DECLINE OF HVAR
By
Arthur A. Baer


Read Before
The Chicago Literary Club
on
May 23rd, 1955

Always in the imagination of the child, the boy, the man, in the opaque rosy firmament of dreams and desires, there were repeated in endless pattern the names of cities, Ninevah and Babylon and Baghdad, Athens and Sparta and Troy, Budapest and Bucharest and Belgrade, Constantinople of the six-minaret mosques, Sarajevo and Mostar and Skoplje, and as a far- distant star, the city of Hvar.

For the little fishing village of central Dalmatia, charming with its weather-beaten honey- colored ruins of Venetian palaces and its red-brown fishing nets spread for drying on the white marble quays; was once a city. Once the streets were crowded with artisans and merchants and officials, the warehouses were packed to the doors with goods in transit from East to West and from West to East, and the great harbor, protected from storms by the Islands of Hell, could barely contain the hosts of ships from all over the known Mediterranean world.

How had it happened that we were now on the deck of the white steamer, sitting on a bench on the lee side, having our lunch of bread and Trappist cheese and Gabrilovic salami and oranges from Jerusalem, the frothy wake of the ship making a great curve on the smooth blue Adriatic as we headed for the channel between the islands, on our way to the accomplishment of a desire, a dream about to become a reality?

Perhaps the die had been cast two years before, when we were landed without warning by the Turkish plane at the airport of Salonika. Pleasantly delayed by the lotus blossoms in the hot Turkish baths at Bursa, we had missed our ship and so had made hurried arrangements to fly from Istanbul to Athens. For some unaccountable reason the pilot set us down at Salonika. Only two events happened there. As we finished making arrangements to continue our flight, a tall sallow-faced man in a fur-lined greatcoat and a black astrakhan shako approached us, thrust an envelope into my hand and said quietly, "Since you are flying to Athens, please be kind enough to post this letter there. It is most important that it reach its destination promptly." Without waiting for a reply, he wheeled and walked rapidly out of the waiting room. I hurried after him, but lost him in the crowd around the taxis. At this moment the loud-speaker announced raucously in Greek incomprehensible to us, that something was about to happen and thinking it might be our take-off to Athens we rushed through the doors opening to the field. It was not our plane, but a somewhat shabby DC-3 was wheeled into position, displaying on its side the large letters J, A, T. An attendant reported that it was the Yugoslavian plane going to Bitolj, Nis and Belgrade.

"Let's take it," I whispered to Alice. "We've always wanted to go to Yugoslavia and here's the chance!"

But wifeishly, she rejected the proposal, reminding me that we were to meet Oscar Broneer in old Corinth on Good Friday.

Of course the incident of the letter resulted in nothing. When we reached Athens, we were not surrounded by men in dark fedoras and gabardines and whisked off as international spies. I posted the letter to Mlle. Anastasia Melikopolis, who, I suppose, was delighted to learn that her cousin had given birth to a six-pound girl, and forthwith went down to Churchill Avenue to buy a bonnet as a present for the baby.

But the incident of the Yugoslavian plane sowed its damaging seed, which sprouted and brought forth shoots, which in time were nurtured by pamphlets from Putnik, the Yugoslav nationalized travel agency. These arrived at intervals during the autumn, and perhaps the one from the Palace Hotel in Hvar was the reason why we were now on the white steamer, eagerly anticipating the unfolding of a dream come true.

The brochure stated modestly: "Its marvelous scenery, ideal climate, historic buildings and art treasures combine to make Hvar an attractive seaside town. Owing to its pleasant summers and temperate sunny winters, Hvar has long ago been proclaimed a prominent health resort also, particularly for person suffering from asthma and from diseases of the respiratory organs. The mean annual temperature of the air amounts to 16.2 degrees Centigrade, equaling to that of Minorca. Hvar is a quiet town without motor traffic or industrial plants, and with its lush vegetation and mild climate, it rightly bears the name of the Adriatic Madeira."

The brochure continued in the same intriguing vein: "Palace Hotel is situate in the nicest part of the town, overlooking the little bay, and is completely sheltered from all winds. Very comfortable rooms with cold and hot running water, central heating and bathrooms with hot sea water. Terrace-restaurant with dancing facility and a lovely park in front of the hotel. An adjoining loggia dating from the Renaissance period has been discreetly turned into a tastefully furnished café. A bar is also available."

And this was not all. More followed to tempt a sybarite. The brochure continued: "With its first-class cuisine, offering also tastily cooked native specialties, its renowned Hvar wines and its moderate prices; our establishment ranks among the best Dalmatian hotels and restaurants."

