, to ignore the transitions of intervening links, and pointing to the extremes of a long concatenation of causes and effects, to seize upon their differences as a proof of disconnection. In the course of ages the development of creeds and churches is not less striking than that of more secular institutions. Bogomilism obeyed an universal law; it paid the universal tribute of successful propagandism; it compromised; or, where it did not compromise, it was ruthlessly stamped out. The Manichæan elements, most distasteful to modern Protestants, were in fact the first to disappear.[74] In its contact with the semi-pagan Christianity of the West, the puritanism of the Gnostic East became, perforce, materialized; just as, ages before, Christianity itself, an earlier wave of the same Eastern puritanism had materialized in its contact with the undiluted heathendom of the Western empire. To a certain extent Bogomilism gained. It lost something of its dreamy transcendentalism, something of its anti-human vigour, and by conforming to the exigencies of Western society, became to a certain extent more practical. Thus by the sixteenth century the path had been cleared for a compromise with orthodoxy itself. The Reformation marks the confluence of the two main currents of religious thought that traverse the middle ages, in their several sources, Romish and Armenian. No doubt, from the orthodox side, which refused to reject all that was beautiful in the older world, which consecrated Greco-Roman civilization and linked art with religion, the West has gained much; but in days of gross materialism and degrading sacerdotalism, it has gained perhaps even more from the purging and elevating influence of these early Puritans. The most devout Protestant need not be afraid to acknowledge the religious obligations which he owes to his spiritual forefathers, Manichæan though they were; while those who perceive in Protestantism itself nothing more than a stepping-stone to still greater freedom of the human mind, and who recognize the universal bearings of the doctrine of Evolution, will be slow to deny that England herself and the most enlightened countries of the modern world may owe a debt, which it is hard to estimate, to the Bogomiles of Bulgaria and Bosnia.
After the Turkish conquest of Bosnia the history of the Bogomiles in those parts becomes obscure. That they still existed in the revived Banat of lower Bosnia we may gather from a passage in the ‘Annals of the Minorites,’[75] to the effect that in 1478 the city of Jaycze was ‘polluted by heretics and schismatics.’ Many who had resisted the propaganda of Rome appear to have found in the iconoclastic puritanism of Islâm a belief less incompatible with their own. We have direct evidence that it was the Bogomiles who chiefly swelled the ranks of the renegades.[76] Many, doubtless, when they found how hard were the masters they had called in, were provoked to their old attitude of resistance, and perished for their obstinacy. They are generally said to have died out, and the Bosnian monks of the order of St. Francis, who, in 1769, supplied the author of ‘Illyricum Sacrum’ with an account of the present state of that country, declare that there are no traces left of them. This, however, is not the case. During the recent insurrection, over 2,000 Bogomiles from Popovo, a single district of the Herzegovina, took refuge in the hospitable territory of what was once the Republic of Ragusa.[77]
To return to the more secular aspects of Bosnian history. Much still remains to be elucidated by Sclavonic historians with regard to the inner government of the country, the rise of the semi-feudal nobility, and the complicated relations of parties. Here it would be hopeless to attempt anything more than the merest outline, giving prominence only to a few episodes of general interest. The Hungarian overlordship is occasionally broken by a Serbian, and Stephen Dūshan, who, in the middle of the fourteenth century, revived the Czardom among the Balkan Sclaves, seized the pretext of a claim on the Principality of Chelm to overrun Bosnia, and add its dominion to his titles. For an interesting monument of this period I may refer the reader to the account of the Book of Arms of Bosnian Nobility, drawn up in the year 1340 by order of the Serbian Czar, which we saw in the Franciscan Monastery of Foinica.[78]
But this Serbian suzerainty vanishes with the dreams of Stephen Dūshan. Shortly after his date the Bans of Bosnia become so powerful that they are able to annex the two important Serbian provinces of Rascia and Zenta, which answers to the modern Montenegro, and to proclaim themselves virtually independent both of the Serbian and Hungarian monarchies. In 1376 the Ban, Stephen Tvartko, was strong enough to extort from his uncle, King Louis of Hungary, permission to assume the royal style—the King of Hungary only reserving the suprema dominatio.[79] After half a year spent in preparations, Tvartko, accompanied by his lords spiritual and temporal, and by four representatives from each important town, progressed from his residence of Sutiska to the Monastery of Mileševo, the foundation and burial-place of his uncle and predecessor, but the greater glory of which was that it contained the tomb of the Serbian Apostle, St. Sava. There he was crowned by the hands of the Metropolitan, and assumed the title of Stephen Tvartko, by the grace of God King of Rascia, Bosnia, and Primorie.[80]
Stephen Tvartko distinguished his rule by his wisdom and toleration. Though himself leaning in his belief alternately to Greek orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, he displayed a generous toleration of the Bogomiles; he did much to encourage trade and commerce, and was indeed, after Culin, the first Bosnian prince who struck coins.[81] He succeeded in quelling the insolence of his great nobles who had burst out into rebellion, under the leadership of his brother, and the attendance at his coronation of four representatives from each of his great cities would alone be a striking proof that Bosnia was advancing on the path of constitutional liberty, and was not by any means alien to the civic and industrial impulses of fourteenth-century Europe. Nay, it is certain that, in spite of the prevalence of Bogomilism among the masses, and of the artistically blighting influence of an iconoclastic religion on a rude society, arts of a more æsthetic kind were penetrating among the Bosnian mountains. Nor was it only in the illuminations of heraldry, the embellishment of gold and silver work, and the superb embroidery of sacred vestments that these more refined influences asserted themselves. That munificent patron of South-Sclavonic Art, the present Roman Catholic bishop of Bosnia, has collected in his palace of Diakovar, a series of paintings by Bosnian artists of this and the succeeding century, which reflect the Giottesque revulsion from the wooden Byzantinism which preceded it, and show that Bosnia bade fair to produce a school of artists who might hold a place in the galleries of Europe.[82]
Dîs aliter placitum! Already, through the passes of the Balkan the storm was howling nearer and nearer that was to annihilate the budding gems of culture and free government in Bosnia. In 1353,—five years before Tvartko’s accession to the Banat,—under Suleiman, the son of Orchan, the Turks had first set foot in Europe. In twelve more years their ravages had spread to Attica, the Palæologi had pawned their crown jewels, and the Turkish Sultan had transferred his residence from Broussa to Adrianople. The tide of invasion poured along the Pontic shores, across the plains of Thrace, and was bursting through the iron gates of Hæmus. The Crescent already floated on the holy city of Bulgaria, the Marica had run red with the blood of Serbian chivalry, and turbaned warriors had scaled the salt steppes of Albania; the people, in the plaintive words of their heroic poetry, ‘were scattered abroad like the fowls of the air,’ and Macedonia was resigned to wolves and vultures. Meanwhile, Bulgaria, already half conquered, was split up into the two rival Czardoms of Tirnovo and Widdin; Serbia, by the death of Czar Dūshan, had lost the one man capable of restraining anarchy at home, or of marshalling the forces of the nation against the Turkish invaders, and the great empire of the Némanjas had shivered into a hundred fragments.
