Francesco Borri - White Croatia and the arrival of theCroats: an interpretation of ConstantinePorphyrogenitus on the oldestDalmatian history

White Croatia and the arrival of theCroats: an interpretation of Constantine

Porphyrogenitus on the oldestDalmatian historyemed_318 204..231

Francesco Borri

The article examines Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ (913–59) witness on thearrival of the Croats in Dalmatia during the seventh century. The emperor’snarrative proposes a migration from a land called White Croatia, locatedsomewhere in central Europe, and a battle with the Avars in order to securetheir new territory. The migration, although becoming an important elementin nationalist thought, is not confirmed by any other source, neither contem-porary, nor later, being reported only by Constantine. I propose that themigration was instead a literary pattern deployed by the emperor in order toexplain the complex developments which brought a new elite, called Croats,to a leading position in tenth-century Dalmatia.

The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913–59) wasthe first Greek author to write about the Croats.1 The population was

* The material for this article was collected thanks to a grant offered by the Ca’ Foscari Universityof Venice during the academic year 2008/9, when I worked as a research assistant with StefanoGasparri. The opportunity to return to this topic was provided by a sponsored visit to theÖsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in the autumn of 2009, when I collaborated onthe Wittgenstein Projekt 2005–2010, Ethnische Identitäten im frühmittelalterlichen Europa,coordinated by Walter Pohl. I would like to express my gratitude to these host institutions.Further thanks go to Florin Curta, Ewald Kislinger and Herwig Wolfram, who patiently helpedme to make my own mind clear about the ideas summarized here. I would also like to thankRichard Corradini, Max Diesenberger, Stergios Laitsos, Stefano Petrungaro, MariannePollheimer and Roland Steinacher.

1 On the character and the work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus: A. Toynbee, ConstantinePorphyrogenitus and his World (New York and Toronto, 1973), especially on the De AdministradoImperio and Constantine’s literary production pp. 575–612. Also I. Ševcenko, ‘Re-readingConstantine Porphyrogenitus’, in J. Shepard and S. Franklin (eds), Byzantine Diplomacy: Paperfrom the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990, Societyfor the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, Publications 1 (Aldershot, 1992), pp. 167–95. On thevery subject here discussed see also D. Dzino, Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat (Leiden andBoston, 2010); and T. Živkovic, ‘Sources de Constantin VII Porphyrogénète concernant le passé

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previously unknown in the Byzantine world and the only witnesses to aso-called group settled in Dalmatia are, until the tenth century, a fewLatin documents whose reliability has long been debated.2

The emperor described the Croats on different occasions: they arementioned very briefly in the Life of Basil, which constitutes the fifthbook of the biographical collection called Theophanes Continuatus;3

Croatian archons are listed among the many Barbarian chieftains receiv-ing Byzantine tribute in the forty-eighth chapter of the second book ofthe text On the Ceremonies;4 and, finally and most important, Croats arethe subject of lengthy chapters in On the Administration of the Empire(De Administrando Imperio, henceforth DAI).5

In the Life of Basil the major concern was to justify the murder ofEmperor Michael III (842–67) perpetrated by Constantine’s grandfa-ther Basil I (867–86), painting the former as a cruel drunk, the sum ofevery depravity, and praising the latter as a shining holy man. Themodel for the biography may have been the lost Life of Augustus,written by Plutarch (in order to create a comparison between Basil/Augustus and Michael III/Marc Anthony), or the encomium in honourof the same emperor composed by Nicholas of Damascus.6 In the Life

le plus ancient des Serbes et de Croates’, Byzantina Symmeikta 20 (2010), pp. 11–37, which,unfortunately, was published too late for me to access.

2 See note 71. For an analysis of the sources dealing with the oldest Croatian history J.V.A. Fine,When Ethnicity did not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist Croatia,Dalmatia and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods (Ann Arbor, 2006), pp. 27–66.

3 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Vita Basili, cc. 52, 54, ed. I. Bekker, Theophanes Continuatus,Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 33 (Bonn, 1838), pp. 211–353, at pp. 288, 291. On thetext see A. Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature II (850–1000), ed. C. Angelidi, Institute forByzantine Research 4 (Athens, 2006), pp. 137–44; Gy. Moravcsik, ‘Sagen und Legenden überKaiser Basileios I’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers [hereafter DOP] 15 (1961), pp. 59–132.

4 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae II.48, ed. J.J. Reiske, ConstantiniPorphyrogenneti Imperatoris Constantinopolitani Libri Dvo De Cerimoniis Avlae Byzantinae, 2vols (Leipzig, 1751–4), II, p. 691. Kazhdan, A History, p. 135; É. Malamut, ‘Les adresses auxprinces des pays slaves du sud dans le Livre des cérémonies, II, 48: interprétation’, Travaux &Mémoires 13 (2000), pp. 595–615. See also the monographic part of volume 13 of Travaux &Mémoires which is entirely dedicated to the Book of Ceremonies. Finally, J. Ferluga, ‘Archon. EinBeitrag zur Untersuchung der südslawischen Herrschertitel im 9. und 10. Jahrhundert imLichte der byzantinischen Quellen’, in N. Kamp and J. Wollasch (eds), Tradition als historischeKraft (Berlin and New York, 1982), pp. 254–66.

5 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio [hereafter DAI], ed. G. Moravcsik,trans. J.H. Jenkins, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae [hereafter CFHB] 1 (Washington,DC, 1967) and the classic commentary R.J.H. Jenkins (ed.), DAI II: Commentary [hereafter DAIII] (London, 1962). See also J.B. Bury, ‘The Treatise De administrando imperio’, ByzantinischeZeitschrift [hereafter BZ] 15 (1906), pp. 517–77; B. Beaud, ‘Le savoir et le monarque: le traité surles nations de l’empereur byzantine Constantin VII Porphyrogénète’, Annales: ESC 45 (1990), pp.551–64; and J. Signes Codoñer, ‘Los eslavos en las fuentes bizantinas de los siglos IX–X: el Deadministrado imperio de Constantino VII Porfirogéneto’, in J.A. Álvarez and P. Núñez, Lacristianización de los eslavos = Ilu: Revista de ciencias de las religions, Anejos 13 (2004), pp. 115–31.

6 On the historical background E. Kislinger, ‘Eudokia Ingerina, Basileios I. und Michael III.’,Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 33 (1983), pp. 119–136. On the Life see R.J.H. Jenkins,‘The Classical Background of the Scriptores post Theophanem’, DOP 8 (1954), pp. 11–30;

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of Basil the Croats are mentioned twice: first, they are noted among theScythian populations of Dalmatia and Pannonia escaping imperialauthority due to the incompetence of Michael (it is not clear if thesecond or third emperor of this name was originally meant),7 and, afterthat, among those who, recognizing Basil’s might, accepted again Byz-antine lordship.8 This information is also reported in the DAI, with themajor difference that instead of being Scythians, the DAI describes theCroats as Slavic.9

Scythians were, from Herodotus’ days, the nomads of north-easternEurope, embodying the other in the ancient Greek world.10 The nameenjoyed a long history: late Roman authors, like Procopius, Agathias,Theophylactus Simocatta and Maurice, still considered Steppenvölker likeHungarians, Turks, Avars and Huns part of the Scythian family. Procop-ius and Agathias used the label Scythians to point out the many tribalgroups living in the vast regions beyond the Meotis Moors (the Sea of

Ševecenko, ‘Re-reading’. See also P.J. Alexander, ‘Secular Biography in Byzantium’, Speculum 15(1940), pp. 194–209, who considers the Life of Basil as the first lay biography in Byzantium.Moreover R.J.H. Jenkins, ‘Constantine VII’s Portrait of Michael III’, Bulletin de la Classe desLettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Académie Royale de Belgique 34 (1948), pp. 71–7, andthe criticism contained in R. Scott, ‘The Classical Tradition in Byzantine Historiography’, inM. Mullet and R. Scott (eds), Byzantium and the Classical Tradition, University of BirminghamThirteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (Birmingham, 1981), pp. 61–74, particu-larly pp. 70–1. Also, more recently, M. Gallina, ‘La diffamazione al potere: l’invettiva controMichele III nella Vita Basili di Costantino VII’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per ilMedioevo 112 (2010), pp. 57–89. On emperors labelled as heavy drinkers, M. Humphries, ‘TheLexicon of Abuse: Drunkenness and Political Illegitimacy in the Late Roman World’, in G.Halsall (ed.), Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cam-bridge, 2005), pp. 75–88.

7 The loss of Byzantine Dalmatia is also mentioned in DAI, c. 29, p. 124. The confusionoriginated from the order of composition of the two works: J. Signes Codoner, El periodo delsegundo iconoclasmo en Theophanes Continuatus: Análisis y comentario de los tres primeroslibros de la crónica, Classical and Byzantine Monographs 33 (Amsterdam, 1995), pp. 349,353–5.

8 Vita Basilii, cc. 52, 54, ed. Bekker, pp. 288, 291.9 Vita Basilii, c. 52, ed. Bekker, p. 288: ‘kaì των� �ν Παννον α�� kaì Δαλματ α�� kaì των�

� �π κεινα to�twn diakeim�nwn Σκυθων� , �ρwb�toi jhmì kaì S�ρbloi καΖαχλουμο Τε βουνιωταρ �� te κα Καναλ ται κα Διοκλητιανο κα � �Ρεντανο ’.

10 On nomads in Greek literature, F. Hartog, Le miroir d’Hérodote: Essai sur la représentation del’autre (Paris, 1980); also H. Kothe, ‘Der Skythenbegriff bei Herodot’, Klio 51 (1969), pp. 15–88and W. Pohl, ‘Die Rolle der Steppenvölker im frühmittelalterlichen Europa’, in R. Zehetmayer(ed.), Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen: Niederösterreich an der Wende vom 9. zum10. Jahrhundert = Mitteilungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Landesarchiv 13 (2008), pp.92–102. On the Scythians in Byzantine historiography: O. Pritsak, ‘Scythians’, in A. Kazhdan(ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols (Oxford and New York, 1991), III, pp. 1857–8;and the entry H. Göckenjan, ‘Skythen, Skythien’, in Lexicon des Mittelalters 7 (1995), cols1999–2000. Finally E. Malamut, ‘L’image byzantine des Petchénègues’, BZ 88 (1995), pp.105–47; Gy. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, Berliner Byzantinistische Arbeiten [hereafter BBA]10–11, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Berlin, 1983), II, pp. 279–83. On Byzantine ethnography: M. Maas,‘Ethnography’, in G.W. Bowersock, P. Brown and O. Grabar (eds), Late Antiquity: A Guide tothe Post Classical World (Cambridge, MA and London, 1999), pp. 435–6.

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Azov);11 and, according to Theophylactus and Maurice, the Avars werealso among them. In the Strategikon, moreover, Slav mildness was con-trasted with the wildness of the Scythians, the empire’s most fearsomeenemies.12 It is possible that Constantine Porphyrogenitus, following thegenerally positive view of the Croats offered in the DAI, avoided men-tioning their Scythian background, but it seems clear that, from theByzantine perspective, the Croats were indeed Scythians. John Scylitzes,quoting the Life of Basil and the Book of the Ceremonies in the eleventhcentury, described them as a minor Scythian group, deserving just afew lines.13

The DAI is the most important text for the study of early medievalDalmatia, offering us rich information about the earliest Croatian his-tory.14 The emperor dealt with Croatia contradictorily, principally inChapters 29 to 31, part of the unitary section (formed by Chapters 29to 36) dedicated to the settlement of the Balkans. These chapters havebeen the subject of great interest to scholars: they were edited separatelyfrom the rest of the DAI and have been commented on numeroustimes.15 More generally, the text is vital to the study of south-eastern

11 Procopius of Cesarea, Bella VIII.5–6, ed. J. Haury and G. Wirth, Procopi Cesarensis OperaOmnia, 4 vols (Suttgart, 1962–4), I–II, II, pp. 503–15; Agathias, Historiae V.11, ed. J.D. Frendo,CFHB 2 (Berlin and New York, 1975), pp. 176–7.

