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Performing national identity: the case ofPavao Ritter Vitezovic´ (1652–1713)Zrinka Blazˇevic´ a

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To cite this article: Zrinka Blazˇevic´ (2003) Performing national identity: the case of Pavao RitterVitezovic´ (1652–1713), National Identities, 5:3, 251-267, DOI: 10.1080/1460894031000163148

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National Identities, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2003

Performing National Identity: The Case ofPavao Ritter Vitezovic (1652–1713)

ZRINKA BLAZEVIC, University College London, UK

Abstract The historiographical writings of the Croatian writer Pavao Ritter Vitezovic(1652–1713) have been included in the canon of ‘the basic works of Croatian national politics’by the traditional ‘national’ historiography. This fact gives rise to the question which symbolicmodels, ideological concepts and narrative constructions of his discourse seemed to be ‘state-making’ and ‘nation-making’ within this interpretative framework. I shall try to show howVitezovic’s performative historiographical discourse produces such an effect, and to demonstratehow this discourse creates and makes legitimate the symbolic construction of national identity,creating a virtual, utopian artefact – a ‘revived Croatia’. However, even though themechanisms, strategies and devices accounting for its internal cohesion and persuasiveness canbe identified in the dominant semantic layer of Vitezovic’s performative discourse, it at thesame time lends itself to an analysis exposing its ‘buried grammar’ of internal contradictions,mostly contextually determined, which destabilise and disintegrate it. As this of necessityrenders the ‘national’ readings reductive, I propose instead that the canonical texts be treatedas polyphonic cultural artefacts bearing imprints of various discursive and contextual re-inscriptions.

Keywords Croatia; Nation-building; Historiography; Vitezovic, Pavao Ritter (1652–1713)

Obsessed by the need to create a normative system of cultural representations thatwould form a distinctive identity of the Croatian ‘national being’, the traditionalnational historiography set up a Pantheon of canonised heroes who had, by pen or bysword, made a contribution to the ‘glory of the homeland’. A prominent place wasaccorded to Pavao Ritter Vitezovic (1652–1713)1– his most famous work, Croatiarediviva (1700), was hailed as the ‘Bible of Croatian national politics’,2 and he wasgiven the flattering title of ‘an early precursor and spiritual forefather of popularpolitical thought, wherein ethnic-national Panslavism, South-Slavism and state-makingPan-Croatism had all been born together and remained entwined’.3 Neither has the‘European’ aspect of Vitezovic’s work gone unnoticed, and his concept was character-ised as the ‘first proposal for the resolution of the eastern, Balkan question’.4

Before I try to answer the question as to which symbolic models, ideological conceptsand narrative constructions of his discourse seemed to be ‘state-making’ and ‘nation-making’ within the interpretative framework of traditional national historiography, it isnecessary to give at least a cursory outline of the referential frame of his works. Sincediscourse analysis5 approaches discourse as a form of practice simultaneously constitu-tive of and determined by the sociohistoric and the sociocultural contexts, its method-

ISSN 1460-8944 print/ISSN 1469-9907 online/03/030251-17 2003 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1460894031000163148

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ology insists on an interrelated three-dimensional analysis of discourse on the textual6,intertextual7 and contextual8 levels in order to get a firmer interpretative grasp of itsstructural and functional polyvalence.

The contextual ‘environment’9 of Vitezovic’s discourse (re)constructed for heuristicpurposes would look something like the following. In the latter half of the seventeenthcentury, a gradual and unequal Staatswerdungprozess (state-making process) was underway in the Habsburg Monarchy. Its ideological matrix was characterised by thestructural and functional interdependence of mercantilism, absolutism and Counter-Reformation Catholicism, comprising an ideological conglomerate of great integrativeand centripetal force. This ideology was most readily accepted by the magnates of theErblande (the Austrian lands and Bohemia), who become political partners of the rulerand the main creators and advocates of mercantilist and absolutist reforms, the first aimof which was to transform the monarchy into an economically, politically and militarilyrespectable societas civilis (civil society). The first step in that direction was theintegration of Hungary (i.e., the Crownlands of St Stephen: Hungary, the Kingdom ofCroatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, Transylvania) – an issue of particular interest after thesuccessful liberating operations of the Habsburg Army in the Viennese War (1683–1699). Hence a number of projects and plans were laid out in this period for organisingthe newly conquered areas on mercantilist and absolutist principles, especially at thetime of the Karlowitz peace treaty and the final demarcation between the HabsburgMonarchy, Ottoman Empire and Venetian Republic.10

As regards the situation in Hungary and Croatia, after a period of political collabora-tion of the Estates with the aim of establishing a ‘national monarchy’, culminating inthe famous magnates’ conspiracy, from the 1670s onwards an ever-increasing politicalseparation of former partners can be observed. The majority of the Hungarian politicalnation still persists in the old programme of ‘self-determination’ and, entrenchedbehind its privileges, refused any possibility of collaboration with Vienna, while inCroatia a policy of the ‘new course’ is advocated by the group around the CroatianRoyal Conference.11 In the realm of foreign politics, this Croatian political Sonderweg(separate way) was characterised by emancipation from Hungary and the aim ofestablishing a partnership with the ruler (diarchy) – through traditional loyalty, on theone hand, and religious orthodoxy, on the other. In domestic politics, the Sonderwegwas characterised by the efforts to implement state jurisdiction in all newly liberatedterritories (Croatia to the River Una and south of Mount Velebit, and Slavonia)12, byendeavours to modernise and rationalise the administration, and by encouraging‘mercantilist’ projects. Apart from that, an important role in propagating the newpolitical platform seems to have been played by the printing press.

During the two-year period between the Karlowitz peace treaty and the definitivedemarcation (1699–1701), Croatia became a virtual intersection of two ideological andpolitical paradigms – that of the Croatian Estates and that of the Habsburg ‘state’. Thepart of the real, diplomatic and symbolic mediator between these two paradigms wasplayed by Pavao Ritter Vitezovic.

Vitezovic hailed from German immigrants from Alsace, who came to the town ofSenj as Habsburg mercenaries in the middle of the fifteenth century. His sharpawareness of the problem of identity could have been influenced by the fact that he wasa stranger and that he grew up in Senj, which was located at the crossroads of differentpolitical, cultural, even civilisational spheres: Venetian, Habsburg and Ottoman. Inaddition, his education at the Jesuit college in Zagreb, and his Wanderjahre (years oftravel) spent in Italy and Carniola, certainly played a part. The next step in Vitezovic’s

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formation was his ‘Viennese episode’. In 1686 he became the agens aulicus of theCroatian National Assembly in Vienna,13 thus gaining access to Viennese politicalcircles, where he tried to make a name for himself writing panegyrics to leading politicalluminaries of the day. He seems to have been successful, for already in 1688 he wasproposed as an official of the newly established Hungarian Chancellery in the reformproject Einrichtungswerk des Konigsreich Ungarn.14

Vitezovic’s influence became more pronounced in the political life of the Kingdom ofCroatia as well. In keeping with the current political propaganda of the CroatianEstates, he was entrusted with the management of the national printing press by theorder of Parliament in 1694. In order to mobilise public opinion by means of workstailored to meet the linguistic and generic expectations of as large part of it as possible,he published the Chronicle and numerous calendars in the vernacular, in which hedescribed ‘the virtues of the Croatian kings’ and ‘the glory and the spread of theCroatian name and language’. Finally, he reached his finest moment as the emissary ofthe Croatian Parliament to the boundary commission after the Karlowitz peace treaty(1699) headed by the plenipotentiary commissioner Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli(1658–1740).15