Thus it was that in the hour of disunion and despair Serb and Bulgar alike turned to the new and rising kingdom that their Bosnian kinsmen had established in the Illyrian West. Tvartko was now at the height of his power, and included under his sceptre more extensive dominions than any Bosnian Ban, or King, before or after. He had seized the land of Chelm, the later Herzegovina, which had belonged to former Bans of Bosnia, till exchanged for Primorie with the King of Hungary; and added to it the two old Serbian Župas of Canali[83] and Tribunja; he had extended at least a suzerainty over the Principality of Zenta or the Black-Mountain; and by 1382 appears to have reduced the whole of Dalmatia, with the single exception of the city of Zara. Tvartko ruled already from beyond the Drina to the islands of the Adriatic, and from the Save to the lake of Skodra, but his ambition aimed at nothing short of re-establishing the empire of the Balkan Sclaves under a Bosnian sceptre, and of ruling, it might be, over wider realms than the greatest of the Némanjas. For these mighty schemes not only did he seem qualified by his personal abilities, but by connection and descent. His first wife, Dorothea, was the daughter of the Bulgarian Czar, Sracimir of Widdin; on his mother’s side he traced his descent from Stephen Dragutin; and, on the extinction of the Némanjids, claimed to be the rightful heir of the Serbian Kings and Czars.[84] In Croatia he had allied himself with the nobility in their opposition to their Hungarian suzerain, with the object of incorporating that province in his own dominions, and extending his frontier to the Drave.[85] Thus the appeal of the Sclavonic princes, Serbian and Bulgarian, who felt themselves powerless to repel the Turks, not only roused the Bosnian King to a sense of his own impending danger, but flattered his ambition. He hastened to respond to the appeal, by gathering an army of 30,000 men and advancing in person against the Infidel. For a moment that fatal spell of isolation which had held Bosnia so long aloof from the fortunes of neighbouring and kindred people is broken through, and she stands forth against the Turks at the head of a great confederacy of the Southern Sclaves, whose members were scattered from Silistria to Durazzo, and from Thessalonica to Belgrade. Joining his forces to the Serbian host collected by the ill-starred Knez Lazar, King Tvartko took advantage of the absence of Sultan Amurath in Asia, to fall upon his army near Pločnik on the Toplica, and inflicted on it such an annihilating defeat that scarce a fifth escaped the sword or captivity.
Amurath was furious, and hurried from Asia to avenge the disaster. Tirnovo fell, and the sight of a captive Czar struck terror into the Bulgarians. Tvartko despatched an army under his brave General, Vlatko Hranić, to the aid of the Sclavonic confederates, and for the last time Bosniac, Serb, Croat, and Bulgarian, joined their forces against the Infidel. Only two years after the rout of Pločnik, on June 15, St. Vitus’ day, 1389, on the ill-omened field of Kóssovo was fought one of the great battles of the world, decisive even in its indecisiveness.
Nothing but a brilliant victory could have galvanized into unity the ill-compacted alliance of the Sclaves. We need not dwell upon the incidents of the fight.[86] How the hero Miloš met the wassail taunts of treachery by rushing to his doom and stabbing ‘the Turkish Czar Murad’ in his pavilion; how the head of the Serbian Knez Lazar was held aloft by its grey hairs to glut the glazing eyes of the Turkish Sultan; how the Bosnian Voivode, metamorphosed into his Herzegovinian successor,—‘ducal Stephen,’ struck down nine Pashàs and sank himself before the tenth; of the lightning charge of Bajazet, the thunder-stroke of his iron mace, the crowning treachery of Vuk; or how, long afterwards, the Serbian wayfarers on the Field of Thrushes found the body of their sainted King, and Knez Lazar was borne at last by priestly hands ‘to beauteous Ravanica in the mountain forest,’ there to lie amidst his kindred in the convent of his rearing: all this, with many a legendary aftergrowth, lives as fresh in the minds of the Southern Sclaves as if it were of yesterday. There is not a name in that heroic muster-roll which is not a household word wherever the Serbian tongue is spoken. Epic lays of the fatal day of Kóssovo are still sung every day to throngs of peasant listeners by minstrels of the people, whose rhapsodies, set to the dolorous strains of the ghuzla, resound in a great national dirge along the willowed banks of Save and Danube, through the beechwood glens of Bosnia, the dark recesses of the Balkan, the mountain strongholds of the Czernagora, till, far away across the Illyrian desert, they find an echo in that caverned waste of rock that frowns above the blue waters of the Adriatic. The battle of Kóssovo has grown and grown on the imagination of oppressed peoples who only realized its full significance long afterwards. Tragic and romantic as were the actual incidents of that great contest, they stand out against the disastrous twilight that succeeded, in fantastic and supernatural relief, lit up by the lurid conflagrations of after ravages. At the time, we have the most direct evidence that the battle was regarded by one at least of the principal actors as a great victory for Christendom. Amurath was slain, the Turks had retired from the field of battle, and the brave Bosnian General had returned to his sovereign with unbroken forces. Tvartko wrote word to the citizens of Traù and Florence that he had once more triumphed over the Infidel, and Te Deums of thanksgiving for the success of the Christian arms were celebrated in the cathedral of Notre Dame and in the presence of the king of France.[87] Yet the death-knell of the Serbians and Bulgarians had already sounded, the last confederacy of the Southern Sclaves was broken up, the imperial aspirations of the Bosnian King were dashed for ever, and the doom of Bosnia itself was but postponed.
The battle of Kóssovo was the turning-point in Tvartko’s fortunes. His intrigues in Croatia, and a victory obtained over the Hungarian arms in Dalmatia, roused the Magyar King, Sigismund, to vengeance, and Tvartko, prevented himself by bodily weakness from taking an active part in the hostilities, saw his allies defeated, his province of Ussora overrun,[88] and himself reduced to renew his homage.
