– Jean-Claude Faveyrial –
Under Mauricius and Phocas, the Avars found it more advantageous to send the Slavs to destroy Illyria on their behalf. Eventually, they sent so many that it was no longer possible to either call them back or share with them the spoils of war taken from the Romans.
Consequently, all of Illyria (but less so Albania than Macedonia, Dardania, Moesia and Thrace) was flooded and covered by a new population.
During this time, Salona was also ruined (year 639). At that point, finally, according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the Roman population expelled from Herzegovina by the Slavs migrated partly to Dalmatia and partly to Durrës (years 610-640).
Authors claim that Heraclius caused the Slavs to come to Illyria. His aim was to repopulate the desolated fields and create a barrier against the Avars. However, things did not turn out this way. All Heraclius could do was avoid attempting to send away those who could no longer be expelled from the Balkans and Pindus. He likely later engaged them to defend the abandoned lands, villages and towns (as they are still abandoned today — D.G.) which they had taken over.
Touched by what Pope John IV and Abbot Martin, his vicar, did by redeeming Illyro-Roman captives who had fallen into the hands of the Slavs, Serbs and Croats, in short, many of these barbarians, sought to become Christians themselves (year 640). Since all these lands belonged to the Illyrian vicariate, meaning they were under the Pope’s jurisdiction, Heraclius then turned to him to provide priests and bishops. This truth is even less doubtful as it is preserved by a Greek emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
The baptized Slavs — this author adds — swore with a sacrament dedicated to Saint Peter that they would live in peace and wisdom with other Christians, and in exchange, the Pope promised them his protection and that of God.
It is noted that the emigrant Slavs did not constitute either a state or a confederation. They were a disordered mass useful as a farming population but unprotected by imperial power. Each tribe was led by a Zhupan, a kind of headman, whose influence extended more or less proportionally to the number and strength of the tribe.
Vidimir, one of their principal zhupans, took the name of Viatoplok (Viati-Pelek) “holy child” at his baptism and was buried in the cathedral of Doclea in Upper Albania when he died.
The Slavs who came to Illyria were mostly Christian, and Greek authors, especially Constantine Porphyrogenitus, distinguish them from their brothers left in Moravia, Galicia and Bukovina by calling them Christian Slavs and Pagan Slavs.
It is also seen that the inhabitants of Herzegovina are referred to as pagans, as they were baptized much later.
Being essentially farmers and lacking a common leader, the Slavic tribes did not cause great trouble to the Byzantine emperors for a long time.
But it was not so with the Bulgarians. At one time, they surrounded Byzantium, allied with the Catholic Illyrians, during the time of Emperor Anastasius, in the years 514 and 518. They surrounded it again, allied with the Avars, in 625.
Afterward, emerging from the tutelage of the Avars, Kuvrat, their leader or king, sought friendship with Heraclius (year 640), at the same time that Amron took Egypt.
But then Kuvrat died, and the Bulgarian nation split among his five sons. The fifth son led his people to Italy. Asparuh, the second son, settled with others in Moesia (year 678). Constantine Pogonatus hurried from Constantinople to try to expel them from there but was defeated at the mouth of the Danube. From that day on, the Greco-Byzantines would have two main enemies to fight: the Bulgarians in Europe and the Avars in Asia and Africa.
Notes
Greco-Byzantine: This term does not refer to Greeks as a nationality but to the faction against Constantine that created the division of the empire by the Arianist sect.
Phocas: Eastern Emperor (602–610)
Heraclius: Eastern Emperor (610–641)
Constantine Porphyrogenitus: Eastern Emperor (913–959), author of “The Administration of the Empire,” was devoted to art and literature, and erected numerous monuments and buildings.
Constantine Pogonatus: Eastern Emperor (668–685)
Eastern Emperor: Emperor of Byzantium
Asparuh: Khan of the Bulgarians, settled them south of the Danube in Moesia and Thrace.
What did Byzantium do? Converted to Hellenism those whom Rome had turned into Romans at a time when in Illyria, the work of moral assimilation, which Rome and Christianity had so painstakingly prepared, was being carried out (p. 34).
According to Strabo: Macedonians and Albanians formed a single people (p. 36).
Albania: Perhaps the only one in the world among non-barbaric peoples (p. 38).
Illyrian Primacy: Was preserved until 1767, established from the beginning by the apostolic see (p. 123).
The invasions of barbarian tribes: Occurred at a time when the Roman Empire (753 BC-476 AD) was dealing with Avars, Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vikings, Huns, Slavs, Bulgarians, Normans, Turanics, etc.
Barbarian: Backward and primitive in development, uncultured and rough, savage, ruthless, destructive and cruel.
(From the book by Jean-Claude Faveyrial “The History of (Older) Albania,” first edition 1905, published in Albanian by Plejad, 2004, pp. 114–116)
French scholar Jean-Claude Faveyrial is the first to write the history of Albania, compiled between 1884-1889. For the history of Albania and the Albanian language, Faveyrial refers to historians, scholars and personalities of all ages who have written or expressed opinions about the Albanian nation: Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Strabo, Lucian, Dozon, Pliny, Plutarch, etc., up to authors of the 19th century.
Tirana, May 31, 2024
(Translated from the Albanian post by Dilaver Goxhaj)
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