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CHAP. PAGE

LIST OF BOOKS ON THE HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF RAGUSA 417

INDEX 421

PAGE

ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOUR OF RAGUSA 1

ONOFRIO'S FOUNTAIN IN THE PIAZZA 41

TORRE MENZE 66

GENERAL VIEW OF RAGUSA, FROM THE WEST 83

BAS-RELIEF OF ST. BLAIZE, NEAR THE PORTA PLOCE 95

FORTIFICATIONS OF STAGNO GRANDE 99

COURTYARD OF THE SPONZA 121

FA?ADE OF THE SPONZA , AND CLOCK TOWER 131

CAPITAL IN THE FRANCISCAN CLOISTER 152

CAPITAL IN THE FRANCISCAN CLOISTER 153

APOTHECARY'S GARDEN, FRANCISCAN MONASTERY 189

TERRACE OF THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY, WITH THE TORRE MENZE IN THE BACKGROUND 207

CLOISTER OF THE DOMINICAN MONASTERY 231

THE ORLANDO COLUMN 249

FORTE SAN LORENZO 289

GARDEN NEAR RAGUSA 299

ISOLA DI MEZZO 313

COURTYARD OF THE RECTOR'S PALACE 325

MOSTAR, IN THE HERZEGOVINA 334

"AESCULAPIUS" CAPITAL, RECTOR'S PALACE 340

SCULPTURED IMPOST, RECTOR'S PALACE 345

SCULPTURED BRACKET, RECTOR'S PALACE 349

CHURCH OF THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE ROSARY 355

TORRE MENZE AND THE WALLS 389

TERRACE OF THE VILLE BRAVA?I?, NEAR RAGUSA 405

THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA

INTRODUCTION

But in spite of these disadvantages, along this shore a Latin civilisation arose and flourished which, if inferior to that of Italy, nevertheless played an important and valuable part in European development. Many wars were fought for the possession of Dalmatia. Roman, Byzantine Greek, Norman, Venetian, Hungarian, Slave, and Austrian struggled for it, and each left his impress on its civilisation, although the influence of two among these peoples far surpassed that of all the others--the Roman and the Venetian.

Dalmatia has at all times been essentially a borderland. Geographically it belongs to the eastern peninsula of the Mediterranean, to the Balkan lands. But this narrow strip of coast, as Professor Freeman said, "has not a little the air of a thread, a finger, a branch cast forth from the western peninsula." In its history its character as a march land is still more noticeable, and this feature has always been manifested in a series of civilised communities in the towns, with a hinterland of barbarous or semi-civilised races. Here were the farthest Greek settlements in the Adriatic, settlements placed in the midst of a native uncivilised Illyrian population. Here the Romans came and conquered, but did not wholly absorb, the native races. Then the land was disputed between the Eastern and the Western Empires, later between Christianity and Paganism, later still between the Eastern and Western Churches. The Slavonic invasion, while almost obliterating the native Illyrian race, could not sweep away the Roman-Greek civilisation of the coast. Again Dalmatia became the debating ground between Venetian and Hungarian, the former triumphing in the end. When Christianity found itself menaced by the Muhamedan invasion, Dalmatia was the borderland between the two faiths. A hundred years ago it was involved in one phase of the great struggle between England and France. To-day, under the rule of a Power which may be said to be all borderland, it is the scene of another nationalist conflict between two races. As before we still have a civilised fringe, a series of towns, with a vast hinterland inhabited by Slaves, by a race less civilised, yet wishing to become civilised on lines different from those of the Latin race. It is still the borderland between the Catholic and the Orthodox religions, and also between the two branches of the South-Slavonic people--the Croatians and the Serbs.

The Dalmatian townships had many features in their development similar to those of the towns of Italy, especially of the maritime republics. But, unlike their Italian sisters, they were always on the threshold of barbarism, and this fact imparts to their history its peculiar character. They were essentially border fortresses, keeping watch and ward to save their civilisation from being swept into the sea by the advancing tide of Slave and Turk.