Vitezovic’s five memorials written between 1699 and 1701 (Responsio ad postulataComiti Marsiglio, Croatia, Dissertatio Regni Croatiae, Croatia rediviva and Regia IllyriorumCroatia sive Croatia rediviva)16 therefore constitute both a formulation of narrativenational identity17 par excellence and a specific combination and compilation of thedifferent elements of the two ideological and political models – that of the CroatianEstates and that of the Habsburg ‘state’ – seeking legitimisation, on the one hand, anda double symbolic profit, on the other. This is corroborated by intertextual analysis ofVitezovic’s works. All five can be considered to belong to the genre of memorials(memoranda) very popular and widespread within the so-called ‘pragmatic historiogra-phy’.18 The latter blossomed in the Germanic countries from the mid-seventeenthcentury and was introduced into the Habsburg Monarchy in the early eighteenthcentury on the initiative of the Emperor Leopold I (1658–1705).19 The main feature ofthe works belonging to this historiographic genre is the interpretation of the past in theperspective of actual (mostly political) interests. Since pragmatic historiography focuseson institutions and their historical continuity, its basic materials are various officialdocuments structured into a coherent narrative whole. Another salient feature of earlymodern pragmatic historiography is the bridging of the gap between the past and thepresent, which means perceiving the past as a projection of the present or the presentas an expansion of the past. This is especially clear in the notion of ‘the permanentinstitution’, which is underpinned by the idea that legal acts, including those ofinstitutions no longer extant, are an expression of unbroken political and legal traditionand thereby represent its symbolic ‘enactment.’

Apart from sharing these general features of early modern pragmatic historiography,the memorial has some peculiarities enabling it to become a separate genre. Theseinclude, first and foremost, explicit addressees, as such works are mostly written at therequest of some authority (i.e., for a specific purpose). This facilitates reconstruction ofthe author-addressee relationship and makes the author’s possible intentions moreapparent. Vitezovic’s three handwritten memorials (Responsio ad postulata, Croatia,Dissertatio Regni Croatiae) are addressed to Count Marsigli; Croatia rediviva, printed inZagreb in 1700, has three addressees: the Croatian Estates, the Emperor Leopold andhis son, the Hungarian and Croatian King Joseph I; while Regia Illyriorum Croatia, alsoin manuscript, was written at Leopold’s direct request. Generally speaking, the memo-

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rials addressed to the Emperor (or the court) have greater ideological potential thanthose addressed to Count Marsigli, since this is determined by how much real andsymbolic power the addressees respectively wield – this power being necessary totranspose Vitezovic’s textually formed political utopia into reality.

Furthermore, the conventions of the genre demand a limited scope of exposition, theabsolutisation of the authorial position and the incontestability of his ‘knowledge’, aswell as creating an impression of objective explanation. As for compositional andstylistic features, the deployment of textual material and its discursive treatment are toa large degree determined by the subject-matter, usually to do with explicating somepressing political, economic or legal issue. Moreover, due to its structural features, thememorial is the ideal genre for transmitting the (proto)national ideology; this probablybeing the most important reason for its popularity in both Croatian and Serbianhistoriography,20 especially during and after the Viennese War.

The thematic, rhetorical and poetic features of these texts would also justify theirinclusion in the somewhat expanded Slavic genre of ‘Illyrian literature’, which served toformulate the collective narrative identity. The basic distinctive feature of this genre istextual articulation of the Illyrian ideologeme, which can in the broadest sense be definedas a historically determined conceptual or semantic complex thematising the commonorigin, linguistic unity, territorial spread and exceptional qualities of the Illyrians,ethnically equated with (Southern) Slavs.21 The continuous textual use of the Illyrianideologeme can be traced to the late Humanist period, when the cultural and the politicalidentity of the Illyrian ‘people’ (this concept gaining an ever more prominent place inthe political practice of the early modern period) started to be produced discursivelythrough instrumentalised representations of the traditions of classical antiquity andre-interpretations of its terminology. In Croatian historiographic production, the ideo-logical, political and cultural investment of the Illyrian ideologeme and its appropriationsfor the contemporary universalist paradigms such as the Counter-Reformation religiousproselytism, the Habsburg absolutism and the proto-nationalism of the Estates, reachedits climax in the seventeenth century. As for Vitezovic, apart from the multiplediscursive formulations of various elements of the Illyrian ideologeme, the structuralbasis of his whole ideological concept is the formula Illyrians � Slavs � Croats.

All five memorials are also closely linked thematically. As the end of the VienneseWar created a new geographical (Neoaquisita) and mental space to be ‘colonised’, thethematic axis of Vitezovic’s memorials is a discursive ‘cartography’ of Croatia based ontwo argumentative and topical complexes: the historico-legal (the legal tradition,continuity of the institutions of king and iupanus (head of the country)), and theethno-linguistic and ethno-cultural (common language, origin and customs).

In his work Responsio ad postulata, Vitezovic presents the geographical, historico-administrative and ecclesiastical division of a Croatia defined to include the ‘Illyricumproper’: Liburnia and Panonia to the rivers Mura, Drava and the Danube. He thenexpounds the genealogy and territorial scope of the Roman term ‘Dalmatia’. Heconcludes that Dalmatia is only a remnant of Roman times and that it does not existin reality, being but a titular kingdom in the title of Hungarian kings and actually anintegral part of Croatia. He then lists and briefly describes the ‘counties’ (comitatus) ofCroatia. The description includes territorial scope and geographical features of thegiven area, as well as the names of the most important towns and, occasionally, of theirformer rulers (comites). The final part of the work is devoted to a brief description ofthe ecclesiastical administrative organisation including, alongside the Catholic, theOrthodox territorial-ecclesiastical structure.22

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In terms of composition, the work Croatia is very similar to the one preceding it.Vitezovic first defines the borders of Croatia, but this time equating them with theborders of the Roman province of Liburnia. He then proves that the Dalmatian townsand islands belong to Croatia on the basis of historico-legal criteria. Finally, he lists thecounties of Croatia, but the list is very different from the one in the previous memorial.

The memorial Dissertatio Regni Croatiae opens with an account of how the Hungariankings became the rulers of the Kingdom of Croatia following the death of KingZvonimir (eleventh century). The territorial scope of the Kingdom of Croatia is thentaken to be the same as during Hungarian rule as Vitezovic places its borders on theRiver Sava, the Montes Pinei and the estuary of the River Cetina. Finally, there is againthe topos of denying the legal existence of the Kingdom of Dalmatia.

