Nadir

Im Croat and in our schools we learn all best about medival Kingdom of Croatia. Since on Historum there is great numbers of historians I would like to hear your opinon about it.

Thanks in advance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom...atia_(medieval)

arras

What "bad" there should be about Croatian kingdom?

Karlo

Interesting thread, but unfortunately, as far as I know there are not too many historum members who are interested in medieval Croatia.

Arras, you can not take everything you learn in school for granted, especially when it comes to national history, I mean, no one is going to mire there own country or its history.

arras

Well first I do not know what Croatian schools teach about your history. So perhaps this thread should have been started with description of this teaching.

As far as I go and what I learn in Slovakia there is nothing controversial/bad about Croatian history during early medieval period. And that is what we are speaking of here: arrival of Croats to Balkans, their settlement and creation of early state. Right?

As for national history, it is natural to history to be critical and that is what I expect from any good history. national history in particular. In any case Slovak national history does not lack critical view about many aspect of our national past. I expect same in Croatia or any other country.

Is what you learn in your schools somehow different from what is accepted in other European countries?

Btw: I doubt many here know at last something about medieval Croatia except few members from Balkans and Slavic countries.

arras

Btw: There was one issue of our main historical magazine dedicated to early Slavs and it included history of Croatia during early medieval period. I may sum it up here just for comparison.

Karlo

Ok, I will give you an example, you do know Croatia and Hungary were united in a personal union? Sometimes in 12th century, probably 1102nd, although today it is generally accepted that the union was only a personal one(I will not go into detail), this is still disputed by some Hungarian historians, when I learned about this in school I was thought that K. of Croatia and K. of Hungary have joined into a personal union in 1102nd by document called Pacta Conventa, and no one sad anything about the other possibility, that Croatia my have been conquered.

I am not sure what is accepted in other European countries, especially regarding Croatia, and its history.


It would be interesting to see this issue, this is what i believe the thread is about, "issues" that occur in teaching history, especially in teachings on Croatian Kingdom.

DreamWeaver

Im afraid I must confess relative ignorance of Medieval Croatia, what little I know has come from the Regesta documentorum regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, saeeuli XIII. (1896) which I havent gone into too much depth with,mainly because its in Latin and I dont have the time.

Tulun

My impression we have very few and only later sources about the events.

1. what i read as "Hungarian version" of the events: King Zvonimir died in 1089 without leaving a child an anarchistic situation arose, for 2 years an old guy, the last member of the Croat dynasty ruled before he died without heir. Zvonimir's widow was the sister of King László/Ladislaus of Hungary so this could be the legal pretext to intervene.
Now according to a Hungarian chronicle (Chronicon Pictum) Ilona/Helena asked Ladislaus to take the throne, but a Croatian one (Thomas Archdeacon) gives a longer description, according to it a Slavonian magnate came to Hungary and asked him to come to Croatia with an army and conquer it. Then Ladislaus came with force, sized the territory between the Drava and a mountain (Gvozd?) without resistance and further conquered castles, defeated the Croatian nobles in many clashes but he couldn't reach the coastal area because he had to turn back due to a foreign attack on Hungary. (a cuman raid btw).

Then Ladislaus put his nephew, Álmos to power (it is not enterely clear for me, was he crowned Croat king or only put there as governing in the name of Ladislaus) but then in 1093 Croat nobles chose Petar Svacic as counter-king and Álmos had to leave and only king Ladislaus' successor (Ladislaus died in 1095) restored the Árpád dynasty's power, king Kálmán/Coloman who defeated Petar in battle in 1097. Then in 1105 he also conquered the Dalmatian cities, Zadar, Trogir, Split and finished the conquest. Now i don't know how much does the Croatian version differ.

2. Pacta Conventa, i dont know much about it, apart from that it is a claimed agreement between Croat nobles and king Coloman, it talks about guaranteeing Croat rights and that its authencity is questioned and it only remained in a later copy.

So what is the exact content of it? Latin text can come, no problem with it. Even if it is not authentic, Croat autonomy was always respected by the kings, they always kept their own diet and had legal and judiciary autonomy, so even without a single legally biding document, it could live as a costumary law.

3. personal union: during the reign of king Kálmán/Coloman we can definetly call the relationship this way, as according to the story he was also a separetely crowned king of Croatia in Biograd, but im not sure can we describe it for later rulers also? As far as i know no other ruler was crowned separately as Croatian king after, the kings didn't keep a separate Croat royal court either, though they appointed Bans to represent them (equivalent could be viceroy or margrave for the "ban" title?).
Its maybe just me but for personal union i rather associate to relationships like Louis the Great when he was both king of Hungary and Poland, or King Sigismund who also became king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor later. in these cases the king was the same and after he died the union also finished, that was all.
With Croatia it was a closer issue i think, a term like "co-state" or "associated state" would maybe describe it better as Croatia (and Slavonia and Dalmatia) were more permanently attached to the Hungarian crown. but i don't want to provoke, i know the public legal relation between the 2 countries was a hot debate in the 19th century so if you feel personal union is the right term, we can call it that.

Tulun

Ok i found the Latin text in Kukuljevic's Jura regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae.

I also found a fairly good Hungarian language study about it that gives a brief view of different Croat scholarly opinions about the text.

What i understood so the Pacta Conventa was an attachment toThomas Archdeacon's Chronicle and it survived in 3 kodexes, a Vatican codex, Codex Spalatensis and a codex in Trogir (Appendicula Traguriensis), there is debate about which variant preserves the earliest version of the text. The title what clearly indicates the public legal nature of the document (Qualiter et cum quo pacto dederunt se Chroates regi Hungariae/How and with what agreement did the Croats subdue to the Hungarian king/Kako i kojim sporazumom su se predali Hrvati kralju Ugarske) is only found in the Trogir codex and that manuscript is dated to late 14th century (dating by Franjo Racki and Miho Barada).
Another point of the criticism is in the content, the 12 Croat nobles from the 12 croat tribes/clans mentioned in it, because otherwise the references to the institution of the "alliance of the 12 Croat clans (duodecim generationum Croatorum) only appear in the 14th century (1350 earliest mention, 1459 latest)" and this alliance was only formed in the Anjou period ( Croat scholars with this opinion Milan Sufflay, Nada Klaic). If you need titles, page numbers for reference of the Croat works, just ask.

Adriat1c

yes, pacta conventa is most likely a later forgery, that might not have been so important in the medieval period (because those early hungaro-croatian kings seemed to have crowned themselves with both the crown of hungary and crown of croatia), but proved very handy after Habsburg assended to throne in hungary/croatia, because it formed a legal basis for certain rights of the 'kingdom of dalmatia, croatia and slavonia' within the kingdom of hungary.