After teaching at the Matthias Flacius Illyricus Faculty of Theology (see report elsewhere on the website), I took the opportunity to travel into Dalmatia, on Croatia’s Adriatic coast, to some places of keen interest to me as a historian—Split, Zadar, and Nin.

In Split: Bishop Grgur of Nin by Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic

Split, now Croatia’s 2nd-largest city (after Zagreb), grew up around the palace erected by the Roman emperor, Diocletian in the early 4th century to serve as his retirement home. Much of the original structure remains standing, and in the intervening centuries many other buildings have been erected within the palace grounds and in the surrounding area. As a historian, it was extraordinary to spend two nights in a hotel within the ancient palace itself.

Diocletian guided the last great persecution of the Christian church. Within less than a decade of his retirement, Constantine had become the Augustus of the western half of the empire, with huge eventual consequences for the empire, Christianity, Europe, and western civilization. The changes which ensued eventually enveloped Diocletian’s palace. In the 7th century, his mausoleum was consecrated as the Cathedral of St. Domnius, a bishop martyred under Diocletian: the emperor’s sarcophagus was removed and replaced with the remains of the martyr. (It was a serendipitous privilege to be there on May 11, 2008, for the Pentecost Day service , celebrating the beginnings of the Christian church in a place originally erected to honor its last imperial persecutor, and realizing that Christians had been celebrating Pentecost there for the past fourteen centuries.) In the 6th century, the temple to Jupiter within the palace precincts had already been consecrated as the Baptistry of St. John. Even so, much of the original remains unchanged: the baptistry still has the carved faces of various Roman gods above its entrance, and a sphinx expropriated from Egypt by Diocletian to serve as a guardian of his mausoleum still commands the wall ledge beside the cathedral.

The peristyle, the interior courtyard of the palace, was the heart of the original palace complex. A bell tower erected in the middle ages beside the cathedral affords panoramic views of Split and its environs. The four gates of the palace are still open to pedestrian traffic. The brass gate faces the seacoast; at the top of the hill above the golden gate stands a huge monument from the Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic to Bishop Grgur of Nin (Grgur Ninski), the fiery 10th-century champion of the Slavonic (rather than the Latin) liturgy. The silver gate is surrounded by bustling contemporary market stalls. Just inside the iron gate stands a monument to Marko Marulic, revered as the 15th-century father of Croatian literature.

Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Nin

A few hours’ bus travel northwest along the coast brings one to Nin, the oldest Croatian royal town: Tomislav, crowned in 925 under papal auspices as Croatia’s first king, and his successors usually resided here until the Trpimirovic dynasty died out and Croatia was incorporated into the Hungarian Kingdom (in 1102). Some Croat leaders had lived in Nin before Tomislav’s time: a statue of the 8th-century Croatian leader Duke Branimir guards the bridge onto the island of Nin. “Sv. Kriz” (the Church of the Holy Cross) was established as a cathedral in the 9th century; it is the smallest cathedral in the world. (By my steps, it is 10 paces across, in both directions of the Greek cross which is its internal layout.) This was the cathedral of Bishop Grgur Ninski, of whom another Mestrovic monument stands nearby. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Croatia’s kings were crowned in a church dedicated to St. Anselm in Nin. Although that building no longer stands, another Church of St. Anselm was erected in the 18th century, near the original site. Just outside that structure is a copy of the late 8th/early 9th-century baptistry of Duke Viseslav. On the island one encounters ruins dating as far back as pre-Roman times.

A short bus ride (14 kilometers [about 9 miles]) from Nin is Zadar. Founded in antiquity, the city boasts a Roman plaza, complete with a free-standing Corinthian column, and a Roman forum—with cafes and restaurants allowing visitors to drink in the historic ambience. Just off the forum is the Church of St. Donat, a pristine example of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture of the early 9th century. Nearby are the Orthodox Church of Sv. Ilija (St. Elijah) and the 11th-century Church of St. Mary. On the other end of the forum is the Cathedral of St. Anastasia.

Some of these churches were built or renovated during the period Zadar was under Venetian control. In the 16th century, Venice also saw to the erection of the Land Gate {#34}, which protected the peninsula city from invasion, and of the Sea Gate {#35}, which has a memorial stone commemorating the naval victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

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