12 Theophylactus Simocatta, Historia, ed. C. de Boor and P. Wirth (Stuttgart, 1972), passim, trans.M. Whitby, The History of Theophylact Simocatta (Oxford, 1986). H.W. Haussig, ‘Theophylak-tos Exkurs über die skythischen Völker’, Byzantion 22 (1953), pp. 275–462. Maurice, StrategikonIV.2, XI.2, ed. and [German] trans. G.T. Dennis and E. Gamillscheg, Das Strategikon desMaurikios, CFHB 17 (Vienna, 1981), pp. 194, 360–8, trans. G.T. Dennis, Maurice’s Strategikon:Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy (Philadephia, 1984). J. Wiita, The Ethnika in ByzantineMilitary Treatises, Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota (1977).

13 John Scylitzes, Synopsis Historiarum, ed. I. Thurn, CFHB 5 (Berlin, 1973), pp. 145–7, 222, 365.14 On the legends of origin see: H. Wolfram, Gotische Studien: Volk und Herrschaft im frühen

Mittelalter (Munich, 2005), pp. 207–24; H. Wolfram, W. Pohl, H.H. Anton, I. Wood and M.Becher, ‘Origo gentis’, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde [hereafter RGA] 22 (2003),pp. 174–210. Challenging the very existence of a literary genre called origo gentis, W. Goffart,‘Two Notes on Germanic Antiquity Today’, Traditio 50 (1995), pp. 9–30. More recently, A.Plassmann, Origo gentis. Identitäts- und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh- und hochmittelalterlichenHerkunftserzählungen, Orbis mediaevalis, Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters 7 (Berlin, 2006),pp. 11–35.

15 The most recent commentary is M. Eggers, ‘Das De administrando imperio des KaisersKonstantinos VII. Porphyrogennetos und die historisch-politische Situation Südosteuropasim 9. und 10. Jahrhundert’, Ostkirchliche Studien 56 (2007), pp. 15–101; older ones are:F. Dvorník in DAI II, pp. 93–146 and A. Pavic, Cara Konstantina VII Porfirogenita Deadministrando imperio glave 29–36 [The Chapters 29–36 of the De Administrando Imperio ofEmperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus] (Zagreb, 1906). Chapters 29 to 36 have been also sepa-rately edited: Documenta Historiae Chroaticae periodum antiquam illustrantia, ed. F. Racki,Monumenta spectantia historia Slavorum Meridionalium 7 (Zagreb, 1877), pp. 264–419;The Early History of the Slavonic Settlements in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Serbia, ed. J.B. Bury,Texts for Students 18 (London and New York, 1920). For a discussion of ConstantinePorphyrogenitus’ witness: N. Budak, ‘Identities in Early Medieval Dalmatia (Seventh–Eleventh Centuries)’, in I. Garipzanov, P. Geary and P. Urbanczyk (eds), Franks,Northmen and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, Cursor Mundi



Europe, being virtually the only source for many places and periods.The significance of the DAI is, nevertheless, comparable with its diffi-culty, and its nature is hard to describe. The DAI was a sort of usermanual for the empire, dedicated by Constantine Porphyrogenitus tohis son Romanus II (959–63), describing the many neighbouringpeoples of Byzantium and the way to deal with them. The text containshighly heterogeneous information (most likely coming from files anddossiers lost to us), long quotations of other works, legendary elements,and a work of interpretation and re-edition by the emperor himself.Romily Jenkins thought that the composition of the DAI should beunderstood in two periods, and, more recently, James Howard-Johnston proposed that the text was commissioned by Leo VI (886–912) and that only later his porphyrogenite son brought it personally toits final form, because ‘no imperial secretary or bureaucrat would havedared to carry out the task of gathering and editing material so incom-petently’.16 The treatise commissioned by Leo VI, was, supposedly,more agile and focused, dealing with the diplomacy pertaining to fourfundamental areas for the empire: southern Italy, Armenia and westernCaucasus, the Pontic steppes, and the Balkans. It is striking that majorpowers like the Bulgars or the Chazars were openly avoided, while theprincipal concern was the many minor groups surrounding them.17

Howard-Johnston’s hypothesis is appealing: the greater part of theinformation contained in the DAI ends indeed at the beginning of thetenth century, but some of the witnesses concerning the Croats’ historyoriginate from a period closer to Constantine’s. Starting from Howard-Johnston’s ideas, therefore, I shall suggest that the information concerningthe Croats (or at least part of it) was an addition to an already existingdossier compiled in the age of Leo. The idea is not completely new: alreadyJohn Bury proposed, on grounds of style and content, that Chapter 30,introduced by an unusual opening line, was subsequent to the firstredaction of the treatise, but this thesis did not receive universal agree-ment.18 Elements contained in all the chapters twenty-nine to thirty-one

5 (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 223–41; J.V.A. Fine, ‘Croats and Slavs: Theories about the HistoricalCircumstances of the Croats’ Appearance in the Balkans’, Byzantinische Forschungen 26(2000), pp. 205–18.

16 J. Howard-Johnston, ‘The De administrando imperio: A Re-examination of the Text and aRe-evaluation of its Evidence about the Rus’, in M. Kazanski, A. Nercessian and C. Zuckerman(eds), Les centres proto-urbains russes entre Scandinavie, Byzance et Orient, Réalités Byzantines 7(Paris, 2000), pp. 301–36, the quotation from p. 308. For Jenkins’s ideas: DAI II, pp. 1–8. Theauthorship of Constantine (and not of one of his employees) was already proposed by Bury,‘The Treatise’, pp. 518–19.

17 Bury, ‘The Treatise’, p. 575; Howard-Johnston, ‘The De administrando imperio’, p. 307.18 Bury, ‘The Treatise’, pp. 523–5. For a critic: B. Grafenauer, ‘Prilog kritici izvještaja Konstantina

Porfirogeneta o doseljenju Hrvata [Critical Contribution on Constantine Porphyrogenitus’

208 Francesco Borri


are, however, later than Leo VI’s reign, such as the mention of Otto I (whobecame king in 936) in the description of White Croatia, or the attemptedBulgar invasion of Dalmatia.19 The witness concerning the Croats, or atleast a part of it, therefore, should be dated to Constantine’s reign.

The emperor collected two versions of the Croatian Wanderung forwhich historiography has found two different origins: the first was sup-posedly an indigenous tribal saga, the second one the Byzantine interpre-tatio of the same events. Chapter 30, where there is no Byzantine mediationin the Croatian settlement of Dalmatia (and which Bury thought to be alater interpolation), was read as a transcription of ancestral Croatiantraditions.20 This legendary, but ‘national’ character, was supposed to grantmajor reliability to this short account owing to the lack of imperialinterpretation and interpolations: the story was believed the more trust-worthy witness to the Croats’ earliest history and to their Landnahme.21

The anthroponyms and the place names, surviving together with thetradition of migration, were intended as traces of the ancestral memoriesaround which Croatian identity gathered, preserved by a Traditionskern(the Croatian elite) surviving until Constantine’s day, to use the conceptsdeveloped by Reinhard Wenskus.22 Nevertheless, there are clear method-ological limitations in believing one tradition to be true and dismissinganother as a literary creation, and it has not been sufficiently considered

Witness on the Migration of the Croats]’, Historijski Zbornik 5 (1952), pp. 1–52, here pp. 18–20,who noted how the introduction ’Ist�on �τι is absent in many chapters of the DAI and notjust from the thirtieth as instead suggested by John Bury.

19 DAI, cc. 30, 32, pp. 142, 157.20 Bury, ‘The Treatise’, pp. 523–5; F. Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the

Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 64–7. Curta, starting from Bury’s idea,sees Chapter 30 as a much later interpolation, compiled by a different author after the emperor’sdeath (959). The idea that Chapter 30 was not written by Constantine may also be found in M.Loncar, ‘O Porfirogenetovoj Dalmaciji [Concerning Porphyrogenitus’ Dalmatia]’, Diadora 12(1990), pp. 391–400. For a summary of the debate see L. Margetic, Dolazak Hrvata. Ankunft derKroaten, Biblioteka Znanstvenih Djela 119 (Split, 2001) and M. Loncar, ‘Porfirogenetova seobaHrvata pred sudom novije literature [The Croat Migration of Porphyrogenitus in RecentLiterary Discussion]’, Diadora 14 (1992), pp. 375–448.

21 Grafenauer, ‘Prilog’; Lj. Hauptmann, ‘Seoba Hrvata i Srba [The Migration of the Serbs and theCroats]’, Jugoslovenski istoriski casopis 3 (1937), pp. 30–61. For a discussion of the romantic andnationalistic concept of Landnahme: R. Corradini, ‘Landnahme’, RGA 17 (2001), pp. 602–11.

22 R. Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: Das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen Gentes(Cologn and Graz, 1961). On Reinhard Weskus see H. Wolfram, ‘Terminologisches’, inNomen et Fraternitas: Festschrift for Dieter Geuenich on his 65 th Birthday, U. Ludwig and Th.Schilp (eds), Ergänzungsbände zum RGA 62 (Berlin and New York, 2008), pp. 787–802; S.Gasparri, ‘Tardoantico e alto Medioevo: metodologie di ricerca e modelli interpretativi’, in S.Carocci (ed.), Il Medioevo (secoli V–XV) VIII: Popoli, poteri, dinamiche (Rome, 2006), pp.27–61. For a critic of Wenskus, see A.C. Murray, ‘Reinhard Wenskus on “Ethnogenesis”,Ethnicity, and the Origin of the Franks’, in A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity: CriticalApproaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 1 (Turn-hout, 2002), pp. 39–68, but also the response, W. Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition:A Response’, in ibid., pp. 221–40.



that the two traditions, although in manifest contradiction to one another,were collected in the same text, apparently following a clear intention.23

Chapter 29 has two narrative focuses: the conquest of Salona (todaySolin, a few kilometres north of Split) and the siege of Bari of 871.Constantine wrote the earliest account of Salona’s fall, while a secondone, richer, but largely different, survives in the chronicle of ThomasArchdeacon of Split (1200–68).24 The emperor described the vastnessof Dalmatia, extending as far as the Danube, a land populated by�Ρωμανοι� ; beyond the river dwelled the Avars who eventually attackedthe �Ρωμανοι� , conquering Dalmatia. The region was also inhabited by,among others, Croats, who, since the time of Heraclius (610–41), weresubjects of the empire, even if authority over them lapsed during thedisastrous reign of Michael II (820–9).

The subsequent chapter, the thirtieth, supposedly echoes the ancestralCroatian legends. Here Dalmatia was inhabited by Delmatino� whoprovoked the Avars, causing their bitter reaction. After describing theharsh defeat of the Delmatino� and the consequent fall of Salona,Constantine adds:

But the Croats at that time were dwelling beyond Bavaria, where theBelocroats are now. From them split off a family of five brothersKloukas and Lebelos and Kosentzis and Mouchlo and Chrobatos andtwo sisters: Tuga and Buga, who came with their folk in Dalmatia andfound the Avars in possession of that land. After they had fought oneanother for some years, the Croats prevailed and killed some of theAvars and the remainder they compelled to be subject to them.(Jenkins’ translation)25

23 For a Frankish comparison see H. Reimitz, ‘Die Konkurrenz der Ursprünge in der fränkischenHistoriographie’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: Von der Bedeutung des frühenMittelalters, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters [hereafter FGM] 8 (Vienna, 2004),pp. 191–209; idem, ‘The Art of Truth. Historiography and Identity in the Frankish World’, inR. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Pössel and P. Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early MiddleAges, FGM 12 (Vienna, 2006), pp. 87–104. Also W. Pohl, ‘Identität und Widerspruch: Gedan-ken zu einer Sinngeschichte des Frühmittelalters’, in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen, pp. 23–35.

