Original scientific paper
The first encounters of the Croats with the Cyrillo-Methodian origin of their mediaeval culture
Ivanka Petrović
Abstract
The first encounters of the Croats with the Cyrillo-Methodian origin of their mediaeval culture
In the introduction the author presents the origins and the history of Cyrillo-Methodian research within historical sciences and Slavic philology and then talks about the scope, themes and results of the contemporary research as well as the needs and tasks which stand in front of the Cyrillo-Methodian science of today and tomorrow. With the research of all-Slavic achievements of the Cyrillo-Methodian activity, very early commences also the research of the begining of the individual Slavic national cultures directly related to the Cyrillo-Methodian heritage or indirectly connected with the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition. This research requires a great effort from the Cyrillo-Methodian scientists and philologists mediaevalists and causes confrontations in discussions as well as a great number of hypothetical solutions, for the monuments which connect individual Slavic peoples and cultures directly with the Cyrillo-Methodian mission and activity in the first centuries of the slavic literacy and literature are rare and few. The Cyrillo-Methodian begining of the Croatian mediaeval culture, the most important Slavic Glagolitic literature, is for the researchers the "darkest" period of the Croatian Glagolitism. The Croats have not preserved any Glagolitic monuments older than the eleventh century. The primary Cyrilllo-Methodian and historical sources for the oldest Cyrillo-Methodian period of the Slavic literacy say nothing about the meetings of the Croats with the Cyrillo-Methodian Moravian mission activity. However some other Cyrillo-Methodian and historical sources give some information and indications which can be connected with the beginnings of Glagolitism among the Croats. The Split Synode papers (925, 928 and 1060), the most important among them being the two lettres of Pope John X and the tenth canon of the Split Synode from 925, these first direct news of early Glagolitism among the Croats, are the most important witnesses of life and destiny of Croatian Glagolitism in the centuries from which no monuments have been preserved.
The research of the beginnings of Croatian Glagolitism commences already with I. Lucius and D. Farlati. Modern Croatian historiography and Slavic philology of the 19th century have stated a number of theses and opinions about the first possible encounters of the Croats with the Cyrillo-Methodian mission or with the achievements of their work in northern Croatia and the Croatian principality. On the other hand a thesis developed from the twenties till the seventies of the 20th century is generally accepted nowadays. It is a convincing view of the Croatian historians that the Croatian Glagolitism primarily originated and developed in Dalmatian bishoprics and towns, that is among the Croats in Byzantine Dalmatia and not in the Croatian prinicipality.
The author has accepted this view of Croatian historiography and evaluates the information and data from Cyrillo-Methodian sources (primarly the Slavonic and greek Lifes of St. Naum) and other historical sources (the Split Synode papers, Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, the letter of Pope John VIII to the Dalmatian clergy from 879) which can help to unveil the beginnings of Glagolitism among the Croats. On the basis of some of these sources (especially The Second Slavic Life of St. Naum) and the opinion that the Cyrillo-Methodian mission travelled to Moravia by sea and not by land by way of Bulgaria (taking Via Egnatia from Constantinopole and Salonika to Durrёs, then by sea to Venice and then taking the Amber Road to Moravia), the author states the opinion that the first seed of the Cyrillo-Methodian Slavic culture among the Croats might have been sown by the Cyrillo-Methodian misson in 863 as it passed through Dalmatia on its way to Moravia. Constantine and Methodius may have left some of their disciples on the friendly Dalmatian Byzantine dominions (maybe on Kvarner islands) and the Dalmatian bishops had no reason not to alow to the Croats the Slavonic language in liturgy. Thus born the Croatian Glagolitism gained new impulses for its development in the next decades, as during Methodius' journey to Constantinopole in 882 when he probably passed through Byzantine Dalmatia. Among other possiblities it is highly probable that the Slavic priests, the disciples of Constantine the Philosopher and Methodius, seeked refuge among the Croats after the collapse of the Slavic mission among the Pannonic Slavs in 874. It is certain that they came to Croatia after Methodius' death in the spring of 886. There is no doubt that some Slavic priests returned to Constantinopole by way of Byzantine Dalmatia and it is possible that some of Methodius' disciple, sold as slaves in Venice, came to Byzantine dominions on Kvarner islands and Dalmatia. A special friend and protector of the Slavic mission was the Byzantine emperor Basil I the Macedonian, who tried, already during Methodius' life, to spread the Cyrillo-Methodian liturgy and learning aming the South Slavs and probably also among the Croats in Byzantine Dalmatia.
This theme always needed historians and philologists as well as other mediaevalists. At present it especially requires palaeoslavists who can, in the absence of early Old Church Slavonic monuments of the Croatian Glagolitism and the silence of Cyrillo-Methodian and historical sources, by textological analysis of Glagolitic texts of later periods of the Croatian Middle Ages continue to investigate, and will probably confirm, the Cyrillo-Methodian Great Moravian roots and traditionality of the Croatian mediaeval Glagolitic culture.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
14778
URI
Publication date:
30.9.1988.
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