Chapter Five. Strategies Of Distinction In The Work Of Vinko Pribojević

Abstract

In the year 1525 on the Island of Hvar in front of a selected audience, the social and intellectual elite of this prosperous Adriatic community, the learned Dominican monk Vinko Pribojevic (Vincentius Priboevius) gave an oration titled De Origine Successibusque Slavorum. With a wide stroke of the brush, Pribojevic painted his history of the Slavs from times immemorial to the present day, incorporating in it the histories of various ancient peoples, such as the Thracians, Macedonians, Goths, Gets, Vandals, Sarmatians, Gepids and Illyrians, all of whom he declared Slavs. Pribojevic ignored the migration of the Slavs to the Balkan peninsula in the sixth century, and claimed ethnic continuity for the Slavs in these regions. By doing so, he invents an ancient tradition for contemporary Slavic Dalmatia, linking it with the heritage of the ancient Illyrians. In the case of such an invented tradition, one can easily note the obvious connection between the claim of a glorious history, and the author's (in this case Pribojevic) ability to identify a particular historical person (Emperor Diocletian, Aristotle, St. Jerome etc.) or entire nations such as Goths, Macedonians or Vandals as alid members of a communal past. The mechanism used for distinguishing the ancestors from the others, contains the core elements that constitutes an understanding of itself and its community. For this purpose, Pribojevic used the criteria applied since the early Middle Ages, to distinguish various ethnic groups, namely descent, language and customs. This study uses Pribojevic's oration as a case study in the research of early modern protonationalism. The aim is, through the use of an ethno-symbolic framework analyse Pribojevic's understanding of collective identities, and to identify it as a new model of Dalmatian patriotism, one consciously built on the Slavic character of 16th century Dalmatia.