What is a moderate price? A single room costs 300 dinars a day and food only (three meals) costs 650 dinars a day. The legal rate of exchange is 300 dinars for one American dollar. Moreover, there is a ten percent reduction on each full day's pension during the off-season.

Actually, however, we were on the S.S. Dalmacija admiring the white Dinaric Alps which rise steeply form the rugged Adriatic shore, topping off our string-bag lunch with a drink of slivovica, not because of the enticing Putnik brochure, nor because of the incident of the Jat plane at Salonika, nor even because Matthew Arnold once wrote,

"Far, far from here
The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
Among the green Illyrian hills"

but simply because, many years before, we had read a book.

The title of the book was Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, and in it Rebecca West presents in most entertaining and readable and intelligent form the rich, involved, bloody, distressing and glorious history of the Balkans. She writes it in the form of a travel book and in it she travels the length and breadth of the land, through Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia. She visits cities and villages, palaces and peasant huts, monasteries and museums, manipulating each visit as the setting for a delightful and informative essay on the Obrenavices and the Karageorgevices, the bans of Hungary, the Bosnian zupans, the Turkish viziers, the archdukes and the bishops, the kings and the sultans, the great and the small, who played their parts, courageous, vicious, generous, selfish, brutal, kind, but hardly ever far-sighted, in the unhappy history of the Balkan peninsula.

She does not visit Hvar and therefore we must, and therefore we are on the white steamer, about to clear the channel, about to turn the point, about to have revealed to us for the first time the three lovely Renaissance campaniles, brilliant white against the grey stone hills, and the ancient Forte Spanuole of the old city.

However, she does mention it. She writes that Hvar is "a beautiful town, which lies on an island of the same name. It is noted for the extraordinary sweetness of its air, which is indeed such as might be inhaled over a bed of blossoming roses."

She is traveling on a white steamer and she gets involved in conversation with an angry, rebellious young Dalmatian aboard, who is the hotel manager at Hvar.

I quote from the book.

"The angry young man scowled down at the marbled blue and white water that rushed by our ship. ' I have read in Jackson's great book on Dalmatia,' said my husband, to soothe him, ' that the inhabitants of the island of Hvar added to their income by making a sweet wine called prosecco, by distilling rosemary water and by making an insecticide from the wild chrysanthemum. Do they still do all those pleasant things?' ' Not to any extent,' answered the young man, his brows enraged. ' Now they cultivate the tourist traffic all summer and talk politics all winter. Politics and politics and politics. I am sick of politics. Why can we never have any peace? Why must there always be all this conflict?'"

"There had been standing beside us a middle-aged man in expensive clothes, who was holding up his hand to hide the left side of his face. He now pressed forward and made what was evidently a sharp remark to the angry young hotel manager, who turned to us and said gloomily, ' This man, who is a native of Hvar, says that I do wrong to speak to you like this, for it might discourage you from visiting Hvar and it is certainly the most beautiful place in the world. I hope I have not done that!' The middle-aged man interrupted in German, ' Yes, you must not take what he says too seriously, for though we in Hvar are quarrelsome, as all Slavs are (it is a curse that has been laid upon us), that does not alter its extraordinary beauty. You must not miss visiting us, indeed you must not.'"

"He began to speak of the main street, which is broad and paved with marble and lined with fifteenth-century palaces weathered to warm gold; of the old Venetian arsenal, that had a dry- dock for the galley below and above a theater, the first theater to be built in the Balkans, which is still just as it was in the seventeenth century, though the curtains in the boxes are thin as paper; of the Franciscan monastery that stands on a piney headland, with its picture of the Last Supper which is so marvelous that a Rothschild who had been made an English duke had tried to buy it form the monks for as many sovereigns as would cover the canvas; and of the lovely garden that had been made on the hill above the town. During his story there sometimes came to him living phrases which made actual the beauty of his home and then his hand dropped, no longer feeling it urgent to hide the port-wine stain that ravaged the left side of his face from temple to chin; and when the steamer entered Hvar harbor, and it was as he had said, he let his hand drop by his side."

Sir T.J. Jackson, whose book (1889) is still the standard on Dalmatia for English readers, reports that the Greeks established a settlement on this island in 385 B.C. They had come from the island of Paros, one of the Cyclades. On the coinage of the new city of Paros, which they built where modern Hvar now stands, was stamped the goat which had been stamped on the coins of the mother-city. Presumably these ambitious, shall we call them, Pharosites, pushing on to new horizons or possibly just to new fishing grounds, ousted the aboriginal Illyrians from an ancestral home. Archeologists, opening sepulchral cairns in the vicinity of Hvar, have uncovered tools and instruments of the bronze age. At Starigrad, the town across the island, there are found remnants of Cyclopean walls, which Jackson says must be attributed to the ancient Illyrians, or possibly pre-Illyrians.

