There was a slaughter. From 303 a series of edicts from the Roman government rescinded the rights of Christians in the Empire and demanded that everyone sacrifice to the gods. Those that didn’t conform were killed – although this was enforced to different levels in different places. Illyricum and Thrace, the Balkan areas of the …
Roman ruins are everywhere in the Balkans. The Romans, after the Batonnian Uprising, repopulated the province of Illyricum with their own people. The region was first pagan, and St Paul himself preached through Illyricum. By the year 300, 10% of the Roman empire was Christian. In the last gasps of a pagan majority, the …
It would probably straighten up a few things in popular culture if the Balkan contribution to ruling the Roman Empire were more well known. Obviously the Romans were in the Balkans and they ruled the Balkans; they left tons of evidence. But for more than two hundred years the Balkans also ruled the Romans, …
The mightiest empire of antiquity, and arguably the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, was in decline in the third century AD. Not just in decline, but rapidly falling apart at the seams. Barbarians were invading, the peasants were revolting, the currency was debased, the plague surfaced, and Roman rulers were busy amusing themselves …
Empires have to begin and end somewhere, and in Europe the Balkans are the beginning and ending of East and West, and North and South. Within the Balkans, it is Bosnia where everything comes crashing together. As Saint Sava said in the thirteenth century, “…we are doomed by fate to be the East in the …
If a church is corrupt enough and gives little enough care to its adherents, at some point its followers will be tempted to follow something else. This was the case in tenth century Bulgaria, where the Orthodox Church provided a breathtakingly rich pageantry full of jewel encrusted costumes, but gave little care to the …
“At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in the clash of currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side, and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell …
In the Balkans, language rolls off the tongue and defines the culture profoundly. The way people speak is the way they think and also how they act and react. Tradition is key – the way things are done is the way things have always been done. Nothing changes easily. It is little wonder there are …
Josip Broz Tito loved dogs. Although people may not have known that before World War II, they certainly realized it after as photos of him with his omnipresent canine companions circulated throughout Yugoslavia and the world. And if it weren’t for a dog, Yugoslavia may never have existed. Or, at least, not the Yugoslavia that …
Throughout Europe the Middle Ages are synonymous with kings and courts and conquest. Every king in the medieval history of Great Britain was proven on the battlefield. Charlemagne rode over huge swathes of continental Europe and added it to his empire – including parts of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia. Frederick I Barbarossa fought through no …
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