Dalmatia

DALMATIA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - A historical region corresponding to the Adriatic coastal strip of the Balkan peninsula, from the Quarnero to the Gulf of Drin. It consists of a continental sector of varying width (minimum 5-10 km. in the N.; maximum 100 in the center) and a garland of islands, islets and rocks (about a thousand) that face it as far as the latitude of Ragusa. The coast, for the most part high and rocky, is carved by frequent and characteristic inlets (channels and "valloni"), branched and protected toward the outside by the islands that stretch parallel to it, sometimes in several rows. The nearby mountain ridge (the Bebie and Dinaric Alps), which rises to 2000 m., sharply isolates, also in climatic and floristic terms, the elevated Dinaric hinterland from the Dalmatian coastline and archipelago, whose Mediterranean character is highlighted, above all, by the prevailing cultivation of the olive, the vine, fruit trees (almonds, figs) and, locally, citrus fruits. Despite its karstic nature, D. has barely 3% of ter-

unproductive land, with a prevalence of pastures (46%), woods and "maquis" (30%) and more than 1/4 of intensive cultivation.

Natural D. covers about 18,000 sq km, with a little more than 80% of mainland; but its regional unity has been lost in the new organization of the Yugoslav Federal Republic, in which it is included. Its ethno-linguistic physiognomy has changed greatly over time; at the end of the last century the Italian element (predominantly urban) probably still numbered 75-80 thousand. The Treaty of Rapallo (1920) left Zara and Lagosta to Italy (as well as Cherso and Lussino, included in Istria); the agreement of 18 May 1941 additionally recognized its possession of the whole of central D. and the region of Cattaro (5242 sq km with 325 thousand inhabitants); as well as the islands of Veglia and Arbe, annexed to the province of Fiume. With the diktat of Paris (11 Feb. 1947) the entire region passed instead to Yugoslavia, including Zara, where the predominance of the Italian element was incontrovertible.

The major inhabited centers of D. are all coastal; the most populous is today Spalato, in central D.; no other exceeds 20,000 inhabitants.

Giuseppe Carsci

II. HISTORY

In the Metal Age it was inhabited by the Illyrians, constituted around the 3rd century B.C. into two principalities (of which that of the Dalmatians gives the country its name) and by the Liburnians, who inhabited especially the islands; the southern zone had many Syracusan colonies and frequent exchanges with Apulia. The Roman conquest, begun at the end of the 3rd century B.C., was rather fortunate and concluded in 9 A.D. with the subjection of the whole country and the constitution of Illyricum, in which very many cities flourished, first among them Salona. Here Diocletian was born, who near Salona built his great palace.

After the fall of the Western Empire and the decline of the ephemeral kingdom of Julius Nepos (476-80), Dalmatia, already entirely Christian, it is included in the kingdom of Odoacer, then in that of Theodoric and the Ostrogoths. Once the Justinianic restoration had begun in the East, the Byzantines established themselves firmly in the region, which then enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity, until around 614, when it began to be afflicted by Avar-Slav incursions and subjected to frequent devastation. Only narrow coastal strips, the cities of Zara, Traù and Budua, built on small peninsulas, and all the islands offered valid resistance to the invaders and preserved their Latin character. But toward the end of the reign of Heraclius (641) peaceful relations were established between Byzantines and Slavs, and only then could Dalmatia settle politically and reorganize its religious life under the pontificate of John IV (a Dalmatian by birth).

Scanty information is available on Dalmatia for the 7th and 8th centuries: it is certain that the region continued to depend on the exarch of Ravenna, until it formed a "thema", that is, a government of its own, headed by a strategos. In the early years of the 9th century the Franks attempted to seize the region; but the setbacks they suffered induced Charlemagne to recognize, in the peace of 812, the Byzantine government. But this was continually declining, nor was it any longer able to defend its cities and provinces from the piracy of Croatian and Narentine corsairs. Then various maritime cities began to provide for their own needs and requirements. As early as the 10th century the communes of Veglia, Arbe, Ossero, Zara, Traù, Spalato, Ragusa and Cattaro arose, governed by tribunes, priors, consuls and judges. The bishop, elected by the clergy and the people, did not hold temporal government in his hands, but exercised an important function in communal life. The Cassinese Benedictine monasteries, which were rapidly spreading through the region, also exercised a notable influence on the population, orienting it ever more toward Rome. At the same time, various coastal cities concluded agreements, against enemy communes, with Venice, which had by then become strong and powerful at sea. Thus, precisely at the end of the same century, invited by the Dalmatians themselves, Doge Pietro II Orseolo placed himself at the head of a formidable fleet, defeated the Croats and Narentines and, after receiving homage and promises of loyalty, assumed the title of Duke of Dalmatia (1000).

