The Revisionist Claims of Vinko Pribojević

De origine successibusque Slavorum (On the Origin and Glory of the Slavs)
Vinko Pribojević — Italian edition, published in Venice, 1595

Vinko Pribojević (Vincentius Priboevius; Vincenzo Pribevo) was a 16th century Slavic monk and pseudo-historian. He is often credited as the first ideologue of pan-slavism and a precursor of the Illyrian movement, although these movements did not officially emerge until the 19th century.

Biography

He was born on the Dalmatian island of Lesina, in the Republic of Venice, in the 15th century. His existence is documented for the first time in 1511 in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where he lived and studied as a monk. His name was recorded as Vincentius Dalmata (the name Vinko Pribojević is a recent slavicization of his Latin name).

In 1525 he traveled to Venice where he delivered a speech known as De origine successibusque Slavorum (On the Origin and Glory of the Slavs). In this speech he made many outrageous claims regarding the Slavs—none of which have any support in the academic world today, but are supported only by a fringe of radical Slavic extremists and ultra-nationalist revisionists. He later entered a Dominican convent in Ancona, Italy. He died sometime after 1555.

Pribojević was a minor and relatively unimportant figure for many centuries, and likely would have remained forgotten and unknown today if his works and ideas had not been revived by Slavic nationalists in the 19th century, and embraced especially by the Yugoslavs in the 20th century.

Claims on Ancient Slavs

Among his claims were that the ancient Macedonians, Mysians, Illyrians, Thracians, Dacians, Dardanians, Vandals, Goths, Gepids, Sarmatians, Dalmatians and Istrians were all Slavs. He further claimed that men such as Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Diocletian and St. Jerome were all Slavs.

These claims stand on their own as so ridiculous that they require no rebuttal.

Claims on Italy

In addition to these claims, he also attempted to argue that the lands of northeastern Italy are culturally and linguistically separated from the rest of Italy, and in fact belong to Slavdom, claiming that “those who live beyond Istria, as do the inhabitants of Trieste and Gorizia, converse only in the Slavic tongue.” These assertions were astonishingly false.

The city of Trieste had been a Latin-speaking city since its foundation more than a century before Christ, was a Romance-speaking city in the 15th and 16th centuries (the same in which Pribojević lived), and is still Romance-speaking today. The local dialect spoken in Trieste until the 19th century was Tergestino, a Ladin dialect related to Friulian. This dialect went extinct in the 19th century and was replaced with Triestino, a Venetian-Italian dialect. Today the predominant language is standard Italian. The language of Trieste was never Slavic at any point in history.

The Gorizian dialect, called Goriziano, is a Venetian-Italian dialect, and was established in Gorizia in the early 1500's. It was spoken both in the city of Gorizia and in the surrounding Gorizian hinterland during Pribojević's own lifetime. Prior to the development of Goriziano, Friulian dialects (derived from vulgar Latin) were spread over almost the entire Gorizia region, and were spoken also in the city of Gorizia. Also spoken in the region of Gorizia, in an area known as Bisiacaria, was a local dialect known as Bisiacco, an autochthonous variant of Venetian-Italian. Spoken in Grado was another autochthonous Venetian-Italian dialect called Gradese. The native languages of Gorizia, therefore, had always been Latin-derived Romance dialects, namely Friulian and Venetian-Italian.

The Slavic tongue is not native to Gorizia, but was first introduced into certain parts of the Gorizian countryside by a minority of Slavic immigrants who only arrived during the Middle Ages. The main centres of the region (Gorizia, Gradisca, Grado, Monfalcone, Aquileia, etc.) always maintained a majority Italian population, even into the Austro-Hungarian period, and still remain Italian today.

Pribojević then claimed that Istria is “by its location, by its customs and by its language separated from Italy.” Those acquainted with Istria and its history will immediately recognize the falseness of these assertions. The Istrian peninsula, besides being clearly geographically linked to Italy, formed an intricate part of Italy for over a millennium. Furthermore, the native language of Istria, called Istrioto, is a Romance language descended from Latin and closely-related to Italian (even regarded by some linguists as an Italian dialect). This language was famously spoken in all the Istrian cities for centuries, before being gradually replaced by the Istro-Venetian dialect and standard Italian. All the cities of Istria continued to be Italian-speaking well into the 20th century. Yet Pribojević pretended that Istria, together with Trieste and Gorizia, somehow belonged to the Slavic world.

