The first Apostles and the Orthodox Vlachs and Stradioti in Croatia

By: Jean LUNT-MARINOVIC

In the context of Croatian history we can say that at the time of St. Paul's second imprisonment in Rome, he sent his disciple Titus to Solin or Salona on the Dalmatian coast, where he founded the first Christian See there in AD 65. (see Timothy 2, 4:10) 

St. Paul had himself travelled and preached as far as Illyricum, today's Croatia, during his third missionary journey between AD 53 and 57. (see Romans 15:19) When the English talk about their Roman archaeological sites in Britain it is always in the context of English or British history. Therefore early Christian settlements along the eastern Adriatic coast are part of Croatian history. Double standards should not exist in historical dialogue. (source: Sanader) In addition, many early settlements in Croatia came under the jurisdiction of Constantinople.

It is said that the Ottomans brought with them nomadic Vlachs (Morlacchi or Wallachs, etc.) to settle land depopulated by either the plague or those who had fled or died during the Ottoman invasion. The majority of these Vlachs of the Orthodox faith were mostly assimilated into Croatian civilization by the 18th century, between Istria and Dubrovnik, and throughout the Lika, Dalmatia and other parts of Croatia. Often these Orthodox settlers along the Adriatic coast had been deliberately forced to inland Croatia by Venice and its Allies, during and after the Ottoman retreat (for example, the Uskoks of Senj).

If these Vlachs had been of Serbian ancestry as claimed, why is it that the land where they originated from was known as 'Turkish Croatia'? In addition, if these migrating Vlachs had been exclusively of mixed Serbian ancestry as claimed by their propagandists it is unlikely that they would have been at the centre of the enlightenment debate.

After all, the Vlachs were the virtuous so-called 'noble savages' romanticized by Rousseau. In conflict with Rousseau, Voltaire cited the 'Morlaque' of Dalmatia as an example of people who had a lowly place in the development of enlightened civilization. (Source: Wolff, pages 156-157; (Note: In this essay I am not discussing the complex history of the Vlachs, only referring to their existence.)

In one of many sources which allude to the true ethnicity of the original Orthodox in Croatia, Larry Wolff (in Venice and the Slavs) writes that "The heterogeneous Orthodox society of Zadar included Montenegrin officers and Sarajevo merchants ... and (others) from Corfu and Crete. The Venetians were concerned to reduce foreign influence on Orthodox Dalmatians, including the Morlacchi".

The presence of Vlachs is established in history, philosophy, novels, decrees or statutes, and place names on genuine original maps.

On October 5, 1630 Statuta Valachorum ('Law of the Vlachs') under Hapsburg King Ferdinand II acknowledged that the Vlachs would not be subject to the Croatian leadership but would instead be soldiers in the military cordon subject to the King; and in 17th century Venice a statute re Morlacchi.

Place names such as Latinski Islam or Grcki Islam or the Vlasko More, as well the existence of former Greek or Eastern rite churches in Croatia testify to the existence and identity of the Vlachs and other Orthodox people in Croatia.

The Vlachs spoke an old vulgar Latin language and used the Latin script and this is no doubt why only five per cent of Misha Glenny's so-called-Krajina Serbs could read the Cyrillic script, something Glenny incorrectly attributed to an alleged Croatian government policy instead of to their non-Serbian ancestry.

Misha Glenny incorrectly accuses the Croatian government of 'dismissing the Serbs' Cyrillic script' as if Croatia had some Herculean power to cancel a century of Serbian hegemony overnight. Glenny continues about the Cyrillic script.....

''According to moderate Knin Serbs I met in 1990, only about 5 per cent of the local Serbs used the Cyrillic script, the rest not only spoke the Croatian variant, they used the Latin Script. Eighteen months later, on my return, I witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a Knin Serb attempting to write the address of his relations in Belgrade in Cyrillic - he could not do it. Half-way through the address, he gave up and wrote it in Latin. The Croatian language was already dominant in Knin and Tudjman did not need to force it on people. As soon as he did, this helped to drive them away from the Croatian culture''. (Source: Glenny page 12 )

In reality, of course the real reason the majority did not use the Cyrillic script is because they had no Serbian ancestry - in fact the opposite was true. It was Croats who had been forced to learn Cyrillic in their schools under the first and second Yugoslav dictatorships.

