Hungary afforded him a brief respite; and in 1244 peace was concluded after a Bosnian campaign against Croatia. A renewal of the crusade proving equally vain, in 1247 Pope Innocent III. entered into friendly negotiations with the ban, whose country was for the moment an independent and formidable state. The importance attached to its conversion is well attested by the correspondence of Pope Gregory IX. with Ninoslav and various Bosnian ecclesiastics.[1]
On the death of Ninoslav in 1250, vigorous efforts were made to exterminate the Bogomil heresy; and to this end, Béla IV., who appeared as the champion of Roman Catholicism, secured the election of his nominee Prijesda to the banate. Direct Hungarian suzerainty lasted until Period of Hungarian supremacy. 1299, the bans preserving only a shadow of their former power. From 1299 to 1322 the country was ruled by the Croatian princes, Paul and Mladen Šubić, who, though vassals of Hungary, reunited the provinces of Upper and Lower Bosnia, created by the Hungarians in order to prevent the growth of a dangerous national unity. A rising of the native magnates in 1322 resulted in the election of the Bogomil, Stephen Kotromanić, last and greatest of the Bosnian bans.
At this period the Servian empire had reached its zenith; Hungary, governed by the feeble monarch, Charles Robert of Anjou, was striving to crush the insurgent magnates of Croatia; Venice, whose commercial interests were imperilled, desired to restore peace and maintain the Stephen Kotromanic. balance of power. Dread of Servia impelled Kotromanić to aid Hungary. In an unsuccessful war against the Croats (1322–26), from which Venice derived the sole advantage, the ban appears to have learned the value of sea-power; immediately afterwards he occupied the principality of Hlum and the Dalmatian littoral between Spalato and the river Narenta. Ragusa furnished him with money and a fleet, in return for a guarantee of protection; commercial treaties with Venice further strengthened his position; and the Vatican, which had instigated the Croats to invade the dominions of their heretical neighbour (1337–40), was conciliated by his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Defeated by the Servian tsar Dushan, and driven to ally himself with Servia and Venice against Louis I. of Hungary, Kotromanić returned to his allegiance in 1344. Four years later his influence brought about a truce between Hungary and the Venetians, who had agreed with Bosnia for mutual support against the Croats; and in 1353, the year of his death, his daughter Elizabeth was married to King Louis.
Stephen Tvrtko, the nephew and successor of Kotromanić, was a
minor, and for thirteen years his mother, Helena, acted as regent.
Confronted by civil war, and deprived of Hlum by
the Hungarians, she was compelled to acknowledge
the suzerainty of Stephen Dushan, and afterwards
Establishment
of the Bosnian kingdom.
of Louis. But in 1366 Tvrtko overcame all opposition
at home, and forthwith embarked on a career of
conquest, recapturing Hlum and annexing part of Dalmatia.
The death of Stephen Dushan, in 1356, had left his empire
defenceless against the Hungarians, Turks and other enemies;
and to win help from Bosnia the Servian tsar Lazar ceded to
Tvrtko a large tract of territory, including the principality of
Tribunia. In 1376 Tvrtko was crowned as “Stephen I., king of
Bosnia, Servia, and all the Sea-coast,” although Lazar retained
his own title and a diminished authority. The death of Louis in
1392, the regency of his widow Elizabeth, and a fresh outbreak
in Croatia, enabled Tvrtko to fulfil his predecessor's designs by
establishing a maritime state. With Venetian aid he wrested
from Hungary the entire Adriatic littoral between Fiume and
Cattaro, except the city of Zara; thus adding Dalmatia to his
kingdom at the moment when Servia was lost through the Ottoman
victory of Kossovo (1389). At his coronation he had
proclaimed his purpose to revive the ancient Servian empire;
in 1378 he had married the daughter of the last Bulgarian tsar;
and it is probable that he dreamed of founding an empire which
should extend from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. The disaster
of Kossovo, though fatal to his ambition, did not immediately
react on Bosnia itself; and when Tvrtko died in 1391, his
kingdom was still at the summit of its prosperity.