24 Thomas Archdeacon, Historia Salonitana 7–10, ed. O. Peric, trans. D. Karbic, M. Matijevic-Sokol and J.R. Sweeney, Archdeacon Thomas of Split, History of the Bishops of Salona and Split,Central European Medieval Texts 4 (Budapest and New York, 2006), pp. 32–52.

25 DAI, c. 30, p. 142: ‘Ο δ� �ρwb�toi ��κατ κουν τηνικαυτα� � κε θεν �agibaρe�aς,�νθα � ισ ν �ρ �τ ως ο �elocρwb�toi. ��a δ� γενε� διαχω ισθε σαρ �ξ �υτων� ,�γουν � �δελφο p�nte, � te Κλουκας� κα � Lóbeloς κα � �os�ntzhς κα �Μουχλ� κα � �ρwb�toς κα � δελφα d�o, � Τουγ� κα � �oug�, μετ� του�λαου� α των� � �λθον ε ς� Delmat�an, κα ε ον�ρ το ς� � ρΑβα εις kat�contaς τ ν�toia�thnγην� .’ All the names not attested in the rest of the surviving evidence: P.M. Fraser andE. Matthews (eds), A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names IV: Macedonia, Thrace, Northern Regionsof the Black Sea (Oxford, 2005); L. Zgusta, Die Personennamen griechischer Städteder nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste: die ethnischen Verhältnisse, namentlich das Verhältnisder Skythen und Sarmaten, im Lichte der Namenforschung, Ceskoslovenská akademie ved.

210 Francesco Borri


Of the Croats who came to Dalmatia, some moved to Illyricum andPannonia. Constantine’s account describes the war between the Franksand Croats and lists the many županie into which Croatia was divided.26

In Chapter 31 the Croats are the descendants of the White Croats wholive beyond �ouρk�a (Hungary) and are neighbours of the unbaptizedSerbs. The Croats asked Emperor Heraclius for protection and came toDalmatia, fighting and defeating the Avars; at that time their ruler wasthe father of Porgas. Under Porgas, who succeeded his parent to thethrone, the Croats were baptized by men whom the emperor summonedfrom Rome.27

These are the chapters describing the Croatian migration and thehuman geography of Dalmatia. The migration described in Chapter 30 isnot clearly datable, but has a post quem in the destruction of Salona. InChapter 31, however, we can date the settlement of Dalmatia to the yearsof Heraclius (610–41): here the memory of the ruler leading the migrationis lost (he is just named Porgas’ father), but the name of the leader beingbaptized does survive.28 The Byzantine interpretatio, as it is read, did notjust give Byzantium a greater centrality, thanks to Heraclius’ role in theCroatian settlement, but offered diverging elements and characters,making us question the nature of Constantine’s sources. The narrative, infact, mixes rather concrete matters, such as the description of the manyžupanie or the names of the seven siblings, with largely fantastical ones.Good examples would be the anecdote concerning the disguises used bythe Avars to conquer Salona, somewhat echoing the famous episode inthe Trojan War, and the Franks taking the children of the Croats to feed

Monografie orientálního ústavu 16 (Prague, 1955). The names of the seven siblings have beeninterpreted as the transformation of hydronyms, useful for the understanding of the extensionof White Croatia: H. Grégoire, ‘L’Origine et le nom des Croates et des Serbes’, Byzantion 17(1944–5), pp. 88–118. Arthur Evans interpreted the two sisters’ names as indicating contrastingemotions, see A.J. Evans, Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot During the Insurrection,August and September 1875 (London, 1877; repr. New York, 2005), p. XX, n. 2: ‘and Chrovat twosisters bear the Slavonic names of “Joy” and “Sorrow”. The names are perhaps allegorical ofthe gradual character of their conquest.’

26 Župan is the title, similar to dux, in eastern and central Europe, first attested in 777. See P. Bartl,‘Župan’, in E. Hösch, K. Nehring and H. Sundhaussen (eds), Lexikon zur Geschichte Südos-teuropas [hereafter LzGS] (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2004), pp. 765–6; M. Blagojevic andL. Steindorff, ‘Župan’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters 9 (1998), pp. 709–10; M. Hardt, ‘Der Supan:Ein Forschungsbericht’, Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 39 (1990), pp. 161–71; Moravcsik, Byzanti-noturcica, II, pp. 131–2.

27 F. Curta, ‘Emperor Heraclius and the Conversion of the Croats and the Serbs’, in T. Stepanovand G. Kazakov (eds), Medieval Christianitas. Different Regions, ‘Faces’, Approaches = Mediae-valia Christiana 3 (2010), pp. 121–38.

28 DAI, c. 32, p. 148: ‘tòn pat�ρa του� Πο γαρ � ’. Concerning this see the considerations of S.Esders, ‘Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitung. Religion, Ethnizität und politische Integration amRande des oströmischen Imperium (4.–7. Jh.)’, in W. Huschner and F. Rexroth (eds), GestifteteZukunft im mittelalterlichen Europa. Festschrift für Michael Borgolte zum 60. Geburtstag (Berlin,2008), pp. 3–28, at 18–25.



to their dogs, which is similar to the story recounted by AmmianusMarcellinus about the Goths, in the prelude to the battle of Adrianopolis(378), being forced to sell their children in order to buy dog meat fromthe Franks.29

Despite the text’s many incongruities, we can establish that Constantinedescribed a Great Croatia (� meg�lh �ρwbat�a) or a White Croatia(� � ρσπ η �ρwbat�a) as the place from which the Croats, led by sevensiblings or by the father of Porgas, began their journey, apparently in thefirst half of the seventh century. The idea of a migration from a so-calledland does not appear in the chronicles of Thomas Archdeacon or the Priestof Duklja, who wrote many centuries after Constantine (between thetwelfth and the thirteenth centuries), but which are normally relied on assources for the earliest history of Dalmatia. Owing to the nature of theDAI, Constantine’s witness was not known. The text was of a confidentialcharacter and survived only in four manuscripts, the oldest dating to theend of the eleventh century (Parisinus graecus 2009, the other three copiesare from the sixteenth century). Although the text’s tradition cannot, byitself, prove poor diffusion, the DAI was practically unknown to theauthors writing after Constantine Porphyrogenitus, with the possibleexception of twelfth-century writers and of a copy circulating in fifteenth-century Dubrovnik/Ragusa.30

The idea of a Croatian migration found its place in historical debateonly after the first edition and Latin translation of the DAI in 1611, byJohannes van Meurs.31 Despite the many and great inconsistencies of theDAI with the other sources we possess, Constantine’s narrative was, afterthis date, considered the most reliable, bringing a re-discovery of the earlymedieval past to the seventeenth century. From this time on the treatiseof the emperor enjoyed great popularity in Croatia, reaching its heightduring the national debate at the end of the nineteenth century, when itseemed to offer an early and prestigious origin for the Croatian peopleable to challenge rising Hungarian nationalism.32

29 On the Barbarians in disguise see DAI, cc. 29, 30, pp. 124, 140–2; Ševcenko, ‘Re-reading’, p. 192.On Franks feeding their dogs with Croatian children see DAI, c. 30, pp. 140–2; AmmianusMarcellinus, Res Gestae XXXI.5, V–VIII.

30 B. Mondrain, ‘La lecture du De administrando imperio à Byzance au course des siècles’,Travaux & Mémoires 14 (2002), pp. 485–98; Beaud, ‘Le savoir et le monarque’, pp. 562–3; L.I.Conrad, ‘The Arabs and the Colossus’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 6 (1996), pp. 167–87,proposes that Cedrenus and Zonaras quoted the text; also Howard-Johnston, ‘The De admin-istrando imperio’, p. 305, n. 10. On the DAI in Dubrovnik/Ragusa: T. Živkovic, ‘ConstantinePorphyrogenitus and the Ragusan Author before 1611’, Istorijski Casopis 53 (2006), pp. 145–64.

31 Constantini Imperatoris Porphyrogeniti De Administrando Impero, ad Romanum F., Libernunquam antehac editus. Ioannes Mevrsivus primus vulgavit, Latinam interpretationem, ac notasadjecit (Lugduni Batavorum [Leiden], 1611).

32 E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Social Function of the Past: Some Questions’, Past and Present 55 (1972),pp. 3–17; I. Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia. Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, 1984),

212 Francesco Borri


White Croatia

In Chapter 30 we read that the Croats, before coming to Dalmatia at thebeginning of the seventh century, lived beyond Bavaria (� �agibaρe�a)and close to Francia (� Fρagg�a), where in Constantine’s days theBelocroats lived as subjects of King Otto and enjoyed good relations withthe neighbouring Του κοι�ρ (the Hungars).33 In Chapter 31 WhiteCroatia (� κα � ρσπ η � �πονομαζομ νη) is also called ‘Great’ (�meg�lh �ρwbat�a) and is still heathen; it is often attacked by Pech-enegs, Turks and Franks and is able to gather resources inferior to thoseof Dalmatian Croatia, which could muster 60,000 mounted soldiers,100,000 foot soldiers and a fleet of 180 ships.34 White Croatia, mean-while, has no ships because it lies thirty days’ journey from the sea whichis called ‘dark’ (skotein ).35

Those historians who have accepted the idea of a migration, whetherperformed by an entire population or just by military elites, have also hadto accept the concept of a Croatian ancestral fatherland called WhiteCroatia. The existence of a land with this name, however, presents manydifficulties; the main one is that it does not appear in any source other thanConstantine Porphyrogenitus, while White Croats are mentioned onlymuch later, in the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle.36 Althoughthe reference to White Croatia is isolated, names similar to Hrvat (whichmeans ‘Croat’ in Serbo-Croatian, with ‘H’ to be read as ‘K’) are reasonablyspread, in a large number of texts largely independent of one another,written in Arabic, Old English and Latin (even if sometimes they seem tobe simple assonances, and it happens that an ‘H’ or ‘K’ together with an ‘R’

pp. 85–8. On the Hungarian situation: Gy. Dalos, ‘Ungarn’, in M. Flacke (ed.), Mythen derNationen: ein europäisches Panorama (Munich and Berlin, 1998), pp. 528–56.

33 DAI, c. 30, p. 142; J. Shepard, ‘Byzantine Writers on the Hungarians in the Ninth and TenthCentury’, Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 10 (2004), pp. 97–123, here pp. 99–100, 104–6.

34 The numbers are clearly fictive, T. Živkovic, ‘Contribution to the New Reading about theConstantine Porphyrogenitus’ Statement of the Number of Croat Horsemen, Foot Soldiers andSailors in Early 10th Century’, Byzantinoslavica 65 (2007), pp. 143–51, who examining theCodex Parisinus, theorized a transcription error, proposing instead that Constantine meant amuch smaller number of soldiers. For a broader overview: G. Halsall, Warfare and Society in theBarbarian West, 450–900 (Abingdon and New York, 2003), pp. 119–33, who proposes rather smallnumbers. Different ideas are expressed by W. Treadgold, ‘The Army in the Works of Constan-tine Porphyrogenitus’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 29 (1992), pp. 77–162, but see alsothe criticisms of C. Zuckerman, ‘Learning from the Enemy and More: Studies in “DarkCenturies” Byzantium’, Millennium 2 (2005), pp. 79–135.

35 DAI, c. 31, pp. 150–2.36 The Povest’ vremennykh let: An Interlinear Collation and Paradosis, ed. D. Ostrowski and D.J.

