Ostalo
https://doi.org/10.17234/RadoviZHP.56.18
The Hinterland of the Croatian Medieval State (Summary)
Anđelko Đermek
orcid.org/0000-0002-9434-0959
Sažetak
The illogicality of the description of Croatia’s borders in DAI, which occurs if the county of Imota was located in the area of Imotski is a motivation for this research. Since we are deprived of sources that would shed more light on this prob¬lem, it will be solved in an indirect way. The starting point is the philological analysis of the name itself, whereby the ancient station of Aemate, which was located along the Vrbas River in the hinterland of Pliva County, emerged as a fruit¬ful piece of information. It has been shown that Aemate has meanings related to iron ore at the root of the name. Namely, one can argue the development of the name from the Greek αἱμάτῐνος (haimatinos – bloody), connected with the name for hematite, i.e. iron ore (Greek αἱματίτης λίθος and Latin lapis haematites) whose vulgar Latin form *Ēmat- could result in Slavic Imot- and be written in DAI as τὰ Ἤμοτα. This connection is not only philological, because the area of today’s north¬western Bosnia where the peregrine community of Maesaeans lived had a very great economic importance for the Roman state precisely because of the iron ore deposits. In the 1st century AD certain parts of the peregrine civitas of Maezaeians were therefore separated into mining districts - ferrarias, which were under direct imperial administration. Epigraphic monuments and votive reliefs found in Ljubija, Briševo and Japra near Prijedor bear witness to the development of ancient mining-metallurgical workshops and plants for processing iron ore (officinae fer¬rariae) from the 1st to the 3rd century AD. Archaeological findings confirm that the iron processing facilities in Blagaj Japra also flourished during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, who ruled until 565, i.e. until the appearance of the Slavs who could then take the name from the pre-Slavic population, which most likely par¬tially survived the migrations in that deep hinterland of Dalmatia. In the geo¬graphical analysis of the mentioned area, the distribution of medieval counties from the 12th century onwards is investigated. At the same time, for the first time, the enigmatic Rčeve mentioned in the donation document of the Bosnian ban Tvrtko I. Kotromanić from 1366, in this paper is resolved as Smrčevo and placed in the area from the Smrča hill above the source of the Sana River near Gornji Vrbljani to Smrčeva kosa at mountain pass Mlinište, and on the basis of this, the position of Lužac County is determined in more detail, for which until now there was no real solutions. It is concluded that this county covered the slopes of the Srnetica, Grmeč and Šiša mountains and extended along the western borders of the Banica County. Lužac County stuck like a wedge in the area between Croatia and Slavonia after the area of Donji kraji became part of Bosnia around the time of the reign of the Byzantine emperor Emanuel I. Komnen. On the basis of the Roman road network that led through the mentioned area and on the basis of the mention of the King Koloman’s road in the sources, contrary to the prevailing opinion, the conclusion is that Koloman’s road from Pakrac continued via Gradiška and Dubica through the valley of the Sana River and over the passes on the Di¬naric mountains all the way to Knin, mainly on the route of the road that was a continuation of the Roman Dolabella road that led from Knin to Pannonia. Atten¬tion is drawn to the fact that the continuation of the road from Topusko through the Una valley towards Srb and Knin is undocumented in the sources. The new proposed route of the King Koloman’s road resulted in a completely new location of Petrov Gvozd. The research starts again from the philological analysis of the word gvozd, which originally primarily meant klin (a wedge), and only secondar¬ily could also refer to forest and mountain. Attention is then drawn to the word from the older Croatian lexicon zagvozditi with the meaning: to close a passage or door by driving a wedge. In a landscape, Gvozd symbolically closed and opened a passage or a road. Synonyms in this sense were gora zaprta (closed mountain, which monk known as pop Martinac recorded in 1495) and ključ (a key). Right on the route of the road through the Sana valley, at the point where it turns between the Dinaric mountains of Grmeč, Srnetica and Šiša, there are toponyms: the old town of Ključ, the hill of Gvozdac, the pass of