Dionysus of Syracuse protected the young Greek colony from depredations at the hands of the neighboring Illyrians, as he protected a number of other small colonies of sea-faring Greeks who were developing trade on the Adriatic. The two most important were Pharos, which was fortified, and Issa, now known as Vis, the westernmost of the Dalmation islands. The Syracusan power waned toward the end of the third century B.C., and the Illyrians, who, along the Dalmatian coast had been developing strength through piracy, or vice versa, took over Pharos along with other islands. Issa alone held out and in desperation appealed to the Romans for help.

Rome, resting from battle in the period between the First and Second Punic Wars, responded by sending a solemn delegation to the court of Queen Teuta of the Illyrians, requesting that she put a stop to attacks upon friends of the Republic. Her defiant reply was to throw one of the ambassadors into prison and to cut off the heads of the other two. The Romans responded to the insult, invaded the queen's homeland with an army of 20,000 foot-soldiers and 2,000 horsemen, scored an overwhelming victory, and bottled up the warlike queen in the Bay of Kotor.

Success was made simpler for the Romans through the defection of Demetrius of Pharos, a wily Greek and native of Pharos, who had been the queen's governor for Corfu and Pharos. He turned both islands over to the Romans for a price, which was the governorship of Pharos for the Romans, and when Rome soon became involved in the Second Punic War, he cut all ties and formed an Illyrian state of his own. The irritated Romans chose the right moment, attacked suddenly and ferociously with superior forces, overwhelmed the army of Demetrius, and, in 222 B.C., completely demolished the old Greek settlement of Pharos.

The island next appears in history some four hundred years later, when the Slavs of the mainland, fleeing in terror before the barbarian hordes which overran Illyria and destroyed the Roman stronghold of Salonae, took wretched refuge on the island, where they found no housing of any nature and were forced to live in tents and makeshift huts in the woods. However, they made the most of their pitiful security and gradually set about rebuilding the old Pharos. It is undoubtedly in this period that the name became Slavonized into Hvar.

They were part of a Slavic pagan people known as Narentines, who, during the seventh and eighth centuries, pirated and marauded along the Dalmation coast, mostly independent of control from East or West, but occasionally paying homage to the Byzantine court. In the ninth century, they had a powerful navy centered at Hvar and were contesting maritime supremacy with the Venetians.

Meantime, the Saracens from Sicily were invading the Adriatic, finally capturing Bari, where they established themselves in strength. In terror, the Venetians scrambled into an alliance with Theophilus, emperor of the East, and the combined fleets defeated the Saracens at Taranto. Later, Basil of Macedonia arranged a temporary partnership with Lewis, great grandson of Charlemagne, and the two organized an army form their vassal territories, assembled it at Ragusa (now known as Dubrovnik), transported it to Bari, where a long siege was finally successful, and the Saracens were liquidated as an Adriatic threat.

It is interesting to note that although the Narentines were subject to Basil at this time, they took no part in the repulse of the Saracens. But while the Venetian fleet was engaged at Bari, the Narentines used the opportunity to consolidate their position as masters of the eastern Adriatic. During a period of one hundred and fifty years, the young republic of Venice paid tribute to the Narentines for the privilege of navigating the sea. Finally, the great Doge Pietro Orseolo the Second, assembled a fleet and crossed to the eastern shore, where, through naval power, military strategy and diplomatic skill, he took over city after city, bringing the Narentines to their knees, and returning to Venice with the added title, Duke of Dalmatia.

During the eleventh century, the power of the Eastern Empire was wavering, and a new national force was exerting itself in its western provinces. Hungarians invaded Croatia and in 1102 their leader Coloman was formally crowned King of Croatia and Dalmatia. Thus began the duel between Venice and Hungary which lasted for four centuries, and during which the Dalmation cities, including Hvar, were pawns and sorry victims, sometimes allies and sometimes vassals of one power or the other.

Hvar was sacked by the Genoese in 1354, during their war with the Venetians. Lewis of Hungary organized an attack on Hvar in 1358 by the mainland cities of Omis, Trogir and Split, and the island city was sacked again and was surrendered by Venice to Hungary.