The work Croatia rediviva opens with a discussion of the etymology of the term‘Croatia’ and a definition of its territorial scope. This is followed by the argument forthe Croatian right to the Adriatic islands, and for identifying the Illyrians and the Slavswith Croats. Vitezovic then discusses the institution of regal rule and its ancient lineage,as well as the towns of Dalmatia. In contrast to the arguments presented in the workCroatia, which are of historical and legal nature, Vitezovic here introduces language asthe criterion for the ethnic inclusion of Dalmatia and Dalmatian people into Croatia.The works ends with a division of Croatia.23

In the memorial Regia Illyriorum Croatia sive Croatia rediviva, Vitezovic defines theterritorial scope of Croatia by the borders of Illyricum according to Suetonius. Hediscusses the provinces Liburnia, Dalmatia and Panonia (which had been part ofIllyricum) separately, and concludes that, with the arrival of Croats, the whole ofIllyricum comes to be called ‘Slavonia’ or ‘Croatia’. He then goes on to date and listthe Croatian kings, ‘following without interruption from Ostrivoius’.24 The last part isagain devoted to the Adriatic islands and the Croatian legal claim on them. Finally, theauthor again addresses Emperor Leopold, proposing that he replace the individualkingdoms of Dalmatia, Slavonia, Rama and Serbia in his regal title with the formula ‘ofCroatia entire’ (totius Croatiae).

Reading all these memoranda as one great ideological text, one cannot fail torecognise this as an instance of Bourdieu’s ‘regionalist discourse which aims to imposeas legitimate a new definition of the frontiers and to get people to know and recognisethe region that is thus delimited in opposition to the dominant definition’. Accordingto Bourdieu, the basic feature of regionalist discourse is performativity, for ‘ethnic orregional categories, like categories of kinship, institute a reality by using the power ofrevelation and construction exercised by objectification in discourse’.25

I shall try to show how Vitezovic’s performative historiographical discourse producessuch an effect, and to demonstrate how this discourse, using its signifying resources,creates and makes legitimate the symbolic construction of national identity, creating avirtual, utopian artefact – a ‘revived Croatia’. As I have already said, specific genericdemands of the memorial call for establishing a particular type of authorial position,which could most generally be termed the ‘omniscient author’ position. As regardsVitezovic’s memorials, I would provisionally term ‘divine’ the type of authority that canbe read in them. This means that the author in the text has, or pretends to have, thesymbolic authority, abilities and attributes of both divinity and priest. The divine natureof the author manifests first in his absolute knowledge which he then at will ‘reveals’ in‘writing’. To this end, he uses the strategy of ‘performative naming’26 based on identityequations,27 exercising thereby a ‘real ontological transmutation of the thing named’.28

It is hardly surprising therefore that ‘name’ (nomen) forms the axis of Vitezovic’s textual

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and ideological construct. In this way the author assumes the symbolic role of the onewho has the power to reintroduce a ‘name’ into linguistic, as well as real, life. Toillustrate this point, we can take the self-referential opening of the ‘call for collabora-tion’ in one of the copies of Croatia rediviva: ‘I have undertaken the enormousendeavour to resurrect the great name of Illyria or our Croatia or Slavonia, duringincessant turns of wartime long suppressed and all but buried, from the bloody asheswherein it lies’29 (emphasis added).

The second ‘divine’ attribute of the author shows in the way in which temporality istreated in the text. As the ‘mind of God’ perceives history, present and future as one,so the ‘divine’ author, is constantly projecting the ‘reconstructed’ past into his own‘constructed’ present, which is but a utopian projection of a wished-for future, tran-scends the boundaries of the temporal. The most obvious example of this is Vitezovic’stextual (re)construction of the borders of Croatia. Not only is the scope of his Croatiadefined in terms of the historico-geographic names of classical antiquity – the divisioninto counties, being in fact a textual compilation of data from varied, mostly mediaeval,sources, is presented as the actual and real state of affairs.30

The priestly dimension of the ‘divine’ authorial position is reflected most clearly inthe features of hermeneutic procedures the author ‘employs’ in the text. He assumesthe position of an Historian, the minister of History, presenting himself in and throughthe text as the authorised interpreter of sources. His discourse thus assumes thecharacteristics of a magisterial enunciation marked by a ‘tone of obviousness’.31 Thiseffect is achieved by the use of apodeictic expressions such as ‘there can be no doubtthat’, ‘no one can deny that’, ‘it is clear that’, ‘it is evident that’, ‘there is no doubt that’,‘it is more than obvious that’ and the like, in which Vitezovic’s discourse abounds.32

The authority of this high priest of History rests on the one hand on having a privileged‘insight’ into sources33 and, on the other hand, on the ability to read and interpret themcorrectly and legitimately.34 This ‘gift’ is constructed discursively through opposition toincorrect interpretations of ‘uninitiated authors’. In other words, in order to strengthenthe impression of his own hermeneutic competence, Vitezovic systematically ‘producesdifficulties in the text’35 by citing the ‘wrong’ interpretations of others, which he, as theonly authorised priest of History, then triumphantly dismantles.

On the lexical level, the degree to which Vitezovic’s discourse is permeated by theideological is apparent not only in the use of ideologemes (e.g., Croatia, nomen, limites,lingua, gens), but also in the frequent use of certain words, expressions and grammaticalforms. Thus there is, for example, a myriad of adjectives in the superlative and theso-called ‘quantifiers’ (adjectives multi, omnes, nonnulli, plurimi, etc.), which greatlyenhances expressivity and suggestiveness. Also, there are great many verbs in thegerundive form,36 which further enhances the persuasiveness and the potential manipu-lative power of discourse.

The pervasive presence of the ideological in Vitezovic’s discourse is reflected on thelevel of syntax as well. In Vitezovic’s writings, parataxis is generally favoured overhypotaxis, and the indicative over the conjunctive verbal mood. In keeping with thebasic structural dichotomy olim-nunc, Vitezovic’s historiographic discourse mostly usesthe perfect and present tense. His enunciations are characterised by accuracy andexplicitness in general, and there are hardly any stylistic caveats or indicators ofrelativisation. The texts mostly use the impersonal third person singular and verbs inthe passive voice. The first person is used sporadically, usually in the function ofstressing the author’s knowledge and power (i.e., the hermeneutic authority they granthim). Vitezovic uses relative and conjunctional connectors, which, apart from the effect

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of truthful reasoning, also produces the relation of logical ‘causality’ between elemen-tary clauses. Of the subordinate clauses, the clauses of result and comparison are themost frequent, which is hardly surprising as Vitezovic’s discourse belongs to thecategory of argumentative and polemical discourse.

As regards semantic devices in Vitezovic’s texts, the most prominent is the alreadymentioned performative naming. This device can be noted on all levels of ‘territorialdefining’ in Vitezovic’s texts – from Croatia to a particular county – and it manifestsitself in (re)defining the referential/territorial scope of a given semantic ‘void’ or‘incorrectly filled’ name/toponym.

One of the most important generic features of the memorial is persuasiveness. It is,of course, primarily the result of a specific construction of the authorial position, but itneeds to be legitimised by other discursive means as well. The most important of theseis argumentative structure. In Vitezovic’s memorials, quotes, always typographicallyemphasised,37 generally appear in three forms. They can simply be incorporated intothe author’s exposition, merging with it semantically, the name of the writer and thesource being indicated in the margin. The second form is the traditional manner ofcitation, giving the name of the writer accompanied by one of the verba dicendi and thereader’s interpretation being guided by the author’s comments. The third form isjuxtaposing quotes from one or several writers, usually with the intention of ‘exposing’their contradictions. However, in the case of diplomatic documents, considered to be‘more authentic’ representatives of historic reality, this latter form is never used. Thedevice of textual manipulation of quotes is another ideological move of Vitezovic’sdiscourse, since by taking the quotes out of their original context and intentionallydeploying them in a new textual tissue, even though the linguistic form remainsunchanged, new and different semantic ties and relations are being formed.