The Falsified “Donation” of Alexander

In 1532 Pribojević published a falsified document entitled Privilegium Alexandri Magni donatum Populis Slauis (The Donation of Alexander the Great to the Slavs) as an appendix to his 1525 speech in Venice. This fictional document, purported to have been written in the 4th century BC by the court of Alexander the Great, bestows vast amounts of land to the Slavs as a reward for supposedly being “allies” of Alexander during his military campaigns. Pribojević claimed that the document had been discovered in Constantinople and translated from Ancient Greek. However, this story was a fabricated lie. In reality the text originated in 13th century Poland and resurfaced in 14th century Bohemia. Evidently it later caught the attention of Pribojević, who decided to translate and publish the hoax document in Latin as “evidence” of Slavs having a prominent role in classical antiquity and an ancient right to occupy vast swaths of territory in Europe.

The fraudulent text is preserved in the 1532 edition of Pribojević's De origine successibusque Slavorum, held in the Metropolitan Library of the Archdiocese of Zagreb.

Conclusion

Vinko Pribojević and his absurd claims would be entirely insignificant to us today, except for the fact that it can be used to demonstrate a point. It demonstrates how far certain Slavic revisionists will go in their attempt to rewrite history; the length they will go to forge myths, lie to themselves and deceive others, in order to steal other peoples history, appropriate a foreign culture and usurp a heritage which does not belong to them, merely to justify their past misdeeds or to gratify their ultra-nationalistic pride. Although many of his claims are rejected even by most Slavs today, nevertheless Pribojević's same spirit of myth, deception and pseudo-historical revisionism continues to live on amongst certain radicals of the ex-Yugoslavia, particularly in modern Slovenia and Croatia.

Ivan Golub Claims Pope Sixtus V was “Croatian”

(Taken from the journal “La voce del popolo”, No. 3400, March 10, 2012.)

“In the secret archives of the Vatican we have found documents that testify to the Croatian origin of Pope Sixtus V.” This declaration, made the day before yesterday evening by the theologian, writer and researcher Ivan Golub at the round table of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) on “The Dome of St. Peter's in Rome”, has spread throughout all the Croatian media. “His father” – says Golub – “was from the Croatian coast and moved to Italy. Here he married an Italian woman with whom he had a son, Felice Peretti.” Echoed by other Croatian academics: the “Croatian spirit” of Sixtus V – they claim – “is perceptible even in the foundation of the Institute of St. Jerome [of the Illyrians or of the Slavs in Rome, editor's note], of which only one who knew the Illyrian language and was of Croatian descent could become a member.”

Laurana and Giorgio da Sebenico

The meeting at the HAZU was one long “hymn” to “Croatian” genius and ingenuity (real or imagined). Regarding the participants in the construction of St. Peter's Basilica, Andrija Mutnjaković claimed that “in addition to the Croatian Pope Sixtus V, there was also the Croatian architect Lucijan Vranjanin [Luciano Laurana or, in Latin, Lutiano Dellaurana, born in Aurana, near Zara, in 1420 and died in Pesaro in 1479, editor's note] and his brother [Francesco, Aurana, 1430 - Avignon, 1502, sculptor and architect who played a leading role in spreading the Renaissance aesthetic in Naples, Sicily and France, ed], who were inspired by the school of Juraj Dalmatinac [Giorgio Orsini, or Giorgio da Sebenico, Zara, early 15th century - Sebenico, 1473/75, ed], the builder of the Cathedral of Sebenico.”

The Inevitable Boscovich

And of course, as Croatian academics always do, Žarko Dadić added to this list the “Croatian” scientist Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich, whose influence was decisive in the reconstruction of the monumental dome of Michelangelo, which was consolidated and finished by Giacomo della Porta. “At that time there arose disputes among the builders who relied on experience and those who took as a starting point knowledge of mathematics and statics,” said Dadić. Eventually the latter prevailed and therefore the “evaluations of the Croatian scientist Ruđer Bošković”.