Birnbaum, Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, Texts 10 (Cambridge, MA, 2003), p.23, trans. S. Hazzard Cross and O.P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle:Laurentian Text, The Medieval Academy of America 60 (Cambridge, MA, 1954). On thechronicle: S. Franklin, Writing Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300 (Cambridge, 2002),passim.



are enough to recall the name Hrvat to the historian’s mind).37 Othertrustworthy sources, however, reported similar names: Thietmar describeda region called Chruvati reachable in one night from Merseburg, and aplace with a similar name was also mentioned in a diploma of EmperorOtto I (936–73) and in one issued by Henry III (1039–56) collected in theChronicle of the Czechs written by Cosmas of Prague.38

The emperor also described a Pagan Serbia (�� β πτιστοςSeρbl�a),neighbouring with White Croatia and populated by White Serbs(S�ρblwn, των� kaì � ρσπ ων � �πονομαζομ νων), which was theland from which the Serbs moved to the Balkans helped by the Byzantineauthority of Beograd.39 Pagan Serbia has normally been located in theland of the Sorbs/Sorabians, known thanks to many witnesses, but theexistence of a population called White Serbs can also be theorized justthrough Constantine’s narrative. The nearness between Pagan Serbia andWhite Croatia seems to be confirmed by the Old English translation ofOrosius, accomplished under the authority of Alfred the Great (871–99),where the Horigiti and Surpe are mentioned living north of Moravia(Maroara).40 Arab geographers (Gaihani, ibn Rusta and Masudi) and theRussian Primary Chronicle also list two contiguous populations calledCroats and Serbs, apparently dwelling north of the Carpathians.41

The wide spread of the place name Hrvat could suggest its derivationfrom geographical characteristics, but the fact that we have no satisfactoryetymology in different linguistic groups makes every hypothesis very

37 See for example the many place names and anthroponyms that are linked to the name Hrvat inS. Pantenic, Die Urheimat der Kroaten in Pannonien und Dalmatien, Symbolae Slavicae 26(Frankfurt am Main, 1997) and in the map presented in I. Goldstein, Hrvatski rani srednji vijek[The Early Middle Ages in Croatia], Historiae 1 (Zagreb, 1995), p. 89.

38 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon III.11, ed. R. Holtzmann, Die Chronik des Bischofs Thi-etmar von Merseburg und ihre Korveier Überarbeitung, MGH SRG, ns. 9 (Berlin, 1935), p. 110:‘in Chruvati laetus duxit’, trans. D. Warner, Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmarof Merseburg (Manchester, 2001). Otto I, Diplomatum 173, ed. G. Althoff and G. Keller, DieUrkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., MGH Urkunden 1 (Hanover, 1879),pp. 80–638, p. 255: ‘in loco Zuric ac in pago Crouuati’. Cosmas of Prague, ChronicaBoemorum II.37, ed. R. Köpke, MGH SS 9 (Hanover, 1851), p. 92: ‘deinde ad aquilonalem hiisunt termini: Psovane, Ghrrvati, et altera Chrowati’, trans. L. Wolverton, The Chronicle of theCzechs (Washington, DC, 2009). The text (however dated to Henry IV) is also edited inDiplomata Hungariae Antiquissima I: 1000–1131, ed. G. Györffy (Budapest, 1992), 83, pp.243–6.

39 DAI, c. 32, p. 152; R.J. Lilie, ‘Kaiser Herakleios und die Ansiedlung der Serben. Überlegungenzum Kapitel 32 des De administrando imperio’, Südost-Forschungen 44 (1985), pp. 17–43.

40 The Old English [Paulus] Orosius, ed. J. Bately, EETS, Suppl. 6 (Oxford, 1980), p. 13. See: J.Bately, ‘King Alfred and the Old English Translation of Orosius’, Anglia 88 (1970), pp. 433–60,and D. Pratt, The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 115–29.

41 On the Arabian geographers: T. Lewicki, ‘Die Vorstellungen arabischer Schriftsteller des 9. und10. Jahrhunderts von der Geographie und von den ethnischen Verhältnissen Osteuropas’, DerIslam 35 (1965), pp. 26–41. See also F. Curta, South-Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250(Cambridge, 2006), pp. 138–9.

214 Francesco Borri


speculative.42 The name’s meaning is however unimportant, which issadly ironic if we consider that the Croatian name was the basis of themost nationalist and racist theories about the Croatian people and theirhistory.43 What we can say is that the ethnonym is attested between theninth and tenth centuries in many areas of central and eastern Europe,together with others which may be found both north and south ofthe Carpathians in slightly different forms (Serbs/Sorbs, Abrodits/Obrodits).44 In reality there is no reason to suppose that those different

42 H. Kunstmann, Die Slaven: Ihr Name, ihre Wanderung nach Europa und die Anfänge derrussischen Geschichte in historisch-onomastischer Sicht (Stuttgart, 1996), pp. 35–9, discusses thewide distribution of the name. Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ etymology runs: ‘those whooccupy much territory’, see DAI, c. 31, p. 146: ‘�ò δ��ρwb�toiτη�� των� Skl�bwn διαλ κτω� �!ρ �μηνε εται, tout�stin � ο πολλ ν� c�ρan κατ χοντες� "’. H. Kunstmann, ‘Über denNamen der Kroaten’, Welt der Slaven 27 (1982), pp. 131–6, proposes a Greek origin. Suggestiveis Constantine’s explanation of the name Serbs, as servants: DAI, c. 32, p. 152. The etymologyis clearly false and created by the emperor (in Latin) to explain an unknown name. O.Kronsteiner, ‘Gab es unter den Alpenslawen eine kroatische ethnische Gruppe?’, Wiener slaw-istisches Jahrbuch 24 (1978), pp. 79–99, proposed that the name Hrvat should be explained asfreier Kämpfer, but see contra A. Tietze, ‘Kroaten ein türkisches Ethnonym?’, Wiener slawistischesJahrbuch 25 (1979), p. 140, who maintained that this etymology could only be theorized byrelying on later Turkish loans from Arabic. On the many difficulties in explaining this name seeH. Sundhaussen, ‘Kroatien’, in LzGS, pp. 389–93. That the name Hrvati, according to itsdiffusion, could have been linked to geographical characteristics (maybe the mountains) wassuggested by J. Bacic, Red Sea – Black Russia: Prolegomena to the History of North Central Eurasiain Antiquity and the Middle Ages, East European Monographs 171 (New York, 1995), pp. 94–5,who gave the translation ‘mountain-dweller’, already proposed by H.H. Howorth, ‘The Spreadof the Slaves I: The Croats’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain andIreland 7 (1878), pp. 324–41, here p. 325: ‘Croat therefore means merely an inhabitant of theCarpathians’. See also the many contributions contained in N. Budak (ed.), Etnogeneza Hrvata:Ethnogeny of the Croats (Zagreb, 1995).

43 A.J. Bellamy, The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-Old Dream? (Manchesterand New York, 2003), pp. 33–5; but also the criticism expressed in the review M. Young, Nationand Nationalism 11 (2005), pp. 320–2. The importance of the name Hrvat was recently stressedby A. Piteša, ‘The Slavs and the Early Croatian State’, in D. Davison, V. Gaffney and E. Marin(eds), Dalmatia: Research in the Roman Province 1970–2001, Papers in Honour of J.J. Wilkes, BARInternational Series 1576 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 193–212, here pp. 194–5; for a more critical readingsee Budak, ‘Identities’ and Fine, ‘Croats and Slavs’. The theories of a non-Slavic origin for theCroats follow the text H.H. Howorth, ‘The Spread of the Slaves IV: The Bulgarians’, TheJournal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 11 (1882), pp. 219–67. Thisvision was accepted by J.B. Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene(395 A.D. to 800), 2 vols (London, 1889; repr. Boston, 2005), II, p. 275, but initially the idea wasmuch more innocent than its later development in the first half of the twentieth century. Fora discussion see H. Sundhaussen, ‘Nationsbildung und Nationalismus im Donau-Balkan-Raum’, in H.-J. Torke (ed.), Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, Osteuropa-Institut ander Freien Universität Berlin, Historische Veröffentlichungen 48 (Berlin, 1993), pp. 233–58; R.Yeomans, ‘Of Yugoslavian Barbarians and Croatian Gentlemen Scholars: National Ideologyand Racial Anthropology in Interwar Yugoslavia’, in M. Turd and P.J. Weindling (eds), Bloodand Homeland: Eugenetics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940(Budapest, 2007), pp. 83–122. A summary of the different theories is R. Katicic, ‘The Originsof the Croats’, in I. Supicic (ed.), Croatia in Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey, Croatia andEurope 1 (London and Zagreb, 1999), pp. 149–67.

44 S. Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen: Siedlung, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im früh- undhochmittelalterlichen Ostmitteleuropa, Ergänzungsbände zum RGA 30 (Berlin and New York,2001), pp. 56–7. P.M. Barford, The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern



attestations are evidence of the division of unique peoples, neither is thereany way to prove that the people described with the same name sharedsomething more than the name itself.45 Of course the problem lies in thewitness of Constantine, who links the two names thanks to a migration,but, as we will see, the emperor’s account was probably an interpretationof this complex situation: in this case the witness should not be inter-preted as independent to the great diffusion of the name Hrvat, but as aconsequence of the same. Examples of recurring place and ethnic nameswithout a clear relation are many: it is enough here to mention theBulgarian ethnonym or the name Vendi/Venethi, both to be found inplaces and times very far from each other.46 For a certain time the nameHrvat must also have been striking and alluring, being adopted by orused to describe different groups of peoples, appearing at least two timesin the Balkans. This was probably the origin of Constantine Porphyro-genitus’ account, according to which the Croats coming from WhiteCroatia split between Dalmatia, Pannonia and Illyricum, a later expla-nation to describe the presence in the Balkans of more than one groupcalled Croats.47 Almost two centuries after Constantine, the RussianPrimary Chronicle mentioned Croats in many passages, in one of themadding the adjective beli: here, as well, Croats are apparently differentgroups settled in different regions.48

Owing to this cascade of place names, White Croatia has beenlocated in various places. The most widespread theory has theBelocroats settled around the north edges of the Carpathians in Galicja/Galicia, in what is now southern Poland. This idea was already popularat the beginning of scholarly research on the topic, finding a place inthe pages of Johannes Lucius, and being quoted after him by GiovanniCattalinich, Leopold Krause, Pavel Šafarik and Ernst Dümmler, to beafterwards developed by Francis Dvorník (who theorized about a lostempire of amazing extension and power) and reaching, through hiswork, the most recent debate.49 Confirmation of the idea that White

Europe (New York, 2001), p. 331, offers a map with the names appearing north and south of theCarpathians. For an approach linking names to migration see Goldstein, Hrvatski, pp. 87–92.

45 Pohl, ‘Die Rolle der Steppenvölker’, pp. 95–6.46 D. Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk zur Großmacht: Die Entstehung Bulgariens im frühen Mittelalter

(7.–9. Jh.), Kölner Historische Abhandlungen 43 (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2007),pp. 32–8. On the name Venethi: F. Curta, ‘Hiding Behind a Piece of Tapestry: Jordanes and theSlavic Venethi’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 47 (1999), pp. 321–340 and G. Schramm,‘Venedi, Antes, Sclaveni, Sclavi. Frühe Sammelbezeichnungen für slawische Stämme und ihrgeschichtlicher Hintergrund’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 43 (1995), pp. 161–200.

47 DAI, c. 30, p. 142: ‘ " #Απ δ� των� �ρwb�twn, των� � $λθ ντων �ν Δελματ α�� ,diecwρ�sqh m�ρoς ti, κα � ρ�κ τησεν tò " ρ #Ιλλυ ικ ν κα τ ν� Pannon�an’.

