CROATIA. —
I. GEOGRAPHY
Region of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire occupying roughly the same borders as the eponymous kingdom, which had a brief existence during the Second World War.
The Kingdom of Croatia, united with the Hungarian Crown, measured in 1913 an area of 42,534 sq. km. with 2,261,954 inhabitants; the one that arose and disappeared during the Second World War, comprising in addition to the original nucleus a large part of Dalmatia, Slavonia, and the entire Bosnia and Herzegovina, covered approximately 106,000 sq. km. with 7 million inhabitants. The present People’s Republic of Croatia measures 57,400 sq. km. with 3,749,039 inhabitants (1949). Important cities are: Zagreb, Osijek, Varaždin, Karlovac, Brod, Ragusa, and Spalato.
Croatia consists of the Dinaric zone to the southwest of the Kupa and Sava rivers and the Pannonian zone, which comprises two parts: a mountainous one, an extension of the Alpine zone, and a plain around the Sava, Drava, and Danube rivers. The climate of Croatia has a continental character with hot summers and harsh winters, and violent “bora” winds on the highlands.
Croatia is distinguished by the partial lack of religious unity. The majority is Catholic (60%), especially in Dalmatia, Slavonia, central and southwestern Bosnia; the “Orthodox” make up about 29%, and Muslims 11%. The latter descend from the “Patarenes” who infiltrated the country around 1200 and, after the Turkish conquest, embraced Islam.
II. CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
The Croats, an ancient people (in the 6th century B.C. they lived in Iran), who moved to Central Europe around Cracow, according to Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, already in the 7th century A.D. (unlike other Slavs) were governed by a firm state structure. Called by Heraclius after defeating the Avars and occupying Pannonia, they then settled throughout Dalmatia where the Roman element had fallen under Avar domination (first half of the 7th century). Soon after their arrival in Dalmatia, the Croats received baptism from missionaries sent by Rome during the time of John IV (640–642). From then until the present day, those whom Pope John X in 925 would call “specialissimi filii Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae,” in a letter to the first “King Tomislav,” found in their attachment to the Roman See and the Catholic faith an element of strength and national identity, in contrast to the expansionist assaults of Serbian Orthodoxy and the Muslim Turks. Bound to Rome, under Pope Agatho (678–681) by “pacts signed with their own hand and by firm and inviolable oaths to St. Peter the Apostle,” pledging not to invade others’ lands but to live “in peace with all who wished it” (according to Porphyrogenitus in De administrando Imperio), this bond with the West was further strengthened by Frankish expansion into Central Europe, when around 800 both Pannonian and Dalmatian Croatia acknowledged Frankish sovereignty.Toward the end of the 9th century, a dark period began for Croatia, marked by internal strife between the pro-Frankish faction, centered around Duke Domagoj (864–876), and the Byzantine faction, which with Sedeslao attempted to induce the Croats into Photian schism, but without success. After this was overturned by Branimir, the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the crisis of the papacy itself due to the Investiture Controversy led the Croatian dynasty to increasingly orient itself toward Byzantium. The Glagolitic liturgy was already in use among the Croats around 900: that is, the Roman rite based on the Old Slavonic language and Glagolitic script. Six dioceses retain this privilege.
With the general revival of the Roman Church under Gregory VII, Dalmatian Croatia, after a long period of struggles and Norman interventions from Apulia and Venetian incursions in Spalato (February 1076), succeeded in firmly aligning itself among the states that Gregory VII’s strong theocratic conception placed directly under the See of Rome. Zvonimir, crowned Rex Chroatae Dalmatiaeque in 1076, strengthened his people’s orientation toward the West. After Zvonimir’s death in 1089 (penultimate king of the national Trpimirović dynasty) amid internal turmoil, two years later Ladislaus of Hungary exploited the state of anarchy to extend his rule over Pannonian Croatia, while his successor Coloman, by the Pacta conventa of 1102, obtained Dalmatian Croatia by right of succession, uniting the Crown of Croatia with that of St. Stephen. From then on, the Arpád kings were crowned twice, in Hungary and in Croatia.