Of all these towns, that in which this feature is most marked is Ragusa. Ragusa's development shows in every way a stronger individuality than that of any other. For three characteristics above all is this city remarkable, characteristics which enabled it to attain and preserve such a peculiar position in the Adriatic. The first is its geographical situation. Ragusa was, as it were, the gate of the East, the meeting point of Latin and Slave, of the Eastern and Western Churches, of Christian and Muhamedan. One of the chief commercial highways from the coast to the interior had its terminus at Ragusa, while the sheltered position of its harbour, and of that of the neighbouring Gravosa, indicated it as meant by nature for a great commercial centre. Here the Slaves from the interior found their nearest market, and the nearest spot where civilisation and culture flourished. Ragusa was the means of spreading the beginnings of progress among the benighted Servian lands, for with the caravans of Western goods which made their way into the Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Servia, Western ideas penetrated as well, and to Ragusa came the sons of Slavonic princelings and nobles to be educated. Here there were schools where learned professors and famous men of letters from Italy taught. Italy came to impart Italian culture to the Ragusans and the Slaves.

Even to-day, when trade follows other routes, and Ragusa, no longer a great commercial centre, is reduced to a humble position, it is still the meeting point of many races. Italians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Montenegrins, Albanians, Turks, and Greeks throng its streets and piazzas on market days, filling them with brilliant costumes. Now that the railway from Mostar and Sarajevo has reached Gravosa, there is reason to hope that the ancient city of St. Blaize may once more become a trading centre of some importance. The prosperity of the hinterland which Austria-Hungary has reclaimed to civilisation cannot fail to have a favourable effect on Ragusa. Had not the Turkish invasion swept over the Balkans in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, Ragusa's position as a civilising influence would have been still more considerable. Later its r?le changed to that of intermediary between the Christian Powers and the Sultan, and in its history we see reflected on a small scale the vast struggle which convulsed Europe for four hundred years.

The second characteristic of Ragusa is its natural position. It is one of nature's fortresses, being surrounded by the sea on three sides, and the rocks on which it is built drop sheer down to the water's edge. It seemed indeed a suitable spot on which to erect a city, in days when security was the first, almost the only, consideration. As we approach Ragusa from the south, it stands out a mass of rocks rising up from the sea, crowned with towers, bastions, and walls, which have defied ages of storm and stress, still imposing, still beautiful.

A third feature intimately connected with the last is Ragusa's character as a haven of refuge. While all around there was chaos and strife, at Ragusa there was peace. The original inhabitants had fled from the ruins of Epidaurum and Salona, and fortified themselves here; subsequently other refugees from all parts of the country helped to increase the population, for the hospitality of its walls was denied to none. The Ragusans were ever ready, as they proved many a time, to undergo any risk rather than give up those who had placed themselves under the protection of the rock-built city. Even in recent times Ragusa remained true to its past; when in 1876-77 there was revolution in the Herzegovina, and the savage Turkish soldiery were at their accustomed work of massacre and torture, the luckless Christian rayahs found shelter and protection at Ragusa, as their ancestors had done before them.

Ragusa was a small city, and its history is all on a small scale. At best she can only be regarded as a second-class city of the first rank. In size, wealth, and intellectual and artistic development she was far inferior to the city republics of Italy; but her close proximity to a world of barbarism, and the vastly important events in which she played a part, however small, make it loom large. Moreover, while the other republics of Dalmatia, with the exception of the tiny Poljica, were all absorbed by Venice, while those of Italy were a constant prey to civil wars, and lost their freedom and even their independence after a few centuries of chequered existence, Ragusa, after two hundred and fifty years of Venetian tutelage with internal autonomy, remained free, now under the nominal protection of this Power, now of that, for 450 years, actually surviving her mighty rival of the Lagoons.

The beginnings of Dalmatian history are purely legendary, and very little is known of the ethnographical character of its original inhabitants. Wanderers from pre-Homeric Greece are said to have settled along its shores, followed later by the Liburnii, who had been driven from Asia, whence part of the country was called Liburnia by the Romans. In the seventh century B.C. a Celtic invasion took place. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. a number of Greek colonies were planted among the islands at Issa , Pharos , and Kerkyra Melaina , and others along the coast at Epidamnos , Epidauron , and Tragyrion . In the third century Illyria was welded by a native ruler into a powerful kingdom, which ere long came into contact with the Romans. The latter made several attempts to conquer the country, but met with a most stubborn resistance before they finally subdued it. In the year 180 B.C. the Dalmatians, a people inhabiting the middle part of modern Dalmatia, revolted from the Illyrian kingdom and became independent. Their territory was comprised between the rivers Naro and Titius ; beyond the latter Liburnia began. During the second and first centuries B.C. the Romans waged no less than ten wars in Illyria, which was not completely reduced until the year A.D. 9.