Moreover, the author’s intention of guiding the reader’s reception evidently underpinsthe composition of particular thematic units. Each begins with a definition or anapodictic statement, followed by an elaborate explication. The latter is mostly conceivedin negative terms: Vitezovic first lists ‘incorrect’ interpretations of ‘uninitiated’ writersand then expounds his own ‘correct’ opinion, supported by ‘incontestable’ proofs. Theexplication almost always is a semantic amplification of the opening definition.

Vitezovic’s argumentation is also marked by the so-called ‘staccato’ effect, a promi-nent feature of early modern historiography. It is achieved by repeating sentences orphrases of great semantic or ideological potential in various places in the text in orderto ensure a better reception, thus turning them into a kind of intratextual loci communes(common locations).38

Nevertheless, even though mechanisms, strategies and devices accounting for itsinternal cohesion and persuasiveness can be identified in the dominant semantic layerof this performative discourse, it at the same time lends itself to an analysis exposing its‘buried grammar’ of internal contradictions, mostly contextually determined, destabilis-ing and disintegrating it. On the metatextual level, this can be perceived in the author’swriting technique, in the graphic structure of his handwritten memorials. Not only arethere several crossed-out and/or corrected sentences on almost every page of themanuscript, the margins are also filled with various additions, comments and correc-tions to be inserted in the text. All this is as if Vitezovic refused to fix the text evenformally through such ‘extended writing’, which on the hermeneutic level opens thequestion of how ‘finished’ his works in manuscript really are, and which text to choosefor analysis and interpretation.

On the level of text, this phenomenon manifests itself variously. It is perhaps best to

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start with a topological analysis. In general, Vitezovic’s formulation of Croatian(proto)national39 ideology is highly reminiscent of contemporary European, especiallyGerman, concepts of (proto)national ideology. Their common feature is a strong linkbetween the legal elements (territory, institutions and legal tradition) and culturalelements (language, origin and customs) formed textually in historiographical works,for they were considered a medium that can invest the ‘nation’ with the values andmeanings it embodies.40

Almost all theories of ethnicity and nationalism emphasise the constitutive import-ance of territory: in the symbolic function of ‘sacred habitat’, in the framework ofvarious ethnic and national ideologies. This applies to Vitezovic’s ideological concept aswell. In discursive realisation, however, the ‘territory’ of Croatia becomes a site ofnumerous and contradictory semantic re-inscriptions. I shall, nevertheless, try, withnecessary simplifications, to (re)construct the model of discursive constitution ofCroatian ‘territory’ in the works of Vitezovic.

Using performative naming as the principal semantic device, Vitezovic referentiallyassociates the territory ‘Croatia’ with the historico-geographical terms of classicalantiquity (Illyricum, Liburnia), thus obtaining unassailable symbolic legitimisation.41

Furthermore, this provides a temporal extension strengthening its symbolic status.42

Vitezovic uses the ‘continuity of institutions’ dogma of early modern historiography asthe ground for his concept of ‘translatio imperii’ – a theory of uninterrupted transferenceof royal rule from the Illyrian, Gothic and native rulers onto Hungarian and, finally,Habsburg kings – giving the whole construct even more ideological cohesion. Aterritorial ‘core’ is thereby produced in discourse, to be further expanded or contractedusing two basic sets of criteria: (a) the legal tradition and institutions, and (b) geneticand linguistic kinship.

In accordance with the conventions of the genre, and in the general context ofbaroque passion for systematisation,43 Vitezovic often presents territorial definitions informulaic terms of territorial division, whether on the global level of ‘Croatia’, or on thelocal level of counties. The strategy he employs to this end is to expand the divisiontaken from one or more precursors historians with his additions, trying to ensuresymbolic legitimisation for his own construct.44 Generally speaking, the importance anarea is accorded in terms of textual space and argumentation procedures decreases inproportion to its geographical distance from the territorial core (i.e., ‘Croatia proper’).In other words, marginal Slavonic ethnic areas such as Poland, Bohemia, Bulgaria andRumania are not given the meticulous textual treatment in Croatia rediviva and RegiaIllyriorum Croatia reserved for Serbia, Bosnia, the Slovene lands or Istria. The samegoes for the counties in the memorials Responsio ad postulata and Croatia.45 It is preciselythe semantic elasticity of the topos of territory – accompanied by the evidently ‘construc-tivist’ strategy of its discursive constitution – that cancels out, or at least seriouslyundermines, the symbolic status of national ‘sacred habitat’, and it is therefore hardlysurprising that this aspect of Vitezovic’s ‘national programme’ has been completelyignored in the traditional ‘national reading’, which laconically explained away Vite-zovic’s thematic focus on territory by his intention of ‘giving Croatia, short-changed inthe Karlowitz peace treaty, what is her due by God and by right’(!).46

After the topos of territory, the next most frequent mentions are the institutions ofking and iupanus. Their ideological impact cuts two ways: as a traditional feature of thepolitical culture of Croatian nobility they represent an important element of(proto)national ideology, while at the same time granting historico-legal legitimisationto the Habsburg rulers. In the perspective of linguistic pragmatism, in contradistinction

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to the topos of royal institution, the signals of which are aimed directly or indirectly atthe main addressee – the Habsburg ruler – the textual function of the ‘institution of theiupanus’ is mostly connected with contemporary political aspirations of the Croatiannobility. Vitezovic’s continual textual insistence on the division of Croatia into countiescould be read as an implicit project of the political ordering of a ‘revived’ Croatia,which would – in spite of the absolute power of the ‘natural’ ruler, the king of the‘whole of Croatia’, the Emperor Leopold I – still contain the network of counties as atraditional institutional foothold of the political power of the nobility.

On the level of text, however, this topos also performs the argumentative task of givinghistorico-legal legitimisation to the territorial scope of Croatia, especially with respectto Dalmatia, an area under Venetian rule at the time and a direct political interest ofthe Habsburgs. In this way, the institution of counties is (re)presented as constitutivelynecessary and unavoidable, both on the textual and on the referential level, being agood example of how thematic content can be doubly ideologically invested in the text.

‘National’ historiography was, of course, unable to ignore Vitezovic’s legitimising ofthe Habsburgs, interpreting it pragmatically as the author’s wish that the ‘Habsburgrulers would free Croatia from Turkish bondage’.47 In keeping with the stereotype ofVitezovic as a tragic, lonely and misunderstood national hero ‘whose speech fell onsilent ears’,48 however, all Croatian historians have overlooked Article 21 of theConclusions of the Croatian Royal Conference held on 10 February 1700, which grantsPavao Ritter Vitezovic 100 forints in recompense for ‘a certain work in memory of thiscountry he has had published at his own expense’.49

Judging from textual realisations, Vitezovic conceives of language in a markedlybiologist and primordialist fashion, which means that language – along with othercultural elements (customs, religious rituals) – is a distinctive feature of a group ofcommon origin. It is for this reason that in Vitezovic’s works the topos of ‘language’almost always appears within the framework of various ‘theories of origin’: theBelochrobatio-Sarmatian, the Gothic, the Herulian, the Henetian and the Cureto-Corybantic, with the addition of the myth of Czech, Leh and Rus.50 Although these areto a large degree mutually exclusive and contradictory, they form a logical starting pointfor Vitezovic’s theory of the ‘corresponding territorial extension’ of a people and alanguage, whereby a relation of causality is established between these two factors, aninvaluable argumentative instrument. From the viewpoint of ideology, this concept isexplicitly hegemonistic, for the arrival of the new ethnic element (the Croats) hasfundamentally altered the existing ethno-linguistic structure, either by physically elimi-nating the preceding ethnic stratum, or by completely ‘integrating’ it into the new‘language, name, and custom’.51

There is an inherent contradiction in this argument, however, since the hegemonisticmodel of ‘Croatisation’, used by Vitezovic to prove the ‘Croatian’ character of a givenarea, by the same token undermines the thesis of continuity (Illyrians-Liburnians-Croats), by means of which he aims to reconcile, logically and ideologically, the variouscontradictory elements of his (proto)national ideology.