Oklinci/Oklinak, Petrovo vrelo (Peter’s fountain) and Vrelo Kraljevac (the king’s fountain). Due to their position, Ključ and Gvozdac, like wedges or keys, symbolically opened and closed the door to the core of the Croatian medieval state, and that is where Petrov Gvozd was obviously located. The symbolism and the military-strategic significance of Petrov Gvozd and the road across the Dinaric mountains to Knin is then analyzed. Regard¬ing the adjective “Petrov” (Peter’s), it should be noted that the connection with the poorly documented Croatian king Peter is secondary because the motivation originally came from Saint Peter and his keys. The oath of the Croats to Saint Peter, according to DAI, had an important role in this. The geostrategic unsustain¬ability of the Una valley road for Croatia is argued. Unlike the route of the road that crossed from the Sana valley across the Dinaric mountain passes, where it was easier to organize a defense, the road through the Una valley would run along the Dinaric mountains, enabling the enemy to appear in front of Knin in no time without any problems. It is then concluded that Thomas the Archdeacon, when describ¬ing the military of king Ladislav, translated Gvozd into Latin as Iron Alps (Alpes ferree) because of the change in the meaning of the word gvozd that occurred when wooden wedges began to be replaced by iron ones and when, according to the law of synecdoche, the word gvozdje began to denote iron as well. The impetus for this came from the knowledge that the area from Gvozd to the north in the Sana River basin was rich in iron ore. The enigmatic Messia from King Ladislav’s letter to the Benedictine abbot of Monte Cassino Oderizius is accordingly interpreted as the former land of Maezaeians, which exactly corresponds to the mentioned area that Ladislav had apparently just conquered in 1091. In support of this, attention is drawn to the privilege of King Ladislav, which he granted to the Benedictine abbey of Pécsvárad (Pécsvárad) in the Hungarian part of Baranya (“monasterium S. Benedicti, ad radicem montis ferrei”). It is about the right to collect taxes every Saturday in the market held next to the River Sana (“fori tributum, quod iuxta fluuium Szana die Sabbathi congregator”) in the old Trgovište (de antiquo foro), which means that King Ladislav precisely in the so-called Messia really fulfilled some of the promises given to abbot Oderizius. Analyzing the records from the Gesta about the forest called Petrov Gvozd, the conclusion is that it referred to the hilly area located in the hinterland of Petrov Gvozd which originally belonged to Lower Pannonia, but after the invasion of the Hungarians, it was annexed to Croatia as a separate territory in the possession of the Croatian king. At the end, the events from the 12th century are analyzed that led to the annexation of the Croatian county of Pliva and the eastern part of that territory to Bosnia under the name of Donji kraji (Partes inferiores). On the remaining part of the Petrov Gvozd hinterland the county of Sana was formed and administratively included into Slavonia. After Donji kraji were annexed to the Bosnian diocese, the phrase was added to the title of the archbishop of Dubrovnik in 1187: “regnum Seruilie, quod est Bosna“. This was forced by the fact that Bosnian bishop was a suffragan of Dubrovnik at the time and by the fact that Donji kraji were never before part of Serbia. Special attention is given to the rise of the noble family Hrvatinić, who came from the Lužac County, i.e. from the area where Petrov Gvozd was originally located according to the analysis. In the hinterland, on the passes to its core maritime area, the Croatian state positioned certain clans that had the task of guarding the border, because in the report of Thomas the Archdeacon, it is written that King Ladislav from Gvozd subsequently encountered resistance from the Croatian clans. Eleven counties and one banovina as stated in the DAI made up the sym¬bolic and magical number of 12 representatives at the table before the Croatian king, and it is probable that no other counties and banovinas existed in Croatia at the time the DAI was written. Nothing written so far contradicts the initial assumption that the area in the hinterland of Pliva and Pset or Petrov Gvozd was covered by the county of Imota although we are left without direct evidence for such a conclusion.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
330259
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.12.2024.
Posjeta: 1.054 *