In 1391 Tvartko dies, of vexation, it is said, at these reverses, and is succeeded by Stephen Dabiscia, otherwise known as Tvartko II., and he again in 1396 by Tvartko III.[89] The greater part of the long reign of this King, which lasted forty-seven years, is distracted by perpetual wars, connected with the disputed succession of the Hungarian crown. It is extremely difficult to trace out the aims of the different parties who are now disputing for mastery in Bosnia. At one time Tvartko III., who seems, like his father, Tvartko I., to have aimed at Croatian annexations, appears at the head of an insurrection of Bosnian and Croatian magnates against Sigismund of Hungary, and in 1408 is defeated and captured under the walls of his historic Castle of Doboj,[90] where the conqueror executed 180 Bosnian and Croatian nobles. Tvartko, though forced to resume his allegiance, was suffered to retain his crown, and for many years we find him maintaining his position in league with the party of Sigismund among the Magyars, and generally by the support of the Bogomiles, and the popular party who seem to be identical with them. When the Magnates and their auxiliaries of the Neapolitan and Dalmatian faction sought to oppose him and set up a rival king, Tvartko carried out his national policy still further by sending a message to Vladislaus Jagellon, the Polish claimant of the Hungarian throne, in which he offered him his homage and begged for assistance on the plea of the common origin of the Poles and Bosniacs.[91]
In this universal confusion the Turks first make good a footing in Bosnia. Already in the reign of Stephen Dabiscia, Bajazet had advanced into the county of Chelm and established stationary quarters at a spot become memorable in the most recent times as the scene of the first outbreak of a revolt which has shaken Turkish dominion in Bosnia to its foundations—Nevešinje.[92] But in the factious contests which distracted the reign of the third Tvartko, each of the competitors for dominion outbade the other for Turkish help, and it was by the direct invitation and under the actual leadership of a turbulent noble that the Turks first gained sufficient footing in Bosnia to establish there a Sandjakate. The whole story is worth repeating, as it singularly illustrates the state into which this unhappy country had fallen. At the time there were two kings in Bosnia; Tvartko, who had now made his peace with Sigismund and ruled over the parts of Bosnia along the Drina and the Serbian frontier, and Ostoja, who owed his elevation to the Neapolitan faction of Ladislaus, and whose territory embraced the maritime parts and a tract roughly answering to the later Herzegovina. Between the Eastern and the Western kingdom lay a more or less neutral wedge of country which had been carved out by King Sigismund and formed into a Hungarian Banat under the great Croatian noble Hervoja Horvatić, whose dominion included the city of Jaycze, and anticipated in its extent that Banat of lower Bosnia which, at a later time, Mathias Corvinus recovered from the Turkish conqueror. Hervoja, who assumed the title of Chief Voivode, and even Prince, of Bosnia,[93] and who shifted his allegiance, as the whim seized him, from Tvartko and Sigismund to Ostoja and Ladislaus, happened on one occasion to have honoured King Sigismund with his presence at his court. Hervoja, who added a bullying manner to a body of bovine dimensions, was haranguing the assembled magnates, Hungarian and Bosnian, in his usual tones, when a certain Paul Chupor, Ban of Slavonia, broke in upon his lordship by bellowing like a bull. This was too much for the gravity of court ceremonial, and King Sigismund himself could not help joining in the general laugh. But Hervoja, in a frantic rage, left the court, and hurried back to his Banat, vowing vengeance against the Hungarian King, his Bosnian liegeman King Tvartko, and every baron who followed their banners. Seizing the opportunity when both of them were away in Germany, he called in the Turks and took the command of the invading horde in person. In the absence of the two Kings, the magnates of the country, with his mortal enemy, Paul Chupor, at their head, united their retainers to oppose him. Hervoja defeated their army, and having the luck to take his old insulter prisoner, had him sewn up alive in a bull’s hide and thrown into the river, with the characteristic jest, ‘When thou wert a man thou didst speak with a bull’s voice; take now thy bull’s hide as well!’
The Turks after devastating the country, destroying Varch Bosna near the site of Serajevo and penetrating into the district of Sala in lower Bosnia, refused this time to content themselves with plunder, and established their first Sandjakate in Bosnia. Hervoja, seeing himself thrown over by the Turks, who found him no longer useful as a cat’s-paw, and deserted by his own adherents, shut himself up in his family castle at Cattaro, and worn with vexation, perhaps remorse, died the same summer. The two Kings, Tvartko and Sigismund, succeeded on their return in gaining a victory over the Turks, slaying the Sandjak Ikach, and freeing Bosnia for a while from the occupation of the Infidel. But the anarchy within continued, and in 1430 culminated in the spectacle of three rival princes, each of them claiming to be King of Bosnia! In 1435 the death of his two rivals left Tvartko III. once more sole king; but shortly after that date the part of his dominions which answers to the modern Herzegovina separates itself from the rest of Bosnia, and forms for a while an independent principality.
The County of Chelm, variously designated as the Banat of Zachlumje and the land of Humska, had been originally incorporated in the Banat of Bosnia by the Ban Stephen[94] in 1326. We have seen it exchanged for Primorie with the King of Hungary, and re-annexed by the first King of Bosnia, who granted it as a fief to his brave general Vlatko Hranić. His grandson, who from his birthplace Cosac, was known as Stephen Cosača, or Cosaccia,[95] took advantage of the weakness of Tvartko III. to transfer the immediate suzerainty of his county to the Emperor Frederick IV., who in 1440 created him Duke, or, as his Sclavonic subjects who had borrowed the German word expressed it, Herzega, of St. Sava.[96] This, and the further title of ‘Keeper of St. Sava’s Sepulchre,’ he derived from the tomb of the patron saint of Serbia in his monastery of Mileševo.
The Herzegovina, or Duchy, as this country now begins to be called,[97] included, besides the old county of Chelm, the coastland district known as Primorie, and extended from the borders of Rascia to the neighbourhood of Zara.[98] Stephen Cosaccia fixed as the seat of his government the important point where the old Roman bridge still spans the river Narenta, and the City of Mostar still looks back to Radivoj Gost, his Curopalata or ‘Mayor of the Palace,’ as its founder.[99]
During the last years of Tvartko’s reign Bosnia enjoyed the peace she so much needed. The King who had inherited many of the good qualities, though not perhaps the martial ardour and masterful ambition of his father, the first Tvartko, won the hearts of his people by his even-handed justice. He heard complaints himself, sitting in the gate, as the Prince of Montenegro does at the present day, and decided the cases set before him with wisdom. Before punishment could be inflicted on anyone judgment had first to be pronounced by the Starosts or Elders of the realm, and the verdict had first to be submitted to the approval of the people. Business of state was conducted by the King in Council, and his chief advisers were the Bans of Jaycze and Bosna. In Tvartko’s days, we are told, no flatterer dare approach the Court. The Bogomiles enjoyed toleration, and Tvartko himself and the chief barons of the realm, including the Count of Popovo and Trebinje, the despot George of Serbia, and Sandalj Hranić were adherents of the sect. The Franciscan Missionaries, to whom directly or indirectly a very large share of the troubles of the Bosnian kingdom was due, were confined to the districts where they were already settled, and compelled to limit their exactions to a more restricted sphere; Tvartko even profited by a quarrel that broke out between them and the superior of their order, to place them under his direct jurisdiction.[100]
Stephen Thomas succeeded Tvartko ‘the Just’ on the throne of Bosnia in 1443. He was an illegitimate son of Ostoja and a Ragusan lady, Voiacchia, and was raised to the throne by the Bogomiles to whose communion he belonged. True to the policy which prompted the Puritan population of Bosnia to seek a counterpoise against Catholic Hungary in their fellow Puritans, the champions of Islâm, King Stephen Thomas began his reign by promising a yearly tribute to the Sultan. But the Papal party had rightly reckoned on the weakness of Thomas’s character; and the subtle genius of the Apostolic legate, Thomasini, whom the Pope had sent to effect his conversion, knew only too well how to play upon his fears and cupidity. Stephen Thomas was illegitimate; the lawful son of Ostoja, Radivoj (or Gaudenzo) had returned from Turkish exile and put in a claim on the Bosnian crown; the Papal party had powerful weapons at their command in the Duke of St. Sava, then a staunch Catholic, who refused allegiance and invaded Thomas’s territory, and in the King of Hungary, who as suzerain, declined to recognize the title of a heretic prince. Thomasini offered to legitimate Thomas and his heirs, to obtain for him a consecrated crown, to reconcile his rivals and his suzerain. The King of Bosnia yielded, abjured his Bogomilian heresy, and was baptized into the Catholic fold. Thomas, who had hitherto hesitated to take the style of King in his official acts,[101] was formally crowned in 1444. His homage was accepted by the Hungarian King Ladislaus, and his rival Radivoj was pacified with the grant of the Banat of Jaycze.