48 The Povest’ vremennykh let, pp. 166, 955. On this Barford, The Early Slavs, pp. 99–100.49 J. Lucius, De Regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae libri sex (Amsterdam, 1666), p. 41; G. Cattalinich,

Storia di Dalmazia (Zadar, 1834), pp. 74–5; H.L. Krause, Res Slavorum in Imperiorum

216 Francesco Borri


Croatia was in Galicia was found in the narrative of Thomas Archdea-con, who described the Goths (and the Goths were somehow linked tothe Slavs between the twelfth and the thirteenth century) migratingfrom Poland (‘de partibus Teutonie et Polonie exierunt’) to Dalmatia;moreover Kraków/Cracow was thought to be related to the ethnicname Hrvat.50 Constantine’s narrative, dating to the tenth century, wastherefore reinforced by Thomas’s work, written in the thirteenth, totheorize a migration taking place in the seventh century from southPoland to Dalmatia. This idea became so widespread that in recenttimes Pope John Paul II (1978–2005), while born in Wadowice, stillclaimed to be a neighbour of the White Croats.51

A further theory placed White Croatia in Samo’s kingdom. Becauseof the mention of Sorbs among the prince’s allies and the proximity ofWhite Serbs to White Croats, it has been thought that Samo may haveruled in White Croatia.52 In more recent years Heinrich Kunstmannproposed that White Croatia should be located in Carinthia;53 andslightly different ideas were proposed by Ljudmil Hauptmann andHenri Grégoire.54 Even the date of the arrival of the Croats was subject

Occidentalis et Orientalis confinio habitantium saeculo IX, Pars I (diss. Berlin, 1854), p. 1; P.Šafarik, Slawische Altertümer, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1843–4), I, pp. 242–8. E. Dümmler, ‘Über dieälteste Geschichte der Slawen in Dalmatien (549–928)’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akad-emie der Wissenschaften in Wien: Philosophisch-historische Klasse 20 (1856), pp. 353–420, at pp.365–6; F. Dvorník, The Making of Central and Eastern Europe (London, 1949), pp. 268–304.

50 Thomas Archdeacon, Historia Salonitana VII, ed. Peric, p. 34: ‘Gothorum tempore, qui Totiladuce de partibus Teutonie et Polonie exierunt, dicitur Salona fuisse destructa.’ On the sourceslinking Slavs and Goths see F. Kampfer, R. Stichel and K. Zernack (eds), Das Ethnikon Sclaviin den lateinischen Quellen bis zum Jahr 900, Glossar zur frühmittelalterlichen Geschichte imöstlichen Europa 6 (Stuttgart, 1990), p. 34. F. Borri, ‘Arrivano i Barbari a cavallo! FoundationMyths and origines gentium in the Adriatic Arc’, in W. Pohl and G. Heydemann (eds), Strategiesof Identification: Early Medieval Perspectives (Turnhout, forthcoming).

51 Homily of 30 May 1979 to the Croatian pilgrims: ‘Vi ricordate della “Croazia Bianca”, vostraterra d’origine che si trova proprio là dove si trova la mia patria?’, <http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19790430_pell-naz-croato_it.html>, accessed 26 May 2009. See also P.R. Magocsi, Galicia: A Historical Survey andBibliographic Guide, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Harvard Ukrainian ResearchInstitute (Toronto, 1983), pp. 56–60.

52 Fredegar, Chronicon IV.68, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), pp. 1–193, at p. 155,‘etiam et Dervanus dux gente Surbiorum, qui ex genere Sclavinorum erant et ad regnumFrancorum iam olem aspecserant, se ad regnum Samonem cum suis tradedit’; trans. J.M.Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar (Oxford, 1960). See W. Pohl,‘Samo’, in RGA 26 (2004), pp. 406–7; F. Curta, ‘Slavs in Fredegar and Paul the Deacon:Medieval gens or “Scourge of God”?’, EME 6 (1997), pp. 141–67.

53 H. Kunstmann, ‘Wer waren die Weißkroaten des byzantinischen Kaisers Konstantinos Porphy-rogennetos?’, Welt der Slawen 29 (1984), pp. 111–22.

54 Lj. Hauptmann, ‘Kroaten, Goten und Sarmaten’, Germanoslavica 3 (1935), pp. 95–127, 315–53,at pp. 343–5, theorized that the original Croatian homeland was located in the Caucasus; theidea was later spread by G. Verandsky, Ancient Russia, A History of Russia 1 (New Haven, 1943),p. 321. Grégoire, ‘L’Origine’, pp. 94–100, instead believed in a wide region between modernBohemia, Germany and Poland; see also idem, ‘L’origine et le nom des Croates et leurprétendue patrie caucasienne’, La nouvelle Clio 4 (1952), pp. 322–3, and idem, ‘Le prétendu



to debate and settled in a wide chronological frame, ranging from thesixth century, as proposed by Lubor Niederle, up to the end of theeighth (precisely, in the year 791) according to the researches of LujoMargetic and, after him, of Nada Klaic.55 It is therefore clear that we aremoving in extremely difficult terrain, and it seems that the majority oftheories aiming to precisely locate White Croatia are extremely specu-lative, and occasionally ideological. The only thing we can say withsome degree of certainty is that, according to Constantine Porphyro-genitus, White Croatia was: ‘somewhere in Central Europe nearBavaria, beyond Hungary and next to the Frankish empire’.56

It was from these regions that the Croats, whether by previous agree-ments with Heraclius or not, migrated to Dalmatia (and Pannonia).Owing to the nature of our sources, every effort to apply the migrationtheory or to frame Croatian settlement in the long debate on the accom-modation of the Barbarians is apparently impossible, with the conse-quence that the scholarship has focused mainly on more traditional issuessuch as the year of the Wanderung or the location of their Urheimat,sometimes without considering the ongoing international debate.57 Whatis assumed is that the Croats migrated to Dalmatia like foederati, and thatthey lived in a relationship of semi-dependence to the empire until thedays of Constantine VII, obtaining greater autonomy between the reignsof Michael II and Basil I.58

There have also been dissident voices. As early as the end ofthe nineteenth century, Jaroslav Jagic criticized the reliability of

habitat caucasien des Serbes et des Croates’, La nouvelle Clio 5 (1953), pp. 466–7, whereHauptmann’s ideas are criticized.

55 L. Niederle, Manuel de l’antiquité slave, 2 vols (Paris, 1923), I, pp. 89–90. On the migration’sdate: L. Margetic, ‘Konstantin Porfirogenet i vrijeme dolaska Hrvata [Constantine Porphy-rogenitus and the Arrival of the Croats]’, Zbornik historijskog zavoda JAZU [Jugoslavenskeakademije znanosti i umjetnosti] 8 (1977), pp. 5–88; N. Klaic, ‘O problemima stare domo-vine, dolaska i pokrštenja dalmatinskih Hrvata [On the Problem of the Old Fatherland andthe Christianization of the Croats of Dalmatia]’, Zgodovinsk Casopis 38 (1984), pp. 253–70,and the discussions in Fine, ‘Croats and Slavs’, pp. 212–15, and W. Pohl, Die Awaren: EinSteppenvolk in Mitteleuropa 567–822 n.Chr., 2nd edn (Munich, 2002), p. 432, n. 7.

56 Curta, South-Eastern Europe, p. 138.57 On this, see the very good G. Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376–568

(Cambridge, 2007), pp. 417–54, which summarizes the debate on the Barbarian migration andsettlement. For a discussion of the recent Croatian historiography: N. Budak, ‘Post-socialistHistoriography in Croatia since 1990’, in U. Brunnbauer (ed.), Rewriting History-Historiographyin Southeast Europe after Socialism, Studies on South East Europe 4 (Munster, 2004), pp.129–64.

58 This idea was proposed, for example, by G. Ostrogorsky, Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates(Munich, 1965), p. 74, reprinted with the title Byzantinische Geschichte 324–1453 (Munich,1996). On the foederati: P.J. Heather, ‘Fodera and Foederati of the Fourth Century’, in W. Pohl(ed), Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity, The Transforma-tion of the Roman World 1 (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 1997), pp. 85–97; E. Chrysos,‘Conclusion: De foderatis iterum’, in ibid., pp. 186–206, and R. Scharf, Foederati: von dervölkerrechtlichen Kategorie zur byzantinischen Truppengattung (Vienna, 2001).

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Constantine’s account on linguistic issues (underlining the differencesbetween southern and western Slavic languages), suggesting that WhiteCroatia was a land born of the emperor’s imagination, and that Con-stantine was referring, in a colourful way, to Croats settled in what isnow the Czech republic. Jagic’s ideas strongly influenced later scholar-ship and his theory was partially re-proposed by John Bagnell Bury, whohowever thought that White Croatia, despite being an imaginary land,found its origins in ancient Croatian tribal sagas that the emperorsimply collected and divulgated.59 A further criticism came from MiloBarada, who saw the Croats as an ethnic group formed at the edges ofthe Avar kingdom, anticipating Walter Pohl, who, developing an intu-ition of Otto Kronsteiner’s, suggested that the name Hrvat should beused of warrior groups settled by the Avars at the limits of their empireand who developed in an ethnic group only in the aftermath of theCarolingian conquest of Avaria. The idea was recently followed byPatrick Geary, who pointed out how this vision could explain the spreadof the name without recourse to the migration model.60 Moreover, HuwEvans highlighted the many logistical issues arising from a long-distancemigration (assuming that White Croatia was located in Galicia), anddemonstrated the absence of traces of seventh-century moves fromcentral Europe in the so-called Starohrvatska Kultura.61

Despite those highly influential contributions, the idea of a northernfatherland covered with snow (which in some later historiography wasdestined to become merely one stage of a longer march beginningon the shores of the Black Sea or as far as eastern Iran) and of thelong march on the quest for a ‘place in the sun’ survived, offering an

59 J. Jagic, ‘Ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte der südslawischen Sprachen’, Archiv für slavischePhilologie 17 (1895), pp. 47–87, here p. 61; F. Racki, ‘Biela Hrvatska i Biela Srbija [White Croatiaand White Serbia]’, Rad Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti 52 (1880), pp. 141–89; DAIII, p. 96. Bury, ‘The Treatise’, pp. 556–61.

60 M. Barada, ‘Hrvatska dijaspora i Avari [The Croatian Diaspora and the Avars]’, Starohrvatskaprosvjeta 2 (1952), pp. 7–17; W. Pohl, ‘Das Awarenreich und die “kroatischen” Ethnogenesen’, inH. Wolfram and A. Schwarcz (eds), Die Bayern und ihre Nachbarn I, Veröffentlichungen derKommission für Frühmittelalterforschung 8 (Vienna, 1985), pp. 293–8; idem, Die Awaren, pp.261–8; P. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002), pp.147–50.

61 On the Starohrvatska Kultura see J. Beloševic, Materijalana kultura Hrvata od 7.–9. stoljeca [TheMaterial Culture of the Croats between the Seventh and Ninth Century] (Zagreb, 1980); H.M.A.Evans, The Early Medieval Archaeology of Croatia: A.D. 600–900, BAR International Series 539(Oxford, 1989) and more recently idem, ‘The Medieval Ravni Kotari: A Synthesis’, in J.Chapman, R. Shiel and Š. Batovic, The Changing Face of Dalmatia: Archaeological and EcologicalStudies in a Mediterranean Landscape (London, 1996), pp. 294–308; also Barford, The EarlySlavs, p. 74. Recently the idea of a migration across the Carpathians has been challenged withmany arguments by D. Dzino, ‘Becoming Slav, Becoming Croat: New Approaches in theResearch of Identities in Post-Roman Illyricum’, Hortus Artium Medievalium 14 (2008), pp.195–206.



ideological strength superior to all the other alternatives, finding itsplace in the romantic paradigm and being almost universally acceptedin non-scholarly environments.62

One final issue is the name White Croatia, whose origin is an openquestion. It is believed that the colour could represent the ancientorientation system born in the Euro-Asiatic steppe and adopted fromChina to central and eastern Europe.63 It is debated which colourscorrespond to which directions, but the classic correspondence schemeis black/north, azure/south, red/east and white/west. Many place namessupposedly bear traces of this ancient custom: it is alleged that Red Sea,Black Sea, Beograd (the White City) and Black Russia should beunderstood in this way. Herodotus, describing the great Scythiannorth, wrote that the most extreme of the populations, the men livingalways farther to the north than the others were the �el�gclainoi.The historian justified the name explaining that the �el�gclainoiused to dress in black.64 Is it not possible, instead, that the�el�gclainoi were the populations living always farther north thanthe others, and that their name was born from the association ofblack/north?

