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The Pre-Croatian Period
If we were to judge by the caves existing
in the area of Brotnjo as well as in
the parish of Medjugorje, we can't completely
exclude the possibility of habitation
as far back as the older Stone Age period.
From the later Stone Age period, there
is material proof of the existence of
a pre-Illyrian culture and civilisation
in the area. In the older Bronze Age,
there is evidence of Illyrian tribes.
Copper objects found in the area are
proof of an intensive lifestyle. Some
walled settlements on the higher points,
so-called "gradine" (castle
ruins), which were either circular or
square in shape, date from this period.
A double wall surrounded some of them.
In the parish of Medjugorje, there are
still existing examples of the double-walled
"gradine": in Surmanci and
above Medjugorje itself in Zuzelj. Apart
from the "gradine", the most
eloquent evidence of the Illyrian civilisation
(which is abundant in Brotnjo and indeed
in the area of Medjugorje itself) are
the graves of the Illyrian dignitaries.
In the second century before Christ,
the Daors allied themselves with the
Romans and waged war with the Illyrian
tribes of Dalmatia. Brotnjo first belonged
to the Illyrian province of Dalmatia,
which has its administrational seat
in Solin near Split, and from the third
century to the setting of Narona. The
writings on the gravestones testify
that Roman legions and cohorts were
situated in the area, and that Roman
veteran soldiers lived there. There
remain some parts of a road from the
time of the Romans, constructed in the
3rd century. Apart from that, many Roman
memorial tombstones and objects of everyday
use have been found. The most significant
archaeological site from the Roman time
is to be found in the Catholic cemetery
in Miletina, where some vestiges of
buildings made of Roman bricks have
been discovered, but it hasn't been
sufficiently examined.
The Beginnings of Croatian History
At the end of the 6th century, Croatians
began to establish themselves in these
regions. The region of Brotnjo represented
a tribal political-territorial unit,
a district, with a tribal regional chief,
a district prefect.
Brotnjo always belonged to the land
of Hum, which in 1322 fell under Bosnian
administration. From 1357, this area
then belonged to the Hungarian Croatian
King, Ljudevit I.
From the mediaeval period, the most
famous memorials of the civilisation
in this region are the "stecak"
- truly indigenous autochthones grave
memorials. In many ways the "stecak"
from Herzegovina are superior to those
from the rest of Bosnia, Herzegovina
and Croatia; in the number and in the
dimension of burial grounds, in the
beauty of their ornamentation, and in
their worth regarding artful elaboration.
In Brotnjo itself there are many burial
grounds and "stecak", likewise
in the area of Medjugorje. Man-formed
crosses with arms raised in prayer are
sculpted into some of them.
Up to the 12th century, this area was
Glagolitic. The famous “Plaque
of Humac” testifies to this. In
the second half of the 12th century
a form of the Cyrillic alphabet called
“Bosancica” prevailed. In
the area of Brotnjo, not one mediaeval
Latin inscription is to be found, only
Croatian inscriptions written in “Bosancica”.
The Period of Turkish Occupation
Christianity arrived to the area surrounding
Medjugorje in the time of the Romans.
Judging by the amount of early Christian
church ruins it was extensively widespread.
In large part they were destroyed, and
churches were levelled to the ground
during the time of the migration in
the 6th and 7th centuries after Christ.
The Croatian settlers accepted Christianity
very early: They started to be baptised
as early as the 7th century. However,
the Catholic Church never became really
solidly established in the mediaeval
Croatian Bosnian state, which facilitated
the expansion of the "Bosnian Church."
In the 13th century, the Croatian Bosnian
state, which included the land of Hum
(Herzegovina), was firstly visited by
the Dominican missionaries and, after
their lack of results, the Franciscan
missionaries who accomplished great
success in bringing the Bogumils or
“Bosnian Christians” back
to the Catholic Church and the Catholic
faith.
Bosnia and Herzegovina fell under Turkish
power in the year 1463. The Turkish
invaders wished to occupy the whole
of Croatia too, to reach Vienna and
Rome, and likewise further west. On
their way, the Croatians stopped them;
for this reason, the Pope proclaimed
them to be the "bulwark of Christianity".
Croatia had nevertheless to pay a high
price. Not only were many Croatian lives
lost in continuous warfare, but the
central part of Croatia - its heart
- was also snatched away: Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
The life of the Catholics under Turkish
rule was constantly exposed to the forced
passage into Islam, to oppression and
to persecution. Under the Turkish feudal
system, no Croatian could possess anything
immovable. Catholics were permanently
considered as “enemies of the state,”
because their head was in “enemy”
territory: Rome. Croatians subsisted
from stock bearing and work on the properties
of Turkish invaders and of local landlords
who embraced Islam; they were paying
large taxes in stock, corn, grain and
even children. The Turks forcefully
snatched their children, made them embrace
Islam and used them as Janissaries,
special-force units for the purpose
of conquering the still unconquered
Christian lands, among others their
own Croatian country. For this reason,
many Croatians were driven to flee westwards.
