Original scientific paper
Venetian offi cers, priests, citizens - tracing people from Bar in Zadar (XVIIth-XVIIIth century)
Lovorka Čoralić
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In the early modern period, during the Venetian-Turkish wars, Zadar, as the capital city of the Venetian province of Dalmatia, represented one of the most powerful military strongholds of the Republic of Saint Mark on the eastern Adriatic. In the XVIIth century, during the period when two especially significant and long lasting Venetian-Turkish conflicts took place (the Candian and the Morean war), numerous military units, assembled by men from the broader area of the then contemporary (and former) Venetian territories from Istria to Albania, were active in Zadar and its surrounding area. In this article the author, using material from the State Archive in Zadar (wills and inventories from the fund of Records of the Zadar Notaries), draws attention to the presence and the activities of a number of people from Bar in Zadar (but also on the broader area of the east Adriatic littoral) during the second half of the XVIIth century and up to the sixties of the XVIIIth century. The article describes nine wills, a codicil (supplement to a will) and an inventory that were written in Zadar in the period from 1662 to 1764. The number of people from Bar who, as direct bearers (makers of the will) of these documents, are mentioned in the documents is not large (up to nine persons). However, the total number – including indirect references to people from Bar and emigrants from the place – in the texts of the same documents is much larger. The summary analysis of the structure of professions of this group of Zadar citizens reveals a prevalence of the military profession (officers in Venetian military service). This data in large part is in agreement with the general structure of Zadar immigrants whose origins were in Venetian Albania who had moved to the city during the Venetian- Turkish wars. Although the majority of immigrants had come from the city of Bar itself (excepting one instance where the immigrant came from the vicinity of Bar), it is evident that many of them very early, even before arriving in Dalmatia and in Zadar, had lived in cities which are geographically near to Bar but which did not fall under Turkish jurisdiction (Budva, Herceg-Novi). Furthermore, the people from Bar in Zadar, as is the case with the largest number of immigrants from other areas and cities from Boka Kotorska to Skadar and Drivast, cannot be considered a classic immigrant group but as individual examples of immigration. Wills as well as other documents of people from Bar in Zadar give exceptionally valuable evidence about people but also about the space and the events that unfolded there. A careful analysis of their content, at times very extensive and complex, reveals their social status and position, their economic opportunities and professional interests, their relations with church institutions and spiritual figures, their ties with their place of origin and – above all – it gives us a full spectrum of facts about numerous families and individuals sharing a similar life and a similar fate. This is the reason why these documents are, while relevant to Bar itself and its people, also testimony about numerous other participants (frequently unrecorded or insufficiently noticed in historiography) in the turbulent (war) times on the broad space from Venice and Istria, through Dalmatia to Boka Kotorska and Albania. At the end of the article in the appendix the reader can find complete or partial copies of a number of wills made by Bar immigrants in Zadar.
Keywords
Dalmatia; Venetian Albania; Venetian Republic; Zadar; Bar; early modern times; military history; social history; demography; migrations
Hrčak ID:
31837
URI
Publication date:
22.10.2008.
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