Original scientific paper
19TH Century Documentation of Medieval Grave Monuments in the Makarska Coastal Area using the Examples of Mijat Sabljar and fra Lujo Marun
Marinko Tomasović
orcid.org/0000-0003-4148-4470
; Gradski Muzej Makarska
Abstract
Medieval grave monuments from the Makarska coastal area have been mentioned in literature from the early days, but for a long time only in the form of unsystematic documentation. The first mention s of grave monuments and stećci from this part of the coast can be found in the travel book by A. Fortis from 1774. He did not determine them chronologically, nor call them by any special name, just as in the case of other places in Dalmatia where he travelled. Franciscan P Kačić-Peko called them stećci and provides more detail on them in his work from 1863. He emphasized their great numbers at the Baćina site, and gives general data on their decoration. The first detailed description of a stećak, though, was given by F Bulić in 1925. He wrote about the area of Zakuće, west of Makarska, where a decorated gabled stećak was found, which was later, during the 1960s, moved and placed in front of the Franciscan church in Makarska. This is the most beautiful medieval gravestone on the Makarska coast, which had already by the mid-191h century, attracted the attention of Mijat Sabljar. Since Bulić's work, this stećak has remained, until the present day, inadequately described in the literature. Only Bulić did not miss the fact that the stećak is decorated on aJI sides. Apart from a circle of human figures on the wider side, a crescent and roses on one of the narrower sides, he also noticed a cross on the other narrower side, and most importantly, a depiction of a horse rider and an animal on the other main side. In the field notebooks of M Sabljar, of which we have two that deal with the Makarska coastal area, it is possible to find several topographic notes on stećci and grave monuments. These refer to a tall chest with pedestal, the so-called Kostanića Greb in Drvenik, about 25 km south-east of Makarska, and also to the gravestones with motifs of tools at the graveyard in Igrane, a coastal settlement 12 km south-east of Makarska. The third site which attracted the attention of M Sabljar was Zakuće. The page of his note book dealing with this site, represents the most detailed drawing of one such monument from this part of the coast, and also gives information on the site itself. This page also resolves some doubts, since the site has entered the literature in a confusing way. Namely, M Wenzel, in her book of drawings of gravestones, entered documentation for this stećak from two sources. She uses the drawings of M Sabljar, as well as later documentation. The author did not realize that she was dealing with drawings of the same stećak, and placed them in two different locations, believing that she was deal ing with two separate monuments. This was a consequence of her skimmed reading of Sabljar's manuscript. The contribution of M Sabljar to the documentation of medieval monuments in the Makarska coastal area, to the analysis of stećci and grave monuments is modest in its extent. However, Sabljar's field work should be evaluated in the light of his extremely important data on the graveyard in Zakuće. This refers to a number of decorated stećci, destroyed during the building of the road in 1818, and the preserved stećak that we are analysing here, which was saved by the Franciscans in 1965 when another road was built. Sabljar claimed that a number of stećci were also destroyed during the building of St Nicholas's chapel, which is easily proved by a decorated chest built into its facade. One other thing adds to the importance of Sabljar's drawing of the stećak from Zakuće, and this is the sketch of the depiction of a horseman and animal from one of its sides. Sabljar claimed that he was not able to see the other side, that is the depiction of the circle of human figures, photographed a century later. F Bulić, in the meantime, viewed and described aJI sides of the gabled tombstone. If we compare the contribution of M Sabljar to the published data of P Kačić-Peka, we can see that the latter are more general. On the other hand, the result of Sabljar's visit to Zakuće is substantial drawings and data on destruction of the stećci. This is also the case in the documentation of the grave slabs in Igrane. There is one more significant contributor to the documentation of monuments from the Makarska area. This is the Fra Lujo Marun, the father of Old Croatian archaeology, who in 1897, half a century after Sabljar, registered the gravestones in Drašnice, a coastal settlement about 10 km south-east of Makarska. The importance of Marun's field notebooks is almost identical to Sabljar's, identical in their scientific usefulness today. However, one of the preserved stećci could not be connected to Marun's notes, although this is a case of specific low-gabled tombstone. Obviously, Marun's field work in the Makarska coastal area, no matter how modest it was compared to other parts of Dalmatia, did not stop at the already known episode of registering the remains of the medieval church on Sutvid, between Tučepi and Podgora, or the interest in religious matters on those peaks. Marun's interest in these areas coincides chronologicaJly with the arrival of the Drešnik inscription, with a cross and the year 1466 carved on it, at the Museum of Knin, which proves Marun's concern for the Makarska area, and his care for one of its movable monuments. Translation: Nicholas Philip Saywell
Keywords
stećci and grave monuments in the coastal area around Makarska; stećci at Sladinac in Baćina; field notebooks of M. Sabljar; gravestones in Igrane; ornamented gabled stećakfrom Zakuće; field Marun; graveyard in Drašnice; low-gabled stećak of the so-called slab type
Hrčak ID:
81505
URI
Publication date:
10.12.2007.
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