Morals in Bosnia Shortly Before 1463

Abstract

Death of the king Tvrtko I (1391) was a great loss for the State of Bosnia. Loyalty, obcdience and devoted service, the features which had united Tvrtko's state, suddenly weakened after his departure from the historic scene. Bosnian state was exposed to the great danger of exterior attack and interior crisis, as it had not being for a long time ago.

While during the Tvrtko's reign the strength of the king had prevailed, under his indecisive and weak-willcd successor Dabiša (1391-95) three of the landowncrs were in the foreground: Hrvoje Vukčić-Hrvatinić, Pavle Radusinović and Sandalj Hranić-Kosača. These landowners had followed the king until they felt themselves strong enough to turn their great feudal properties

into independante little states from which they could enjoy the whole ammount of the rent and all the incomes realised through turnover of goods. In the Parliament of Bosnian landowners three of them were deciding about the election and changing of the kings, guided in that by their own personal interests.

In this decadent period of Bosnian past the landowners, selfish, badly quarreled and cynic from the bottom of their hearts, were plunging into mutual extermination. Intermediary role in these crysis was played by either Ottomans or Magyars to whom those Bosnian quarrels were suitable. Bosna degenerated into feudal anarchy full of obstinacy, frivolity and "nongovernmental" spirit of Bosnian landowners, which surpassed even the average of the 15th and 16th centuries. The lost Balkan people, most of all the peasants, suffered a lot because of the disintegration around Turkish borders and mutual conflicts of the landowners, so that they expected Ottoman rule to  free them from misfortunes.