But further disgrace lay ahead. Ragusa, in her prosperity, purchased Hvar, along with the neighboring islands of Brad and Korcula, from Sigismund, King of Hungary, and sent a Ragusan supported by an armed force to rule the island. The government was not popular and the people of Hvar complained that the officers were illiterate and unskilled in the administration of justice. They sent an emissary to Sigismund and in 1417 the Ragusans were compelled by an imperial decree to withdraw, and the Hungarians came once more into direct control.

However, three years later in 1420, the island passed without a struggle back to the Venetians and finally became part and parcel of the dominions of the Republic and entered that Golden Age which had so intrigued our imaginations.

A long blast on the ship's horn announces that we have entered the harbor and the deckhands scurry to prepare the hawsers for docking.

The town is strangely and poignantly quiet. Three old men sit in rheumatic awkwardness on a stone bench before the Arsenal, watching the slight commotion of the steamer's landing. Two women wrapped in dark shawls step out of a food shop, each carrying a small bundle of greens, and disappear up a narrow street of stone steps. The mail is trundled off on a two- wheeled cart by a cripple whose pantaloons, buttoned at the calf, are a bewilderment of patches. A pipe-smoking fisherman stands by his drying net.

Could we but have moved back the calendar five hundred years, what a different sight would have greeted our eyes. The power of Venice was obvious to her many rivals at the opening of the 15th century, Hungary had withdrawn, the Slavic pirates had been cowed, the Turks were not yet a serious threat and the Republic was in full control of the Dalmatian coast. Hvar began to assume its importance as an outpost of the mother city.

The well-protected harbor was filled with the naval and commercial galleys of Venice and of her allies and friends. It was a provisioning point for vessels on their way to and from Corfu, which was the Venetian base for traffic into Mediterranean waters and for cargo ships headed for Levant. In addition, because of its mild climate, Hvar was designated the winter harbor of the main Venetian fleet.

Records of the day indicate that the war galley which Hvar agreed, by treaty, to furnish to the Venetian naval forces, was manned with one hundred oarsmen and several hundred armed sailors. When divisions of the fleet were in port, thousands of sea-faring men filled the steep streets of Hvar. The forges blazed night and day. The Arsenal resounded with the ring of mallets on iron straps. Hundreds of fishermen brought into the market huge desirable catches, for the stony sea-floor about the island, with its abundant flora, had always been a productive fishing-ground. Since salt drying was an old trade on the island, tons of fish were salted and packed for shipment to the towns of Italy.

The prosperous island had good grazing areas for sheep and there developed important exporting of wool and sheep and goat cheese. In the terraced vineyards was grown a particularly rich and luscious grape. Every house had huge bunches of the grapes hanging from the ceiling for drying, and, when half dried, the grapes were taken down and each grape showing the least evidence of mold or decay was rejected. The resultant untainted juice was, naturally, sweeter and of an unusually clean flavor. The wine, called prosecco, was like a liqueur in character and had a wide market.

The ground floor of every palace was a warehouse packed to the ceiling with bales and cases and barrels waiting for cargo space to Venice and Bari and Naples, and the streets rang with the cries of porters pushing, pulling and carrying their heavy cumbersome loads to and form the overcrowded quays.

Artisans and stone-cutters from Venice and her dominions filled the city. Endless lines of oxen dragged blocks of stone and marble from the quarries. Scaffolds were everywhere as the churches and palaces and bell-towers rose in splendor throughout the city.

The colorful pageantry of Venetian social and civic life had its full reflection in Hvar. The great religious holidays were celebrated with pomp and ceremony. The banners of San Marco flew proudly from the marble-based pillory on the quay.

In this propitious atmosphere, a Renaissance culture developed, principally Venetian in character, but with important Slavic outcroppings. Poetry and drama developed. The city established a humanistic school, offering training in mathematics, grammar and rhetoric, and both the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries assembled significant libraries. A record of 1444 indicates that there was a physician in Hvar, who naturally also served as surgeon, dentist and pharmacist.

Italian masters were imported to fill the churches and monasteries with paintings, and the sacristies bulged with silver and gold reliquaries, with chalices and bishops' staffs fashioned by the most skilled artisans of the time. The Venetian traders brought from the Levant and sold to the rich families and congregations of Hvar costly and precious silks, brocades and velvets.

The diplomatic and naval power of the Republic protected Hvar in its Golden Age. Unfortunately, the Doges made enemies as well as friends, and as the decades passed the Turk became the most dangerous threat to her wide-spread trading empire. Defensive alliances were not always successful. By the middle of the 16th century, Serbia and Bosnia were completely under Turkish domination, and even Dalmatia itself, except for the coastal cities and some of the islands.

