Byzantine pressure relaxed after the death of Manuel; indeed this was the last flicker of a Byzantine Dalmatia. Henceforward Venice disputed it alone with Hungary. Both Bulgaria and Serbia now rapidly rose to independence. With the establishment of the Latin Empire of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade (1204), the Nicaean Emperors had little option but to grant Bulgaria and Serbia autocephaly, in an attempt to ensure their adherence to the Eastern church and to the principle of the Byzantine Empire. A similar complaisance is visible too in the Catholic attitude to Dalmatian Croatia though the ascendancy of the Western church was not in any doubt. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 relaxed the theoretical ban on the Slav liturgical language through the general provision of Canon IX. From that time the Glagolitic use of Croatia began slowly to recover some of its lost ground. This was still toleration rather than approval. Qualified Papal permission given in 1248 marks the turning-point. Benedictine monks on Krk thought it advisable to apply again to Pope Innocent IV in 1252 for specific permission to use the Slav language. The permission was given insofar as concerned those incapable of learning Latin.

As far as the perpetuation of the Glagolitic alphabet is concerned, manifestly the main credit goes to those monasteries which most consistently cultivated the language. Foundation dates for the considerable number of Benedictine houses which came into being up and down Dalmatia are for the most part unknown. About 1059 a Benedictine house was founded exclusively for Slavs near Biograd - the monastery of St John the Evangelist at Rogovo. It is thought that the Benedidine Rule was translated into Croat at this time. Those houses which are most likely to have cultivated the Slav use before that date, and were certainly strong foci of it subsequently are: St Lucia near Bashka and St Nicholas at Omishalj, both on the island of Krk; St John the Baptist at Povlja on the island of Brach; and St Nicholas at Otochac (Lika). Almost equally important were: two others on Krk- St Mary at Koshljun and St Laurence; St Mary on the island of Zirje (off Sibenik) and St George (Juraj) Koprivski at Obrovac. The monastery of SS Cosmas and Damian at Tkon on the island of Pashman, to which the Rogovo monks fled in 1129 after the destruction of Biograd by the Venetians, was also an important later centre. It is believed that Charles IV of   Bohemia brought Glagolitic monks from here for his foundation of Emmaus in the middle of the fourteenth century. These houses are concentrated on the coast and islands of Dalmatian Croatia. It cannot be assumed that they were all exclusively and continuously Glagolitic. No Glagolitic houses are reliably known from Istria, still less from inland.

In the days of its greatest flourishing the Glagolitic use was still confined to the eight Croatian coastal dioceses, to wit Pazin (Pedena in South Istria),

(b) As defined in 1147, the episcopus insularum administered Hvar, Brach, Vie and other lesser islands.

Rijeka (Fiume), Senj, Krk, Zadar, Shibenik (created 1298), Split and Hvar (b) - much less in some than in others. It was a relict phenomenon, tolerated but not encouraged by any high authority. In the days of its final decline it hardly extended outside the dioceses of Senj and Shibenik. More early Glagolitic material has however survived from Krk, the backwater which from 1133 was virtually independent under the Croat house of Frankopan (Frangipani), originally known  under the name of Krchki. To the determined separatism of these Croats is due the curious historical chance that only in this one corner of Croatia survived the Western form of the Cyrillomethodian tradition - a church using the Roman rite in Slav translation and in the Glagolitic alphabet; moreover that it helped by its very conservatism to preserve texts in danger of extinction in Bohemia, such as the First OCS Legend of St Wenceslas as it is now to be found in the Breviary of Novi.

Church Slavonic in course of time here took on a Croat cast and the ductus of the alphabet was also modified, partly under the influence of Cyrillic, partly under that of Latin script. At a place such as Split the Latin, Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets were all in use concurrently at certain times, though for more or less different purposes. The sacred  texts were generally brought into conformity with Roman practice, especially from 1248 when Papal recognition of the Slav use was renewed.(a)

Glagolitic as a secular alphabet for Croat literature saw a considerable development in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, evolving for the purpose a special cursive variant. But it was gradually superseded by the Croatian form of the Latin alphabet. After about 1600 the ecclesiastical language and script had little currency outside the service-books of the church and even here continued to be used regularly only in the Mass. Latin became more and more general for all other offices; even the silen parts of the Mass might be said in Latin. In 1927 a Latin transcription of the whole Missal was permitted and made. The alphabet has been virtually extinct since that date.

(a) The Psalter long retained a very archaic and conservative aspect, more so even then Ps Sin. at some points. Traces of Cyrillomethodian usage, in the form of the liturgy of St Peter appear to have survived into the seventeenth century. (b) Parenzo basilica dates from about 550 or somewhat later and is now one of the least altered Byzantine monuments of that time.