Kotromanić and Tvrtko had known how to crush or conciliate
their turbulent magnates, whose power reasserted itself under
Dabiša (Stephen II., 1391–1398), a brother of Tvrtko.
Sigismond of Hungary profited by the disorder that
ensued to regain Croatia and Dalmatia; and in 1398
Decline of the
Bosnian kingdom.
the Turks, aided by renegade Slavs,[2] overran Bosnia.
Ostoja (Stephen III., 1398–1418), an illegitimate son
of Tvrtko, proved a puppet in the hands of Hrvoje Vukčić,
duke of Spalato, Sandalj Hranić,[3] and other leaders of the
aristocracy, who fought indifferently against the Turks, the
Hungarians, the king or one another. Some upheld a rival claimant
to the throne in Tvrtković, a legitimate son of Tvrtko, and all
took sides in the incessant feud between Bogomils and Roman
Catholics. During the reigns of Ostojić (Stephen IV., 1418–1421)
and Tvrtković (Stephen V., 1421–1444) Bosnia was thus left an
easy prey to the Turks, who exacted a yearly tribute, after
again ravaging the country, and carrying off many thousands
of slaves, with a vast store of plunder.
The losses inflicted on the Turks by Hunyadi János, and the attempt to organize a defensive league among the neighbouring Christian lands, temporarily averted the ruin of Bosnia under Thomas Ostojić (Stephen VI., 1444–1461). Turkish conquest. Hoping to gain active support from the Vatican, Ostojić renounced Bogomilism, and persecuted his former co-religionists, until the menace of an insurrection forced him to grant an amnesty. His position was endangered by the growing power of his father-in-law, Stephen Vukčić, an ardent Bogomil, who had united Tribunia and Hlum into a single principality. Vukčić—or Cosaccia, as he is frequently called by the contemporary chroniclers, from his birthplace, Cosac—was the first and last holder of the title “Duke of St Sava,” conferred on him by the emperor Frederick III. in 1448; and from this title is derived the name Herzegovina, or “the Duchy.” Hardly had the king become reconciled with this formidable antagonist, when, in 1453, the death of Hunyadi, and the fall of Constantinople, left Bosnia defenceless against the Turks. In 1460 it was again invaded. Venice and the Papacy were unable, and Hungary unwilling, to render assistance; while the Croats proved actively hostile. Ostojić died in 1461, and his successor Tomaševic (Stephen VII., 1461–1463) surrendered to the Turks and was beheaded. Herzegovina, where Vukčić offered a desperate resistance, held out until 1483; but apart from the heroic defence of Jajce, the efforts of the Bosnians were feeble and inglorious, many of the Bogomils joining the enemy. From 1463 the greater part of the country submitted to the Turks; but the districts of Jajce and Srebrenica were occupied by Hungarian garrisons, and organized as a separate “banate” or “kingdom of Bosnia,” until 1526, when the Hungarian power was broken at Mohács. In 1528 Jajce surrendered, after repelling every attack by the Turkish armies for 65 years.
The fall of Jajce was the consummation of the Turkish conquest. It was followed by the flight of large bodies of Christian refugees. Many of the Roman Catholics withdrew into Croatia-Slavonia and south Hungary, where they ultimately fell again under Ottoman dominion. Others found shelter in Rome or Venice, and a large number settled in Ragusa, where they doubtless contributed to the remarkable literary development of the 16th and 17th centuries in which the use of the Bosnian dialect was a characteristic feature. Some of the most daring spirits waged war on their conquerors from Clissa in Dalmatia, and afterwards from Zengg in maritime Croatia, where they formed the notorious pirate community of the Uskoks (q.v.). There was less inducement for the Orthodox inhabitants to emigrate, because almost
- ↑ Given by Theiner, Vetera monumenta Hungariam . . . illustrantia, 173-185.
- ↑ This is the first recorded instance of such an alliance. The Slavs were probably Bogomils.
- ↑ These magnates played a considerable part in the politics of south-eastern Europe; see especially their correspondence with the Venetian Republic, given by Shafarik, Acta archivi Veneti, &c.
