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THE EARLY MEDIEVAL BALKANS a Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Tvvelfth Century

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THE EARLY MEDIEVAL BALKANS a Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Tvvelfth Century THE EARLY MEDIEVAL BALKANS A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Tvvelfth Century JOHN V. A. FINE, Jr. THE EARLY MEDlEYAL BALKANS The Early Medieval Balkans A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century JOHN V. A. FINE, JR. Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press First paperback edition 1991 Copyright© by the University of Michigan 1983 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America 2000 1999 11 10 9 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CJP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fine, John Van Antwerp. The early medieval Balklands. Bibliography: p. Includes index. I. Balkan Peninsula-History. I. Title. DR39.F56 1983 949.6 82-8452 ISBN 0-472-08149-7 (pbk.) AACR2 To Gena, Sasha, and Paul Preface This book is a general survey of early medieval Balkan history. Geo­ graphically it covers the region that now is included in the states of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia), Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania. What are now Slovenia and Rumania are treated only peripherally. The book covers the period from the arrival of the Slavs in the second half of the sixth and early seventh centuries up to the 1180s. A second volume will continue the story from this point to the Turkish conquest, a process carried out over the late fourteenth and through much of the fifteenth centuries. This book is, to the best of my knowledge, the first of its kind in any language. There are many works devoted to the history of the Byzantine Empire (which encompassed much of the Balkans). How­ ever, these works have stressed the history of Byzantium and its insti­ tutions; when the Slavic regions were not imperial provinces these works have treated the Slavic states only from the point of view of foreign relations. The various Balkan nations have produced a wide assortment of histories of their own individual states (or of regions within those states) in the Middle Ages, and foreign historians have also produced monographic surveys of specific regions (e.g., of Bul­ garia, Serbia, or Croatia in the Middle Ages). However, no work has yet dealt with the various medieval Balkan peoples as a whole. Such a work seems necessary, particularly for this early period when much of the area was in a state of flux and the protostates' borders did not coincide with later state boundaries. Since the early medieval period was an era of both national and state formation, a study that treats the region as a whole may better trace and explain developments than a study focused on only one area. This is particularly to the point, since the regions that have usually been chosen for study by historians have been defined by what came later, namely by being included in a subse­ quent national state. The early medieval period is a critical one for Balkan history. Enor- vm Early Medieval Balkans mous demographic changes occurred. If we exclude the Greeks, living in Thrace and Greece, the Albanians, and the Vlachs, scattered in various mountainous regions of the Balkans, the population of the clas­ sical Balkans disappeared in the sixth and seventh centuries to be re­ placed (partially by assimilation) by new ethnic groups which invaded and took over the Balkans: the Turkic Bulgars and the Slavic groups which produced the Serbo-Croatians and the Bulgaro-Macedonians. In the period that followed, these new arrivals developed into identifiable nationalities, each acquiring an ethnic awareness which has survived to the present. Moreover, the first states created by each of these peoples (which of course greatly cqntributed to the development of each group's ethnic awareness) also appeared in the early medieval period. Finally, during this period all these peoples were officially con­ verted to Christianity. Though many of the peasants retained so many pagan beliefs that we might consider them semipagans and only nomi­ nal Christians, nevertheless the rulers and their people considered themselves Christians, and churches and a church hierarchy were es­ tablished throughout their lands. Furthermore, during this period it was determined which regions were to end up under the religious jurisdiction of Constantinople (and later under that of independent national Orthodox churches) and which were to end up under Rome. Thus when the split in the church came to affect the Balkans, a gradual process occurring over a long period of time, which peoples were to be Eastern Orthodox and which Roman Catholic had already been set­ tled. This differentiation, which has lasted to the present, has had a great impact on the history of the Balkans up to our own day. Only Bosnia proved to be an exception. Though in the early medi­ eval period it was nominally under Rome, it had so weak a church organization that Catholicism was not firmly established. Thus, despite its nominal Catholicism, it was more of a no-man's-land between faiths than Catholic; hence it is not surprising that it had a unique religious history in the later Middle Ages when it was to produce its own inde­ pendent and somewhat heretical church. From that period to the pres­ ent Bosnia has been an area of mixed faiths. This work is to large extent a political history with a good dose of church history. Needless to say, this emphasis follows the emphasis of the surviving sources. I would have liked to treat at greater length social and economic matters. However, we have so few sources on these questions that broader or more detailed treatment is impossible. When documents like The Farmer's Law have survived, I have dealt with them at some length. However, for other matters or other peri- Preface ix ods-though sweeping generalizations about the activities of various social classes are often seen-! have limited myself to more narrow conclusions that can be supported by the sources. I have very little sympathy for "what must have been" or for conclusions about other lands based on what was occurring in the Byzantine Empire at the same time. I also see little value in works that fill in the blanks on the basis of the belief that societies pass through certain ordered stages. The story told here of various people, movements, and events­ including some major ones-differs from that found in previous schol­ arship, because the sources simply do not support many statements made in existing historical works. Thus it is important for historians to take each statement of fact found in these works and seek its source. By this means many items, which turn out to have no reliable source, can be removed. At this moment historians of the medieval Balkans should concern themselves primarily with determining what did hap­ pen, and it is as important to remove myths and fictions as it is to uncover new facts. Since this has been one of my main aims, this work has fewer broad generalizations than most survey histories. Until the facts can be established, these generalizations are not warranted, for trends based on hypotheses really are not trends. It is important to more or less forget all the myths and tales which generations of Balkan school children have been brought up on-many of which have a na­ tionalistic origin, showing the heroic past of a people ever struggling to assert its nationality, and provide justification for preserving or chang­ ing modern borders-and turn back to the sources with a critical eye. On the sources depends all that we can know of the medieval Balkans. Yet, because many sources are tendentious or uninformed, the histo­ rian cannot simply take them at face value but must devote much of his attention to scrutinizing them closely. It immediately becomes apparent that our sources on the whole are poor. The narrative sources were chiefly written by foreigners, often at a considerable distance from events, or by patriotic locals centuries later on the basis of oral traditions and documents of varying reliability, many of which no longer survive. Thus, frequently we do not know what a later author's source was. And even when we can identify what it must have been, the lack of the original document often makes it difficult to determine its reliability. Although there exists a considerable number of other documents, such as letters and charters, these rarely give us the details and explanations we would like; thus we are constantly faced with a scarcity of source material. However, such a lack is no justification to fill in the blanks with fiction and then, as has so often happened in the past, to serve up this mixture x Early Medieval Balkans of fact and fiction as history. There is nothing shameful in admitting that we do not know things. Only when we admit our ignorance will it become clear which areas have the greatest need for further study. Then we can turn to these areas and problems with fresh minds and possibly uncover some new facts about them. If we cannot find further material, which will frequently be the case, then we must be satisfied that there are some things which we may never know. Though this work is primarily aimed for the general reader and college student, I hope specialists will also find much in it to interest them.
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