From the Antemurale to the Heart of the Roman Church

The Croats, therefore, having already claimed to be the Antemurale Christianitatis, now even claim they “saved” the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, one of the symbols of the Church of Rome. Regarding Pope Sixtus V, the Tough Pope, we know that for some time they have speculated on the origins of the pontiff, attempting to demonstrate his Croatian ancestry. But so far in the official history of the Papacy there has never been any pope of “Croatian nationality.” If anything, according to numerous documented investigations, it is only proven that Pope Sixtus V, born Felice Peretti (Grottammare, 13 December 1520/1521 - Rome, 27 August 1590), had a friendly relationship with Dalmatian Croats.

From Krušćica or Kruševica to Peretti

The ancestors of Sixtus V are claimed (by Croatian academics) to have originated in Kruševica, Krušćica or Kruševo. According to some texts of the University of Cambridge and the research of Croatian historians as Božidar Vidov, Bazilije Pandžić, Stjepan Krasić, Ivica Mlivončić, in the papal coat of arms of Sixtus V we can “read” important references about his origins: it shows, in fact, a lion, three pears, a castel and a star. It is argued that the three golden pears at the top, under the strip depicting a six-pointed star and a stylized castle, are an allusion to his place of origin (from “Kruška”, in Italian “pear” and hence the name “Peretti”).

The archbishop Andrija Zmajević, born in Perasto, wrote in his “Chronicle” that the father of Sixtus V, known by the Italian name of “Piergentile”, was born in the village of Bjelske Kruševice, near Cattaro, as a member of the Šišić family. The nickname of this Piergentile was “Peretto”, and from here therefore, according to Zmajević, would be born the last name “Peretti”, adopted by the future pope only at the age of 31 years, in 1551. Up to that time he was called “Felice di Montalto”, from the name of the town in the Marche (Montalto, in the province of Ascoli Piceno) – a region where today there also lives a Croatian community – in which he grew up as a kid and where his ancestors, Zmajević claimed, had settled after fleeing from the Turkish invasions, like many other Dalmatians. From Montalto, the family then moved to Grottamare to escape the oppression of the Duke of Urbino, and here was born the future pope.

Felice as a child entered the Franciscan Order, was noticed by Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, protector of his order, by Ghislieri (later Pope Pius V) and by Caraffa (later Pope Paul IV) and finally he ascended the papal throne on 24 April 1585.

The Tough Pope

Sixtus adjusted finances, promoted public works – including the completion of the dome of St. Peter's – but in his larger political relations showed himself to be a visionary and vacillating. He entertained fantastic ambitions, such as the annihilation of the Turks, the conquest of Egypt, transporting the Holy Sepulchre to Italy, and the ascension of his nephew to the throne of France. He died August 27, 1590, and posterity recognizes him as one of the greatest popes: although impulsive, obstinate, severe and autocratic, he was open-minded and devoted himself to his business with energy and determination which often led him to success.

Golub did not say much, at least not on this occasion, regarding the alleged sources found in the Vatican archives. It also remains to be seen whether the adjective “Croatian” is merely a reference to him coming from a region which today is part of Croatia (remember the case of the Bronze Statue from Lussino, called the Athlete of Croatia, which is actually a Greek statue) or if it indicates descent from a “race”, and therefore a question of blood. In any case we expect “Enlightenment”.

The Unfounded “Croatian” Origin of Pope Sixtus V

(Written by Raffaele Tassotti, taken from the journal “La voce del popolo”, No. 3402, March 13, 2012.)

The Culpable Stupidity of Croatian Pseudo-Historians

Already since 1987 – at this point I was mayor for about two years in Montalto, home of Sixtus V and the immemorial Peretti family, when Marijan Zugaj published the volume “Sisto V tra Oriente ed Occidente” – we became aware of the partisanship and arrogance of certain “historians” who, in order to prove a preconceived thesis, are prepared to commit all sorts of crimes against historical criticism. Zugaj pretended in his book to “prove” the Croatian origin of the Peretti, and therefore of Sixtus V, and claimed that his father Piergentile, called Peretto, was a Croatian immigrant.

The attempt, somewhat cunning, was totally demolished, brick by brick, in 1990 by Isidoro Gatti, OFM Conv., with a massive research volume of more than 600 pages, based on thorough investigations and capillaries in the archives of Montalto (where no Croatian “historians” ever went to verify), Venice, the Vatican and the College of St. Jerome. We thought that would be enough; we were wrong.

