RICHARD AND RAGUSA

I have always been interested in the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik. I am not sure why, for I knew little of its history. It may have been the sheer beauty of the locale—the white medieval walls, the red tile roofs, the turquoise of the Adriatic Sea, the mountains rising up in the distance. Whatever the reason, for as long as I can remember, Dubrovnik has been on my Bucket List of places to visit before I die. In all honesty, I never truly expected to make it, though. But that may be changing, thanks to a man dead more than eight hundred years.

When he was attempting to make his way back to England after the end of the Third Crusade, Richard Lionheart ran into more drama in the span of weeks than most people do in the course of a lifetime—storms at sea, an encounter with pirates, two shipwrecks, a mad dash through enemy territory with just twenty men, and then betrayal and capture, an imprisonment that blatantly violated Church law. His first shipwreck was on the island of Lokrum, just outside the harbor of Ragusa. I was both surprised and intrigued to discover that Richard's Ragusa was my Dubrovnik.

Ragusa was a fiercely independent republic, nominally under the suzerainty of what we today call the Byzantine Empire, known in Richard's time as the Empire of the Greeks. It had an old and proud history that dated back to the seventh century, and during its Golden Age in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it rivaled the much larger cities of Venice and Genoa. It was an oligarchy, ruled by a small elite of patricians—all male, of course. They served by turns on the great council and elected one of their own to serve as rector, limited to very brief terms. The office of rector was not formed until the fourteenth century, though; Richard would have met the Count of Ragusa. But the government structure was the same.

Richard would have found a prosperous, peaceful city. The streets were cleaner than those he'd have been accustomed to in Europe, and medical care was probably better, for the Ragusans imported physicians from the celebrated medical school at Salerno. Public order was an important aspect of life in the republic, and women could walk the streets in greater safety than in the other cities of Christendom, for any man who molested a woman was swiftly punished, even if she was a serving maid and he of high birth. But this protection was not extended to the home. While a female servant could not be accosted in public, she was fair game for her employer. The Ragusans were not concerned with protecting their women, but rather with the protection of children. The rationale was that a man would assume no responsibility for a child born of a street rape, but a child sired by a servant girl's master would be taken care of by the household. This system worked so well that there was no orphanage established in Ragusa until the end of the fifteenth century. Nor was this medieval city-state a democracy in the sense that we would use that term. It was true that the benefits enjoyed by the patrician inner circle spilled over to the rest of the citizens. But it was also a city of slaves, 90% of them women; in fact, household slaves trained in Ragusa were highly valued in the Italian slave trade.

Ragusa must have seemed like the Tower of Babel to Richard and his men, for four languages would have been heard on the city streets. The local people spoke Slavic and an Italian dialect and what was known as "Old Ragusan." Fortunately for the English king, Latin was still the official language, so he could communicate with the count and the great council. Even more fortunately for him, Ragusa was one of the few sites on the Adriatic coast where he would be given a friendly welcome. We do not know how long he stayed in Ragusa, but when he sailed away, he left behind a legacy that is remembered there even today.

As his ship was driven toward the rocky coast of Lokrum, Richard had made a desperate vow, promising God that if He spared them, he would pledge the vast sum of one hundred thousand ducats to build a church wherever he landed. English chronicles and Ragusan records say that Richard wanted to erect his church on Lokrum, but the townspeople convinced him to build it within the city. Richard agreed on condition that the Pope would approve this change to a holy vow and that some of the money would be used to rebuild the Benedictine monastery church on Lokrum. And so an English king became the patron of Ragusa's great cathedral of St Mary. In appreciation for consenting to this change, the Lokrum abbot was permitted to don the archbishop's mitre and preach a mass each Candlemas in the cathedral; there is a letter to the Pope from the town council in 1598 which explains the origin of this highly unusual custom. The cathedral was destroyed in the earthquake of 1667, but Richard's memory burned brightly over the centuries in Ragusa. In 1916, a Serbian official publicly sought England's aid, reminding the British that "Richard received our hospitality and built for us a beautiful church on the spot where our ancestors saved him from shipwreck on his way back from the Crusade."

While researching Richard's time in Ragusa, I stumbled onto another remarkable story, that of the Archbishop of Ragusa. We know very little of this enigmatic man. His name was Bernard and he is believed to have been of Italian or Dalmatian origin. In 1189, he was consecrated as the republic's new archbishop and there is reason to believe he gave Richard a warm welcome. Two years later, though, his relationship with his flock was so fractured that he fled the city and steadfastly refused to return, claiming his life was at risk. He somehow found his way to Richard's domains, where the English king repaid the hospitality he'd been given in Ragusa. By 1198, Bernard was in England, and after Richard's death, he rose in the favor of the new king, Richard's brother John. He would end his days as the Bishop of Carlisle, far from Ragusa.

I would love to know more about the mysterious Bernard, but that is so often the case with these historical snippets of information. We are told just enough to awaken our curiosity, not enough to satisfy it. But now when I think of the beautiful city of Dubrovonik and my Bucket List, I will also think of Coeur de Lion, a medieval cathedral, and an exiled archbishop who died far from home.

I'd promised that I would do another book giveaway for Devil's Brood before the October publication date for Lionheart. So again—anyone who posts a comment on this blog will be eligible for the drawing. I probably won't be able to tend to it until the conclusion of the Lionheart book tour, but upon my return home, I will send a signed copy of Devil's Brood to the winner. Of course, by then I hope you all will be happily engrossed in reading Lionheart!

PS For those interested in learning more about the Republic of Ragusa, I recommend Susan Mosher Stuard's A State of Deference: Ragusa/Dubrovnik in the Medieval Centuries. And we ought to remember, too, that Dubrovnik—like Sarajevo—suffered through a siege by the Serbian army in 1991-1992, its unfortunate citizens never dreaming that their medieval walls would one day help them to stave off an enemy invasion. I was writing When Christ and His Saints Slept during the siege of Sarajevo and I was chilled that civilians in our time could be enduring the same danger and deprivations that the siege of Winchester brought to the townspeople in 1141.

September 21, 2011