In Bosnia itself this abjuration of the national faith produced the most deplorable effects. The Inquisition raised its head, the Franciscans were again rampant. The Bogomiles saw themselves betrayed by the King of their own creation. The great vassal of the Bosnian crown, Stephen Cosaccia, Duke of St. Sava, who in the first blush of Thomas’s conversion had been induced to return to his allegiance, and whose goodwill had been further courted by Thomas taking his daughter Catharine to wife, now began to find it politic to cut himself adrift from the Papal party, and to bid for complete independence of the Bosnian Crown by posing as the protector of the Bogomiles. Meanwhile, beyond the border, the great battle of Varna had been fought, the Hungarians routed, and their King slain. As the danger of Turkish conquest drew nearer and nearer, the most bigoted champions of the Roman Church might see the danger of throwing the Protestant population into the arms of the invader; and the most sanguine of the Christian Puritans, viewing the fate of their brothers in Bulgaria, might shrink from accepting the dominion of their Mahometan counterparts. In the Diet, or Great Council of the Realm, which King Stephen Thomas assembled at Coinica, we may see a last effort to check the growing anarchy, and unite the discordant elements of the realm. I have given an account of the great charter of King Stephen Thomas while describing the scene of the ‘Conventus’ of Coinica.[102] In it the constitutional relation of the Duke of St. Sava will be found defined, and the clause which enacts ‘that the Manichæans build no new church nor restore the old,’ but which omits to prescribe any further penalties or to fulminate any of the usual anathemas against them, seems to me to imply that even the Bogomiles were to be accorded comparative toleration.[103] But passions ran too high, anarchy was too inveterate in Bosnia, for this attempt at internal pacification to succeed. In the Papal legate, Thomasini, King Stephen Thomas had ever at his side an evil genius, who inclined him more and more towards the path of persecution. With the Turk at the door King Thomas, who was known to the Roman Catholics as the ‘pious,’ once more lent the support of the civil arm to the Inquisition. The Bogomiles turned for protection to the Turks, their only possible ally, and, four years after the ‘Conventus’ of Coinica, invited them into the country. Stephen Thomas, a tyrant towards his own subjects, showed himself a craven before the foe, and purchased an ignominious peace from Amurath by agreeing to pay him 25,000 ducats a year. But the Turkish suzerainty became more and more galling, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 finally roused him from his lethargy. Four years after that event he issued from his Palace of Sutisca, near the Castle of Bobovac, an appeal to the whole Christian world for help against the Infidel.[104] This was addressed to the Pope, the King of Arragon, the Doge of Venice, the Duke of Burgundy, and other Christian princes. But the days of the Crusades were gone by, and the appeal of the King of Bosnia met with no response, save that the Pope sent him a consecrated standard and a cross.
Meanwhile the death of the brave John Hunyadi, and the paralysing civil war in Hungary, left the Bosnian King without his one ally. The Turkish ravages now extended to the heart of Bosnia. Already, in 1449, Turks were settled in the country between the Drina and Ukrina stream,[105] on the main line of communication between Bosnia and Hungary; now, the neighbouring Pashàs and Agas begin to drive a regular traffic in Bosnian slaves. A half mythical atmosphere surrounds the last days of the Bosnian kingdom. It is said that the craven Thomas, fearing to resist the Turks, entered into a secret league with them. We are told by contemporary writers that Mahomet himself, disguised as a Morabite, made his way in company with two real members of that order, into the royal palace of Sutiska,[106] that King Thomas showed him all honour, and solemnly entered with him into that sworn brothership so hallowed amongst the Southern Sclaves, the Pobratimstvo. Whether such a meeting actually occurred, or whether the whole story was the invention of domestic enemies, there can be no doubt that the poltroonery and tergiversation of Thomas had alienated even that Catholic faction on which since his abjuration of Bogomilism he had relied. Signs of defection already appeared, and the King turned the arms that he should have employed against the national enemy, to reduce a refractory Croatian vassal. It was while besieging his castle, encamped on the field of Bielaj, that King Stephen Thomas was assassinated, if report spoke truly, by his step-brother Radivoj and his illegitimate son Stephen.
The parricide Stephen Tomašević at once usurped the throne, though Stephen Thomas is often regarded by Bosnians as their last king. The Catholic and anti-Turkish party were now triumphant, and the new King began his reign by an appeal to the feudal nobility of Bosnia to meet him with their retainers equipped for battle against the Infidel, on the field of Kóssovo. This summons is dated Pristina, June 3, 1459, and is one of the last records of feudal Bosnia. The Barons, Prelates, Nobles, Voivodes, and magnates of the realm,[107] are summoned by name. The Župans[108] of Rascia and of Serbia, with their banners and retainers, the Ban of Jaycze, the Ban of Ussora, the Duke of St. Sava, and the lesser nobles, are marshalled before us on parchment. The King appeals to their orthodox bigotry, and seems to take an illustration from the fire-drakes of Sclavonic folk-lore. ‘What faithful Christian,’ he asks, ‘and zealous lover of the orthodox faith can restrain his tears when considering the capture of Constantinople?’ He calls on the Barons aforesaid ‘to meet us on the field of Kóssovo in June, for we ought in a body to advance against the dragon, lest he spit forth over us his venom.’[109] But King Stephen Tomašević inherited his father’s poltroonery, with more than his father’s bigotry. We do not know that he ever met the Turks at Kóssovo; but we know that this same year he turned the arms of his orthodox Magnates against his unoffending Bogomile subjects, and hounded 40,000 of them from the realm. His brave generals, Paul Kubretić and Tomko Mergnjavić, defended severally the line of the Drina and the Rascian frontier with success, but the surrender of Semendria which the Hungarians had intrusted to his safe-keeping, to the Turks, had irritated Mathias Corvinus and the powerful Hungarian faction among the Magnates, and this dissatisfaction was intensified by Tomašević throwing himself and his kingdom at the feet of the Papacy, which, however, wisely refused to accept it. Meanwhile it was no secret that Mahomet was preparing for his great invasion of Bosnia.
The King of Bosnia who had already secured the alliance of the Venetians and Scanderbeg, turned once more to the Pope, if not to gain him fresh allies, at least to sanctify his efforts, and to breathe into his followers the enthusiasm of a new crusade. The ambassadors of Tomašević appeared at Rome in 1463, and were received in solemn conclave by the Pope. They read to him and the spiritual senators assembled an appeal drawn up by the Bosnian King’s own hand. The speech, for it is nothing less, has been preserved, and is the last monument of Christian Bosnia. In turns it is argumentative, insinuating, and solemn; selfish personal ambition is blended in a remarkable way with a real appreciation of the gravity of the situation, and the far-reaching consequences of a Turkish conquest of Bosnia to Hungary and Christendom; and the King as he warms with his harangue forgets the official plural of a royal style and lapses into the impressive individuality of a prophet.