Zugaj, furious at having been proven wrong, revised his thesis regarding the arrival of Peretto (father of Felice/Sixtus V) in Marche from the Croatian coast; he admitted he was wrong, but raised the theory of Croatian origin again with a pamphlet entitled “Antenati di Sisto V a Montalto non documentate oltre quattro generazioni” (Rome, 1999), that is, he already admits that for at least four generations the Perettti were in Montalto.

We responded to Zugaj's virulent and offensive brochure with another work by a four-handed research team (Isidoro Gatti - Raffaele Tassotti, “Ancora su Sisto V papa piceno – commento a un recente opuscolo”, Acquaviva Picena, 1999). Once again we thought that documented history was sufficient to dispel the myth. Unfortunately not.

Today we read that a certain Ivan Golub claims to have “found secret documents in the Vatican archives that testify to the Croatian origin of Pope Sixtus V”, and that even his father Peretto was a Croat who immigrated to Piceno, thus reviving the thesis already denied by the same Zugaj. Faced with such stupidity, we no longer desire to be kind and polite.

It has been demonstrated incontrovertibly that the documents in the archives of St. Jerome of the Croats were falsified in the middle of the 17th century by the Croatian friar and swindler Jeronim Paštrić, who also constructed the false Sistine genealogy given to the naive Bartolomeo Piazza, author of the “Hierarchia Cardinalizia”, because they were published and were proven to be invented when compared to authentic documents in the notarial and historical archives of Montalto, documents covering several centuries, written by several scribes and notaries, unanimous in their witness to the truth.

Now Golub has found what? Other forgeries designed to prove the unprovable? He does not even cite them, but only announces them!

We are prepared to do something serious: both Fr. Isidoro Gatti (I believe I can speak on his behalf) and myself are ready to have a debate on this matter in a public conference in Rome, at St. Jerome, at the Vatican, or wherever. I repeat we are ready: we challenge them with the classic slap on the cheek. We await a response.

Artists, Navigators, Popes, Scientists... “Croats”

(Taken from the journal “La voce del popolo”, No. 3404, March 15, 2012.)

Here we go again. The list of famous people who have distinguished themselves in various fields of human knowledge being passed off as Croats increases. The brigade of great names includes: the explorer Marco Polo (Marko Polo), the architect Giorgio Orsini (Juraj Dalmatinac), the philosopher Francesco Patrizio (Frane/Franjo Petrić, Petrišević or Petrišić – the counterfeiters have not yet agreed on the final version of his name), the scientist Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich (Ruđer Bošković), the businessman Andrea Lodovico Adamich (Andrija Ljudevit Adamić) and still many others, including a pontiff: Sixtus V! The remaining men – who we do not mention because we could fill pages –, just like the above listed, have all been shamefully officially croatized.

One Way Reasoning

On the other hand, paper is patient. It is sufficient that a person is born on the soil which now belongs to Croatia, or, in some cases, who simply arrived from other shores, and they are passed off as “Croatian”. There is no shame, we are now faced with a brazenness that knows no limits. Even those who fought for Italianity, in some cases, are now grotesquely called “Croats”, especially if the last name is not proper “Tuscan”. Or they use the label “talijanaš”, i.e. a renegade of the Fatherland who joined another nation. This formula also serves to diminish the contribution of the autochthonous Italian component of these territories. This whimsical reasoning, however, is only applied one way. Nobody, for example, would dare to define as “Austrian” or “German” a nineteenth-century man of prominence such as the Bishop of Djakovo, Msgr. Josip Juraj Strossmayer, who is considered one of the fathers of the Croatian nation. The scholars of other countries have other historiographical problems to deal with instead of this stupidity.

Havoc and Looting: the Bajamonti Case

The Adriatic region, due to its heterogeneous nature, can not be classified “sic et simpliciter” as Croatian: that is unhistorical and has no foundation. The counterfeiters on duty have disrupted the onomastics of family names; the newly-coined Slavic names are a mess made by those who despise and literally plundered a legacy that does not belong to them, by passing it off as their own. Giulio Bajamonti in the meantime has been renamed “Julije” and is presented as a “Croatian” encyclopedist. By what right do they arrogate the power to assign an identity to a person who in the first place was a native of Spalato of Italian culture? In the second half of the nineteenth century another great man of the Diocletian city, the mayor Antonio Bajamonti, speaking at the Diet of Zara against the attacks of those who set out to decapitate the Dalmatian Autonomist Party, said: “We'll be Slavs tomorrow too, but never Croats.”