Vitezovic’s concept of ethnic identity could not, of course, pass muster with the morescrupulous scientific ‘national’ historiographers, who, moreover, could not comprehendwhy Vitezovic needed to combine various theories of origin when he was familiar withthe ‘correct’ story of the settlement of the Croats as told by Constantine Porphyrogen-itus. His approach was nevertheless credited with having a ‘system and certain logic toit, because it springs from the awareness of and the need for the unity of all Slavs, andespecially of the Southern Slavs, and from the need to be organised in a single state’.52

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Apart from the already noted heterogeneous elements of (proto)national ideologyundermining the semantic and logical stability of Vitezovic’s historiographical dis-course, similar effects are produced by some of the discursive strategies and devicesemployed. For example, various self-referential indications suggesting a degree ofincompleteness of the text,53 or intentional leaving out of its particular parts (usuallyheralded by the figure of paralipsis), though used for the purpose of legitimising it byemphasising the author’s ‘surplus’ knowledge, actually weaken the textually formedideological structure. Within the frame of a given text, frequent implicit semanticamplifications, especially of nomothetic territorial definitions, are yet another importantfactor in destabilising the ideological structure.

This is even more evident when the territorial definitions of Croatia in all five ofVitezovic’s memorials are compared. Even though they are similar thematically, generi-cally and even chronologically, in each of the works the borders of Croatia arereferentially situated differently – the five texts (re)present five respective (textual)Croatias. It was precisely this (pseudo)referential dimension of Vitezovic’s texts thatmost attracted the ‘national’ historians in their explorations; the fact itself, however, hasbeen unanimously overlooked or ignored by the Croatocentric and the Yugoslav-integralist ones alike.

Of the five memorials, Responsio ad postulata is chronologically the earliest (dated 25September 1699), written immediately after Vitezovic became a member of theboundary commission. Vitezovic composed it at the request of Count Marsigli, whowas only interested in the areas of the Kingdom of Croatia and the border areas overwhich the Habsburgs were in contention with the Venetian Republic and the Ottomans.Vitezovic, however, presented a broader territorial concept of Croatia (Croatia � Istria,Carniola, Croatia proper, including Dalmatia and the islands, Bosnia and Serbia), moreor less corresponding to the Habsburg territorial claims during the Viennese War.54 Inthis way, if only through indicating a more extensive virtual scope of Croatia, Vitezovicwas evidently testing the persuasive potentials of his memorial.

In the memorial entitled Croatia, he was forced, however, to situate Croatia withinmore narrow confines (Rasa, the River Sava and the River Cetina, including thecounties of Livno and all the Dalmatian islands) and in Dissertatio Regni Croatiae, hefinally delineates Croatia as the area between the River Sava, the mountain range fromDinara to the River Drina and the estuary of the River Cetina (see Figure 1). Incounterdistinction to the memorial Responsio ad postulata, which has a much broaderideological base, the latter two works are primarily to be considered with respect to theirfunction in the territorial disputes between the three imperial systems at the time whenthe boundary commission was being active, when each of the signatories to theKarlowitz peace treaty was trying to turn to its own advantage the agreed principle ofuti possidetis, ita possideatis (enjoy the possession the way you possess it).

In the booklet Croatia rediviva, dedicated to the Emperor Leopold, Vitezovic’sideological structure reaches its conceptual peak. This is most evident in the exampleof territorial definition of Croatia as the area stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seaand the Adriatic, including Hungary. It should be stressed that Croatia rediviva waswritten in early 1700, when Marsigli’s commission was still at work on demarcating theCisdanubia and, even more importantly, when the Habsburg Charles II of Spain wasstill alive, which means that Viennese foreign policy had not yet turned exclusively tothe West. Even though a ‘revived Croatia’ at first seems a completely fantastic andmegalomaniac project, it actually fits rather neatly into utopian visions of the idealabsolutist state, meeting as it does the necessary conditions for the economic, political

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FIGURE 1. The five Croatias of Pavao Ritter Vitezovic

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and cultural functioning of the absolutist state – comprising the compact area betweenthe Baltic and the Black Sea and being inhabited mostly by Slavic ethnic groups. SinceLeopold I was the sworn enemy of Louis XIV (who was at the beginning of the year1700 still resting on the laurels of having won the Viennese War and fantasising ofspreading his empire), to offer him the crown of a revived Croatia was thus a movecompletely in keeping with the actual policies of creating the Habsburg Grossmacht(great power). Finally, writing the memorial Regia Illyriorum Croatia at the Emperor’srequest the following year in Vienna, Vitezovic again situated Croatia in the boundariesof Responsio ad postulata, but excluding the Slovene lands. This scope was apparentlyintended to continually remind the Habsburg ruler of the imperialist plans he hadduring the Viennese War, so that after 25 years (the period agreed by the Karlowitzpeace treaty) he would again attempt to ‘revive’ Croatia. Moreover, within the frame ofVitezovic’s ideological concept, the problem of the borders is doubled, for the samesemantic situation is repeated at the lower level of the borders between the counties.This is best exemplified by the fact that, of the counties listed in the three memorials(Responsio ad postulata, Croatia and Regia Illyriorum Croatia), only about one-thirdcorrespond in name and size.55

To conclude, what is ‘the case of Vitezovic’ all about? First, it goes to show that anational reading is unavoidably reductive, even though, judging by its normative andnomothetic discursive features, it pretends to be authoritative and universal. A criticalreading of a canonical ‘articulation of national identity’ reveals it, on the contrary, to bea polyphonic cultural artefact, brimming with various discursive and contextual re-inscriptions. Furthermore, due precisely to its performative characteristics, Vitezovic’shistoriographical discourse includes a ‘surplus of meaning’, transcending its immediatecultural and temporal context, and resisting interpretative stabilisation, on the onehand, even as it enables a continuous extension and multiplication of its interpretativeperformance, on the other; as demonstrated by this text.