‘White’ people were also known by Greek authors, and Procopiusmentioned the White Huns (ο σπε% ρ λευκο ς� & �νομ ζουσι).65 His-torians explain this name by claiming that those Huns were moreattractive than the others (for whom Ammianus Marcellinus, as is

62 On this theme: H. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality(Cambridge, 1990); moreover L. Poliakov, Le mythe aryen (Paris, 1971) and M. Olender, Leslangues du Paradis (Paris, 1989). See also A.D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of NationalIdentity (Oxford, 2003), pp. 166–217. An attempt at further discussion with the help of thepsychoanalytical method, although uncritical of the idea of a seventh-century migration, is I.Rendic-Miocevic, ‘Retracting the Past to the Cradle of Croatian History’, East EuropeanQuarterly 36 (2002), pp. 1–25.

63 The classic contributions on the subject are H. Ludat, ‘Farbenbezeichnungen in Völkernamen’,Saeculum 4 (1953), pp. 138–55; O. Pritsak, ‘Orientierung und Farbsymbolik. Zu den Farben-bezeichnungen in den altaischen Völkernamen’, Saeculum 5 (1954), pp. 376–83, following thedirection pointed by L. de Saussure, ‘Le système cosmologique sino-iranien’, Journal Asiatique202 (1923), pp. 335–97. New contributions have been issued recently: Bacic, Black Russia; G.Schubert, ‘Farben und ihre Manifestationen in Nomina Propria der Slavia und des Balkans’,Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 31 (1995), pp. 186–203.

64 Herodotus, Historiae IV.107. I. von Bredow and S.R. Tokhtas’ev, ‘Melanchlainoi’, Der NeuePauly 7 (1999), col. 1167.

65 Procopius of Cesarea, Bella I.3.i–v, ed. Haury and Wirth, I, pp. 10–11. The White Huns are theEphthalites, mentioned by many other historians, but never with the name White Huns. F.Altheim, Geschichte der Hunnen, 5 vols (Berlin, 1959–62), I, pp. 33, 38, and A. Lippold,‘Hephtalitai’, PWRE [Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft], Supp. 14 (1974),cols 127–37, suggested that ‘white’ meant western. See also: O.J. Maenchen-Helfen, ‘TheEthnic Name Hun’, in S. Egerod and E. Glahn (eds), Studia serica Bernhard Karlgren dedicata(Copenhagen, 1959), pp. 223–38, and idem, The World of the Huns: Studies in their History andCulture (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1973), p. 378, n. 20. On Procopius’ description seeD. Sinor, ‘The Hun Period’, in idem (ed.), The Cambridge History of Inner Asia (Cambridge,1990), pp. 177–204, here pp. 199–200.

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well known, used the topos of physical deformity),66 but it is ofcourse possible that this was merely the etymology found by Procopiusto explain a name which he did not completely understand. InConstantine’s narrative we also find a Black Bulgaria (� ma�ρh�oulgaρ�a), and it has been proposed that the White should be (just)opposed to black: the White Peoples of Greek ethnography were theones whose customs, religion and institutions were perceived ascloser to the writer, between civilization and the deepest barbarity,which was represented by the ‘black’ Barbarians.67 It is also possiblethat *bel- was a misunderstanding of *vel-, which in numerous Slaviclanguages is the root of the adjective ‘great’, and which in this caseshould be read as ‘ancient’ or, according to Evangelos Chrysos, as‘outer’.68 Finally, almost two centuries ago Kaspar Zeuss proposed thatthose Croats derived their name from the River Albis (the Elbe),mentioned, between the seventh and eighth centuries, in the RavennaCosmography.69

We can add, most interestingly, that Constantine’s use of the nameBelocroats relied, apparently, on a Slavic language source, or at least onone very close to the Croats’ customs. Constantine, therefore, was theonly author of a non-Slavic language who, perhaps following hissource, called the northern Croatians beli. No other source describingthe Croats called them ‘white’. It seems, therefore, that a partitionbetween Croats and Belocroats was not widespread, and neither wasit typical of the Constantinopolitan court. More probably it is theCroats of Dalmatia who used to describe their northern homonymsas beli.70

66 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae XXXI.2.i–xii. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns,pp. 360–2.

67 On Black Bulgaria: DAI, c. 12, p. 64, ‘ 'Οτι κα � ma�ρh legom�nh �oulgaρ�a’.Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk, p. 155; C.A. Macartney, ‘On the Black Bulgars’, Byzantinisch-neugriechische Jahrbücher 8 (1930), pp. 150–8. On the opposition between Black and WhiteBarbarians: S. Takács, ‘Die Farbbezeichnungen von Völkern in der byzantinischen Literaturoder das Verständnis der Byzantiner von anderen Kulturen – eine Gedankenskizze’, Poikilabyzantina 13 (1994), pp. 509–27.

68 Kunstmann, ‘Wer waren die Weißkroaten’; P. Skok, ‘Ortsnamenstudien zu DAI des KaisersConstantin Porphyrogennetos’, Zeitschrift für Ortsnamenforschung 4 (1929), pp. 213–44, at pp.239–42. E.K. Chrysos, ‘Zum Landesnamen Langobardia’, in W. Pohl and P. Erhart (eds),Die Langobarden: Herrschaft und Identität, FGM 9 (Vienna, 2005), pp. 429–38.

69 Anonymous of Ravenna, Cosmographia IV.18, 26, ed. J. Schnetz, Itineraria Romana II: Raven-natis Anonymi Cosmographia et Guidonis Geographica (Stuttgart, 1990), pp. 56, 62; on thedifficulties in dating the cosmography see L. Dillemann, La Cosmographie du Ravennate, ed.Yves Yanvier, Collection Latomus 235 (Brussels, 1997), pp. 26–7. K. Zeuss, Die Deutschen unddie Nachbarstämme (Munich, 1837), pp. 607–17.

70 A. Loma, ‘Serbisches und kroatisches Sprachgut bei Konstantin Porphyrogennetos’, Zbornikradova Vizantološkog instituta 38 (1999–2000), pp. 87–161, at pp. 91–2; Skok, ‘Ortsnamenstu-dien’, p. 241.



Constantine and his sources

If, up to this point, we have been examining the rich information offeredby Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it is important to understand the evi-dence the emperor could rely on. If we possess only three very question-able pieces of evidence for the presence of Croats in Dalmatia betweenthe ninth and tenth centuries able to corroborate the DAI’s narrative,71

Constantine’s work represents a watershed. After him, Greek authors likeJohn Scylitze and Nicephorus Bryennius (eleventh–twelfth century),mostly relying on the Life of Basil, will acknowledge the existence of apopulation called Croats inhabiting the inland regions between Zadarand Split. Beginning with John the Deacon (writing in the first years ofthe eleventh century) Latin authors will also describe the DalmatianCroats.

The lack of previous witness to the Croatians’ migration and settle-ment could be partly explained in two similar ways. The first concerns theremarkable lack of evidence about Dalmatia between 600 and 1000, withpartial exceptions such as the first years of the ninth century; while thesecond relates to the nature of the sources on early medieval Byzantiumwhich, for the seventh century, are particularly inconsistent. The narra-tion of the Chronicon Paschale ends in 628 and in Byzantium the histori-cal tradition was continued only in the ninth century by GeorgeSyncellus, Theophanes and Patriarch Nicephorus, with the possibleexception of the lost history of Trajan.72

71 Those documents have been discussed many times. The most important source is the donationof Trpmir, edited in Codex Diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae/Diplomatickizbornik kraljevine Hrvatske, Dalmacje i Slavonije I: 743–1100, M. Kostrencic (Zagreb, 1967),21, pp. 25–8. The problems linked to the use of this document are many (the donation survivesin a 1568 copy) and were noted by Nada Klaic: N. Klaic, ‘O Trpimirovoj darovnici kaodiplomatickom i historijskom dokumentu [Trpimr’s Donation as Historical and DiplomaticMonument]’, Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju dalmatisku 40 (1958), pp. 105–55, who proposedthe second half of the thirteenth century as the earliest date for the redaction of the document.A second source is Branimir’s inscription, found in Šopot, not far from Benvkovac, in 1922, inwhich a dux Cruatoru[m] is mentioned, but there are dating problems: T. Lienhard, ‘The Friezeof Branimir (Croatia)’, in J.J. Aillagon (ed.), Rome and the Barbarians: The Birth of a New World(Turin, 2008), pp. 580–1. Finally there is a letter of John X (914–28) to King Tomislav surviving,like Trpmir’s donation, in a very late copy: it was nonetheless edited in Papsturkunden 896–1046I: 896–996, ed. H. Zimmermann, Veröffentlichungen der historischen Kommission 3 (Vienna,1984), no. 55, pp. 91–2.

72 On the Dalmatian situation: F. Borri, ‘La Dalmazia alto medievale tra discontinuità e raccontostorico’, Studi Veneziani 57 (2009), pp. 15–51. On the rapid decline of the historiography afterTheophilactus Simocatta: M. Whitby, ‘Greek Historical Writing after Procopius: Variety andVitality’, in A. Cameron and L.I. Conrad (eds), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East I:Problems in the Literary Source Material (Princeton, 1992), pp. 25–80. See also I. Rochow,‘Chronographie’, in F. Winkelmann and W. Brandes (eds), Quellen zur Geschichte des frühenByzanz (4.–9. Jahrhundert): Bestand und Probleme, BBA 55 (Berlin, 1990), pp. 190–201; A.Karpozilos, ‘La cronografia’, in G. Cavallo (ed.), Lo spazio letterario nel medioevo III: Le culturecircostanti (Rome, 2004), pp. 379–406, at pp. 384–91.

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Even in the tenth century, however, Constantine’s narrative is ratherisolated. In the anonymous chronicle On the Kings, attributed to Gen-esius, there is no mention of the Croats, and a very similar situation ispresented in Theophanes Continuatus (with the clear exception of the Lifeof Basil) and in the History of Leo the Deacon. Croats are neither to befound in the military treatises compiled during the reign of NicephorusII Phocas (963–9), where the wars in the Orient are the major concern.73

More interesting is that there is no mention of them even in the Taktikaof Leo VI, which was the first treatise, since the sixth/seventh-centuryStrategikon, to deal systematically with the neighbouring populations ofthe empire, despite its strong dependence on Maurice’s work.74

According to the available evidence I shall suggest that it was betweenthe tenth and the eleventh century, and not in the seventh, that the ideaof a Croatian ethnicity in Dalmatia spread, being described by twowriters (Constantine Porphyrogenitus and John the Deacon) whoworked and lived with very strong connections with the eastern Adriaticcoast.75 As we have seen, however, Constantine’s narrative stands in oddcontrast to this idea.

If we do not know of a direct source for Constantine’s DAI, a sourcethat probably did not exist anyway, it is still possible to define a commonpool for the traditions described in Chapters 30 and 31. As we will see,certain elements – such as the existence of brothers at the very beginningof a population’s history, or the crossing of a river (normally the Danube)– are mentioned by many authors in describing Barbarian migrations,often of Scythian groups.76 Moreover, from the very start of Greek

73 Genesius, Regum libri quattuor, ed. A. Lesmüller-Werner and I. Thurn, CFHB 14 (Berlin andNew York, 1978); trans. A. Kaldellis, Genesios, On the Reigns of the Emperors, ByzantinaAustraliensia 11 (Canberra, 1998). A. Kazhdan, A History, pp. 144–52. Leo the Deacon, Historia,ed. Ch.B. Hase, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 11 (Bonn, 1828); trans. A.-M. Talbot,D.F. Sullivan, G.T. Dennis and S. McGrath, The History of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine MilitaryExpansion in the Tenth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 41 (Washington, DC, 2005); A.Kazhdan, A History, pp. 273–89. Military treatise: G. Dagron, H. Mihaescu and J.-H. Cheynet(eds), Le traité sur la guérilla (de velitatione) de l’empereur Nicéphore Phocas (963–9) (Paris, 1986);E. McGeer (ed.), Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth: Byzantine Warfare in the Tenth Century, DumbartonOaks Studies 33 (Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 3–86.