‘Most Holy Father, we, Stephen Tomašević, King of Bosnia, send this embassy unto thee, for that Mahomet hath conceived this summer to fall upon our realm. Already hath he gathered together his array of war; nor is our strength sufficient that we should stand against him. In our grievous necessity we have turned to the Hungarians and the Venetians for succour; and George, the Prince of Albania, hath promised us his help. Now, therefore, have we also turned to thee, O most Holy Father. No mountains of gold do we ask of thee, but this alone, that our enemies and our true friends should know that we have thy protection. If so be that the Bosnians know that they fight not alone, then will their courage be the keener; whereas the Barbarian will fear to attack our land, the passes wherein are difficult, and the fenced cities well nigh impregnable. Eugenius, thy predecessor, promised our father the throne, and that he would establish some bishoprics in Bosnia; but our father refused to accept this treaty, lest peradventure he should magnify the hatred of the Turks against him; for that he himself was newly converted, and the Manichæans were not yet pursued the realm. But I was christened in the true faith, I learned Latin in my childhood, and have remained steadfast in my Christian belief. I fear not therefore what my father feared, and therefore do I entreat thee that thou wouldest send me a crown and the holy bishops. Let this be for a monument that thou wilt not forsake me or my realm. If the enemy breaks in, a crown received from thy hands will be unto my friends as an earnest of victory, and for a terror to my foes. In my father’s lifetime, thou didst issue thy commands that the Crusaders, assembled in Dalmatia under the overseeing of the Venetians, should help him, but this pleased not the Venetian Senate. Bid them now that they come to my aid, if haply thou shalt find more obedience, forasmuch as they have turned from their former designs, and they shall make war against the Turks. This moreover do I pray, that thou send thy legate unto Hungary, that so he may set before the King my grievous necessity, and may spur him on to join his arms with mine.
‘By such means the realm of Bosnia may yet be preserved; otherwise it falls to pieces: for insatiable ambition knows no bounds. But if so be that I am subjugated, the hereditary foe will fall upon the Hungarians, and having subdued the Dalmatians, Istrians, and Carinthians, will turn his arms also against Italy. The first fury of the storm threatens me, after me the Hungarians and Venetians and other peoples must bend before it, nor will Italy remain secure. Such are the foe’s designs. I have learnt them, and therefore do I communicate to thee this intelligence that thou mayest not lay drowsiness to my charge, nor say that these things were not foretold. My father too had foretold to thy predecessor and to the Venetians the fall of Constantinople. He was not believed, and Christendom lost one city of the Cæsars, the Patriarch’s seat and the pride of Greece. Of myself only do I now prophesy. Believest thou me? then succour me, and I am delivered; otherwise I perish. O thou who art the father of Christendom, give counsel and help!’
The Pope in reply recognised the truth of King Stephen’s warnings, and promised to place the arms in Dalmatia at his disposal, to build the desired cathedrals in Bosnia, and send the bishops. The consecrated crown he held in readiness, but would not send it without the consent of Mathias, Stephen’s suzerain, with whom he recommended him to make friends. Let Stephen prevent Mahomet’s invasion by occupying the passes; Hungary and Venice would fly to his assistance.
But while King Stephen Tomašević was pleading for new bishops from the Pope, another negociation was being transacted between his oppressed subjects and the Sultan. While the infatuated king was boasting that he had purged his realm of the Manichæan heretics; these very sectaries who, in spite of the expulsion of 40,000 three years before, still formed apparently the large majority of the population, though forced to dissemble their opinions, seeing themselves threatened on the one hand by a new Romish influx, on the other by invaders indeed, but Puritans at least like themselves, turned to the Turks. By the mouth of their spiritual chiefs the negociation with Mahomet was successfully completed. The Bogomiles promised to transfer their allegiance from their Romish sovereign to the Sultan, Mahomet on the other hand engaging to insure them free toleration for their religion, freedom from taxation, and other privileges.[110]
In 1463 Mahomet crossed the Drina and poured into Bosnia an army, the cavalry alone of which was exaggerated by the terror of the natives into 150,000 horsemen. On June 14 a Turkish Pashà appeared at the head of a large force beneath the walls of Bobovac, the ancient seat of Bosnian Bans and Kings. The Sultan himself came up next day, and the governor[111]—a ‘Manichee,’ we are told, ‘who had feigned to be a Christian’—forthwith, with the consent of the garrison, who it is to be supposed were equally disaffected against the Catholic rulers, opened the gates to the Turk. Thus passed into the hands of Mahomet a fortress of the greatest strength, and supplied with provisions for a two-years’ siege. The King of Bosnia, panic-stricken at the loss of his royal city, and seeing himself betrayed by his own subjects, shut himself up with his treasures in Jaycze, another royal city, as strong by its position and fortifications as Bobovac; but feeling himself still insecure, at the approach of the Pashà fled with his treasures to Clissa on the coast of Primorie, where, after forty days’ siege, on condition of his life being spared, he surrendered himself to Mahomet, together with his treasures, the accumulated hoards of five kings, amounting, it is said, to a million of ducats.[112]
The crafty Sultan utilized, we are told, the King’s authority to obtain possession of the remaining strongholds of Bosnia. He extorted from him writs to the governors of the different cities, ordering them to give up their keys to the Turks. All obeyed. The Protestant population of Bosnia did not need the royal mandate; they looked on the Turks rather as deliverers than foes, and in the short space of eight days seventy cities, ‘defended by nature and art,’ opened their gates to the Sultan’s officers.[113] Then at last the Christians of Bosnia discovered that they had betrayed one tyranny to make room for a worse. The King, Stephen Tomašević, having served his turn, was barbarously executed by his perfidious captor. Accounts differ as to the exact manner of his death; but it matters little whether he suffered the fate of Marsyas, St. Sebastian, or Charles I.; and poetic justice is satisfied, if we may believe the statement that the parricide king met his doom on the same field of Bielaj where he murdered his father.[114] The most eminent nobles who had not escaped to Dalmatia were transported to Asia, thirty thousand of the picked youth of Bosnia were taken to recruit the Janissaries, and two hundred thousand of the inhabitants were sold as slaves.
By a strange irony of fate the blow fell hardest on the cities, where the Bogomilian faction lay.[115] How terrible was their calamity the example of Jaycze, the chief city of the realm, and Clissa, the last refuge of Bosnian royalty, abundantly display. The burghers of Jaycze, relying on the Sultan’s pledge to respect their municipal freedom, their ancient privileges and their property, had gone forth to welcome him within their gates. But no sooner was the city in his possession than the treacherous Osmanlì, not content with arresting the chief nobility of the realm and the king’s brother and daughter whom he found within the walls, seized on the children of the leading citizens for distribution among his Pashàs and Agas, and enrolment in his new body-guard. The fate of Clissa (or Kliuć) was still more overwhelming. The Turkish Beglerbeg divided the townspeople into three parts. One of them he adjudicated to his troops as booty; another portion, the youths and children, he set apart for enrolment in the Janissary guard; and the remainder, but not, we may be assured, either the young or the beautiful, he left to pay tribute for their desolated homes.
