The Republic of Ragusa: An Episode of the Turkish ConquestVillari, Luigi
History
The Republic of Ragusa: An Episode of the Turkish Conquest
Villari, Luigi
Dubrovnik (Croatia) -- History
We have seen how in 1333-1334 Stagno and
the peninsula of Sabbioncello and the coast as far as the Narenta’s
mouth were acquired. In 1357 small additions were made about Breno and
Gionchetto between the Ljuta stream and the village of Kurilo[187]
(north of the Ombla). The districts of Carina and Drieno, although
on the Ragusan side of the mountain above Breno, remained beyond the
frontier: eventually they became Turkish territory, and such they
remained until 1878.[188]
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY]
The Ragusan Church had also been increasing in wealth and dignity with
the growth of the Republic, and a number of handsome ecclesiastical
buildings were begun during the fourteenth century. In the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the Slavonic princes gave the
churches many valuable gifts of land, gold and silver ornaments, and
relics. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Bosnia, Hlum,
and Servia were torn by religious wars owing to the spread of that
strange and little known heresy called Bogomilism, on which it will
be useful to say a few words. Of the origin of this heresy as of its
tenets there is very little reliable evidence. In all probability it
was an offshoot of Armenian Paulicianism, itself derived from the
earlier Adoptionist creed.[189] Paulician colonies have been settled
in Europe as early as the ninth century by the Emperor Constantine
Copronymus, and the heresy spread to Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and
Macedonia. In his History of the Bulgarians, Prof. C. J. Jireček gives
an account of the beliefs of the Bogomils according to the researches
of various Slavonic scholars. They believed in the existence of two
principles, equal in age and power, one good personified in God, and
one evil personified in Satan. They recognised the New Testament, but
not the Old. All matter and all the visible world were essentially
evil; the body of Christ was only an apparent, not a real, body. The
sacraments were corporeal, therefore evil. They had no hierarchy, but
an executive consisting of a bishop and two grades of Apostles. Besides
the ordinary Bogomils there was a special order of the Perfect, who
renounced all worldly possessions, marriage, animal food, and lived
like hermits. They had no churches or images. They had a deathbed
ceremony, without which one went to hell. They did not believe in
purgatory.[190] But, as Prof. Bury remarks, it is doubtful if this is
a true presentation of the Bogomil creed. Hardly any of their books of
ritual survive, and all the accounts of them which have been preserved
are written by their prosecutors. It is more probable that they were
a monotheistic sect, believing in one God only, and rejecting the
Trinity. This view is supported by the fact that at the time of the
Turkish conquest such numbers of Bogomils became Muhamedans. It was
not merely that they went over to the conqueror’s creed from motives
of mere self-interest; there was really more similarity between that
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