The imperialistic sultans, hungering for Italy in their "drang nach Western," needed full control of the east Adriatic coast. Early in 1571, the renegade Uliz-Ali, King of Algiers, invaded the Adriatic with a large Turkish fleet, attacked Korcula, but failed to take it (legend says through the unique courage of the Korcula women), and loosed his forces on the city and island of Hvar. When the savage invasion was over, the island had been desolated and the city burned to the ground. It was the greatest catastrophe in Hvar's post-Roman history.

But 1571 was also the date of the battle of Lepanto, when Turkish sea power was completely annihilated by the combined fleets of Venice and Charles V. In this memorable battle, the Hvar war galley participated with glory, commanded by one Pietro Vidali, and the prow of that vessel, a ferocious snarling dragon, is still preserved in the old theater above the Arsenal.

The Turkish defeat produced a refluorescence of Venetian prosperity, and this was reflected again in Hvar with a complete restoration of its churches, monasteries, public buildings and palaces, all in the rich Renaissance style of the period, and it was the ruins and weathered remains of this lovely architecture that greeted us as we stepped ashore from the steamer.

Hvar's prosperity was dependent on the fortunes of the Republic, and when they began to decline, Hvar began to deteriorate. Moreover, when the steam engine replaced the oarsman and vessels began to go more swiftly and for longer distances, a halfway station on the eastern Adriatic shore lost its importance. Dalmatia was ceded to Napoleon in 1805, and French forces defending Hvar had fallen under Austrian domination, and the Austrians, during the following hundred years, encouraged it to fall into decay.

The Italian Fascist forces occupied all of Dalmatia at the opening of World War II. As Italy weakened under allied blows and German control, Tito's Partisans grew in numbers and strength and daring along the coast and on the islands. The inhabitants of Hvar organized a Partisan contingent under the name of Matija Ivanic, defender of civil rights in the city's 15th century history and Hvar's most revered martyr.

When the German forces, stung to desperation by the harassment of Tito's guerillas, descended in force in Bosnia, making it impossible for the Yugoslav leader to maintain any kind of central headquarters, even in mountain caves or forest hideouts, he consented to move to Vis, the westernmost of the islands, sister to Hvar. The Hvar Partisans gave invaluable assistance in keeping open lines of communication from Vis, which had been fortified and was protected by units of the British fleet, to the guerilla forces on the mainland, for, since the Germans were all along the coast by this time and even in control of most of the islands, Tito's contacts with his contingents were either by air, using English and American planes to parachute supplies and messengers to the guerillas, or via small boats furnished and manned by his Dalmatian followers. Fitzroy McLean in his Eastern Approaches tells many fascinating incidents of this phase of the war, including the adventurous trip of his own, by small boat, from the mainland to Hvar to Vis, through the German patrols.

One is tempted to philosophize a little, recalling the long turbulent history of the people of Hvar, on the immortality of men's urge to struggle and sacrifice for civil rights, and the strange ways in which they have sometimes been betrayed.

As we walk along the great stone quay, which also serves as the town's very gracious esplanade, with its lush palm trees planted at intervals, we are followed by a little boy carrying a live lamb draped around his neck like a fur scarf. Knowing us to be tourists, he points directly ahead with a smudged hand and says eagerly "Café."

What we see is the famous Loggia, one of the finest examples of Renaissance design in Dalmatia, but now suffering, alas, from the encroachments of the modern world, for a coffee shop has been established in it, which announces itself to the tourists with a neon sign. Moreover, the baroque facade of the Palace Hotel towers unpleasantly over the Loggia, giving it the effect of a vestibule. The hotel, built fifty years ago by the Austrians, replaced the fine old ducal palace of the 15th century, of which there remains now nothing but one of the four original towers. This tower contains a bell, installed in 1565, which still tells the hours after almost four hundred years. The destroyed building had been the center of the municipal life of Hvar, the seat of government, and in it was held the meetings of the Gran Consiglio.

Turning to the right off the broad quay we enter the gracious and quiet 15th century piazza, a great expanse paved with white marble, with but a single step across its width, just beyond the Renaissance cistern with its stone crown and rich forged-iron crane. The square divides the town formally and officially, following the natural division made by two hills. On the right, the south part of the town, is the "Borgo" where the commoners lived, and on the left, the lovely and dilapidated palaces of the nobility. The palaces of the commoners were as fine as the palaces of the nobles. In the Borgo is a beautiful Gothic palace of the Garguric family, and also the Gothic house of the Bevilacqua, one of whom was a leader in the famous insurrection of the populace under the national hero Matija Ivanic. There is also a palace, dating from the late Renaissance, of the Vukasinovic family, which had a distinguished history in the sea-annals of Hvar. All of these families were wealthy and their dwellings were as sumptuous, in the Venetian manner, as those of the nobles.

