Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik

Before the 19th century, it is difficult to ascertain the precise number of residents in Dubrovnik who self-identified as Serbs. Prior to the twentieth century, Dubrovnik had never been ruled over by a Slavic nation, although it did have close trade and political ties with medieval Serbian states. In the early Middle Ages, Dubrovnik lay at a crossroads between the Balkan regions inhabited by the Croat and Serb tribes. Most sources from the later medieval and early modern period simply refer to Dubrovnik's Slavic inhabitants generically as "Slav" and their language as "Slavic." [1] With the increased emphasis on ethnic distinction in the nineteenth century, there are increased references to "Serbs" and "Croats" as distinct peoples of Dubrovnik. The Republic of Ragusa enforced a single state religion of Roman Catholicism,[2] while Orthodoxy was given equal status with Catholicism only in 1848, by which time there were hundreds of Orthodox immigrants from Herzegovina in the city who maintained their religious affiliation with the Serbian Orthodox Church.[2] The Eparch of Dalmatia Josif Rajačić dispatched the first Orthodox priest to Dubrovnik, Đorđe Nikolajević, in 1833.[3]

The cultural and political movement of Serbs in Dubrovnik was started around this time, notably by Nikolajević's 1838 article in the newspaper Srbsko-Dalmatinski Magazin (published in Zadar by Božidar Petranović), where he claimed the entire Ragusan Slavonic literary corpus for Serbian literature.[4] In 1841, Medo Pucić, a writer from an old Catholic noble family, became acquainted with pan-Slavists Ján Kollár and Pavel Jozef Šafárik, and started to espouse a Serb national sentiment.[5] Matija Ban, another Catholic from Dubrovnik, was influenced by pan-Slavists and romantic nationalists Michał Czajkowski and František Zach in Istanbul, so much that he moved to Belgrade in 1844 in an attempt to promote his idea that Serbian patriotism must extend beyond Serbian Orthodoxy and the borders of the Principality of Serbia.[6] In Serbia, Ban's group of enthusiasts worked with Serbia's minister of the interior Ilija Garašanin, the author of Načertanije, to enter the upper reaches of Serbian political life.[6] They were not, however, met with uniform acceptance - Jovan Sterija Popović and others, with support of the Church in Serbia, protested against their ideas and by extension against Vuk Karadžić's notion that Serbian language and nationality extended beyond Orthodoxy.[7]

Serb sports society Dušan the Mighty with Dr.Mato Gracić in the center, Dubrovnik, 1910

During the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas (1848-1849), the Serbian government was involved on the side of the South Slavs in Serbian Vojvodina, and at the same time Matija Ban traveled to Croatian lands and advocated for pan-Slavic as well as pro-Serbian ideas, claiming the Kingdom of Dalmatia should be unified with the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, but also describing the language of Dubrovnik as Serbian.[8] By 1850, the revolution was over and Ban, particularly because he had acquired Serbian citizenship in 1844, became suspicious to the Austrian police in Dubrovnik, who started to monitor him.[9] At that point, he was summoned to Belgrade where Garašanin suspended all of his operations and ordered him to permanently return to Belgrade.[10] He hesitated, but was persuaded by Prince Aleksandar and others to comply. He did however leave his family in Dubrovnik and published two more issues of the journal Dubrovnik in Ljudevit Gaj's publishing house in Zagreb in 1851 and 1852.[10]

Three decades later, in the 1880s a sizable group of Ragusan intellectuals independently developed a Serb-Catholic feeling, but at that point it was a political movement that was openly hostile to the Croats and whose leaders cooperated with the pro-Italian Autonomist Party (i.e. it was not pan-Slavic).[11]

Following the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the Habsburg Empire occupied Bosnia and created the Austro-Hungarian Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which prompted a confrontation between the Serb and Croat national ideologies, and the new "Serb-Catholic" circle of Dubrovnik increasingly broke with the pan-Slavic tradition of its founders, Pucić and Ban.[12] The same year, Serbia obtained independence.

In the preparation for the Imperial Council election of 1879, the Serb Party of Dalmatia severed ties with the People's Party, which marked a significant shift in Dalmatian politics at the time. Subsequently, in 1890, a coalition of the Autonomist Party and the Serb Party won the municipal election in Dubrovnik, where the Autonomists were considered to be "Serb-Catholics".[13] In the elections of 1899, local Croats saw their big mistake and a coalition of the People's Croatian Party (from 1899 new name of the People's Party in Dalmatia) and the Party of Rights came into power.

Literature of Dubrovnik, published by the Serb Academic Youth of Dubrovnik (1900).

In 1904/1905, a cultural society "Croatian and Serbian People's Home" from Cavtat (south of Dubrovnik) promulgated pan-Slavic ideas.[14]

In 1908 (Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) all Serbian unions, clubs and newspapers in the city were closed and forbidden by Austrian authorities, which led to massive emigration of Serbian-oriented high society from the city of Dubrovnik.

Matica Srpska of Dubrovnik was founded in 1909 by the last will of Serbian businessman Konstantin Vučković.[15]

After World War I, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia those Serbs who were left in Dubrovnik opted for the Yugoslav national unity, in contrast to Croats in the city who opted for the preserving of autonomous status of Croatia in Yugoslavia and unification of Dalmatia with Croatia-Slavonia. In 1939 Dubrovnik with its district became part of Banovina of Croatia which was established the same year. Those circumstances intensified emigration. During the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), the city completely reoriented itself to Croatian culture.

In a personal correspondence with author and critic dr. Milan Šević in 1932, Murat complained that Orthodox Serbs are not acknowledging the Catholic Serb community on the basis of their faith.[16]

Today, Serbs in Dubrovnik make up 2.73% of the town's population according to the 2011 census.[17]

Logo of Serb Dubrovnik printhouse

Music concert program held in honour of founding Matica Srpska in Dubrovnik, 1909

• Zadruga Srpkinja Dubrovkinja - founded in 1887
• Srpska dubrovačka akademska omladina (Serb Academic Youth of Dubrovnik) - founded in 1900
• Srpska Zora - founded in 1901
• Gimnastičko-sokolsko društvo Dušan Silni - founded in 1907 and headed by Mate Gracić
• Matica srpska - founded in 1909, funded and found by Konstantin Vučković
• Pasarićeva štamparija
• Štamparija Mata Gracića
• Savez srpskih zemljoradničkih zadruga
• Srpska štedionica

• Dubrovnik Prayer Book
• Serb People's Party (Dalmatia)
• Serbian Revival

• Banac, Ivo (1983). "The Confessional "Rule" and the Dubrovnik Exception: The Origins of the "Serb-Catholic" Circle in Nineteenth-Century Dalmatia". Slavic Review. 42 (3): 448–474. doi:10.2307/2496046. JSTOR 2496046.
• Borak, Svetozar (1998). Срби католици (PDF). Novi Sad: СД „Др Јован Рашковић.