Correspondence: Zrinka Blazevic, Institute of Croatian History, History Department,Faculty of Philosophy, Lucicera 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: zblazevi@ffzg.hr

Notes

1. The most important role in the revaluation of the ‘life and work’ of Pavao Ritter Vitezovic, whohad even in his lifetime been denounced as a ‘Habsburg agent’, was played by Croatianhistoriographer Baltazar Adam Krcelic (1715–1778). However, Vitezovic’s ‘pan-Croatian’ ideo-logical conception had its greatest moment in the nineteenth century, influencing decisively theIllyrian movement through Ljudevit Gaj and becoming an important tenet in the programme ofAnte Starcevic’s and Eugen Kvaternik’s Party of Right at the end of the century. Cf. CatherineAnne Simpson, ‘Pavao Ritter Vitezovic: Defining National Identity in the Baroque Age’ (PhDthesis, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, 1991), pp. 161–176; Ivo Banac,‘The Revived Croatia of Pavao Ritter Vitezovic,’ in Ivo Banac and F. E. Sysyn (eds), Concepts ofNationhood in Early Modern Eastern Europe, vol. X (Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute,Harvard University, 1986), pp. 492–507; Jaroslav Sidak, ‘Poceci politicke misli u Hrvata – J.Krizanic i P. Ritter Vitezovic’, Nase teme, 16/7–8, 1972, pp. 1132–1134. Vitezovic remains,however, a favourite national hero in Croatian scientific historiography; for example, it isnoteworthy that the task of writing a monograph on Vitezovic entitled The Life and Works of PavaoRitter Vitezovic was undertaken in 1913 by the most prominent Croatian historian of the period,Vjekoslav Klaic (1849–1929), who is traditionally held as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of modernCroatian historical science. The book was published by Matrix Croatica, the cultural institutionfounded in the period of ‘national revival’ with the aim of ‘preserving and promulgating national

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culture’, and financed by a grant from the trust of Count Ivan Draskovic intended for the supportof national cultural projects.

2. This evaluation comes from a survey of Croatian historiography from the sixteenth to thetwentieth century by Klaic’s younger contemporary and follower Ferdo Sisic (1869–1940). Itwould seem that at the time of ‘defining’ the modern Croatian science of history, it wasunavoidable for each new generation of historians to redefine the role of ‘national heroes’, thuscontributing to their symbolic legitimisation. Cf. Ferdo Sisic, ‘Hrvatska historiografija od XVI. doXX. stoljeca’, Jugoslavenski istorijski casopis, II/1–4, 1935, p. 46.

3. This is how Vitezovic was characterised by the man of letters Milan Marjanovic (1879–1955) inthe Belgrade cultural weekly Public, enabling, on the one hand, a transference of the ‘Vitezovicphenomenon’ from the elite into ‘popular’ discourse, while, on the other hand, adding to hisinterpretative complex a new, Yugoslav-integralist dimension. Cf. Milan Marjanovic, ‘Praotacpankroatizma’, Javnost, 30, 1935, p. 763.

4. This was stated by the historian and man of letters Josip Horvat (1896–1968) in his seminal workThe Culture of the Croats Over 1000 Years. This book is incidentally the first and only attempt ata synthesis of Croatian cultural history, within the favourite framework of ‘uninterrupted conti-nuity’, of course, which testifies to the fact that the Croatian academic public has to this day notfelt the need for a more serious revision of ‘national culture’. Cf. Josip Horvat, Kultura Hrvata kroz1000 godina (Zagreb, A. Velzek, 1939), p. 383.

5. Though critical analysis of discourse cannot be considered a unified and coherent theoretical andmethodological paradigm (the British School relying primarily on sociolinguistics, the Dutch beingmore cognitively inclined, and the German under the influence of Foucault), as far as theepistemological definition of ‘discourse’ is concerned, all the schools seem to be in absoluteagreement. Cf. Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language(London and New York: Longman, 1995), pp. 10–11; Teun A. van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisci-plinary Approach (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi: Sage, 1998), p. 194; RuthWodak et al. Zur diskursiven Konstruktion nationaler Identitat (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,1998), p. 42.

6. On the textual level, what is being analysed is the linguistic form, its organisation and structure,as well as various strategies and mechanisms ensuring the ideological impact of discourse. Cf.Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, p. 187; Wodak et al., Zur diskursiven Konstruktion nationalerIdentitat, pp. 73–75.

7. Intertextual analysis explores how a text draws upon particular configurations of conventionalisedpractices (genres, discourses, narratives) which are available to text producers and interpreters inparticular social circumstances. Cf. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis, p. 188.

8. Even though the epistemological and even ontological status of the ‘context’ is being questionedby postmodern historiography (cf., e.g., Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., Beyond the Great Story: Historyas a Text and Discourse (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 20–24), I shall hereadopt what is, in my view, a very functional definition by Teun A. van Dijk, who defines context‘as a structured set of all properties of a social situation that are possibly relevant for theproduction, structure, interpretation and function of text and talk’(Van Dijk, Ideology, p. 211).

9. Van Dijk, Ideology, p. 209.10. For a very insightful survey of political, administrative and economic situation in the Habsburg

Monarchy in the latter half of the seventeenth century, see Charles W. Ingrao, The HabsburgMonarchy, 1618–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 53–104; RaffaellaGherardi, Potere e costituzione a Vienna fra Sei e Settecento. Il ‘buon ordine’ di Luigi FerdinandoMarsili (Bologna: Societa editrice il Mulino, 1980).

11. In 1685, beset by wartime circumstances, Parliament established a separate body (Conferentia) incharge of solving all the problems of general interest to the Kingdom should Parliament beprevented from assembling. It was assembled by the ‘ban’ (banus, prorex) or the Bishop of Zagreb,who also chaired it. The Conference had six members (three secular and three religious), and theirdecisions bound all the estates without further authorisation from Parliament. This temporary andextraordinary institution soon became permanent and gradually replaced Parliament more andmore, especially in times of the most intensive political activity of the Croatian Estates (1695–1701), when Parliament hardly ever met.

12. The territory of Croatia was almost doubled after the Viennese War.13. The function was created by Parliament in 1673. The jurisdiction of the agens aulicus was

primarily the speeding up of parliamentary petitions to the Court and other offices, and thegathering of information and data for Parliament.

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14. Einrichtungswerk is a detailed and all-encompassing plan of political, administrative, military andeconomic reform of the Hungarian kingdom concocted by the Viennese court officials headed bythe Austrian Vice-Chancellor Kollonich immediately after the election of Joseph, Leopold’s son,as hereditary king of Hungary. For more details, see Theodor Mayer, Verwaltungsreform in Ungarnnach der Turkenzeit (Wien/Leipzig: Gesellschaft fur neuere Geschichte Osterreichs, 1911), pp. 43–92; Gherardi, Potere e costituzione a Vienna, pp. 215–244.

15. For a detailed account, see John Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680–1730: The Life and Times of LuigiFerdinando Marsigli, Soldier and Virtuoso (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press,1994).

16. An analysis of these memorials was the subject of my MA thesis: ‘The Ideological Concept in thePost-Karlowitz Cycle of Writings of Pavao Ritter Vitezovic’.

17. I refer to the dynamic concept of ‘narrative identity’ as formulated by Paul Ricoeur. He sees‘identity’, which discloses itself in the dialectic of selfhood and sameness, as a narrativeconfiguration the basic function of which is to mediate between concordance and discordance(i.e., to integrate the heterogeneous elements into a coherent narrative structure). Cf. PaulRicoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago, IL and London: Chicago University Press, 1994), pp. 140–163. This is, in my view, a very acceptable theoretical starting point for considering ‘nationalidentity’ as a heterogeneous and unstable discursive construct which, since it is constituted bymeans of two contradictory mechanisms – inclusion and exclusion – permanently endeavours toestablish some kind of internal cohesion.

18. For a detailed account, see Leonard Krieger, ‘Germany’, in Orest Ranum (ed.), NationalConsciousness, History and Political Culture in Early-Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD and London:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 72–75.