74 Leo VI, Taktika XVIII, ed. and trans. G.T. Dennis, The Taktika of Leo VI, Text, Translation, andCommentary, CFHB 49 (Washington, DC, 2010), pp. 436–501. On Leo’s work, Moravcsik,Byzantinoturcica, I, pp. 400–9; Kahzdan, A History, pp. 56–7. On Leo’s literary activity see S.Tougher, The Reign of Leo VI (886–912): Politics and People, The Medieval Mediterranean:Peoples, Economies and Cultures (400–1453) 15 (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1997), pp.164–93; on the Taktika Wiita, The Ethnika. On traditionalism in military treatises, see E.McGeer, ‘Tradition and Reality in the “Taktika” of Nikephoros Ouranos’, DOP 45 (1991), pp.129–40.

75 For different perspectives see R. Katicic, ‘Die Anfänge des kroatischen Staates’, in Die Bayernund ihre Nachbarn I, pp. 299–312; Piteša, ‘The Slavs and the Early Croatian State’.

76 Pohl, ‘Das Awarenreich’, pp. 294–5; Curta, South-Eastern Europe, pp. 138–9; Goldstein,Hrvatski, pp. 87–8. See also E.K. Chrysos, ‘Die Nordgrenze des byzantinischen Reiches im 6.



ethnography, similarities of names in places distant from one anotherwere explained through the movement of consistent masses of men: aunifying gaze related ethnonyms and place names distant in space andtime in the effort to rationalize a situation contemporary to the author.77

Perhaps Constantine understood the presence of previously unknownethnonyms only through the migration of a population. Already Thucy-dides had explained the complicated ethnic geography of fifth-century bcGreece as a result of successive migrations, mainly the Dorian one,allegedly taking place in the eleventh century bc.78 Also, the story of theseven siblings finds suggestive parallels in Herodotus, the main model forthe ethnography of the Barbarians of the northern steppe.79 Herodotusdescribed an embassy to the Adriatic composed of five men and twowomen, Hyperboreans from the lands north of the Danube, echoing veryclosely the migration of the five brothers and two sisters from WhiteCroatia to Dalmatia.80 It is therefore possible that Constantine Porphy-rogenitus found in Herodotus a model for settlement to apply to apopulation which, in his mind, had followed a similar route.

Herodotus’ further narrative of three brothers, one of them eponymous(he was called Sk�qhς), at the beginning of the Scythians’ history, issimilarly proposed by Constantine: one of the Croatian brothers is called�ρwb�toς, an anthroponym derived from the name �ρwb�toi.81

Sources contemporary to Constantine, relating the Bulgar migration,mentioned a hero called Bulgaros (�oulg�ρoς), who does not appearin earlier narratives. This etymology of �o�lgaρoi as derived from�oulg�ρoς, is clearly invented and the name Bulgars probably pointedtowards the composite nature of the group.This, however, is representativeof a strategy used by tenth-century historians in order to explain the originsand the oldest history of the northern Barbarians: the creation of amythical founding hero. In the case of the Bulgars it is possible to contrast

bis 8. Jahrhundert’, in B. Hansel (ed.), Die Völker Südosteuropas im 6.–8. Jahrhundert,Südosteuropa Band 17 (Munich, 1987), pp. 27–40; Halsall, Barbarian Migrations, pp. 45–57.

77 I am indebted to Carlo Franco for this expression.78 Thucydides, Historiae I.2. J.M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge, 1997),

pp. 1–16.79 Malamut, ‘L’image’; A.C. Hero and A. Kazhdan, ‘Herodotus’, Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium,

II, p. 922; Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, pp. 107–10.80 Herodotus, Historiae IV.33.iii: ‘ "� �πικν εσθαι m�n nun ο τω% ταυτα� τ� ρ� l�gousi �ς

Δ�ηλον , π ωτονρ � δ� το ς� ‘ϒπε βο ουςρ ρ� p�myai φε ο σαςρ � τ� ρ� δ ο� kóρaς,τ ς� & �νομ ζουσι D lioi ε ναι( ‘ϒπε χηνρ$ te κα Λαοδ κην� ) *μα δ� α τησι� � �� σφαλε ης ε νεκεν+ p�myai το ς� ‘ϒπε βο ουςρ ρ� των� �στων� � ρνδ ας p�nteπομπο ς� .’ The fact was already noted by M. Budimir, ‘Porfirogenit i naša narodna tradicija[Porphyrogenitus and Our National History]’, Glasnik Srpska Akademija Nauka 1 (1949), pp.243–5, but criticized by Grafenauer, ‘Prilog’, pp. 38–9. On the Hyperboreans see H. Sonnabend,‘Hyperboräer’, RGA 15 (2000), pp. 308–10.

81 Herodotus, Historiae IV.10.i. DAI, c. 30, p. 64.

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these narratives with earlier accounts, and we know that a man called�oulg�ρoς was a literary creation. It is probable that Constantineapplied the same topos in order to describe the Croatian past.82

Other narrative elements of the Croatian migration seem to be depen-dent on the Bulgarian Wanderung described by Theophanes and PatriarchNicephorus. The events are reported in Theophanes’ Chronography for theyear 680 AD, the year 6171 from the world’s creation. The same annoMundi, possibly by coincidence, is mentioned in the DAI, althoughConstantine does not quote it correctly, describing instead an episodelinked to Arab expansion.83 Theophanes described a land north of theBlack Sea, extending between the Sea of Azov and the River Kouphis (�legómenoς Κουφις� potamóς), probably the Kuban, called Great or OldBulgaria (� παλαι� �oulgaρ�a � στ ν � meg�lh), which was inhab-ited by the Onogundurs and the Cutrigurs (�ótρagoi). In the years of theSicilian expedition of Constans II (663–8), Krobatos (�ρob�toς), whowas ruling the region, died leaving five sons after him. The first son, calledBatbaian, obeyed his father and remained in Great Bulgaria. The second,Kotragos, crossed the River Don and settled there.The fourth and the fifthwent over the Danube: one reached Pannonia, becoming a subject of theAvar Khan, while the other travelled to Pentapolis, close to Ravenna. Afterthis diaspora the Khazars came, submitting to Batbaian and his followers.Theophanes added that the Bulgars going to Pannonia became the lords ofthe Seven Tribes (κα των� paρakeim�nwn Σκλαυινων� �θνων� τ ς�legom�naς ! �πτ gene�ς), a Slavic confederation neighbouring Avarlands to the west and the south.84

Nicephorus’ Short History also describes a land called Great or OldBulgaria between the Meotis Moors and the River Kophis (περ τ ν�Μαιωτιν� l�mnhn κατ� tòn ��fina potamòn kaq�statai �p�lai kaloum�nh meg�lh �oulgaρ�a), where the Cutrigurs, a Bul-garian tribe, lived.85 In the time of Constans II a man called Kotragos

82 On the Bulgarian name: U. Büchsenschütz, ‘Bulgaren’, in LzGS, pp. 139–42; H. Kunstmann,‘Über den Namen der Bulgaren’, Welt der Slawen 28 (1983); pp. 122–30; Ziemann, VomWandervolk, pp. 38–9. �oulg�roς is mentioned in: Genesius, Regnum libri quattuor IV.7, ed.Lesmüller-Werner and Thurn, p. 61; Leo Diaconus, Historia VI.8, ed. Hase, p. 103. A Bulgarosis also mentioned later by Michael the Syrian, Chronicon X, XXI, ed. J.-B. Chabot, Chroniquede Michel le Syrien, patriarche jacobite d’Antioche, 4 vols (Paris 1899–1910), I, pp. 363–5.Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk, pp. 148–9.

83 Theophanes, Chronographia a.M. 6171, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1883–5), I, pp. 356–9;trans. C. Mango and R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and NearEastern History AD 284–813 (Oxford, 1997). For a commentary see I. Rochow, Byzanz im 8.Jahrhundert in der Sicht des Theophanes: Quellenkritisch-historischer Kommentar zu den Jahren715–813, BBA 57 (Berlin, 1991). For the year 6171: DAI II, p. 84.

84 Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk, pp. 142–8. See also V. Beševliev, Die protobulgarische Periode derbulgarischen Geschichte (Amsterdam, 1981), pp. 149–55.

85 Patriarch Nicephorus, Historia Syntomos, c. 35, ed. and trans. C. Mango, Nikephoros Patriarchof Constantinople, Short History, CFHB 13 (Washington, DC, 1990), p. 86; P.J. Alexander,



(�ótρagoς) became lord of this population. From here on, Nicephorus’account of the five brothers’ destiny after their father’s death follows thesame pattern as narrated by Theophanes. Nicephorus, however, addedanother character, called Koubratos (�o�bρatoς), the nephew ofOrgana, master of the Onogundurs. Koubratos challenged the Avars inwar and fought them off, securing the land where, in the battle’s after-math, he settled. Following his accomplishment Heraclius honouredKoubratos with the dignity of patρ�kioς.86

Up to this point there are many overlapping narrative elements,although no single one of the story lines here mentioned was Constantine’sdirect source. It appears clear, however, that the narrative elementsemployed by the emperor were largely present in texts that he could easilyaccess. The narrative concerning the Bulgar Urgeschichte apparently fur-nished Constantine with the key to interpreting Croatian history, a historywhich he was not able to find in his sources because the Croats were a groupof recent formation. Owing to the numerous resonances between charac-ters like Kotragos and Korbatos and the Hrvati, the Bulgars, absent in thepages of the DAI, offered the Croatian past which Constantine was lookingfor. Many elements of the Croatian migration could be explained by this.

Nonetheless, some aspects, such as the entry on Porgas or the mentionof the other anthroponyms (which in any case we cannot be sure werepertinent to a population called Hrvati),87 were hardly mere inventions ofthe emperor.88 Some information must have existed, but it seems thatConstantine interpreted it through the schemes of ancient and medievalGreek ethnography. Constantine may have framed into an interpetatiograeca much more fluid processes of tradition and myths of origins,selecting among them and forcing the narrative into ancient ethno-graphic models. We have enough evidence to prove the role of politicalauthority in the reshaping of other traditions and I believe that similar

The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople (Oxford, 1958), on his literary activity pp.156–88.

86 Patriarch Nicephorus, Historia Syntomos, c. 22, ed. Mango, p. 70. The tomb of Koubratos wasthought to be found in Malaja Peršcepina: J. Werner, Der Grabfund von Malaja Peršcepina undKuvrat, Kagan der Bulgaren, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historischeKlasse, Abh. new ser. 91 (Munich, 1984), who interpreted a disputed seal as bearing the monogramof the Bulgarian qagan. Also A. Róna Tas, ‘Where was Khuvrat’s Bulgharia?’, Acta OrientaliaAcademiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 53 (2000), pp. 1–22; F. Curta, ‘Qagan, Khan, or King? Powerin Early Medieval Bulgaria (Seventh to Ninth Century)’, Viator 37 (2006), pp. 1–31, here pp. 3–7;Pohl, Die Awaren, pp. 268–82. On Great Bulgaria: Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk, pp. 142–60.

87 Esders, ‘Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitung’, pp. 23–4.88 The idea that many of the origin narratives of early medieval peoples were literary creations

(and therefore, to a certain extent, inventions of the authors) followed the spread of thelinguistic turn methodologies, being presented in its most complete form by W. Goffart,The Narrators of Barbarian History: (AD 550–800) Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul theDeacon (Princeton, 1988; repr. Notre Dame, 2005).