In 1060 the papal legate Mainard, abbot of Pomposa, arrived in Dalmatia to promulgate and apply there the constitutions of the Lateran Easter Synod of the previous year, and took the opportunity to restore to the Church of Spalato jurisdiction over the territories of ancient Roman Dalmatia, then largely held by the Croats. In the last years of the following century (1199), under Pope Innocent III, a Council was held in the region which was called precisely the Council of Dalmatia: Giovanni, chaplain of the pontiff, and Simone his deacon, legates of the Holy See, took part in it, assisted by the archbishop of Dioclea and his six suffragan bishops; various lamented abuses were condemned there, such as simony, the marriage of ecclesiastics, the violation of the seal of confession, etc., and Catholic doctrine was restored in all its purity.

In a struggle lasting about three centuries, from the 12th to the early 15th, Venice contested the possession of Dalmatia with the kings of Hungary, and for a long time the region remained divided into two zones of influence: the northern one, from Quarnaro to Zaravecchia, for Venice; the southern one, from Zaravecchia to Almissa, for the Magyar kings. But in 1409 the Republic of St. Mark, by the effort of contornità ducats, obtained from Ladislaus, king of Naples and Hungary, the cession of all rights over Dalmatia, which soon became the favorite of its provinces. In this 15th century the administrative reorganization of the region was carried out. The Commune no longer existed; the cities were each governed by a Venetian nobleman, with the title of count or captain; crafts and the popular classes, organized into "universities of people and citizens", asserted themselves and gained importance, agriculture progressed, the arts and industries developed, so that even the small cities were adorned with magnificent monuments, like the cities of the other Adriatic shore and of all Italy.

But this prosperity, which coincides with the age of the Renaissance, was interrupted and compromised by the seven wars that Venice had to fight in Dalmatia from 1468 to 1718, that is, over a period of two and a half centuries, with more or less long intervals between one war and another. With the freedom and independence of the region and of the dominant city, the fortunes of all Christian Europe were at stake, and the popes naturally did not watch the formidable struggle indifferently and were generous with aid of every kind, on behalf of the defenders of the faith and of civilization. At first the Turks had the upper hand and succeeded in occupying some stretches of the region; but, beginning in the 17th century, Dalmatian-Venetian victories followed one another almost uninterruptedly, so that the lost territory was not only recovered but even exceeded. In 1671, after the peace of Candia, the Nani line delimited the so-called old acquisition; in 1700, after the peace of Carlowitz, the Grimani line, including the districts of Tenin, Signo and Dernis, delimited the new acquisition; finally, in 1720, after the peace of Passarowitz, the Mocenigo line, adding the territory of Imoschi, delimited the newest acquisition. Thus the regional unity and the authority of the "provveditore generale of Dalmatia and Albania" were fully reestablished.