Identity Defined in Advance

By this we mean that it makes no sense to attribute a priori the identity of people of the past. They belong to a dimension that is not ours and, consequently, to grasp it, we must immerse ourselves in the context of a given historical age. Otherwise we would have to speak of the historical “Turk” Herodotus and the “Russian” philosopher Immanuel Kant because they were born, respectively, in Halicarnassus (now in Turkey) and Königsberg, former East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, a city of the Russian Federation).

Only a few years ago in Nafpaktos (Lepanto) they held a ceremony and a plaque was posted – in Croatian, Greek and English, but not Italian – in honor of those who, under their breath, some identify as a “Croatian victory” and in memory of dead Croats. The issue had been proposed and addressed already a few decades before, even in academia, on the 400th anniversary of the 1571 naval battle in the waters of the Gulf of Patras.

The Victory of Lepanto

The imposing military deployment of the Holy League was comprised of soldiers, sailors and rowers. That there were also some Croats among them is undeniable; the Republic of Venice had recruited thousands of men from every corner of its possessions. But to speak, however, of “Croatian galleys” captained by Croats – with mangled slavicized names, of course – is simply absurd. The homage was to the thousands of Istrians, Dalmatians and Bocchesians involved and/or killed. According to nationalistic logic, these men were all “Croats”, without distinction; not even a mention of the participation of the Italians of those same regions. They do not exist apparently.

Sixtus V

Now there is much talk about the supposed Croatian origin of Pope Sixtus V, born Felice Peretti. Scholars who have worked seriously on archival sources have long demonstrated the inconsistency of this thesis. Despite this, there are still certain environments, sometimes religious, as with the Institute of St. Jerome of the Illyrians, and sometimes cultural, as with the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, who refuse to give it up. They always announce breakthroughs and flaunt the existence of documents, which, of course, have never been presented nor published.

Santorio, Absolutely Not Svetina

The last strange discovery was another load of nonsense: that of the alleged “Slovenian” origin of Santorio Santorio, dubbed “Svetina” by certain men who pen imaginative tales attempting to pass him off as a Slav. But failing in their clumsy operation, without a shred of evidence, they cunningly escape or hide behind generic and pathetic statements. Now in the “Croatian Pantheon” they wish to add a Pope. We await the next boastful farce.

Blessed Agostino Casotti: A New “Croat” for Puglia

(Taken from the Associazione Nazionale Venezia Giulia e Dalmazia, April 17, 2012.)

After the would-be theft of Pope Sixtus V by the Croats, clumsily attempted by a “researcher” in Zagreb who believes that the Peretti coat of arms secretly alludes to a supposed Illyrian origin, now Blessed Agostino Casotti, a native of Traù, very dear to Lucera – whose diocese he governed for one year between 1322 and 1323 and which in recent months has taken part in the process of canonization –, is being claimed to have Croatian nationality.

“We are forming” – according to a statement issued by elements of the Curia – “the diocesan organizations that need to assess the so-called reputation of holiness of the Blessed, to ascertain whether in the course of many years, the veneration of the Christian people has remained unaltered. Additionally, there will also be a great work of raising awareness, so that through his intercession a miracle may arrive, which alone is needed to satisfy the investigations and gain recognition of his canonization by the Congregation of Saints. This means that in order to get the miracle, one must ask through the intercession of the Blessed.”

And of course “Croatia is bustling with activity in this direction, and is also taking advantage of the numerous contacts made in recent years between the two Dioceses, especially at the initiative of the incumbent Bishop Mons. Francesco Zerrillo and now the confrere in service Mons. Domenico Cornacchia.”

