8. the NINTH CENTURY: CHROATI EX MACHINA the First Written Mention of the Croats Appeared in the Mid-9Th

8. THE NINTH CENTURY: CHROATI EX MACHINA

Th e fi rst written mention of the Croats appeared in the mid-9th century. Th e charter of duke Trpimir (Trepimirus) is believed to be the oldest mention of the Croat polity name, mentioning one Trpimir, dux Chroatorum, who ruled over the regnum Chroatorum. It is preserved on a late manuscript from the 16th century. Th e elements of its authen- ticity are disputed for good reasons, as its language shows multiple authorship and obvious irregularities when compared with the diplo- matic terminology of Trpimir’s era, so we can partly see it as a later-day falsifi cation. Whether the charter has a historical ‘core’ or not is diffi - cult to say and the charter is not a decisive source for proving that Trpimir himself used the title dux Chroatorum, although that possibil- ity is believable, and is argued below.1 Th us, the first certain evidence of Croat identity remains the title dux Cruatorum, from the dedication of duke Branimir (Branimirus), discovered during the excavations of a single-nave in the pre-Romanesque basilica in Šopot near Benkovac in the Ravni Kotari, dated to the 880s.2 Th e appearance of Croat, but also many other ‘Slav’ political identities in early medieval Dalmatia in the written sources of the 9th century, came quite suddenly aft er two centuries of almost total silence. Th e appearance of these identities was seen in the scholarship for a long time as a fi nal consolidation of the Slav and/or Croat settlement in post-Roman Dalmatia, and a sign of their political maturity.3 Nevertheless, lack of evidence for the Croat presence in the earlier period has led some scholars to explore other possibilities. Th e appearance of Croat identity in the 9th century has been explained by two recent approaches – the migrationist, which redated the Croat migration date from the 7th to the late 8th/early 9th centuries,4 or the lonely

1 CD 1.3; Klaić 1960; 1966/67 esp. 250; 1990: 58; Perić 1984. Some experts saw its historical ‘core’ as authentic, Perić 1984: 166; Rapanić 1993; Budak 1994: 75–6. Margetić 1995b re-dated the charter from 852 into the 840s, using believable arguments. 2 LEMCro 130; Pohl 1995: 222–3; Margetić 1995b. 3 Based in many ways on the narrative of Šišić 1925: 266 ff , which was rooted in the earlier assumptions of Rački that the Slavs were ‘fl ooding’ into the barely inhabited and desolate region in the 7th century. 4 Margetić 1977; 2001; Ančić 2001a; Milošević 2000a; Sokol2006, cf. also Pohl 1985; 1995; Budak 1990. 176 chapter eight position of Mužić, who saw the establishment of the Croat polity as a rise of the indigenous elites.5 As discussed in chapters 5–7, the migration of the ‘Slavs’ or Croats and their mass-settlement in post-Roman Dalmatia in the 7th century is hardly believable in light of the existing sources, both written and material. While some population movement undoubtedly existed, the change of funerary practices and language shift in this period could more easily be explained by other factors, rather than to see it as a mass migration. However, sources from the period 750–850 indicated a pro- found social and political change which occurred in Dalmatia. Th e archaeological record of the Dalmatian cemeteries showed a develop- ment in the complex grave assemblages, which mostly disappeared aft er c. 850/855, with the simultaneous appearance of new cemeteries positioned around the newly built churches. Th e written sources also showed dramatic changes. Th e Frankish destruction of the Avar qaga- nate in Central Europe, and the return of Byzantine political ambitions in the Adriatic were key contributors to the political restructuring of the area. Th e Carolingian expansion also exported a new model of Christianity, new ways of life and new relations between religion and the elite in the region, carried by arriving Benedictine monks, as well as the Frankish political infl uence. Th is chapter will examine the wider political background of this transformation, the perceptions of the col- lective identity from this period, as well as the religious and social changes which occurred in the 9th century.

Political and social changes

Th e period aft er 750 brought signifi cant political changes into the glo- bal perspective of the post-Roman world, which all signifi cantly aff ected the political and social situation in early-medieval Dalmatia. A very important change was the recovery and return of the Byzantines into the Adriatic, aft er their Adriatic possessions were threatened by the loss of Ravenna and Istria. Th is period witnessed a crucial change in the former Roman West, when the Merovingian clan was replaced by the ambitious Carolingian dynasty. Imperialism and expansion of Carolingian power into Central Europe and the northern Adriatic cor- responded with the establishment of more visible and undoubtedly

5 Mužić 2007; 2008.