That it was nothing but the sheerest intolerance that drove the Bogomiles to welcome Turkish rule in Bosnia is conclusively shown by the different attitude adopted by their co-religionists of Herzegovina. This can be accounted for by no ties of personal loyalty to the reigning Duke. Stephen’s whole career might well have inspired the most vehement repugnance among subjects more tolerant to human weakness than is the wont of Puritans. Stephen Cosaccia was by all accounts a selfish voluptuary, careless of religion, described as fickle as the wind, and reckless as he was ambitious. He had seized his son’s wife, a beautiful Florentine, and when his son and the outraged Duchess saved themselves from perpetual insult by taking shelter within the hospitable walls of Ragusa, had brought disasters on the land by his insolent pretensions. The Ragusans, indignant at his demand for the extradition of the fugitives, his claims on part of their territory, his raising the salt-tax, did not content themselves with impeaching their rebellious senator of high treason, but invaded Herzegovina, took his treasure castle of Blagai and ducal city of Mostar, and hardly needed the double intervention of Pope and Sultan to reduce him to an humiliating peace and the payment of a war indemnity. Stephen Cosaccia changed his creed with as much facility as he changed his consort. In the beginning of his reign, when Bosnian kings leaned to Bogomilism, it had suited his policy to bid for Papal favour and raise his County into a Duchy by playing the part of a faithful son of the Church. But when the King of Bosnia had made his peace with Rome, when all hopes that he may have cherished of placing the Bosnian crown upon his own head were finally dashed, when further a Papal legate had presided at that diet of Coinica by which his dependence on the Bosnian kingdom was formally cemented, Stephen Cosaccia began to think that, after all, more might be gained by fishing in the troubled waters of Puritan disaffection. He veered round once more and henceforth poses as the protector of the oppressed Bogomiles of Bosnia. When the persecutions of Stephen Tomašević drove 40,000 of these sectaries from the kingdom, they found a refuge in the duchy; and, neither for the first nor the last time in history, a tyrant and a libertine became the acknowledged patron of Puritans and levellers.
Thus, when Mahomet turned his arms against Herzegovina, the Bogomiles showed their gratitude to their ducal benefactor, by rising en masse in his defence. They occupied the mountain passes, and while the craven Stephen shut himself up in his capital Mostar, and drowned his anxieties in his usual dissipation, his brave Puritan adherents kept the Turks at bay on the frontier. One pass, however, had remained unoccupied. The Turks burst through it and beleagured the ducal city. The Bogomiles, however, still fought bravely, and made such successful sallies and flank attacks upon the enemy that the Turk saw himself obliged to raise the siege. The rest of the country, however, was overrun, many castles of the Count of Popovo and Trebinje[116] taken, and this great magnate of the duchy slain. The Duke saw himself forced to raise his tribute and send his son Stephen as a hostage to the Sultan. Two years later, in 1466, Stephen Cosaccia died, and his duchy was shared by his two sons, Ladislav, who inherited the ducal title, and Vlatko. But Herzegovina had only gained a respite from complete subjugation.[117] Twenty years after the overthrow of the Bosnian kingdom, in 1483, the Beglerbeg of Bosnia fell upon the Duchy of St. Sava, the two Christian princes were dispossessed, and the whole country incorporated in the Sandjakate of Bosnia. A renegade member of the ducal house, that Stephen whom the first duke had sent as a hostage to Mahomet, rose under the name of Ahmed Pashà to be grand vizier, and is known in Turkish annals as Herzekoglu.[118]
Amidst the universal ruin, the wife of the last lawful king of Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, is singled out by the grandeur of her misfortunes, and I have been tempted to collect a few details which may shed some halo of romance round the unhappy Catharine. After the murder of her husband by his bastard son Stephen and her brother Radivoj, Queen Catharine had lingered near his tomb in the Church of St. John at Sutisca, the burial-place of Bosnian kings, sheltered in the adjoining convent which her own and her husband’s piety had reared,[119] and doubtful whether most to fear her husband’s murderer or the terrible Sultan, who was advancing, avowedly, to avenge her. In the sacristery of the Convent of Sutisca, the Franciscan monks still treasure an antique picture, in which Christ appears in person to the kneeling king Stephen Thomas; and legend says that it was in the monastery of his rearing that this vision befell the husband of Queen Catharine. Here, amidst all these sad and solemn memories, the widowed queen was engaged in embroidering some sacred vestments, when the news of the rapid advance of Mahomet, perhaps the sudden betrayal of the royal stronghold of Bobovac itself, only five miles distant, startled her from her pious task. In the sacristery of Sutisca, with the picture of King Thomas, the Franciscan monks showed long afterwards[120] ‘a stole and a part of a chasuble embroidered in gold threads by a needle in a wonderful way, and delectable to the sight, which is said by immemorial tradition to have been the handiwork of Queen Catharine, the wife of King Thomas, who sleeps at Rome, and which she left unfinished when she fled.’
She, a woman of delicate health, the widowed Queen of Bosnia, the daughter of the Duke of St. Sava, on her mother’s side[121] tracing her lineage from the imperial race of the Comneni, fled away on foot through the passes of the Dinaric Alps, down the valley of the Narenta, across the inhospitable limestone desert that stretches, now as then, between her father’s stronghold of Mostar and the sea, to Stagno, the old seaport of Bosnia. There she found a small boat, which carried her across the gulf to the hospitable haven of Ragusa. At Ragusa she seems to have resided several years; but in 1475[122] she set forth on her pilgrimage once more, and passed the closing years of her life in the shelter of a Roman convent, distinguished by her charitable works, her meekness, and the patience with which she bore her misfortunes,[123] but haunted even there by the craven conduct of her son Sigismund, who had renegaded to the creed of Mahomet. In 1477 Queen Catharine died, and was buried in the Church of the Virgin of Ara Cœli, in which by her orders a monument was reared to her memory.[124] There, beside the feudal escutcheons of her husband’s kingdom and her father’s principality, on a foreign soil, and in a Roman sanctuary, reposes, as is fitting, the effigy of the exiled Queen of Bosnia, the last monument of the feudal kingdom, and of a dynasty essentially alien to the people over whom it ruled.
