Povijesni prilozi, Vol. 28 No. 37, 2009.
Original scientific paper
From the tradition of the ‘seven rebellions’ to the voluntary Venetian subjects: the development of Zadar in the first decade of the fifteenth century
Mladen Ančić
Abstract
The author starts from the perceived discrepancy between the historiographic view of the circumstances in which Venice took the possession of Zadar in 1409 and the information obtained from archival sources, to examine the real events and to place them within the framework of a discussion of the relationship between the medieval state authority and the local power elites. In the first part of the essay, the author discusses the appearance of a group of five noblemen who in the course of the summer of 1401 succeeded in taking control of the political life of Zadar. The group included three noblemen whose conflict with the king of Croatia-Hungary, Sigismund, had forced them to leave the town. They returned to Zadar only after the rebellious Hungarian nobility had captured and
imprisoned the King in the April of 1401. The author then analyzes the ways in which the remaining members of the group, two noblemen who had spent these four years in the town, could have been connected to the refugees. Looking at the circumstances in which the group of five took control of the political life of Zadar,
the author concludes that the key to their success was probably the leading role they played in the repossession of the island of Pag, the centre of salt production and the foundation of the Zadar power, which had been taken from the town by the King in 1396.
In the second part of the essay, the author uses the extant literature and reinterprets the printed and archival sources to redefine the successive waves of rebellion against the king Sigismund. He notices that the discontented nobility failed to find a common denominator and to establish an organization that would succeed in dethroning the monarch. The rebellion succeeded only when its organization
was taken over, rather explicitly, by the Papal Curia, who had its own reasons for a confrontation with the king Sigismund. The author discusses the post-1402 attempts of the organizers of the rebellion to recruit one of the most influential malcontents and the leader of the opposition to the King, the Bosnian Grand Duke Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, and outlines the reasons for the failure of these attempts. He furthermore discusses the behaviour of the Croatian and Slavonian nobility during these restless years, to define the frameworks in which the ruling elites of Mladen Ančić, Od tradicije “sedam pobuna” do dra 96 govoljnih mletačkih podanika
Zadar would fit following their disobedience of the current king. In particular, the coronation of the royal counter-candidate Ladislas of Naples in Zadar in 1403 and its consequences are discussed. The author concludes that the coronation failed to fulfil the expectations of the mutinous Hungarian noblemen, who came to collect the new king, as well as of the Church groups who had organized the
rebellion after 1402. He furthermore stresses that the coronation was organized to suit the interests of Ladislas of Naples and of the Bosnian Grand Duke, who, as a reward for his services to Ladislas, obtained the title of Herceg (dux Spaleti).
In the third part of the essay, the author, availing himself of barely used sources, discusses the mechanisms that Ladislas of Naples and his main adherent on the East Adriatic Coast, the new Herceg of Split, used to tie the political leaders of Zadar to themselves. By using this strategy, they turned the most important East Adriatic town of this period into a stronghold and a secure point from which they could establish safe contacts. The author shows that Ladislas supported and helped the territorial expansion of the Zadar commune, and that he did so at the expense of Sigismund’s supporters. At the same time and in the same manner, the
Herceg of Split secured the attachment of four out of five members of the group, who actually controlled the political life of the town: he gave them large estates that had been taken from the rival magnates and noblemen. In this way both the urban community and its leaders were put in a position in which they came to
share the interests of the new king and the Herceg.
In the concluding discussion, the author shows that it was precisely the fact that both the territorial expansion of the town and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of those who controlled the town were based on the gifts of the Sigismund’s supporters’ estates, significantly reduced the possible scenarios of resolving the
political crisis. Both for the leading group in the town, and for the entire ruling social class, the re-establishment of Sigismund’s rule was out of question because it entailed a priori loss of everything obtained in the past seven years. At the same time, in spite of the rise during this period, the town did not grow sufficiently powerful to transform itself into a city-state. Under these circumstances, even the
rule of Venice, against which the citizens of Zadar had, in the previous centuries, raised no less than seven rebellions and the opposition to which constituted an important element of the urban identity, was more acceptable than the return of Sigismund’s rule.
Keywords
local elites; state organization; Kingdom of Croatia-Hungary; Venice; Zadar
Hrčak ID:
47984
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2009.
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