226 Francesco Borri


processes were taking place in tenth-century Constantinople.89 In thisway the emperor was able to make the appearance of this previouslyunknown ethnonym coherent with the imperial vision of the rich Bar-barian universe, a vision inherited from the classical world. Constantinewas therefore able to use heterogeneous material becoming more detailedfrom the beginning of the tenth century, whose quantity and quality isfor us largely unknown, translating it into the Byzantine grammar ofidentification. It is probable, moreover, that this construction was aneffort to communicate with the Croatian ambassadors, who according tothe Book of the Ceremonies regularly visited Constantinople in the mid-tenth century. Considering the poor diffusion of the information, we cansay that Constantine’s effort apparently met with little success.90

It is interesting to note how very similar ethnonyms to thoseused by Constantine were employed a few decades later in theHistory of the Venetians.91 Especially remarkable is the recurrence ofnames such as Nar(r)entani/,ρentano�,92 Chroati/�ρwb�toi93 andRomani/ �Ρωμανοι� ,94 attested for the first time (both in Greek and Latin)and almost unknown to contemporary sources, with the exceptions of theDalmatian Romans already mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals, andin a more obscure form in the Chronicle of Salerno.95 Another feature ofinterest is the fact that the two historians wrote different histories whichdiverged in many respects, having as the only element of similarity someethnonyms (unknown by other contemporary authors) and the anthro-ponym �eρphm�ρhς/Tibimr.96 It is certain that John and Constantinewere using different models to describe a new social and ethnic realitywhich did not catch the interest of other chroniclers. It is possible that acommon source existed, a source where the two historians were able to

89 Classic studies on the influence of political authorities in the transformation of popular or outercultures are: M. Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges: Etude sur le caractere surnaturel attribue a lapuissance royale particulierement en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1924); J. Goody and I. Watt,‘The Consequences of Literacy’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1963), pp. 304–45,repr. J. Goody, Literacy in Traditional Societies (Oxford, 1968), pp. 27–68.

90 Pohl, ‘Ethnicity, Theory and Tradition’.91 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. L.A. Berto, Giovanni Diacono, Istoria Veneticorum,

Fonti per la storia medievale d’Italia 2 (Bologna, 1999).92 DAI, c. 29, pp. 124, 126; c. 36, p. 164; John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum III.40; IV.31, 40, 45,

49, ed. Berto, pp. 150, 176–7, 184, 186, 190.93 DAI, c. 13, p. 7; cc. 29–36; c. 40, p. 178; c. 41, p. 180; John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum II.40,

46; III.16, 33; IV.6, 45, 49, 52, ed. Berto, pp. 120, 122, 138, 146, 158, 186, 190, 192.94 DAI, cc. 29–36; John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum IV.48, ed. Berto, p. 188.95 Annales regni Francorum, s.a. 817, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SRG 6 (Hanover, 1895), p. 145. Chronicon

Salernitanum 88, ed. U. Westerbergh, Chronicon Salernitanum: A Critical Edition with Studieson Literary and Historical Sources and on Language, Studia Latina Stockholmensia 3 (Stockholm,1956), pp. 88–9. On the �Ρωμανοι� see F. Borri, ‘Gli Istriani e i loro parenti: Fρ�ggoi, Romanie Slavi alla periferia di Bisanzio’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 60 (2010), pp. 1–25,at pp. 7–16.

96 DAI, c. 31, p. 146; John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum III.21, ed. Berto, p. 140.



find the names they used in their narratives, John confining himself to hisyears (tenth–eleventh centuries), and Constantine, following a moreerudite tradition, trying to describe a past according to the patterns ofGreek ethnography in which he collated the different material he couldaccess. The nature of the common source, if it did really exist, is difficultto capture, but it must have been a very poor text from which it waspossible to trace different conclusions.

Conclusions: the DAI and the Croatian migration

Constantine wrote in the tenth century, probably relying on imperialdossiers and on the many texts that he could access. His sources are verydifficult to trace, and consequently it is also difficult to frame the manyelements described in the DAI in their original context. We can say thatConstantine’s Byzantium was very different to the one described byProcopius or Theophanes, authors which he could access. In the emper-or’s world the Balkans were, in fact, populated by previously unknownethnic groups for whom he tried to find a past coherent with the per-spective of imperial ethnography.

If, as we saw, the place name and ethnonym Hrvat seems to beattested in locations distant from one another and in sources indepen-dent of Constantine, it is highly probable that the emperor, whendescribing the migration, did not rely on any Croatian Stammessagereaching his ears from the Rhodopian mountains or the forests of Dal-matia, but that he was trying to find an explanation in the past for atenth-century situation. The existence of two differing traditions wasnot, apparently, cause for concern, and may have been an effort tomanage the heterogeneous nature of the information in his possession,and to offer his audience different patterns of communication to beused with populations called Croats. If a White Croatia did exist, and ifConstantine publicized its existence, then the migration was the resultof his attempt to create order in this apparent chaos, where similarnames were attested in different parts of Europe. The Wanderung there-fore was not the reason why two peoples living north and south of theCarpathians had the same name, but was the explanation that theemperor tried to find for this apparent anomaly. We can easily confirmthat, according to Greek culture, migrations were often used to explainthe appearance of a new ethnonym, and we saw how already in Hero-dotus and Thucydides the ethnic geography of Africa, Asia and Europewas explained thanks to migrations.97

97 Hall, Ethnic Identity, pp. 26–7.

228 Francesco Borri


We can find suggestive parallels that help us to understand theemperor’s intellectual model. A good example is the history of theSerbs, described in Chapter 32. No other author mentions a relation-ship between Sorbs (identified with the White Serbs) and the S�ρbloiof south-eastern Europe, but Constantine’s narrative unified twogroups of the same name thanks to a migration. While describing thehistory of the Latin population of Byzantine Dalmatia, the emperorshowed his narrative strategies in an even more blatant way. The�Ρωμανοι� , inhabitants of costal Dalmatia, derived their name because

they originally came from Rome lead by Emperor Diocletian (284–305).The riddle of two similar names, Rome and the �Ρωμανοι� , was againsolved through the literary expedient of migration, this time takingplace between the third and fourth century. A move from Rome toDalmatia, however, does not puzzle us and it can be easily dismissed asa narrative fiction: we should consider the relationship between Croatiaand White Croatia along the same lines.

Constantine, therefore, framed the scanty information he possessed onthe Croatian past according to the models that previous authors deployedto describe Scythian populations, in order to create a new history. Romanimperial historiography shared similar attitudes, connecting populationsgathered around recent names with other, more ancient and prestigiousones. A good example, though distant in time, is clearly Jordanes whoequated Goths and Gets, a population already mentioned by Hero-dotus.98 I believe that the information concerning Bulgars and Cutrigurswas used in the writing of Chapter 30, since Constantine consideredthem close to the Croats.99 Even Constantine’s dating of the Croats’arrival during Heraclius’ reign could be linked to Nicephorus’ witness onKoubratos being elevated to the dignity of patρ�kioς by the sameemperor. Similar motifs, like that of the brothers, one of them epony-mous, are the same as those used by Herodotus in describing the Scythianpast. The narrative of Chapter 31 must also have been dependent onfurther sources which, unfortunately, I have not been able to identify.The absence of a clear Croatian origo gentis, transmitted from father toson through generations from White Croatia or even further, is moreoverconfirmed by the disparate and heterogeneous nature of the material thatConstantine was forced to use, and by the appearance in the DAI of twodivergent versions, only partially elaborated. Through a single clearintent, the different traditions were simultaneously collected in the same

98 Cf. A. Søby Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths: Studies in a MigrationMyth (Copenhagen, 2002).

99 On the Cutrigurs see Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk, pp. 95–103, but also Gy. Moravcsik, ‘ZurGeschichte der Onoguren’, Ungarische Jahrbücher 10 (1930), pp. 53–90.



treatise in a way which we may judge to be uncritical, though apparentlythe Konkurrenz der Ursprünge did not represent a contradiction forConstantine Porphyrogenitus, nor perhaps for his audience either.100

Who, therefore, were the Croats? At the moment this question is stilldifficult to answer. Milo Barada suggested that the Croats were a groupformed at the edges of the Avar empire and Walter Pohl proposed theCroats to be border guards of the Avar empire, developing in an ethnicgroup only in the ninth century. I suggest that we should date thisprocess even later. Constantine wrote in the DAI about a Croatianvictory against the Bulgars:101 does this event represent the formation ofa new elite on the Dalmatian edges of the Bulgar kingdom? Perhaps theconfrontation with the Bulgars was the first attestation of this group ofmen who were called Hrvati by their neighbours, or who chose thename for themselves; a prestigious name also in other areas of centraland eastern Europe.102

What we can affirm with a degree of certainty is that Constantine lentimportance to the Croats because he thought they might make good alliesagainst the Bulgars, and he wanted to bring this dynamic, recentlyformed group to the attention of his successor. The emperor, however,expressed this judgement in a text destined to have a very poor circula-tion, dedicating to the Croats much less space in writings reaching awider audience. Moreover, Constantine’s predictions never came about,and the Croats did not become a leading power in the Balkans. The sameemperor stated that the amazing military power of the Croats was indecline at the time he was writing, which is perhaps a trace of thedifficulties that the group was experiencing in affirming itself.103 After thedeath of Romanus II (963), the conquests of Emperor John (969–76)must have limited the importance of the Croats as an adversary of theBulgarians. Under Basil II (976–1025), finally, both Byzantines andVenetians further undermined the chances of this recently formed

100 Reimitz, ‘Konkurrenz der Ursprünge’.101 There are two episodes mentioned by the DAI: one may be dated to the second half of the ninth

century, a second to the first half of the tenth; Ziemann, Vom Wandervolk, p. 351. The secondbattle, which the DAI reports as decisive, is also mentioned in the Life of John X contained inthe Liber Pontificalis surviving in the Korculanski Kodeks [Codex of Curzola] dating to thetwelfth century: V. Foretic, ‘Korculanski kodeks 12. stoljeca i vijesti iz doba hrvatske narodnedinastije u njemu [The Codex of Curzola of the Twelfth Century and the Witnesses on theCroatian National Dynasty in It]’, Starine 46 (1956), pp. 23–44, here p. 30: ‘Johannes X. Seditannos XII, menses II, dies VI. Hic fecit pacem inter Bulgaros et Chroatos.’

102 On the fluidity of the ethnic process and on the interdependence of neighbouring identities,F. Barth, ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization ofCultural Difference, 2nd edn (Long Grove, IL, 1998), pp. 9–38.

103 DAI, c. 31, p. 150.

230 Francesco Borri


group.104 In later years the Croats were mentioned in the Greek worldalmost only by authors who were quoting the Life of Basil or the Bookof Ceremonies.

In conclusion, we can assert that the Croatian migration did not takeplace, but that Constantine Porphyrogenitus created it relying on theliterary models traditionally applied to describe the Landnahme of Scyth-ian Barbarians. What instead happened is that, following their rise in themilitary and political context of the Balkans, new elites took a visibleposition in Dalmatia and, as recorded in the tenth century, were given thename Croats, a name which was also found in other areas of central andeastern Europe. Although it is still very difficult to explain how namesrecur in sources independent of one another and in very distant places,for reasons still unknown to us it is possible that the Dalmatian Croatsreferred to other groups who shared their name, as Belocroats. The manyattestations of this ethnonym and place name reached Constantine Por-phyrogenitus, who in order to explain this recurrence deployed the classicmodel of migration, a model which many authors had used to explainthe ethnic geography of the surrounding world from the beginning ofhistoriography itself.

Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademieder Wissenschaften

104 The Annals of Bari also mentioned Croatia in describing the actions of the Byzantine catepanusof Italy. Lupus Protospatharius, Annales, s.a. 1024, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 5 (Hanover, 1844),pp. 51–63, p. 57: ‘Et in hoc anno transfretavit Bugiano in Chorvatia.’ It is interesting thatChorvatia seems to be a transliteration from Greek, indicating, perhaps, the nature of Lupus’sources. V. von Falkenhausen, ‘Between Two Empires: Byzantine Italy in the Reign of Basil II’,in P. Magdalino (ed.), Byzantium in the Year 1000, The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples,Economies and Culture (400–1500) 45 (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2003), pp. 135–59, at pp.149–50; Curta, South-Eastern Europe, pp. 237–47; C. Holmes, Basil II and the Governance ofEmpire (976–1025) (Oxford, 2005), pp. 392–447; Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, pp.62–79. On the Venetian conquest of Dalmatia: P. Štih, ‘Der ostadriatische Raum um das Jahr1000’, in P. Urbanczyk (ed.), Europe around the Year 1000 (Warsaw, 2001), pp. 205–19.



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