After her death two of her family appeared before Pope Sextus IV., and presented to him her will, in which she bequeathed her kingdom of Bosnia to the Holy Roman Church; adding, however, the condition that if her son should return from the Turks, ‘and the vomit of Mahomet,’ he should be restored to his father’s throne. As a token, her representatives handed over the Sword of the Realm, and the Royal Spurs, ‘which the Pontiff benignantly received, and ordered them to be placed, with the will, in the Apostolic archives.’[125]
Meanwhile Mathias Corvinus was taking more effectual measures to recover at least a part of Bosnia for Christendom and Hungary. Within three months after the execution of Stephen Tomašević he had taken the field, and in a short time recovered twenty-seven cities with almost the same rapidity as that of Mahomet’s conquest. The whole of lower Bosnia, including what is now Turkish Croatia, the valley of the Verbas, the Bosnian Possávina, the old Bosnian Banats of Ussora and Podrinia, were for a while recovered.[126] In Jaycze the spirit of the citizens had not been utterly crushed out even by the rigour of Mahomet and the Janissary tribute. Wifeless and childless for the most part, her burghers had not lost the hopes of vengeance and recovered liberty: they called on the Magyars to deliver them, and after a seventy days’ siege the Turkish garrison yielded to the combined efforts of the besieging army and the citizens within. The great stronghold of the realm now received a Hungarian governor, and was forthwith made the capital of the new Banat of Jaycze, or as Mathias called it, to preserve the jus of the Hungarian Crown, the titulary kingdom of Bosnia.[127]
The ancient city of Jaycze, which now for many years becomes the Ilion of Turk and Hungarian, and the bulwark of the Christian world, derives its name, it is said, from its resemblance in form to an egg, the Bosniac word for which is Jaica,[128] and it has thus been compared with the Neapolitan fortress Castello del Ovo, reared by the Normans. Its high walls are still to be seen, rising on a rocky height at the confluence of the Pliva and Verbas; and during the days of the Bosnian kingdom it was recognised as the capital of the realm, sharing with Bobovac the honour of being the favourite residence of the Bosnian kings. Nor did Jaycze owe this royal preference solely to an almost impregnable position. As a pleasance the site is equally alluring, being environed by some of the most romantic mountain and forest scenery in the country, and overlooking not only the one Bosnian lake, but a waterfall which may compare with those of Norway. Here rose the Minorite convent of St. Catharine, enriched by many indulgences, obtained from Rome by the namesake of the saint, the Queen whose melancholy fortunes we have just been tracing; and here, after the fall of Constantinople, the body of St. Luke (the greatest glory of Bosnia’s latter days!) had found shelter till the invasion of Mahomet, when pious hands succeeded in transporting it to Venice. There it was deposited by the Doge Cristoforo Moro in the Church of St. Job: to the no small scandal of the neighbouring city of Padua, which possessed a rival trunk of the Evangelist.
The history of Bosnia now centres around the fortifications of Jaycze. The city was again and again besieged by Mahomet and Bajazet; but the citizens, amongst whom we learn were a large number of Bogomiles,[129] showed that, when under the inspiration of a sovereign like Mathias, they knew how to fight, and, while the town held out, Hungarian armies inflicted disastrous defeats on the Turks under its walls. In 1520 two generals of Sultan Solyman II., the Bey of Semendria and the Pashà of Turkish Bosnia, inflicted the severest blow on the Banat of Jaycze that it had yet experienced. The great stronghold of Zvornik, the key of the Podrinia, fell into the hands of the Turks, owing to the carelessness of the governor, who had failed to provision it; and two other important fortresses yielded to the panic, one Sokol, the other the rock citadel of Tešanj,[130] the key of the province of Ussora. Jaycze, however, at that time had for governor a stout old soldier, Peter Keglević, who had received wounds at Terentzin, and the successful defence of this city under his guidance is the last and perhaps the most romantic episode in the annals of Christian Bosnia.
The Turks, finding all their efforts to take the city by open assault futile, had planned a night surprise, and, to disarm the suspicions of the governor, had retired out of sight of the city, as if to raise the siege. But Keglević, who perhaps obtained his information from renegades in the Pashà’s army, was made aware by means of his spies that the Turks were constructing a large number of ladders. The governor accordingly doubled the watch on the walls, lining them, where they were too low, with foot soldiers; and was shortly made aware, by the same secret sources of information, that the retreating Turks had doubled round, and, making their way by stealth among the mountains and under cover of the forest, were encamped in a retired gorge not far from the town, intending to assault the walls by a sudden escalade in the hours before dawn. Peter showed himself quite equal to the occasion, and told off immediately a picked body of a hundred men to take their stand in the rear of the Turkish ambush, with orders to fall on the infidels at a signal given from a gun-shot.
Nor were Keglević’s resources exhausted by this stratagem. It happened to be the eve of a feast-day, when the women and maidens of the town would in times of security go forth, as they still do through the length and breadth of Bosnia, to dance and sing on the forest lawns. Old Peter called the girls and merry wives of Jaycze around him, and bade them at earliest dawn to go forth, as if no foe were nigh, into the King’s Mead,[131] as the meadowland about the town was known long afterwards, and sing and play their shrillest—disarming their fears by telling them that he would be at hand to help them.
Meanwhile the Turks, astir before sunrise for their planned attack, were shouldering their ladders for the escalade—when the distant sounds of the festal songs, and the Sclavonic dance-music, the plaintive note of the Ghuzla, and the shrill piping of the Svirala, broke the silence of the still morning air; and peering down between the forest trunks they espied by the first faint light of dawn the maidens of Jaycze tripping the light fantastic toe right merrily on the green slopes opposite. This was enough! Down fall the ladders from their backs, and forwards scurry the warriors, forgetful of everything but the sirens across the valley. Old Keglević saw his opportunity, and sallying forth from the city, attacked them with a picked body of men, while the ambushed horsemen, true to the signal, swept down upon their rear. The Turks, in utter confusion, distracted by the double onslaught, surprised, perhaps scarcely armed, offered no resistance, and were cut down almost to a man.
The Pashà, furious at this disaster, attacked Jaycze shortly afterwards with an army of 20,000 men, a long train of siege material, and eight cannon of large calibre;[132] but Keglević held out, and Frangepani advancing with an army of 16,000 men, defeated the Pashà and compelled him to raise the siege. Seven years, however, after his splendid defence of Jaycze, the brave old governor resigned his command, and his successor, a careless and unwarlike man, lost the fortress almost immediately. On the surrender of Jaycze in 1527 the remaining towns of the Banat opened their gates to the Turks, and the whole of Bosnia to the Save passed irrecoverably into the hands of the Sultan.
That the change was much regretted even by the Catholic population of the country may be doubted. The history of the Hungarian Banat of Jaycze is indeed less stained with religious persecutions than that of the earlier kingdom, but much of that feudal tyranny which had contributed in no unimportant manner to the conquest of Mahomet was still at work to alienate the wretched Bosnian peasants. We have the convincing testimony of an eyewitness, and a Doctor of the Roman Catholic University of Bologna, that the rule of the Moslem was at this time looked upon as less oppressive than that of the petty Christian Bans and Barons. ‘The Bosniacs,’ says Montalbano, ‘are not so badly treated by the Turks, but that those subject to Christian rule are not worse oppressed by their own lords. And I myself have often seen no small multitude of country people, having burnt their own houses in their despair, flee with their wives and children and cattle and all that they possessed, to the country under Turkish rule, for as much as the Turk extorteth little, save the tithe. And therefore has it happened oftentimes that our armies in the last Hungarian wars, when they have crossed the Ottoman border, find not the Christian countrymen who, as they supposed, would be their friends and helpers; or if so be they found them, they were hid in nooks, or intent upon their flight; for no sufficient prohibition against outrages and robberies is possible with the army. They think themselves well off if haply their property and the honour of their women be left them uninjured; whereas with the Turks, by reason of their great obedience, these securities can be readily obtained.’[133]
Several desultory attempts have since been made on the part of the Hapsburgs to recover it: by the Markgrave Ludwig of Baden, in 1688; by Prince Eugene, in 1697, who pushed on as far as Bosna Serai itself, but gained nothing by his hasty dash; and again in 1736 by the imperial troops under the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen, which ended in the utter rout of the Austrian army, amounting, it is said, to 80,000 men, and such complete discomfiture, that Ali Pashà could boast that ‘not a hoof of them was left behind.’[134] In 1790 Marshal Laudon took a few places in Bosnia, but the French Revolution put a stop to these operations, and all the towns captured in Bosnia were restored by the peace of Sistov.[135] These later efforts may show that though the Emperor-King had resigned his claim over Bosnia by the peace of Passarovitz in 1718, Austria, in the last century at all events, had not resigned all hopes of recovering the old fief of the Hungarian Crown.