The palaces of the nobility are, however, more noticed by the visitor, for, as his white steamer approaches the quay, their ruins are silhouetted against the hill that faces him, and his imagination is intrigued by the blank trefoil Venetian windows and the splendid stone balconies on which is now hung the week's miscellaneous laundry. The two most remarkable are the palaces of the poets Peter Hektorovic and Hanibal Lucic, rich in Renaissance-Gothic decoration.

Hektorovic was not only a poet; he was noble and he was rich, and besides the lovely palace ruin in the town of Hvar there remains his medieval castle at Starigrad on the other side of the island. He died in 1555 and is principally important for a work called "Ribanje," in which with wit and fine verses he describes the pleasures of fishing and the beauties of life on the sea, incorporating in a pleasing and novel way many folk songs of the islands.

Hanibal Lucic was also poet, nobleman, and plutocrat. He seems to have held a high post of honor in the city, under the title Judex Phariae. He is the author of "Robinja," or The Slave, which Yugoslavs claim to be the first modern original drama. It was written before Shakespeare was born. Dramatic art had an ancient history in this part of the world, having been inherited from the Greeks. Later pastoral drama made its appearance and although "Robinja" was written in the national language and told the story of a young noblewoman enslaved by the Turks but heroically freed by a handsome young Dalmatian, its first performance was under church auspices on the piazza in front of the cathedral.

Hvar boasts one of the oldest preserved theaters of Europe, whose 400th anniversary was solemnly celebrated in the summer of 1954, with lectures, conferences, pageantry and a performance of "Robinja" by members of the dramatic school in Zagreb. The theater has a Renaissance exterior, and had a Renaissance interior until World War II, when it was unhappily done over to serve utilitarian purposes and is now illuminated by bare fluorescent tubes. Over the entrance is the inscription Secundo Anno Pacis, indicating that it was built during the second year of peace following the long struggle between the nobles and the people.

The Arsenal below the theater is now the town cinema and on its second floor are various offices occupied by the Town Committee of the Communist Party. If the official working earnestly at one of the plain board desks in the most important of these simple rooms of government should lean back and look up, his eyes would rest on a marvelous old cassette, a Renaissance carved wood ceiling of beautiful design and workmanship, moved here from one of the old Venetian palaces, and he might be stirred to muse on how ceilings and governments change over the centuries.

Should he be able to secure a copy of Jackson's Dalmatia, unexpurgated by the party censors, he might be interested to read the following statement of Hvar's earlier constitutional rights:

"The real object of the policy of every town of the Dalmatian pale was to be allowed to live under its own laws, to choose its own magistrates, to govern itself on its ancient democratic basis and to regulate its own internal affairs without interference from any superior authority. These privileges were secured to the citizens by the ancient charters, which were confirmed from time to time by the successive rulers under whose dominion they passed. They were all to the same effect: the citizens were exempted from tribute; they had leave to elect their own count and bishop, whom the suzerain, Hungarian or Venetian, was to confirm; no alien, even if he were of the ruling nation, was to reside within their walls except at their pleasure, a stipulation by which they were protected against the intrusion of a foreign garrison; no castle or fort was to be built on their territory without their leave; they were not to be called upon to give hostages; and no citizen could be cited to appear before any foreign tribunal or before any judges but those of his own city. So long as these privileges were respected and they were allowed to govern themselves in their own way, the municipalities of Dalmatia considered that they were free."

The history of the struggle to gain and to keep civil rights is a long and involved history in Dalmatia. Jackson's theory is that it dates back to Roman times when the Roman cities along the coast were established under charters and constitutions granting certain fundamental rights to the citizens and establishing elementary democratic forms of governmental administration.

Through all the ebb and flow of political fortune and misfortune, through all the deals and compromises made with the rulers of Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary, through all the wars, invasions, occupations and subjugations, the cities of the Dalmatian littoral managed to salvage something of their Latin heritage, never becoming completely Slavonized.

The community of Hvar, however, did not have the same background as Zara, Sebenik, Split and Dubrovnik, for its Roman past had been completely wiped out and it developed in its second period, in the 7th century, as a Slav village. But, since the Adriatic was for so many centuries under Venetian influence and since Hvar became a principal outpost of Venetian power and commerce, Hvar absorbed Latin culture at second hand to such an extent that it became incorporated into the very core of her existence.

