Original scientific paper
Ecclesia sancti Johannis apud Cruciferos in Bynna The Problem of the Presence of the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John in Ludbreg
Juraj Belaj
Abstract
A relatively great number of historiographic papers deals with the presence of the Order of the Hospital of St. John (Hospitallers) in Ludbreg. Their origins can be found in certain documents or in the (inadequately) critical opinions of earlier scholars. The aim of this study is to show how cautious one has to be with source interpreting and how earlier interpretations need to be scrutinized.
Military orders were closely connected with the Crusades undertaken at the end of the eleventh century by the Roman Popes and European rulers against the Muslims. A part of the Christian army passed through Croatia towards the East. Since all military orders that emerged in the Crusades were called Crusaders, historical sources sometimes make no clear distinction, nor do later historians. A further obstruction is caused by the fact that the historical data on the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre (the Sepulchrines), who were not a military order, got confused with the data on the Hospitallers and the Templars (DOBRONIĆ, 1984a, 1984b, 1984c). Ludbreg is situated where an extraordinarily important antique Podravina route crossed the Bednja River, and where antique Iovia developed (VIKIĆ-BELANČIĆ, 1984; TOMIČIĆ, 1999, 146-148). Due to its location, Ludbreg must have played an important role in the period of the Crusades through the territory of today’s Croatia. But the sources make no mention of this. We only learned that at the beginning of the fourteenth century Nikola of Ludbreg returned Bela to the Hospitallers, and in turn in 1320 the Hospitaller’s prior gave him a plot of land called Črnec, in the vicinity of the Ludbreg fortress (CD VIII, 566, 456). In the deed of gift the borders of the property are described, but it is not easy to recognize them any longer (BELAJ, 2001, 83). Another source, but from the seventeenth century, Informatio circa alienationem agrorum Ludbregensium (AH, Acta Coll. SJ. fasc. 6 Nr. 23) mentions the monastery of Ludbreg and the opinion that it belonged to the Sepulchrines (Crusaders).
In 1373, documents mention the Franciscan monastery of Ludbreg for the first time (HOŠKO, 1971, 83). Its titular is St. John, which led a number of scholars to think that the Franciscan order inherited this complex, along with the one in Varaždin, from the Hospitallers (ILIJANIĆ and MIRKOVIĆ, 1984, 132; PETRIĆ, 1997, 45; MARKOVIĆ, 1997, 78, N. 9). Thus there is no certified information as to the Hospitallers owning a building in Ludbreg, although there are some indications. But there is a published source that has never been viewed in the context of these problems, which enables a completely new perspective and opens new possibilities for interpretation. This is the muniment of 1239 in which Opoj, the ban, or royal governor, of Slavonia, awards the soldier Salomon a plot of land in a suit against district prefect Puchuna (CD IV, 98-99, 91). In the document, indirectly the preceptory of St. John is mentioned. Years ago Kukuljević believed that the Hospitallers had the seat of their preceptory in Varaždin (1886, 39). Up to the present day there is a rather vehement debate on the presence of the Hospitallers in Varaždin, and in another paper, I reached the conclusion that the preceptory of St. John probably was indeed in Varaždin (BELAJ, 2001, 37-43). The document from 1239 says that ban Opoj personally met the preceptor of St. John in the Church of St. John with the Crusaders in Bynna. The key question arises as to the location of Bynna?
V. Klaić associated the name Bynna with the name of the Bednja River and assumed that it might have been situated in the vicinity of Bela or Ivanec (1909, 6-7). N. Budak restricted the choice and connected Bynna with Ivanec (1994, 72). Obviously the hydronym Bynna indeed stands for the river of Bednja. Many properties and settlements of that time were named after rivers and streams along which they stretched; consequently we should look for Bynna on the banks of the Bednja. Is it really today’s Ivanec? This is where, not far from the Bednja River, the Hospitallers did have the Church of St. John. But Ivanec was not in the precincts of the preceptory of Varaždin, but that of Bela (KUKULJEVIĆ, 1886, 47). A church dedicated to St. Marget (Margaret), and not St. John, was close to Bela (KUKULJEVIĆ, 1886, 46-47). So where was the Crusader Bynna?
Ludbreg of that time was doubtlessly much more important than Ivanec, and it was also much more closely connected with the Bednja River, placed on a strategically more significant position, controlling the river crossing. Only somewhat later a Franciscan monastery of St. John, a name rather unusual for the Franciscan order, is mentioned. If we take the legend of the Knight Lodbring who founded Ludbreg on his return from the Crusades in the year 1100 with caution, that would imply that at the beginning of the Crusades the settlement (which doubtlessly existed longer than that) must have had another name.
Therefore it is not impossible that Ludbreg today hides behind the name Bynna in the muniment of 1239. Ž. Tomičić’s convincing interpretation of the connection between the name Bednja with the name of the settlement which is called Botivo in the Tabula Peutingeriana and in the Cosmography by John of Ravenna (TOMIČIĆ, 1999, 164) also favours equating Bynna with Ludbreg.
In my opinion, the first task of scholars investigating military orders is to conduct archaeological excavations. Admittedly it is difficult to expect extraordinary results in larger towns such as Ludbreg. Anyway, considering the fact that this part of Croatian history very much lacks written sources, archaeology is the only science that can - and must - offer more abundant data for the reconstruction of life in the observed period. Future research of similar problems shall produce the best results if we take a holistic approach, co-operating with other disciplines (history, archive keeping, linguistics, ethnology, architectural history, geography, toponymy, iconology, etc.). That is the only way to avoid taking the observed matter out of context, leading to false perspectives and conclusions.
Keywords
military orders; Knights of the Hospital of Saint John (Hospitallers); Ludbreg; historical sources; Bynna
Hrčak ID:
798
URI
Publication date:
16.6.2003.
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