Abstract | Ovaj rad se bavi istraživanjem slike gradskog prostora Dubrovnika u narativnim vrelima i načinima na koji se ona stvarala. Iako se često shvaća kao marginalna povijesna kategorija, prostor je gotovo nemoguće izostaviti i zanemariti u humanističkim znanostima, a pogotovo u radovima usredotočenima na istraživanje grada i urbane povijesti. Podaci o realnom i fiktivnom gradskom prostoru kasnosrednjovjekovnog i ranonovovjekovnog Dubrovnika raznorodni su i razasuti u raznim vrelima. Odabirom narativnih djela ovo istraživanje želi ponuditi odgovor na pitanje kako se konstruirala slika gradskog prostora Dubrovnika od polovice 15. stoljeća do potresa 1667. godine. Brojni autori tog razdoblja i njihova djela, međusobno različiti po mnogim značajkama, važne su sastavnice urbane memorije o Gradu koje nam mogu pomoći da premostimo nedostatak drugih vrela u istraživanju slike gradskog prostora. Temeljna razdjelnica koja se postavlja ovim radom je ona između domaćih i stranih autora, odnosno između pogleda iznutra i izvana. Upravo ta dva različita pogleda te posljedično dvije različite slike tvore cjelinu koja otkriva zajedničke motive te pomaže u rasvjetljivanju njihovog međusobnog odnosa, odnosa s prethodnicima i značenje te slike u širem jadranskom i mediteranskom kontekstu. |
Abstract (english) | This work tackles the image of urban space of Dubrovnik in narrative sources and methods of its creation. Although it is very often regarded as a marginal historical category, the space can hardly be excluded and neglected in humanistic disciplines, especially in works concentrated on research of urban history. The spatial turn in seventies and eighties of 20th century marked the effort to bridge deficiencies caused by the neglect of space in humanistic researches, and thus in urban history. Data on the real and fictional urban space of late medieval and early modern Dubrovnik are diverse and scattered in various sources. By selecting narrative works, this research seeks to offer an answer to the question of how the image of the Dubrovnik’s urban space was constructed from the middle of the 15th century until the earthquake in 1667. Numerous authors of that period and their works, differing in many respects, are important components of urban memory that can help us overcome the lack of other sources in researching the image of city space. The basic dividing line set by this work is the one between local and foreign authors i.e., between inside and outside views. It is these two different views and consequently two different images that form a whole that reveals common motives and helps to shed light on their mutual connections, relationship with predecessors and the meaning of this image in the wider Adriatic and Mediterranean context.
To achieve these goals, it was necessary to make an introduction presenting the development of urban space before the middle of the 15th century i.e., before the research period in order to establish continuity with later periods. It is even more necessary if we consider the complicated circumstances of that period which saw many conflicts between Venetia, Byzantine Empire and Croatian Kingdom and later with Kingdom of Hungary and Ottoman Empire. The Dubrovnik area was the last Byzantine-controlled area in the Adriatic. This historical fact left very important cultural impact which strongly reflects in various social aspects. After the end of the Fourth Crusade, Dubrovnik came under the Venetian rule which coincided with the strong development of the city in the 13th century, primarily reflecting in enacting of the Dubrovnik Statute in 1272. This document, among other things, determined the future appearance of the city, regulating its streets, house building, utility infrastructure and spatial relations in general. This chapter also tackles the mentions of Dubrovnik in the works from late antiquity to the 15th century. Among these, there are some works which have been extensively analysed and researched e.g., De administrando imperio of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and Thomas the Archdeacon’s Historia Salonitana, and other which went under the radar e.g., some Byzantine provenance works, Chronicon Salernitanum, Gesta
Roberti Wiscardi and others. Since these works are necessarily a reflection of external circumstances, they also found their echo in later works which are the main subject of this research.
The next chapter discusses the seemingly familiar and well researched field, i.e., local narrative sources. Since historical researches are most often focused on the content, they do not discuss non-mentioned or omitted subjects and associated reasons of such “silence”, this chapter aims to respond to the question of why local sources are so silent when it comes to city space. The main reason lies in the fact that space is a cultural code seen by authors as familiar one, and because of that there is no reason to describe it in details. The second associated reason is that all important buildings and spaces were described by those same authors in parts of their works dealing with previous periods, namely periods when those very buildings had been constructed or when those spaces had been formed. So, if for example an author offered to its readers a data on construction of some specific building, there was no need to repeat it again, but it is rather used as a kind of spatial marker to describe some contemporary event. But this lack of specific information and data should be bridged by the comparison with sources of different provenance.
Thus, the next chapter is dedicated to foreign sources primarily produced by pilgrims to the Holy Land, Venetian officials and other travellers that visited and described Dubrovnik. These sources are extremely heterogeneous from various angles but are still united by the same thread i.e., the act of travelling and lack of reference to local sources. They are often very short records which offer limited data and because it was necessary to analyse a huge number of them in order to create a complete image. Perhaps, more than in other works, intertextual relations are recognized in these sources. With the example of pilgrimage accounts, as central sources discussed in this chapter, it is possible to see to which extent authors were prone to content takeover. Sometimes it is very easy to detect identical chapters in various accounts. Such archetypic examples regard both descriptions of buildings and descriptions of events. Tracing their origin leads us to Venice i.e., the starting point of all voyages. But of same importance is the fact that ships which were taking pilgrims to Holy Land were also mostly Venetians and equipped with venetian staff. It is this very strong venetian influence that gave an origin to a great number of data but also a kind of backup to some pieces of information that perhaps were not interesting to travellers or which were poorly understood by them. So, in these situations it was very easy for them to simply take over existing data. But all of the aforementioned does not diminish their value as exceptional historiography sources. At the end of this chapter, I tried to re-discuss and unscramble the question of genre which followed me through the entire work. Although it did not seem so at first, this issue proved to be crucial to understanding the image of space. |