Records of the 12th century indicate that Hvar was then an organized political entity with a Great Council, a Small Council and a Peoples' Assembly of a reasonably democratic character. But during the 12th and 13th centuries, nobility began to develop. In 1242, Bela IV of Hungary issued a bull which vested the election of the count in the bishop, the zupan of the Great Council, and the nobles of the house of Givic. These nobles were exempted from tax under the same regal authority and the merchandise in which they traded was not subject to duty. Gradually, the privileged took over more power. The Great Council, which originally had been composed of men of all ranks, fell more and more under the control of the nobility. Annual elections gave way to election for life, and, in the succeeding century, to hereditary membership.

Hvar was subject to the counts of Omis, on the mainland, during the first part of the 13th century, but sought the protection of the Venetians in 1278. Venice fortified the town and in 1331 granted a charter which consolidated the power of the nobility.

The commoners pressed continually and with determination for participation in the Great Council and for equal rights with the nobles in the administration of the community. The struggle was often violent and the steep streets of Hvar ran with blood in outbreaks that occurred in the years 1417 and 1420.

In 1510, Matija Ivanic organized an insurrection, obtained help from the commoners of other towns on the island, Starigrad, Jelsa and Vrboska, attacked the town offices and forced the nobles to capitulate. Ivanic then departed for Venice to obtain the Republic's blessing of the new order, but he failed. Venice sent a tough providuro, one Giustianini, to resolve the situation, which he did by breaking up the revolt with mercenaries and hanging twenty of the captured leaders, including Ivanic, from the spars of his galley in the harbor.

The setback was only temporary, however. The commoners continued their pressures during the following decades of prosperity and finally, one hundred years later, in 1611, under the providuro Pietro Semitecolo, obtained equal representation with the nobles on the Great Council and in the administrative offices of government. According to Yugoslav sources, no country in feudal Europe had at that time as democratic a government as Hvar.

These rights were brutally wiped out by Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century. The Austrians, who followed, always considered the Slavs an inferior people, unfit to be trusted with political responsibility. During our own time, Serbian officials and Belgrade bureaucracy were not loved by the Dalmatians under the numbered years of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Then came the Great War and the Peoples' Liberation, and now, as the official sitting under the carved oak ceiling said, "This is local headquarters for the Socialist Association of the Working People, which is the biggest organization in the nation, and in which it is desirable for every adult person to be a member, for the purpose of contributing ideas and criticism on all matters of public interest, for on such discussion and participation is founded the successful administration of the Yugoslav Peoples' Republic."

Walking out on the sun-drenched piazza, we are impressed by the skill of the architects who, in their planning, used the space to emphasize the dominance of the cathedral at the far end. The piazza is not quite rectangular, being narrower at the quayside, and the two rows of dignified two-story buildings that enclose it on both sides carry attention to a handsome cathedral facade that seems larger and more imposing than it actually is. The campanile adjoining it is beautiful in design and composition, and like the other two lovely campaniles of the town, was built early in the 16th century by native masters from the island of Korcula.

Behind us, at the far side of the compact harbor, is the second of the campaniles, that of the destroyed church of San Marco. This old church, and the Dominican monastery which stood beside it, are mentioned in records as early as 1326. It was the nobles' church, and served as a meeting-place of the Gran Consiglio of the nobility. On its nine great altars were precious paintings of the Venetian school, some of which can still be seen on the main altars of some of the village churches of the island. Napoleon's men tore the buildings down in 1807, leaving the campanile, which was damaged by lightning at a later date and has not been restored; and if you scramble through the weeds and nettles in the ruins, you can find the grave inscriptions of the nobles who were interred here in 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

We turn and stroll back along the quay turning left at the end along a lane shaded by carob trees, and then skirt the shore for a hundred meters, trying not to notice the hulk of the newly constructed, ugly but significant Narodska Scola, (National School) on the top of the stony hill on our left, and arrive at the Franciscan Monastery which adjoins and includes the church of Santa Maria della Grazie. These were built in 1461 on a charming promontory in the bay and are the pride of Hvar. They were restored after the destruction of 1571.

The church has a very simple and lovely entrance facing the sea, decorated with a stone relief of Madonna and Child done by the Venetian Francesco de Laurana. The interior is rich with paintings. It contains the graves of many Venetian dignitaries and their wives, and members of the families of the native nobility. Directly in front of the altar is the tomb of the poet Hanibal Lucic. With the exception of its magnificent campanile, it is very modest and unpretentious, as is the adjoining monastery.

In the little courtyard across which we walked toward the monastery entrance is an ancient cistern, which, the townspeople claim, has never been dry and has always been a source upon which to depend, even when every other source of water on the island had failed.