From this point onward, Croatia’s history merges with that of Hungary, with which it continued as an associated kingdom until 1791. Recognized nationally from the outset in Rome and in Catholicism, the Croats for centuries defended both their national identity and Catholic positions in the Balkans against the assaults—and later the linked penetration—of the Turks from the political-military side, and of the Serbs from the religious-national side. In 1242, the Croats saw the Mongols of Kadan halted at their borders, while the Turkish conquest of Bosnia opened the gates of Croatia, which soon fell under the dominion of their raids. In vain did Pius II on 22 October 1463 proclaim a crusade to free Bosnia and ease the Turkish pressure that was spreading into Hungary, Carinthia, and Friuli. The last queen, Catherine, a Franciscan tertiary, died in Rome in 1478, bequeathing the kingdom to the Holy See. The Croats remained practically alone, and the necessities of defense brought to the fore the “Ban of Croatia,” with a general-captain under his command (1477), who, as the sole true representative of the people, had his own army as the greatest pledge of national freedom. The Croats’ centuries-long struggle against the Turks earned them the title “scutum valdissimum et annuum Christianitatis” (Leo X, 1519). Ravaged and devastated by Turkish raids, what would later be called “reliquiae reliquiarum olim inclyti regni Chroatae” became the object of slow national as well as religious erosion at the hands of Orthodoxy, which under Ottoman rule became a tenacious factor in preserving Serbian national identity.
From 1527, the reduced territory, by free decision of the Croatian parliament, passed under Habsburg rule, in whose hands it remained until 1918.
The Croats also sought to maintain their identity especially within Hungary, with which they strove to achieve parity of rights. This movement intensified as a result of their partial entry into the Napoleonic orbit as the Illyrian Provinces (1809–13), giving rise to national revival impulses that under the name of Illyrism would be renewed by Gaj and remain alive throughout the 19th century.
While the constitution of 1849 emphasized the complete separation of Croatia from Hungary, it was Monsignor G. Strossmayer, Bishop of Đakovo from 1848, who gave a decisive impetus to
Sensitive, above all in religious and cultural matters, to the consolidation of Croatian aspirations for broad autonomy, which was reconfirmed in 1868. The period up to 1918 was marked by the struggle to defend this autonomy, and with the outbreak of the First World War, the collapse of the “dual monarchy” led to the separation from it of Slovenia and Croatia, which together with Serbia formed Yugoslavia (10 December 1918).
The coexistence of Croats within the new Yugoslav state was anything but easy because of ethnic and religious disputes. Although the Constitution affirmed the principle of equality for all religions, in practice the government, which was predominantly in the hands of the Serbian “Orthodox” element and always inclined to identify the state with the national church, supported the expansion of “Orthodoxy” by obstructing Catholic schools, building “Orthodox” churches, and favoring mixed marriages or outright conversion to schism. Thus it came about that within twenty years the percentage of Catholics decreased by 4%, about one-tenth of their numerical strength. Under pressure from the Serbian schismatic hierarchy, Belgrade refused to ratify the Concordat concluded with the Holy See on 25 July 1935. At the same time, the struggle against Serbdom also played out on the political terrain, where the Croats were divided between the more extreme and intransigent faction of the Ustaša under Pavelić, which sought separation from Yugoslavia, and the Peasant Party of Vl. Maček, which favored broad autonomy and achieved it through the Maček–Cvetković agreement of 25 August 1939.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, on 10 April 1941 the Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed. Its troubled existence, marked by violence and massacres in the various belligerent camps, came to an end on 6 May 1945 following the German collapse. With the new Yugoslav Constitution (30 November 1946), Croatia became one of the six federal republics, and within it communist totalitarianism spared neither clergy nor faithful, along with all opponents of the regime. Notable was the trial of the archbishop of Zagreb, Msgr. J. Stepinac, who was sentenced to sixteen years of hard labor (11 October 1946).
For ecclesiastical circumscriptions, liturgy, art, and literature: V. JUGOSLAVIA.