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CHRISTENDOM’S BULWARK: CROATIAN IDENTITY AND THE RESPONSE TO THE OTTOMAN ADVANCE, FIFTEENTH TO SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2014

Norman Housley
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Abstract

Croatia's entry to the EU in July 2013 signalled an association with Europe which was anticipated in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the regular use of antemurale (bulwark) rhetoric. This rhetoric was one of the salient characteristics of the period's crusading discourse, as the task of mobilising Christian assistance for regions confronting the Ottoman advance, and in so doing defending the faith as a whole, created a two-way traffic of information and arguments between the embattled frontline states and centres of power in the European interior. This paper investigates the distinctively Croatian features of antemurale language. The exposition of Croatia's role as an antemurale reveals the extent of the country's embrace of humanist ideals and techniques, enabling prominent lobbyists like Tomaso Negri to convey Croatia's plight with finesse in orations delivered at Rome, Venice and elsewhere. The written output of the humanists also shows that Croatia's dismemberment occurred at a time when national identity was forming, and the emphasis placed on the country's relationship with fellow-Catholics reinforced the tendency to look westwards. In addition, Croatia provides a telling example of the tension between centre and periphery in the person of Andrija Jamometić. When he dramatically called for the deposition of Sixtus IV in 1482, Jamometić included neglect of the crusade against the Turks amongst the accusations directed against the pope.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 24 , December 2014 , pp. 149 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2014 

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References

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4 The historiography is well covered by Patterson, Patrick Hyder in ‘The Futile Crescent? Judging the Legacies of Ottoman Rule in Croatian History’, Austrian History Yearbook, 40 (2009), 125–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 Grgin, ‘The Ottoman Influences’, 90 (referencing work by Ivan Jurković at n. 11) points out that the slowness of Croatian mobilisation often lay behind such scenarios.

19 For the response to Polje, Krbava, see Ausgewählte Regesten des Kaiserreiches unter Maximilian I., 1493–1519, ed. Wiesflecker, Hermannet al. (4 vols. in 7 pts so far, Vienna, 1990–), nos. 2764, 2777Google Scholar; Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), ii: The Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1978), 444–7.

20 Bracewell, Uskoks, esp. 155–62.

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23 Petrovich, ‘The Croatian Humanists and the Ottoman Peril’, 271–2.

24 Ibid., 258–61.

25 Ibid., 265–9.

26 Hrvatski Latinisti, 141 (Šižgorić, ‘Elegia’).

27 Ibid., 311.

28 Petrovich, ‘The Croatian Humanists and the Ottoman Peril’, passim.

29 E.g. Hrvatski Latinisti, 327–51 (Ludovik Crijević Tuberon, ‘Commentaria de temporibus suis’), 551–67 (Vinko Pribojević, ‘De origine successibusque Slavorum’).

30 Petrovich, Michael B., ‘Croatian Humanists and the Writing of History in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Slavic Review, 37 (1978), 624–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Šižgorić, see the extracts in Hrvastski Latinisti, 139–49.

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33 Praga, ‘Tomaso Negri’, 12–15.

34 The seminal study of Jamometić remains Schlecht, Joseph, Andrea Zamometić und der Basler Konzilsversuch vom Jahre 1482 (2 vols., Paderborn, 1903)Google Scholar, but Petersohn, Jürgen, Kaiserlicher Gesandter und Kurienbischof: Andreas Jamometić am Hof Papst Sixtus’ IV. (1478–1481). Aufschlüsse aus neuen Quellen (Hanover, 2004)Google Scholar, is important for its new and corrected data, and its bibliographic updating.

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36 Schlecht, Andrea Zamometić, ii, 36–41.

37 Petersohn, Kaiserlicher Gesandter, 91, citing a Milanese despatch. In practice, of course, the Turks attacked Otranto.

38 Petersohn, ibid., 111, adds a specifically Dominican grievance relating to Sixtus IV's unfair treatment of the claims of St Catherine of Siena. Additionally, Jamometić nursed a personal injury, having been turned down for promotion to cardinal, ibid., 130–8.

39 Hrvatski Latinisti, 509–13, quote at 511; Petrovich, ‘The Croatian Humanists and the Ottoman Peril’, 266–7.

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44 Schlecht, Andrea Zamometić, i, 28, ii, 7.

45 The association is overt in a citation of the pope that Jamometić issued on 14 May: ibid., ii, 66–8.

46 Ibid., ii, 80–1.

47 Ibid., i, 33 (only Lorenzo de’ Medici stands in the way of a crusade, 1478).

48 For a thoroughgoing restatement of the ideal/reality paradigm, see Poumarède, Géraud, Pour en finir avec la croisade: mythes et réalités de la lutte contre les Turcs aux XVI et XVII siècles (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar.

49 Kafadar, Cemal, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley, 1995), 141Google Scholar.

50 The obscurity of Jamometić's origins enabled the legate Angelo Geraldini to make a maladroit attempt to use this situation against him in 1482, questioning ‘s’el sia christiano o Turcho’: Petersohn, ‘Zum Personalakt’, 2.

51 Hrvatski Latinisti, 637–9; Bracewell, Uskoks, 34; Petrovich, ‘The Croatian Humanists and the Ottoman Peril’, 265.

52 Cf. Petrovich, ‘Croatian Humanists and the Writing of History’, 638–9.

53 This is not to deny that the ‘European’ debate remains highly politicised in Croatia: Patterson, ‘The Futile Crescent?’, 138–40.