King Zvonimir

Compiled by Mr. Vinko Laus

Dimitar Zvonimir (1076-1089)

Zvonimir was elected and crowned as King according to the customs of elections and coronations in Western Europe and particularly of the German Roman Emperors.

Pope Gregory, a great Pontiff of the Roman Church, sent his personal delegate to Croatia to perform the solemn coronation of Zvonimir in Solin near Split at the Basilica of St.Peter.  On this occasion, Zvonimir promised the Pope obedience and fidelity, vowing to cultivate justice, to defend the Church, to protect the widows, the poor and the abandoned, and to oppose the selling of slaves.  The reign of Zvonimir meant prosperity, legal order and peace for Croatia.  The King personally oversaw that no one
experienced injustice.  He organised his state on the model of the Western European nations.  On his journeys he was accompanied by his Chancellor and the Bishop of Knin.  The directors of greater and lesser Croatian regions were now princes and nobles, and there were also Neretvan princes led by Croat Admiral Jacob Morski in the royal company.  Zvonimir had his state government at Biograd, Knin, and Solin.   He authored letters of privilege one of which, granted to the Benedictine nuns in Split, is preserved even today in the Archives of the Land in Zagreb.

During the struggle between Pope Gregory and German Roman Emperor, Henry IV, Zvonimir remained at the Pope's side as proven by his written promise of fidelity which is preserved from the 12th century among the manuscripts in the Vatican Library.  This alliance with the Pope aborted an attack by powerful German Roman landlord Vecelin, who, only because of the threat of
ecclesiastical excommunication, ceased his military expedition against Zvonimir.  As the Pope's ally, Zvonimir did battle together with Norman Prince Robert Guiscard in 1081 against the combined Byzantine and Venetian fleet which experienced a heavy defeat.   The Dalmatian cities also fought against Byzantium because Zvonimir was then sovereign ruler of Dalmatia and
Croatia.  Zvonimir also included in his domain Istria, and from there, he returned to the island of Krk where he gave landgrants to the Monastery of St.Lucy in the presence of the royal company.  The Abbot of the monastery immortalized this event by inscribing the deed of the landgrant in stone some twenty years later.  The text of this deed along with the names of  witnesses present were written in the Croatian language with Glagolithic letters which were then generally used in the ecclesiastical books of the Croats.  This stone is known as the Bascanska ploca and is preserved today in the Archaelogical Museum at Zagreb.
Zvonimir married the sister of the Hungarian King, Ladislav, and he was the last great king of the Croatian national dynasty.  The succeeding rulers, Stephen and Peter Svacic (1089-97) were also rulers of national blood, yet the greatness of Zvonimir overshadowed the brief reign of these last national kings of Croatia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anthony Knezevic 'A Short History Of The Croatian Nation'
Published by Croatian Catholic Union, Lodge"Croatia", Philadelphia,Pa.,USA
1989

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