THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
All rights reserved
THE REPUBLIC
OF
RAGUSA
AN EPISODE OF THE
TURKISH CONQUEST
By LUIGI VILLARI
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
By WILLIAM HULTON
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
MCMIV
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
PREFATORY NOTE
VARIOUS accounts of Dalmatia have been writtenin English, many of which include a historicalsurvey of Ragusa; but the only special historiesof the town itself are in German or Italian, and eventhose are not by any means complete. The best is undoubtedlyProfessor Gelcich’s little book, Dello SviluppoCivile di Ragusa, a perfect mine of valuable information,of which I have availed myself largely in the presentvolume. But it deals principally with the internaldevelopment, the archeology, and the architecture ofthe town, and does not dwell on its internationalposition, which for foreign readers is its most importantaspect. Engel’s Geschichte des Freystaates Ragusais useful and fairly accurate, but it is somewhat dry,and more in the nature of a chronicle of events thana real history. The works of the local historians andchroniclers, such as Resti, Ragnina, Luccari, Gondola,and others, although they contain some interestingdetails and picturesque descriptions, traditions, &c.,are written without a notion of historical accuracy,and are inspired by a strong bias which admits nofacts unfavourable to Ragusa. That of the Tuscan,Razzi, is more reliable, but by no means wholly to bedepended on, and it only brings us down to the endviof the sixteenth century. The safest guide to thesubject is to be found in the original records of thetown, a large portion of which have been publishedby the South-Slavonic Academy of Agram, by theHungarian Academy, and various other collections ofdocuments on the history of the Southern Slaves, suchas Miklosich’s Monumenta Serbica, Marin Sanudo, theworks of Theiner, Počić, Farlati, &c. The modernworks on the history of Ragusa of which I have madethe most use, besides the above-mentioned work ofProfessor Gelcich, are the same author’s pamphlets, LaZedda and I Conti di Tuhelj; T. Graham Jackson’sDalmatia for the chapters on Ragusan architecture;Paul Pisani’s Num Ragusini, &c., for the Venetian period,and his large work La Dalmatie de 1797 à 1815 for theend of the Republic; Klaić’s Geschichte Bosniens for therelations between Ragusa and Bosnia; Heyd’s Histoire duCommerce du Lévant and Professor Jireček’s Handelsstrassenund Bergwerke for Ragusa’s commercial development;Horatio Brown’s Venice for Venetian history; and Puipinand Spasowicz’ history of Slavonic literature. A fullerlist of authorities consulted is appended.
I must express my especial indebtedness to Professor