The new Croatian ID card of the future Saint will of course bear the name of “Augustin Kažotić”, and his place of birth will be listed as “Trogir” (which today falls under the sovereignty of Croatia). It is the finest example of misappropriation of a historical figure who lived in a time and in a place which did not have anything to do with Croatia. Just to remind the readers, the Dalmatian city of Traù, one of the most splendid examples of a Renaissance city, distinctly Venetian and Italian in its sumptuous architecture, was founded by the Greeks in the fourth century BC with the name of Tragurion; it later became Roman, and from the sixth century onward was part of Byzantium. From the 11th century it was variously dependent on Venice and Hungary. But in 1322 (right when the Blessed Casotti was assigned to the Diocese of Lucera) the city aligned itself with Venice in order to prevent falling into the hands of Croatian feudal lords. After a brief period of dependence on the crown of Hungary, in 1420 Traù returned to Venice and remained there for nearly four centuries.

“The most faithful testimony of this material and cultural richness” – wrote Lucio Toth in his historical-legal treatise on the Dalmatian cities – “are the citizens Statutes, [...] republished recently by both the Senate of the Italian Republic (together with the Statutes of other regions belonging to Italian culture) and by the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade.” Statutes which establish and regulate for the flourishing Dalmatian Comunes “organs typical of Italian public law”, to whose sphere of civilization and culture they have historically belonged for many centuries.

Blessed Agostino Casotti - August 3

The body of Blessed Agostino Casotti, which rests in the
Basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta in Lucera, Puglia, Italy

Blessed Agostino Casotti, also known as Augustine of Lucera, was born circa 1260 AD in the Dalmatian city of Traù. He was born into the noble Casotti family, of Venetian origin. At age 15 he entered the Dominican Order at Spalato, where he spent a few years before leaving to study at the University of Paris in 1286. He then returned to his native Dalmatia where he founded several Dominican convents. He also spent time in Italy attempting to reconcile the rival political factions, and later went to Bosnia to combat the Bogomil heresy. Afterwards he went to Hungary, where he met and befriended Cardinal Niccolò Boccasini—the future Pope Benedict XI. The pope personally consecrated and appointed him Bishop of Zagreb in 1303. As bishop, Blessed Agostino presided over several disciplinary synods; founded a Dominican priory, a library and a cathedral school; and cared for the poor. He also attended the ecumenical Council of Vienne in 1311-1312.

Blessed Agostino was opposed to the tyranny of King Charles I of Hungary and the Croatian feudal lord Mladen II (a vassal of Hungary who terrorized Agostino's native city of Traù). As a result, in 1318 he was forced into exile by the King. In January 1322, the Dalmatian cities of Sebenico and Traù rebelled against Mladen II and voluntarily joined the Republic of Venice. This angered King Charles, who desired to subject all Dalmatia to the Hungarian crown. After four years of being exiled and unable to return to his see in Zagreb, in 1322 – at the suggestion of King Robert of Naples – Agostino was appointed Bishop of Lucera by Pope John XXII.

The city of Lucera, located in Puglia, Italy, had previously been the site of a bloody conflict between Christians and Muslims. After the Muslims were completely expelled from Sicily in the 13th century, the city of Lucera was the only city in Italy where the remaining Muslims were permitted to live. In 1300, a Christian army decimated nearly the entire Muslim population of Lucera. The city was destroyed and the Muslim community thereafter disappeared. It was in this environment that Blessed Agostino was charged with the duty of restoring Christianity in the region.

Agostino initiated many public works in Lucera: he created an orphanage for girls; founded a hospital; and reconstructed and expanded the city walls. He also decreed that the city of Lucera should be known by its previous name of Santa Maria della Vittoria (Our Lady of Victory). Within a single year he had transformed the city and Diocese of Lucera. Realizing that death was near, he retired to a Dominican convent in Lucera, where he died in the odor of sanctity on August 3, 1323.

After his death, he was venerated by the people of Lucera and his cult quickly spread. In around 1640, Pietro Casotti, one of his descendants, erected an altar in his honour in the Cathedral of Traù. His body rests today in the Basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta in Lucera, Italy.

He was beatified by Pope Clement XI on April 4, 1702. His feast is celebrated on August 3.

Miracles

Blessed Agostino was known for performing many miracles. In particular, he is said to have had the gift of healing. During his episcopal consecration in Rome, he cured the rheumatism of Pope Benedict XI when his head was touched by the pain-stricken hands of the pope. He also planted a lime tree in Zagreb which cured many people. It is said that the tree was even respected by the Turks when they invaded the city.