No very early Glagolitic manuscripts of the Croatian church hav survived. The earliest of importance is the fragmentary Bashka Missal of the twelfth century. The best are of the fourteenth century: the Vrbnik Breviary (c.1300, from Krk); Codex Vaticanus Illyricus 4, a missal of between 1317 and 1323, probably from Krk; Prince Novak's Missal (1368); Cod. Vat. Illyr. 5-6, breviaries of the late fourteenth century. The first printed Glagolitic service-book was the 1483 Missal; it has not been definitely established where it was printed.

The Dalmatian coast provides an example of a gradual changeove from the Eastern to the Western world. For a considerable time after the Slavs first arrived there the world they saw wore a Byzantine aspect. Ravenna, Venice and Istria perpetuated a predominantly Byzantine style round the head of the Adriatic for long after Byzantine power had ebbed away from those parts. The splendid churches of Torcello ane Porech (Parenzo)(b) bear witness to this. The present St Mark's at Venice was built with the cooperation of Byzantine craftsmen over more than a century from the time of Pietro Orseolo I (976-8). The radiation of Aquileian Christianity to Istria and Dalmatian Croatia propagated a 'Lombard' style which itself contained Eastern elements. Decorative sculpture of interlace patterns, sometimes reminding us even of early Irish Christian work, is particularly characteristic, from Visheslav's font (end of the eighth century) to Peter-Kreshimir's pulpit at Split (c. 1070) and immediately proclaims its affinity with Lombard work such as can be seen in the cathedral of Cividale (Frankish Aquileia). Thus the small centrally organised churches, such as Holy Cross and St Nicholas at Nin, St Mary at Trogir and St Ursula at Zadar, which include th earliest inexpert buildings of the Croat princes, are Byzantine only by indirect transmission - in its far western provincial forms whether of North or South Italy.

The Eastern saint Hermagoras, believed to be St Mark's successor at Aquileia, became in Slav mouths Mogor. Further down the coast all the names of the Eastern saints of the important churches early received Slav forms: at Zadar, St Anastasia became Stoshija, St Chrysogonus- Krshevan; at Trogir St Laurence became Lovrec; at Split St Domnius (a Syrian from Nisibis, martyred in 304) appears as Dujam or Dojam; St Tryphon of Kotor as Tripun.(a)

(a) The first church of St Tryphon was consecrated in 809, when his relics were brought there from Constantinople. Similarly, relies of St Anastasia were brought to Zadar in 811, and the cathedral of St Peter rededicated to her. (b) This saint was in fact a Pannonian who had little or no historical connection wit the city of his adoption. An early church dedicated to him (early sixth century) has been identified near Pola in Istria. (c) The Dalmatian Romance language survived on some of the Quarnero islands into the eighteenth century. It died out at Ragusa-Dubrovnik c.1500, despite official attempts to keep it alive in preference to Slav.

St Demetrios of Saloniki,(b) SS Sergiu and Bacchus, SS Cosmas and Damian were all popular saints. Little by little, with some rallies, Byzantine culture retreated southwards. But it had never been deep-rooted: it had been superficially imposed on an old Latin world. The whole of the Dalmatian coast was on the Latin side of the Latin-Greek language frontier, which started at about Durazzo and ended on the Black Sea coast a little south of the Danube, following roughly north-easterly line. Greek was in Dalmatia only the language of the seaboard communities and their church.(c) For those portions of the coast and its hinterland which became parts of Orthodox states the Adriatic was a potent source of Latin influences.

The Croatian church was from its very beginning Latin (Catholic) with the unusual local features brought by the Methodian disciples. We have followed it mainly from the Dalmatian point of view since the ecclesiastical history of inland Croatia before 1094 is largely surmise. There is nothing inherently improbable in some Pannonian followers of the Cyrillomethodian tradition remaining in the interior, at Sisak, Ptuj and other places on the routes to the South. The lack of large towns and active bishoprics in this region would be apt to favour its survival. Evidence of mixed Western and Eastern practices can be deduced for Zagreb before 1094 from service books in the Cathedral library. Thus a Latin manuscript, probably of the eleventh century, preserves such Eastern rites as the Blessing of the Waters (6 January). It is less likely that such aberrant features were recent importations from Hungary (after 1000), where Greek practices were also to be found in the eleventh century. Similar anomalies suggest the early circulation of Cyrillomethodian liturgical books in this area, possibly influenced by, but not copied from, Glagolitic books of Dalmatian Croatia.

Carniola (modern Slovenia) had remained the preserve of Frankish Aquileia, which owned extensive lands there. But the same would apply; some Cyrillomethodian usages at Emona (Ljubljana), are probable. But much in all these parts, as in Moravia, was destroyed by the Magyars; Emona, for example, was sacked by them about 919.

Though peculiarities of Bosnian history somewhat complicate the picture, in its essentials the eastern frontier of Croatia has remained remarkably stable both as a frontier between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds and as a political frontier between Europe proper and the Balkans. Through Croatia passed the later military frontier between Austria-Hungary and the Turkish Empire. The narrow strip of Dalmatian coast and the islands were secured to the Western world and Catholicism by being absorbed into or becoming cultural dependencies of Catholic Hungary or the Venetian maritime Empire.

END