19. On this type of historiography (termed ‘historico-political journalism’ by A. Coreth) in theHabsburg Monarchy, see Anna Coreth, Osterreichische Geschichtschreibung in der Barockzeit (1620–1740) (Wien: Verlag Adolf Holzhausens, 1950), pp. 12, 13, 15, 55.

20. The most important writers of memorials in Serbian baroque historiography are ‘the Archbishopof Bar and the primate of Serbia’ Andrija Zmajevic (1628–1694), who addressed his memoran-dum State to the Congregatio de propaganda fide, and Vitezovic’s contemporary -Dord-e Brankovic(1645–1711), who addressed his memorials to the Emperor Leopold. Cf. Milorad Pavic, Rad-anjenove srpske knjizevnosti (Beograd: Srpska Knjizevna zadruga, 1983), pp. 85–87.

21. In the article ‘Geneze und Funktion des illyrischen Ideologems in den Sudslavischen Literaturen(16 bis Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts)’, Reinhard Lauer systematically reviews the morphology andgenesis of this ideologeme. It can be realised synchronically (a description of the spatial amplitudeof the Slavs) and diachronically (a survey of the history of the Slavs), and it also has at its disposala number of arguments and motifs-topoi (e.g., the theory of the Scythians, Vandals and Sarmatians,the etymology ‘slava’ (glory)/Slav, linguistic unity, the privilege of Alexander the Great, the storyof Czech, Leh and Rus, St Jerome, the Slavic Orpheus, etc.). For a detailed account, see ReinhardLauer, Poetika i ideologija (Beograd: Prosveta, 1986), pp. 11–31; Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, ‘Lastoriografia umanistica di Dalmazia e Croazia: modelli italiani e miti nazionali’, Ricerche slavistiche,36, 1989, pp. 101–107.

22. Vitezovic lists three Catholic archdioceses and 22 dioceses in his Croatia. He also mentions three‘Greek’ dioceses and a Serbian archiepiscopate. This indirectly proves that the confessional criterionis not relevant for ‘identification’ and ‘selection’ in Vitezovic’s ideological matrix for construingCroatia.

23. Croatia is divided into two parts: Northern Croatia (Croatia Septemtrionalis), north of the Danubeand Drava, including Venedicum (Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia), Sarmaticum (Russia, Poland,Lithuania) and Hungary; and southern Croatia (Croatia Meridionalis), which is further subdividedinto two parts: White Croatia (Croatia Alba) and Red Croatia (Croatia Rubea). Croatia Alba isdivided into four areas: Maritime Croatia (Croatia Maritima); Middle Croatia (Croatia Mediter-ranea); Interamnenian Croatia (Croatia Interamnia); and Alpine Croatia (Croatia Alpestris). RedCroatia consists of Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Odrysia.

24. Ostrivoius, the King of Goths, is mentioned in the annals of the Priest Diocleas and dated in theyear 495.

25. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 223.Bourdieu’s conception of ‘performativity’ derives from J. L. Austin’s concept of the ‘performativeutterance’, which does not refer to an extra-linguistic reality but rather enacts or produces that towhich it refers. J. Butler puts similar emphasis on the discursivity of performatives: ‘The power ofdiscourse to produce what it names is linked with the question of performativity. The performative

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is thus one domain in which power acts as discourse.’ Cf. Judith Butler, ‘Critically Queer’, Gayand Lesbian Quarterly, 1, 1993, p. 17.

26. Ivas uses this term for the device that establishes a firm and stable relationship between a nameand an object, sign and referent, which is in his view an excellent opportunity for ideology tooccupy language. Cf. Ivan Ivas, Ideologija u govoru (Zagreb: Hrvatsko filozofsko drustvo, 1988),p. 57.

27. E.g., ‘What were once Liburnia and Illyiricum proper, as well as Pannonia to the rivers Mura,Drava and Danube, is today called Croatia’ (Pavao Ritter Vitezovic, Ozivjela Hrvatska, ZlatkoPlese (trans.) (Zagreb: Golden Marketing & Narodne novine, 1997), p. 195); ‘What was onceLiburnia, which neighbours were the Istrians in the West, the Pannonians in the North, theIllyrians in the East, is today called Croatia’ (Paulus Ritter, Croatia, Biblioteca Universitaria diBologna, Fondo Marsili, vol. 103, 35r.); ‘I shall demonstrate that the borders of Croatia are thesame as Suetonius gives Illyricum: Italy and part of Noricum in the West, Macedonia and LowerMysia in the East, the Adriatic in the South and the Danube in the North’. Cf. Paulus Ritter,Regia Illyriorum Croatia sive Croatia rediviva (NSK, R 3570), p. 2.

28. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire. L’economie des echanges linguistiques (Paris: Fayard,1989), p. 190.

29. Cf. Pavao Ritter Vitezovic, Ozivljena Hrvatska, Zrinka Blazevic (trans.) (Zagreb: Latina & Graeca,1997), p. 157.

30. The past situation is habitually equated with the present one (olim � nunc) as, e.g., ‘Since the oldas well as new counties of Croatia are these …’ (‘Comitatus igitur tam veteres quam novi Croatiaehi sunt …’) (Ritter, Croatia, p. 39v).

31. On the tone of obviousness as a dominant feature of magisterial discourse, see Bourdieu, Ce queparler veut dire, p. 188.

32. Here is just a sample of the Latin locutions of this kind found in the text: nullum oriri queat dubium,nemo it inficias, absque dubio, procul dubio, certum est, evidentissimum est, nullum sit dubium, non estquod dubitetur.

33. Hence the author habitually interrupts – especially in the voluminous Regia Illyriorum Croatia – histhird person narrative by self-referential pointers such as ‘I have read’, ‘in the many documentsI have read, I have never encountered’, ‘I found the name’, ‘the documents I have on my own’,etc. Vitezovic grounds his superiority as historiographer in the fact that he had access to thefamous archive of the Zrinski family, which was moved to Pressburg after the conspiracy wasdiscovered.

34. When commenting on his sources, Vitezovic always uses expressions denoting transparency andclarity, e.g., palam, patet, clare, evidenter, and the like.

35. On the ‘corrective’ mission of the ‘theoretical priests,’ see Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire,pp. 184–186.

36. In Latin, the gerundive is the verbal adjective with a passive meaning expressing something thatought or should be done, and is hence also called the ‘participium neccessitatis’.

37. Usually emphasised by italics in print, and underlined in the manuscripts.38. The staccato effect, as defined by S. Arch, is the device the primary textual function of which is

to bolster up an argument by frequent repetition. Cf. Stephen Carl Arch, Authorizing the Past: TheRhetoric of History in Seventeenth-century New England (De Kalb, IL: Northern Illinois UniversityPress, 1994), p. 119.