Interestingly, for Glenny, the language is suddenly known as 'Croatian' instead of 'Serbo-Croatian' - a term consistently adopted by all foreigners; and it is suddenly known as 'Croatian' culture instead of 'Yugoslav' culture.

Orthodox Stradioti in Croatia

The Stradioti were brought-in by the Venetians from occupied Greece to fight land battles in occupied Croatia. For half a millennium the Stradioti were behind the establishment of the Eastern Greek Orthodox communities in Venetian occupied Croatia.

Their existence has been documented in Venetian archives and by many other European contemporaneous sources. Not only did the borders of Venetian occupation change frequently but forced migrations of these Orthodox communities also occurred, leading to new settlements in inland Croatia.  

And there were other Orthodox in Croatia including Croats, Czechs, Greeks, Macedonians, Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, etc. All along the Adriatic coast, and inland, Greek Orthodox churches were built to serve the various Orthodox settlers, many becoming Uniate churches later.

Other evidence of the existence of the Croatian Orthodox people is available. In Zagreb the church known as St. Margaret was first a Greek Orthodox church and later taken over by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Today's church of the Serbian Orthodox Metropolis of Zagreb-Ljubljana on Preobrazenska Street in Zagreb was originally the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Preobrazenja on Petar Preradovic Square, built in 1866 on the site of a former Catholic church.

Likewise in Sarajevo, or Zadar or Lika, the churches now called Serbian Orthodox were originally known as Greek Orthodox churches which had been built or converted to accommodate the Eastern Orthodox faith to the various settlers therein. In Sarajevo what is now a Serbian Saborna Church was once a Greek Orthodox church, was built in 1882 on site of Freedom Square (formerly Tomislav Square).

The church of St. Ilijah in Zadar (St. Elias) once served the Greek Orthodox community there and not the Serbs. St. Ilija's Church (St. Elias) church built in 1773 in place of a medieval church (1563) of the same name once served the Greek Orthodox congregation of soldiers, merchants or sailors etc. who had settled there.

St. Ilijah only came under the Serbian Dalmatian Eparchy at the end of the 19th century. According to the above-mentioned author Wolff, Obradovic, a visiting Serbian-born pioneer of Serbian nationalism in Croatia, was preaching in Zadar in 1771 to the 'Schismatic' Orthodox community, but was denied settlement in Skradin because Venetian authorities did not want a 'foreign' influence on the Orthodox Dalmatians and Morlacchi.

If the Orthodox settlements there had been Serbian then how would the situation arise that a visiting Serbian priest would be called a 'foreigner' by the Venetian authorities? If the so-called slavicized Orthodox were under 'foreign' threat from a visiting Serb, it is not likely that they were at that point in time of mixed Serbian origin.

In 1876 in Skradin itself a new church replaced the original Greek Orthodox church which at some point was taken over by Serbian priests. This take-over pattern was repeated in many settlements throughout Dalmatia and Croatia and is part of the oral history of the local inhabitants, and to speak of it in public under the former communist Yugoslav regime or in Royalist Yugoslavia would have meant instant arrest or death.

Today it appears that pro-Serbian EU policy has taken over the role of the former Yugoslav government with an agenda of anti-Croatian conditions.

According to the book about the life of Pavlinovic, a 19th century Croatian priest, on the topic of the Orthodox faith in Croatia, the Orthodox peoples of Croatia were not Serbian.

According to Pavlinovic, the Orthodox in Croatia were members of the old Croatian Greek Orthodox church from the early middle ages, for example, Vlachs or Romanians, Greeks, and other merchants who had assimilated into Croatian society under the Habsburg dynasty.

These Vlachs had been recognized as such in Venetian and Habsburg statues since the 17th century.

To sum up, the Orthodox Minorities in Croatia include:

- descendants of original inhabitants of Pannonia or Dalmatia, the first Croatian settlers,

- descendants of Croatian Catholics who willingly or forcibly were converted to Orthodoxy,

- descendants of Orthodox Vlahs (introduced by Ottomans into Croatia)

- descendants of Orthodox Straddiotti (merchants originating from Turkish occupied Greece under Venetian era),

-          other descendants of Czech, Greek, Russian, Romanian, Macedonian, Ukrainian or other Eastern European immigrants; and amongst this latter group Serbs are only one ethnic group who came.