Writings

Blessed Agostino was distinguished for his extraordinary doctrinal and theological knowledge. He wrote a treatise against witchcraft and magic entitled Dicta super quaestionibus de haeresi, haeretico, superstitione, sortilegio (On Superstition), and a treatise on poverty entitled Consilium de paupertate Christi et Apostolorum (On the Poverty of Christ and His Apostles).

Croatian revisionism

Blessed Agostino Casotti is described by modern Croatian sources as “the first beatified Croat” and as “one of the first Croatian theologians”, and his name has been croatized to “Augustin Kažotić”. This is one of the countless examples of modern Croats deliberately attempting to rewrite history. Unfortunately many ignorant people, misled by this recent deception, have blindly followed this distortion of history and have come to accept the false claim that Agostino Casotti was a Croat.

The Casotti family was of Venetian origin; branches of the family existed in Traù, in Padua and also in Tuscany, all bound by their common Venetian roots. To this noble family belonged Blessed Agostino Casotti. This is confirmed by the Yearbook of Italian Nobility (Annuario della nobiltà italiana, 1882), an annual genealogical publication on the noble families of Italy.

Casotti spent 14 years in Zagreb as a bishop, however his tenure in Zagreb is not the reason he is claimed by the Croats. The reason he is claimed to be Croatian is because he was born in Dalmatia, a region which today is part of Croatia, but which previously was Venetian and underwent profound ethnic and political changes in the 19th and 20th centuries, culminating in the ethnic cleansing of the native Italian population by the Yugoslav Communists at the end of the Second World War. This was followed by a largely successful propaganda campaign designed to erase the Italian history of the region and replace it with a rewritten slavicized version of history intended to justify Yugoslav expansionism, pretending that the region, it culture and its historical figures were all Slavic.

However, Agostino Casotti was neither a Croat nor a Slav. He was a native of Traù, a Latin city in Dalmatia, born into a family of Venetian descent. To pretend that Casotti was a Croat, simply because he was born in a city which today belongs to Croatia, would be akin to calling Immanuel Kant (a native of Königsberg, Prussia) a “Russian” simply because the city in which he was born has been cleansed of its German-speaking population, renamed Kaliningrad and annexed to Russia.

The city of Traù, like the other cities of Istria and Dalmatia, was a Latin city of Romance language and Italian culture, and remained so until the 20th century. To call Blessed Agostino Casotti a “Croat” is an act of perverse revisionism. It constitutes a crime against history, a crime against the memory of those who were murdered and expelled from these lands by the Yugoslavs, and a crime against the native Latin people who created that rich cultural heritage of Istria and Dalmatia which the Slavs today have misappropriated for themselves.

Croatia Kidnaps Marco Polo

(Written by Gian Antonio Stella, taken from the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”, April 22, 2011.)

The HINA press agency reports that former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić has inaugurated a museum dedicated to Marko Polo in the Chinese city of Yangzhou. That’s right, “Marko” Polo with a “k”. Mr. Mesić paid solemn tribute to the “Croatian-born world traveller who opened China to Europe” and, apparently, the Chinese applauded. If ever proof were needed that the Italian authorities don’t know what they are doing, this is it. How could they possibly let anyone kidnap Marco Polo? Yet the myth of the Venetian trader and traveller’s “Croatianness” is not new. According to Alvise Zorzi, who has written a shelf’s worth of books on Venice, including one on Marco Polo, traces the story back to another legend, which claims that the Venetian traveller was captured by the Genoese in a sea battle in 1298 near the island of Curzola – “Korčula” in Croatian – off the Dalmatian coast. Zorzi dismisses this version: “It seems more likely that on one of his travels, Marco Polo ended up in the hands of the Genoese off the coast of Cilicia at Laiazzo [today Ayas in Turkey – Trans.]”.

This, however, is not the point. Even if Marco Polo had by some chance been born at Curzola (Italo Calvino was born in Havana but no one would dream of calling him a “Cuban writer”), the island that Croatians now call “Korčula” was culturally Venetian, as is obvious from the old town, the Marcian Lions over the doors and the cathedral of St. Mark. In fact, it was held in fief by the Zorzi family until the fifteenth century.

