From: wickerhauser-victor@math.yale.edu (Victor Wickerhauser)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.croatia
Subject: Povijest Hrvata (History of the Croats)
Date: 13 Dec 1992 01:52:40 -0500
Organization: Yale University Mathematics Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2155
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: golem.math.yale.edu



Here are some more excerpts from "The Slavs in European History and
Civilization" by Francis Dvornik.  They are rather long, so I have
broken them up into a few pieces:

p.136:  "The political status of the Croats was quite different from
that of other nations and colonists in Hungary.  The successors of
King Koloman respected the stipulations of the treaty concluded in
1102 with the representatives of the Croat nobility, who had accepted
him as king of Croatia.  So the lands of the Croats were regarded not
as conquered lands (_partes subiugatae_) but as annexed lands (_partes
adnexae_),  The exceptional status of Croatia was also emphasized by a
special coronation coronation ceremony of the Hungarian king as king
of Croatia.  This special Croatian coronation was omitted in the
thirteenth century, however--probably in 1205, on the succession of
King Andrew II--but even afterwards the independent status of Croatia
was respected.  As Croat kings, the Hungarian rulers used the title
"King of Croatia and Dalmatia" (_rex Croatiae et Dalmatiae_).  Croatia
was administered by a `ban,' the supreme officer of the realm,
representing the king.  Sometimes the kings chose to send their sons
or younger brothers to Croatia as administrators, called dukes
(_voivoda, dux_).  The dukes or bans used the title `Duke or Ban of
Slavonia' (_dux, banus Slavoniae_) in order to emphasize that that
their administration extended over the whole Croat kingdom.


   "For the second half of the thirteenth century, however, the kings
started to appoint two bans, one for that part of Croatia which used
to be called Pannonian Croatia and comprised the lands between the
river Drava, the mountains of Gvozd, and the river Sava, and the other
for the rest of the realm.  From that time on, the first mentioned
part of the country was called Slavonia, the name of Croatia and
Dalmatia designating the lands between the Gvozd and the Adriatic.
   "The dukes acted as true kings, calling themselves `Duke by the
Grace of God.'  They appointed also their bans and bishops, confirmed
the royal privileges, acted as supreme judges, minted their own coins,
directed the finances of the realm, and convoked the diets.  The power
of the ban was also extensive, although not as extensive as that of
the dukes.  His representative was the vice-ban (_vicebanus_), and his
seal was guarded by a protonotary who had to be elected by the
assembly of nobles.
   "The assemblies were originally, as in Bohemia and Poland, not
proper diets, but judicial sessions.  Besides the magnates and the
higher clergy, the lesser nobility and the representatives of the
towns were also members of the assemblies.  They were presided over by
the king, the duke, or the ban.  Although, from the thirteenth century
on, there used to be two diets, one for Slavonia and one for Croatia
and Dalmatia, diets were sometimes convoked for the whole of the realm
(_congregatsio totius regni Slavoniae_).  Only from the fifteenth
century on, however, did the assemblies acquire the character of
political diets."
-- 
Prof. M. Victor Wickerhauser                      <victor@kirk.wustl.edu>
Department of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130 USA
Telephone:  USA(314)935-6771, USA(314)727-0749;     FAX: USA(314)727-4963
Sto se ljuckim trudom uzdignulo, Ljuckim znojem jopet se ponavlja. --Medo Pucic
Newsgroups: soc.culture.croatia