There are very few materials[136] at hand for the history of Bosnia after the Turkish conquest, and we have little but theories to explain the extraordinary process of renegation which immediately set in, and which has given us a Sclavonic race of Mahometans. From the earliest days of the conquest the Turks inaugurated the policy of allowing all those natives who would accept the religion of Islâm to retain their lands and belongings, and we hear at once of a son of the King of Bosnia and another of the Duke of St. Sava turning Mahometan. It is certain that though the Catholic faction among the nobility was still powerful, a large number of even the highest rank in Bosnia were infected with the Bogomilian heresy; and it is probable that many rightful heirs of ancient houses had been dispossessed for heretical opinions by the dominant Romish caste, and were willing to recover their honours by at least nominally abjuring their religion. By most, perhaps, the renegation was intended to be only temporary; they ‘bowed in the house of Rimmon’ merely to retain their honours. Not a few of these renegade families have preserved even to the present day many of their old Christian and perhaps heretical observances; and it is whispered that there are still members of the old Bosnian aristocracy only waiting for a favourable opportunity to abjure Islâm. With the bulk of the people the desire of lording it over their former Romish oppressors would often outweigh every religious consideration. It has been hinted already that the Puritans of Bosnia might find little repugnant to them in the service of the mosques, and we may perhaps suspect that the Manichæism which looked on Christ as one Æon, might accept Mahomet as another. Certain it is that a large part of the population of Bosnia went over to Mahometanism, and those who would deny that the majority of the converts belonged to the persecuted sect of the Bogomiles, must account for the curious diminution since the Turkish conquest of the heretics who immediately before it formed, as far as we can judge, the majority, certainly the most influential portion, of the population.
Strange as seems the comparative disappearance of the Bogomilian religion since the Turkish conquest, throughout a large part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the more minutely we enquire into Bosnian history the less insoluble does the problem appear. On the whole, the disappearance of the Bosnian Protestants was not so much due to voluntary renegation, though that played its part, as to a cause which I have already hinted at. In the days of the Bosnian kingdom the strength of these sectaries lay in the towns; and it was on the towns that the hand of the Turk fell heaviest. The citizens of Jaycze, and Jaycze was then a peculiar stronghold of the Bogomiles, like those of Kliuć, and like those of the other fenced cities throughout the land, saw their children snatched from them, to be forcibly converted to Islâm, and to return as Janissaries and Mahometans to claim their heritage. Nay, more, we have the direct evidence of an eyewitness and contemporary that the Janissaries were largely recruited from the children of the Bogomiles.[137] At the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century there were still Bogomiles in Bosnia; but how many of them were wifeless and childless! We have historic proofs that the Bogomiles who existed in Jaycze in 1478 had lost their heirs; their children were already Moslemized;—how many, we may ask, outlived that generation? and how few could have survived the consequences of the second captivity of Jaycze in 1527! In Herzegovina, where at the moment of Turkish conquest the Bogomiles were proportionally more numerous, and where their attitude, in contradistinction to their Turcophile manifestations in Bosnia, had been one of open defiance to the conqueror, their calamity must have been even more overwhelming; and if the Turks bore so hardly on their Jayczan benefactors, what mercy could have been meted to the Bogomilian defenders of Mostar?[138]
Whatever were the favouring causes of this wide-spread renegation, its effect has been to afford us the unique phenomenon of Mahometan feudalism and the extraordinary spectacle of a race of Sclavonic Mahometans. This must be borne in mind at the present moment, for nothing is more liable to confuse the questions at issue than to look on the Mussulman inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina as Turks. Conventionally, perhaps, one is often obliged to do so, and I must plead guilty in this respect in the course of this work. But it should always be remembered that, with the exception of a handful of officials and a certain proportion of the soldiery, the Mahometan inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina are of the same race as their Christian neighbours, speak the same Serbian dialect, and can trace back their title-deeds as far. It is a favourite delusion to suppose that the case of Bosnia finds a parallel in that of Serbia; that here, too, an independent Christian principality could be formed with the same ease, and that the independence of Bosnia has but to be proclaimed for the Mussulman to take the hint and quit the soil, as he has already quitted the soil of Serbia.
But, as I have said, the cases of the two provinces are altogether different; in Serbia the Mahometans were an infinitesimal minority of Osmanlì foreigners, encamped; in Bosnia, on the contrary, they are native Sclaves, rooted to the soil, and forming over a third of the population. Under whatever government Bosnia passes, it is safe to say that the Mahometans will still form a powerful minority, all the more important from having possession of the towns.
Nor must we omit another characteristic which marks off the Christian Bosniacs from their Serbian neighbours. As Bosnia of old was the debateable ground between the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, so, to-day, she is distracted between the adherents of the Eastern and Western Churches, who hate each other more cordially than the infidel. It might have been thought that the disappearance of Bogomilism would have resigned the country to the Catholics and Mahometans, for the orthodox Greek element is conspicuous by its absence in the general current of mediæval Bosnian history. But it was there nevertheless, and in the eastern parts of the country was even then the dominant creed. The conquest of Rascia by Tvartko I. brought a Greek province under the Bosnian sceptre, and though the Bosnian hold on Rascia was slight, the Greek Metropolitan appears at the Conventus of Coinica among the great magnates of the realm. Since the Turkish conquest the Sandjakate of Rascia or Novipazar has been incorporated in the Vilajet of Bosnia, and by this means alone a large Greek-Church element has been added to the present province. Nor, if we consider the history of Bosnia since the Turkish conquest, is it difficult to trace the process by which even in Bosnia proper and the Herzegovina, the Eastern Church has risen to a dominant position. The Roman Catholics of Bosnia have at different times during the last three centuries migrated in large numbers into Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, where they found shelter among their co-religionists, and it appears that the Greek population to the South and East, who had less temptation to cross the borders of Latin Christendom, have largely colonized the country thus vacated.[139] The Roman Catholic population who remained, their ecclesiastical organization broken up by these migrations, must in many cases have been absorbed in the congregation of the intrusive Serbs, and indeed, as has been already pointed out, the Roman Church in Illyria was to a great extent only Roman in its higher organization.