But even though victorious, these Venetian-Dalmatian-Turkish wars profoundly disturbed the economic life of the region and also caused strong ethnic upheavals: the Latin element kept diminishing, the Slavs of the hinterland were received into the cities, and in the countryside there was a continuous ebb and flow of Croatian, Serbian and Morlach refugees. Venice and the Dalmatians themselves promptly strove, by every means, to repair the damages suffered, especially in the most recently acquired lands; but they did not have the material time to bring the work begun to completion, inasmuch as, with the storm of the French Revolution having arrived, Venice itself was threatened with extreme ruin. In the face of the grave danger to the Dominante, twelve thousand Dalmatians crossed the Adriatic to defend it; but their surge of loyalty and attachment proved vain. With the treaty of Campoformio (1797) the Austrian monarchy replaced Venice in Dalmatia, as in Istria and northeastern Italy; but only for a short time, for the Napoleonic victories soon reunited Dalmatia and Istria with the Kingdom of Italy (1806-1809): during these few years Dalmatia was governed by the provveditore Vincenzo Dandolo, a Venetian, who introduced many improvements there, opened new roads and new schools, and pursued a wise and enlightened social and economic policy. In 1810 Dalmatia was annexed to the "Illyrian Provinces", in which the small Republic of Ragusa also came to an end; but, at the beginning of 1814, with Napoleon defeated and overthrown, the entire region returned under Austrian subjection and from then on no longer had a representative body or provincial Estates, like the other former Austrian domains: only a few districts and cities preserved a few of the rights and privileges already enjoyed under Venetian government. Several decades of flat politics followed. In the fortunate two years 1848-49 the Dalmatian-Venetians took an active part in the Italian revolution: Niccolò Tommaseo, of Sebenico, exercised a directing role in the government and defense of Venice; Dalmatian legionnaires distinguished themselves by acts of valor in the siege of Rome and in the resistance to the bitter end on the Venetian lagoon. In the following years two political movements, armed against each other, begin to take clear shape in the region: the Italian autonomist and irredentist movement and the Croat-Habsburg annexationist movement. The government of Vienna stands by for a while to see how things develop; then, beginning in Oct. 1865, it inaugurates its Croatophile policy and begins systematically to persecute the Dalmatian Italians. Nevertheless the latter still manage to preserve their positions in the Diet, in the Council of the Empire and in the municipal councils until about 1870. But from that year they begin to lose ground and, despite the heroic efforts of Antonio Bajamonti, the recognized leader of the national movement, they are gradually reduced to almost political non-existence: finally, in 1909, a ministerial administrative decree suppresses, that is, prohibits, the use of the Italian language in State offices.

In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, the national struggle comes to a halt; but four years later, in Oct. 1918, it resumes with the victory of the Entente: on the 31st of that same month, Hon. Ziliotto, president of the municipal council of Zara, with a group of armed commoners, takes possession of the Town Hall, and on the following 15 Nov., Admiral Enrico Millo arrives at Sebenico, and on the 19th at Zara, as the effective Italian governor of the zone occupied under the Treaty of London (Zara and the islands of Lagosta and Carra). Later (Apr. 1941), after the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Italy occupies several other regions of Dalmatia, but must then evacuate them at the end of the Second World War. Today, in the new political-administrative division of Yugoslavia, Dalmatia does not exist, that is, it does not appear by name. There exist, instead, the three banates of Primorje, capital Spalato, Savska, capital Zagabria, Zetska, capital Cettigne.

Turin 1914; A. Tamaro, Le condizioni degli Italiani soggetti all'Austria nella Venezia Giulia e nella D., Rome 1915; id., Italiani e Slavi nell'Adriatico, ibid. 1915; G. Dainelli and others, La D., Genoa 1915; S. A. Evans, Les Slaves de l'Adriatique et la route continentale de Constantinople, London 1916; A. Dudan, La monarchia degli Asburgo, Rome 1917; A. Venturi and others, La D. monumentale, Milan 1917; L. Vojnovic, La Dalmatie, l'Italie et l'unité yougoslave, Geneva 1917; C. Maranelli and G. Salvemini, La questione dell'Adriatico, Florence 1918; G. Amendola and others, Il patto di Roma, Rome 1918; G. D. Belletti, L'italianità della D.,

Bologna 1919; J. Bulic, Jugoslavia e Italia, Spalato 1919; A. Chaboseau, Les Serbes Croates Slovènes, Paris 1919; Z. Moravec, L'Italie et les Jugoslaves, ibid. 1919; A. Tamaro, La Vénétie Julienne et la Dalmatie. Histoire de la Nation italienne sur ses frontières orientales, II and III, Rome 1919 (with an extensive bibliography); S. Gbelli, La maschera dell'Austria nell'Adriatico orientale, Prato 1919; A. Giannini, Libro verde [on the direct negotiations between the Italian and Yugoslav governments for the Adriatic peace], Rome 1921; A. Alesani, La D., Zara 1933; A. Consiglio, D. veneta e romana, ibid. 1941; B. Dudan and A. Teia, L'italianità della D. negli ordinamenti e statuti cittadini, Milan 1943; O. Randi, D. etnica. Incontri e fusioni, ibid. 1943 (with a more specifically Yugoslav bibliography).