We pulled the bell-cord at the monastery door and after some delay it was opened by a plump old Franciscan with a gentle face that beamed with friendliness, generosity and tolerance. He took us first to his proudest possession, a small museum which was once the refectory of the monastery, not needed for this purpose any longer, since there are only three old monks left of the scores that once dwelt here. The museum contains a few odds and ends of casual interest, such as some ancient illuminated parchments, a fine coin collection, assembled locally, tracing the history of Hvar back to the days when the Greeks named it Pharos, and a Ptolomean atlas and the usual religious paintings.

But it also contains a very impressive art treasure, a great painting of the Cenacolo, or Last Supper, which completely covers one end of the room, wall to wall, wainscoting to ceiling. One thinks immediately upon seeing it, in this location, of the Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, but of course it was only a natural thing for painters to paint the subject on the walls of the eating-room of a monastery. The painting is beautiful, rich in color, lovely in the vigor of its composition, and we said immediately, "A Veronese!"

But it is probably not the work of the great Venetian. Its origin is obscure. It is thought to be the work of Matteo Rosselli, a Florentine painter of the early 17th century, whose "Triumph of David" hangs in the Pitti Palace. The legend is that the painter became ill while visiting in Hvar, and that in gratitude to the friars who nursed him back to health, he painted the picture. Another story has it that the commander of the Venetian Adriatic fleet was shipwrecked off the coast of Hvar on January 25, 1465, and that his naval colleagues, in gratitude for the saving of his life, raised a large fund to furnish the church of Santa Maria della Grazie, which had been completed in 1464, and included in their donation the order for this painting. Certainly it is a great work of art and it is amazing to discover it in such a humble spot.

Outside the door of the museum is the cloister of garden, dominated by a magnificent cypress which is thought to be four hundred years old. The friar gently explained to us that a cypress is a symbol of the Virgin, representing by its continuing greenness and growth her universality and immortality. The garden has several terraces on which grow lemon-trees and orange-trees, and flowers in formal beds intermixed with rows of vegetables. Along a stone wall is a long row of Greek amphorae, dragged up from the bottom of the sea in the nets of the Hvar fishermen. There is an Italian phrase about a convent or monastery cloister "Il mondo c chiuso fuori e il cielo c aperto," "It shuts out the world but lets in the sky;" this little cloister garden of the Franciscan monastery at Hvar shuts out the mundane world, but lets in not only the sky, which is heavenly, but the blue Adriatic, which is earthly, the ebb and flow of time and tide and the affairs of men, the Venetian galley supplanted by the shining white steamer from Rijeka. Here, in fragrant cloistered garden, spiritual contemplation is colored with a slightly mundane tinge by inevitable, occasional and sweet side-glances at the changing sea.

Across the quiet bay we see the truncated tower of old Forte Veneranda, rigged up for use as a meteorological station, and, incidentally, the first to be established in the Balkans, in the year 1858. The fort had been built by Napoleon's men over the ruins of ancient San Veneranda, a church and monastery established by Venice for the use and comfort of her mercenary sailors of the Greek Orthodox faith.

At our far right are the ruins of the Venetian palaces on the hillside, above the deserted marble piazza, above the silent quays, above the rippling waters of the bay where once jostled the galleys of Venice and where now the quiet is broken by the arrival of the white steamer.

The struggle for power swept over Hvar for centuries, but now the world seems to need her no longer. The Greek mercenaries departed a long time ago, and their church fell to ruins, and the noble fort built on these ruins is now itself in ruins.

The struggle of the people for freedom and democracy reached its climax four hundred years ago and no one cares now. The natives fish or they gather rosemary and myrrh or they trundle the mail sack to the postmistress, and they have lost all hope.

Today Hvar is just a museum piece, albeit a lovely one, with an air of a once gracious lady fallen into genteel poverty, an air of lavender and old lace, and when the summer tourists have been shown the palaces and the cathedral and the monastery, they heave a deep sigh over the lost glories of the past, and they sit down in the lovely Renaissance Loggia that was once the Peoples' Court of Justice and order a cup of Turkish coffee.

But we loved it all and we decided to stay yet another day.

"There is no steamer tomorrow," said the hotelkeeper sadly. "Since there are so few passengers for Hvar, it no longer stops every day."

So the hawsers are loosed and hauled aboard, the white steamer backs silently into the roads, then swings forward in a large circle. We stop waving to our friends under the palm on the white stone quay. The cathedral is lost from view, then the Loggia, then the monastery, and finally, as the steamer skirts the headland into the channel, the three campaniles are gone and we have left Hvar. The fishing boats are slowly moving toward home. Faintly we hear the tolling of a bell.