In the meanwhile a number of Latin colonies had been settled along the coast, supplanting those of the Greeks. Their splendour and importance may be gauged from the magnificent Roman remains, especially those of the great palace built by Diocletian, himself an Illyrian, at Spalato, and of Salona, the ancient capital of the province.

The capital of the Dalmatian theme was no longer Salona, which together with Epidaurum had been destroyed by the Avars in the seventh century, but Jadera or Zara. The other towns of the theme were: Veglia, Arbe, and Opsara in the Quarnero; Tragurium, Spalatum or Aspalathum, and Rhagusium, founded by refugees from Salona and Epidaurum; Decatera , Rosa , and Butova . The theme was governed by a Greek Strategos residing at Zara , and by inferior officials in the smaller centres. But their authority hardly extended beyond the town walls.

THE FOUNDATION AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE CITY

Ragusa is situated on the coast of Southern Dalmatia, about forty kilometres to the north-west of the Bocche di Cattaro. It is built partly on a precipitous rocky ridge jutting out into the Adriatic, and partly on the mainland, ascending the steep slopes of the Monte Sergio. The original town was limited to the seaward ridge, which was formerly an island divided from the mainland by a marshy channel where the Stradone now runs. There was also a settlement of Bosnians or Vlachs on the Monte Sergio opposite. The ridge slopes gradually up from the channel, but drops sheer down on the side towards the sea. In an old drawing preserved in the library of the Franciscan monastery at Ragusa we see the town as it was when it only occupied the ridge. It is surrounded by a wall, and divided into two parts by another wall. Three extensions of the walls are recorded previous to the beginning of the twelfth century, rendered necessary by the number of fugitives who took refuge within its walls in ever-increasing numbers. "The original city," writes Professor Gelcich, "was limited to the centre of the northern slope of the ridge now called Santa Maria, which, separating from the Monte Sergio, stretches forth in an opposite direction to that of the neighbouring peninsula of Lapad; it comprised the quarter of the town between the diocesan seminary and the street leading from the Chiesa del Domino to the summit of the ridge." The earliest extensions were the suburbs of Gari?te and Pustijerna, the former on the western side, the latter to the east, reaching as far as the harbour. Thus the whole rock was occupied and surrounded by a wall. The channel which divided it from the mainland soon became a marshy field, and finally dried up. As a protection against the Slavonic settlement on the Monte Sergio a castle was built by the sea, on the site of the present rector's palace, guarding the bridge to the mainland. Later the Bosnian colony was also absorbed, and the town walls were extended to the circuit which they now occupy.

"690. Many people came to Ragusa with all their goods from Albania and the parts of Bosna, because many in Bosna were partisans of Duchagini, and wished to save themselves from being accused ."

This evidently refers to a civil war, but the date given is much too early: it is not likely that the Ragusans would have admitted barbarians within their walls so soon after the destruction of Epidaurum:--

"691. There came to Ragusa the men of two castles on the mainland, from Chastel Spilan and Chastel Gradaz, and they all made their dwellings on the coast, for they were of the race of Epidaurum destroyed by the Saracens."

This obviously refers to the Latin colonists mentioned by the Imperial historian:--

"743. Many people came from Bosna with much wealth, for the king, Radosav, was a tyrant, and lived according to his pleasure: Murlacchi from the Narenta also came, and Catunari, among whom there was a chief above all the others; they came with a great multitude of cattle of all sorts: to them was assigned the mountain of Saint Serge as a pasture, for it was so covered with trees that one could not see the sky, and so much timber was there that they made beams for their houses."

Next in authority to the head of the State was the bishop, by whom the acts of the Government had to be countersigned. The question as to who should appoint this dignitary was frequently a subject of dispute between the Ragusans and the Venetians, on account of his political influence.

The Ragusans provided for the defence of their city by surrounding it with walls, "un muro di masiera e travi," as Ragnina says, and these fortifications stood them in good stead by enabling them to hold out against the Saracens, who in 847-848 besieged Ragusa for fifteen months. The citizens implored help from the Emperor Basil the Macedonian, and he at once sent a fleet, under Nicephorus, which relieved the beleaguered city from the raiders.

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