Ersilio Michel

III. ARCHAEOLOGY

The Christian life of Dalmatia began from Salona (v.), which documents it with a wealth of monuments unique among Roman provincial cities. The first sign is an oratory from the end of the 3rd century; the first known bishop, St. Domnius (or Doimo), was martyred with many companions, soldiers and civilians, under Diocletian. Salona, a metropolitan see from 414 to 639, after the serious Avar and Slavic incursions (the relics of the martyrs were taken to Rome), was replaced by Spalato, which was then suppressed in 1828. Eleven episcopal sees were its suffragans, another ten were suffragans of Scodra, later replaced by Doclea and then by Antivari. The latter is currently the primatial see for Dalmatia, but the title of primate of Dalmatia also belongs to the patriarch of Venice. There is then the see of Zara, of which five other episcopal sees are suffragans. Dalmatia, from which the Church received two popes, St. Caius and John IV, boasts of having given birth to St. Jerome, at Stridon. The majority of the population is Catholic; the Orthodox were about 17% in 1921. A notable contribution to the number of the Orthodox was made first by the Austrian occupation, then by the Yugoslav one.

IV. ART

Architecture, which is Dalmatia's preeminent contribution to art, was already extremely vigorous from the Roman age, favored by the excellent stone quarries. Works of notable importance, almost all of them, however, poorly preserved, appear in every city: at Salona (amphitheater, theater, baths, twin temples), at Aenona, at Asseria (circuit of walls and the Trajan's gate), at Burnum (praetorium), at Doclea (basilica). Of particular importance is Diocletian's palace, in which Split was born, admirable for its organic, clear conception, its powerful and animated architecture, fully Roman, and the notable integrity of its remains. In it one also notices characteristic aspects of Dalmatian decorative sculpture, vividly pictorial and of Oriental inspiration. In Dalmatia too, thanks to relations with Attica, the two fundamental tendencies of Roman sculpture coexist. As for the minor arts, the glass industry (Aenona, Iadera) should be noted.

Salona has precious remains of Christian buildings; notable is the variety of basilical types (with a rectangular hall, with three naves, in the shape of a cross, open-air), the mausoleums with two chambers and high buttresses, the mosaic floors, the elegance of the marble furnishings.

The early Middle Ages preserves the Roman attention to the central plan in many small churches of various appearance (St. Donatus of Zara, Trinity of Split, Holy Cross at Nona); characteristic is the small dome over the central nave of certain others (St. Lawrence of Zara). In the 1200s and 1300s, often through the work of Benedictine monks, a broad series of works in polished stone fuses Apulian, Lombard and Pisan-Luccan modes both in structures (the cathedral of Zara) and in rather sumptuous decorations. In sculpture, some Byzantine influences should be noted, either direct or through Venice.

The Gothic arrives with the advent of the Most Serene Republic and has many examples, especially of a decorative character, in religious and civil buildings. The Renaissance, at first immature (Palace of the Rectors at Ragusa), becomes measured and firm especially through the work of Giorgio Orsini (cathedral of Selenico), who had made his name through personal, luxuriant youthful works, of Andrea Alessi and Niccolò Fiorentino (the Orsini chapel in the cathedral of Traù, which takes up the vault of the temple of Split). Noble are the works of military architecture, to which Sammicheli also set his mark (gate of Zara). Orsini and Luciano da Laurana bring to the peninsula a richness and originality of first-rate architecture.

Orsini, impetuous but elegant, sets the tone for the vigorous sculpture of his time (notably Giovanni Dalmata); masters of Zara clothe their painting in Tuscan modes; clearly Venetian are the minor arts. The contribution of the great Venetian painters of the Renaissance is frequent; the decisive colors of Andrea da Zara (lo Schiavone) should be noted, while other painters gravely echo Venetian modes.

In the 1600s and 1700s architectural activity is more limited; Ragusa is the city richest in works of this period, generally of a Roman character, while sculpture and painting are still Venetian. After the Austrian occupation there is a lack of works of importance, although notable building activity took place in various cities (Split, Zara). The sculptor Ivan Mestrovich is the only great voice of modern art, which for painting has produced a few appreciated nineteenth-century artists. Among men illustrious in other fields, Niccolò Tommaseo should be remembered. - See plate LXXVIII.