To claim that Marco Polo, or indeed any other resident of Curzola at that time, was Croatian simply because the island is in Croatia today, is to stretch history perilously far. By the same token, the ancient episcopate of Thagaste in Numidia is today called Souk Ahras, and is located in Algeria, so St. Augustine was an Algerian philosopher. Septimius Severus, born in Roman Leptis Magna, a short distance from modern-day Al Khums in Tripolitania, would be a Tripolitanian emperor while Justinian was born in what is now Zelenikovo in Macedonia, so he would be Macedonian, or if you like Turkish, since he governed from the present-day Istanbul. To say nothing of the well-known French patriot, Nice-born Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Ridiculous. As if that wasn’t enough, Zorzi goes on, Marco Polo never mentions Curzola in Il Milione. He dictated his memoirs while languishing in a Genoese prison to Rustichello da Pisa, a composer of chivalrous romances, which at that time were written in langue d’oïl (as was Marco Polo’s book, originally entitled Le livre de Marco Polo citoyen de Venise, dit Million, où l’on conte les merveilles du monde). Moreover, Curzola is nowhere mentioned in the Polo family archives in Venice.

There is plenty of archive material – births, deaths, marriages, wives, wills and so on – from which to trace the impeccably Venetian roots of the Polo family, which was almost certainly resident in the San Trovaso district. All you want.

How is it then possible that the Croatian president, if we do not wish to question the Hina agency story picked up by the Rijeka/Fiume-based Italian-language newspaper, La voce del popolo, was invited by the Chinese authorities to inaugurate a museum to the Venetian traveller at Yangzhou, where Marco Polo tells us he was an administrator for the emperor, Kublai Khan, and some years later the missionary Odorico da Pordenone would also reside? How is it possible that the Italian government and diplomatic service allowed someone as incredibly famous among the Chinese as the author of Il Milione to slip through their fingers, to the possible detriment of friendly relations, commerce and tourism? With all due respect for Stjepan Mesić, can we condone his going to China and thanking his hosts for the honour of inaugurating a museum dedicated “to a Croatian-born world traveller who opened China to Europe, and who with his writings also reawakened Europe’s interest in China”? Let us leave to one side nationalist resentment and rancour over the expulsion of 350,000 Italians from Istria, Dalmatia and the Quarnero. We have already seen, in the former Yugoslavia, what hate can do if its flames are fanned. That’s how it went. End of story. Yet the Yangzhou snub is merely the latest in a long line of “misappropriations” by Zagreb of a cultural heritage that does not belong to Croatia.

Take, for example, the tourist brochures of Spalato, in which Croatian nationalists rechristened the Lion of St. Mark a “post-Illyrian Lion”. The same goes for the “tweaked” memorandum given to John Paul II for his 1988 visit to Dalmatia, which prompted the pontiff to say that “Spalato and Salona have special significance for the development of Christianity in this region, starting from the Croatian age and then in the subsequent Roman period,” as if the Slavs hadn’t arrived in the seventh and eighth centuries but a thousand years earlier. Above all, it goes for the exhibition in the Vatican library inaugurated for the 2000 Jubilee by Franjo Tudjman, who in his effort to obliterate any memory of Venetian-Italian culture called Marco Polo “Croatian by descent and by birth”.

The exhibition was entitled “Religious Art and Croatian Faith”. But, despite their attempt to pass off the Venetian Basilica of Parenzo as a “high expression of Croatian art”, the Croatian professor Miljenko Domijan, one of the coordinators, admitted to “Novi List” that the claim was a stretch.

Indeed, admitted the scholar, the exhibition labeled as “Croatian” many works by men of Italian culture: “We didn’t have a choice, because the works produced by men of Croatian ethnicity have little value. I don't know what we would be able to show, all of it would be inferior.” The portrait of the bishop of Spalato by Lorenzo Lotto, a Pietà by Tintoretto, a silver bust of St. Stephen by a goldsmith of Rome, a statue of St. Giovanni da Traù by the Tuscan Niccolò Fiorentino, the ark of St. Simon by Francesco da Milano (renamed “Franjo iz Milana” by the Croats), a painting by Carpaccio, the plans and documents of the Cathedral of Zara in Pisan style, and the Cathedral of Sebenico built by Giorgio Orsini da Zara (renamed, of course, Juraj Dalmatinac) were all Croatized...