Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/767

 BOSNIA

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BOSNIA

the population (about 9S per cent) belong to the southern Slavonic people, the Serbs. Although one in race, the people form in reUgious beliefs three sharply separated divisions: the Mohammedans, about 550,000 persons (35 per cent), Greek Schismatics, about 674,000 persons (43 per cent), and CathoUcs, about 334,000 persons (21.3 per cent). The last men- tioned are chiefly peasants. The Mohammedans form the mass of the population in the region called the Krajina in the north-west, in the district of Serajevo and in the south-eastern part of the territory; the Greek Scliismatics preponderate in the district of Banjaluka. The Catholics of the Latin Rite exceed the otlier two denominations only in the district of Travnik and in northern Herzegovina. There are in addition 8,000 Jews and 4,000 Protestants. Di- vided according to occupation 85 per cent of the popu- lation are farmers or wine-cultivators (1,385,291). There are 5,833 large estates, the owners of which are chiefly .Mohammedans, 88.970 cultivators of land not their own (ktneten), 88,867 free peasants who own the land they till, and 22,025 peasants who own farm- ing-land and also cultivate the land of others. The population of the towns is small.

History. — There are traces of human settlements in Bosnia dating from the Stone Age. The earliest inliabitants of Bosnia and Herzego\-ina of whom there is any certainty are the lUyrians, an exceed- ingly rapacious pastoral people who were diWded into various tribes. The best known of these are: a small tribe called the Liburnians living in the north- west, who were notorious pirates; the Ardisans liv- ing south of the Liburnians, and the Antiariats, who were neighbours of the Ardiseans li\-ing still farther to the south. The migrations of the Celts in the third and fourth centuries before Christ drove various IlljTian tribes out of their former possessions. From the third century until 167 B. c, a powerful Illyrian kingdom existed, under rulers called Agron, Teuta, and Gentius, in southern Dalraatia, and the ad- joining Herzego\'ina and Montenegro. The Romans had a hard struggle before they succeeded rinally in breaking the power of the lUyrians and in getting con- trol of Bosnia and Herzegovina (6 B. c.-A. D. 9). The sagacious Romans saw that in order to control the line of the Danube and the east coast of Italy it was nec- essary to absorb the triangular shaped country of the Illyrians. No part of the peninsula contains so many traces of Roman ci\'ilization as Dalmatia and the ad- joining Bosnia. The Romans built a road from Mitro- vic or Mitrovitza (.Sirmium) near the Save to Gradi sea and continued it from Gradisca through what is now- western Bosnia or Turkish Croatia as far as Salona; they constructed a second road tlirougli upper Bosnia icross the present district of Serajevo to Domavia on tlie Drina, and from here to Mitro\ic; a third road ivent from Salona to Narona (near Dubrawa) and to Scodra (Scutari). The Romans named the province Dalmatia after the largest and bravest of the tribes iving on the coast. They divided it into three admin- strative dioceses, the chief cities being, respectively, Salona, the capital of the whole province, Scardona, ind Xarenta. The northernmost part of Bosnia, ex- ending for some distance from the Save, was included n the province of Pannonia. The Illyrians who had >een familiar only with war and cattle-raising now urned their attention, under the guidance of the Romans, to mining, placer-mining for gold, and igriculture. They became largely Romanized and or hundreds of years their legions bravely defended he empire.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire Dal- natia and Pannonia came into the posse.s-sion of the )Ktrogoths under King Theodoric. During the war hat followed (535-554) between Justinian and the Os- rogoths, the Slavs made repeated incursions into the )rovinces. It may be that they were called in by the

Ostrogoths. After the Slavs the Avars raided the tei^ ritory and in 598 turned Dalmatia almost into a wil- derness. After this the Slavs greatly desired the country and succeeded in taking possession during the first half of the se\enth century. Among the tribes which now owned the land, the Hroati (later called Croats) lived on the Dalmatic coast and the Serbi in the interior. Up to the eighth century the influence of the Byzantine Empire was paramount. At the end of the ninth century when the power of the Carlo\in- gian djTiasty extended as far as the south- eastern Alpine provinces, the Croats came under the influence of Western civilization and embraced Latin Chris- tianity. The tribes of the interior retained the patri- archal form of government and the old pagan worship much longer than the d\.ellers ^n the coast, notwith- standing the connexion which they had had for cen- tiu-ies with Constantinople. Bosnia seems to have belonged to Croatia as late as the begimiing of the tenth .entury. A little later the Servian prince Ceslav (931-960) succeeded in freeing Servia from the suzer- ainty of Bulgaria and built up a confederation of which Bosnia formed a part. About 955 Ceslav was obhged to defend the dependent banat, or district, of Bosnia (originally merely the valley of the upper Bosna) from an incursion of the Magyars. After the death of Ceslav and the dissolution of his kingdom, Bosnia was ruled by native bans or chiefs. In 968 however, Bosnia was conriuered by the Croatian king ICresimir and in 1019 tlie whole north-western part of the Balkan Peninsula came under the sway of the Eastern Roman Emperor, Basil II. After Basil's death Bosnia regained its independence and was ruled by native bans until it was united with the domain of B^la II, Iving of Hungarj'. In 1135 this ruler called himself for the fiist time King of Rama (Bos- nia).

During the entire reign of the Emperor Manuel I, Comnenus, (1143-80) a long and fierce struggle went on between the Byzantine Empire on the one side and Himgary and the southern Slavs on the other; in this Ban Boris, the first ruler of Bosnia known by name, remained faithful to Hungary. In 1163, however, Boris took sides against Stephen III in the quarrel over the succession to the Hungarian throne. He was defeated by Gottfried of Meissen who was sent with an army against him, and his family lost their power in Bosnia. The Banat of Boris extended from Livno and the valley of the Rama in the west to the Drina River in the east. Three years later Bosnia, SjTmia, Croatia, and Dalmatia became subject to the Byzan- tine Empire. After the death of Manuel I, Comnenus (1180) the new Ban, Kulin, was able to shake off the foreign yoke. But B^la III of Hungan.', desiring to make Bosnia a dependency of his own kingdom, per- suaded the pope to place the Bishopric of Bosnia and the Diocese of Ston in Herzegovina under the -Arch- diocese of Spalato, the territory of which belonged to Hungary. Before this Bosnia had been suffragan to Ragusa. In order to counteract this indirect Hun- garian control Kulin, his family, and 10,000 Bosnians, between the years 1190-99, became adherents of the Paterine heresy. When Pope Innocent III and King Emmerich of Hungary joined forces to exterminate the Paterines and to conquer Bosnia, Kulin preserved Bosnia's independence of Hungarian control by re- turning in 1203 to the Catholic religion in the presence of the papal legate, Johannes de Casamaris. During the reign of his successor. Ban Stephen, the Paterines grew so powerful that they deposed Stephen and sub- stituted one of their own adherents, the able Matthias Ninoslav (1232-50), who was probably related to Kulin. In 1233 Ninoslav returned to the Catholic Faith, but notwithstanding this the land was filled with the adherents of the Paterine belief, and in 1234- 39 a crusade was preached against Bosnia but was not, however, carried out. Although Ninoslav main-