Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/192

 heirs of Eastern Rome by the traditions of their territories, by the Greek style of their chanceries, and in their ecclesiastical art, by their ambitions and plans of conquest), when these kings, for two brief periods achieved the same position in Ragusa as their rival Venice, as representatives of the Eastern Empire, submission was inevitable for the Ragusans who merely regarded this as a new form of legal Imperial authority. The quasi-domination of the Serbian king Stephen Dushan in the 14th century must be regarded in same light. He was not only master of a great part of the Dalmatian coast, and a citizen of Venice, but as « Emperor of the Serbs and Romans » he constituted yet another embodiment of the imperialism represented on the old Byzantine lines by his rivals and enemies, the Palaeologues of Constantinople. Remaining theoretically bound to the emperor, the abandoned city was constrained to organise herself, her constitutional power, and, to the end of her existence, notwithstanding the great influence of the Venetians, she remained true to the initial forms of the common life.

These forms sprang from the same needs as were felt by the Roumanians, and found similar expression. In the first place, of course, came the « good elders » who formed the Senate of the Commonwealth, afterwards called the pregadi (pregati — called), as in Venice. But as the Roumanians allowed the convocation of larger assemblies, as in Venice, outside the daily work of the senators, all the old families, all citizens could be called together in the Consiglio Maggiore — a Consiglio Minore being called afterwards for decisions involving political desiderata to be taken —, so Ragusa, too, had a greater and a lesser council. Naturally there was a magistrate whose functions were the most important of all, comprising not only the dispensation of justice, but also the general control of affairs.