39. The dominant modernist theories of nationalism (Hobsbawm, Gellner, Anderson) consider thenation a modern phenomenon which appeared in the last 200 years, linked to such specificmodern phenomena and processes as capitalism, industrialization, the bureaucratic state, urban-ization and secularization. For an overview of theories of nationalism, see Umut Ozkirimlı,Theories of Nationalism (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). This theoretical position would notsee Vitezovic’s ideological concept as national since by both its date and basic estatal-particularis-tic ideational structure it belongs to the pre-modern period. However, if it is seen as a discursiveconfiguration of the ethnic/national identity built in its various forms of reception and repro-duction into modern Croatian national-integrative ideologies (Gaj, Starcevic, Kvaternik), it couldbe called ‘national’. In his analysis of the ‘nation-making’ discourse of German humanists, H.Munkler adopts a similar approach. Cf. Herfried Munkler, Hans Grunberger and Kathrin Mayer,Nationenbildung. Die Nationalisierung Europas im Diskurs humanistischer Intellektueller (Berlin:Akademie Verlag, 1998), p. 17. I shall call Vitezovic’s ideological concept ‘(proto)national’precisely in order to highlight its dual nature.

40. Cf. Krieger, ‘Germany’, pp. 75–78.

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41. On the importance of the code of classical antiquity in the early modern elite culture, see GerritWalther, ‘Adel und Antike, Zur politischen Bedeutung gelehrter Kultur fur die Fuhrungselite derFruhen Neuzeit’, Historische Zeitschrift, 266/2, 1998, pp. 359–385.

42. Vitezovic frequently stresses that the various Illyrian kingdoms are more ancient than the RomanEmpire. Cf., e.g., Vitezovic, Ozivjela Hrvatska, Z. Plese (trans.), p. 191; Ritter, Croatia, p. 35r.

43. It was precisely under Leopold that Austrian historiography started to exhibit a strong inclinationto systematise on all levels, from systematising sources to discursive systematisation of historicalmaterial (e.g., Schonleben’s systematisation of the Habsburg genealogical lore in the workDissertatio polemica de prima origine Augustissimae domus Habsburgico-Austriacae (Ljubljana, 1680)).Cf. Coreth, Osterreichische Geschichtschreibung in der Barockzeit, p 56.

44. In dividing Croatia, Vitezovic relies on the division of Croatian counties by Constantine Por-phyrogenitus, the division of Croatia into the White and the Red by the Priest Diocleas andAndreas Dandolo, Horn’s division into the Venedian and the Sarmatian, and on Lucic’s divisionof Croatia into the Interamnian, the Proper and the Maritime.

45. In Responsio ad postulata, e.g., he does not so much mention the division into counties of CiteriorCroatia (the Slovene lands) and Ulterior Croatia (Serbia), while in Croatia he only gives the roughoutlines of the counties Primorska, Zagolda, Radobilje, Imotski and Duvno, which are east of theRiver Cetina. Cf. Vitezovic, Ozivjela Hrvatska, Z. Plese (trans.), pp. 210, 212; Ritter, Croatia,p. 39v.

46. Cf. Vjekoslav Klaic, Zivot i djela Pavla Rittera Vitezovica (1652–1713) (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska,1914), p. 141.

47. Sisic, ‘Hrvatska historiografija od XVI. do XX. stoljeca’, p. 46.48. Josip Horvat, Kultura Hrvata kroz 1000 godina, p. 383.49. J. Barbaric, J. Kolanovic, A. Lukinovic and V. Sojat (eds), Hrvatske kraljevinske konferencije, vol.

I (1689–1716) (Zagreb: Arhiv Hrvatske, 1985), p. 134.50. The Belochrobatio-Sarmatian theory is based on Porphyrogenitus’ report on the tribe of White

Croats, identified by Vitezovic with the Sarmatians, that, led by five brothers and two sisters,occupied Dalmatia, and then Illyricum and Pannonia. Cf. Vitezovic, Ozivljena Hrvatska, Z.Blazevic (trans.), pp. 76, 85; Constantine Porphyrogenitus, ‘De administrando Imperio’, Gy.Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins (eds), Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae, vol. I (Washington, DC:Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1967), pp. 61–75. The Gothic theory is takenover from Thomas the Archdeacon of Split, who writes that the Gothic ruler Totila, at the headof seven or eight clans, occupied Croatia, where the Curetes and the Corybantes had been livinguntil then. Cf. Vitezovic, Ozivljena Hrvatska, Z. Blazevic (trans.), pp. 78–81; Toma ArhictakonMuzej grada Splita, Kronika, V. Rismondo (trans.) (Split, 1977), pp. 25–26. Vitezovic found thetheory of the Heruli or Herli in Mauro Orbini, who gives this name to the Slav tribe that occupiedLiburnia and Dalmatia at the time of the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius. Cf. Vitezovic, OzivljenaHrvatska, Z. Blazevic (trans.), pp. 76–78; Mavro Orbini, Kraljevstvo Slavena, S. Husic (trans.)(Zagreb: Golden Marketing & Narodne Novine, 1999), p. 77. The Henetian theory comes fromthe additions to the Carionis chronicon by Kaspar Peucer. He claims that the Croats, a tribe ofHenetians or Venetians living on the Adriatic and around the North Sea, settled in Liburnia, andthen went over into Bulgaria. He also says that the language of the Henetians is the same as thatof the Czechs, Poles and Illyrians. Cf. Vitezovic, Ozivljena Hrvatska, Z. Blazevic (trans.),pp. 74–75; Ritter, Regia Illyriorum Croatia sive Croatia rediviva, pp. 9, 16, 35; Caspar Peucer,Tertia pars Chronici Carionis (Francofurti, 1594), p. 792. The myth of Czech, Leh and Rus is takenfrom Memoria Regum et Banorum by Juraj Rattkay, who writes that the tribe of Croats came fromits native town Krapina led by the three brothers and founded the Czech, Polish and Russiankingdoms. Cf. Vitezovic, Ozivljena Hrvatska, Z. Blazevic (trans.), pp. 118–119; Georgius Rattkay,Memoria Regum et Banorum Regnorum Dalmatiae, Croatiae et Sclavoniae, (Viennae, 1652), p. 23.

51. Ritter, Regia Illyriorum Croatia sive Croatia rediviva, p. 12.52. Marjanovic, ‘Praotac pankroatizma’, p. 762.53. E.g., the last but one sentence in the memorial Responsio ad postulata says: ‘More of this on

another occasion’, and at the beginning of Croatia Revived, the author stresses that this is only ‘anintroduction to the work costing not a little effort’. Cf. Vitezovic, Ozivjela Hrvatska, Z. Plese(trans.), p. 215; Vitezovic, Ozivljena Hrvatska, Z. Blazevic (trans.), p. 71.

54. In early 1689, at the time of the first negotiations between Vienna and the Porte, the Habsburg’sdiplomatic envoys fiercely asserted that the River Morava was the eastern border of the Monarchy(i.e., that Bosnia, Herzegovina and Serbia must unconditionally become a part of Leopold’sempire). Cf. Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, pp. 71–72.

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Performing National Identity 267

55. If we compare the areas covered by Vitezovic’s textual counties with the actual territorial scope ofCroatia after the demarcation, of the 42 counties of the Responsio ad postulata, only 10 wereincluded in its borders, which is understandable considering Vitezovic’s extensive territorialdefinition of Croatia. However, though the territorial scope of Croatia is much narrower in theCroatia, of its 37 counties only eight are to be found in the post-Karlowitz Croatia. The same goesfor the counties listed in the Regia Illyriorum Croatia, where only 12 out of 30 were within thepost-Karlowitz borders of Croatia. The reason is that Vitezovic cites every Dalmatian town as acounty. In the light of the extent of Venetian jurisdiction on the Adriatic coast, this is notsurprising.

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