This is how the Moslem element entered
into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Up until
the time of Turkish occupation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, the area was almost
completely inhabited by Croatians. As
the Turkish broke in from the east,
the Serbs migrated westwards fleeing
from them, but later on they helped
them in their conquests, and arrived
in these areas where heretofore they
had never been.
The Role of the Franciscans
The activities of the Franciscans in
these areas from the very time of their
arrival had a major influence on the
survival of Croatians under cultural,
religious and every other aspect. The
Franciscans emerged in Croatian regions
in the first decades of the 13th century.
During the whole time of the Turkish
occupation (1463 to 1878), the Franciscans
were the only ones who tended to the
spiritual needs of the Croatian Catholics
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and their
only representatives and defenders in
front of the Turkish administration.
In every way, the Franciscans shared
the plight of their people. After the
Turks had destroyed all of the Franciscan
monasteries in Herzegovina, in the first
half of the 16th century, the spiritual
care for the Croatian Catholics was
taken over by Franciscans from the Christian
Dalmatia, i.e. Croatia. During the Turkish
administration, the Franciscans were
persecuted, tortured and killed, many
thrown alive into the river Neretva...
After the Turkish rule, only the ruins
of the Franciscan monasteries were left.
The first Franciscan Province to be
set up in the region of Bosnia and Herzegovina
was the Bosnian Franciscan Province.
In 1852, the Herzegovinian Custody was
established, and in 1892 the Herzegovinian
Franciscan province was founded, members
of which serve today in the parish of
Medjugorje.
The Franciscans have left indelible
tracks in the region of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Many have enriched the Croatian Church
with their personal holiness and heroic
witnessing of the Gospel; they educated
the population, and contributed to the
alphabetisation and the development
of art and science.
In the great wars of the 17th century
the majority of parishes in Herzegovina
were destroyed, among them the parish
of Medjugorje. When relative peace returned
to Herzegovina in the 18th century,
the Franciscans gathered the remaining
believers together and established parishes.
The parish of Medjugorje was founded
in the year 1892.
The Austro-Hungarian Administration
of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Creation
of Early Yugoslavia
After liberation from Ottoman rule
in 1878, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
took power in these areas. For political
reasons, it didn't want to include the
newly liberated areas in the Croatian
state to which they historically belonged.
And so, once again in history, the Croatian
people of Bosnia and Herzegovina remained
separated from the motherland.
In the year 1914, the First World War
began, the reason being the assassination
of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, carried
out by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian. In
1918, at the end of the First World
War, Yugoslavia was fraudulently brought
into existence as the kingdom of Serbians,
Croatians and Slovenians. This fraud
was brought about by the big powers
of the time. In this state, the Croatian
people were oppressed, and the parliamentarian
who fought for the freedom of Croatians
was perfidiously killed in the Parliament,
in Belgrade, in 1928. In 1929, the Kingdom
of Yugoslavia was established, which
was to crumble at the beginning of the
Second World War.
Life in the Second Yugoslavia
During the Second World War, the losses
of the Croatian people were immense.
At the end of the war itself, when the
cease-fire had already been officially
declared, about 300,000 civilians and
soldiers lost their lives at Bleiburg
and at what is called the "Way
of the Cross" of the Croatian people.
According to attained agreements, the
Allies were supposed to offer refuge
to Croats after their surrender, and
to others who were seeking to evade
communism. But the Allies, according
to the order of the field-martial general
Harold Alexander, handed the soldiers
and the civilians over to the communists
– the partisans. In Bleiburg alone
a multitude lost their lives, while
the rest of them had to form a 60km
long line taking them to the communist
Yugoslavia and it's concentration camps.
This was the beginning of the Croatian
Golgotha, the so-called "Way of
the Cross,” which extended from
the most northern to the most southern
point of the new multi-ethnic state
of Yugoslavia. The Partisans killed
the Croatians while walking, without
trial, without establishing their eventual
culpability, at their own discretion.
Especially persecuted were the Croatians
from Herzegovina.
The communists killed 630 priests and
nuns from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Alone in the Herzegovinian Franciscan
province, 70 Franciscans were killed.
The Second World War took 344 lives
from the parish of Medjugorje.
In the parish of Medjugorje, life under
communist rule was hard. People were
beaten and sentenced to years in prison
just because they were Catholics and
Croatians. In schools, just as elsewhere
in Croatia, the communists tried to
separate children from their national
identity and their faith. Thanks to
the strong faith of the people, they
didn't succeed in this.
At the same time, the area was systematically
economically neglected, with the aim
of having as many people as possible
leave the area… The pilgrims, who
came here at the very beginning of the
apparitions, saw all this in action.
They found here a very poor region and
very rude policemen. The administration
didn't permit the slightest help in
accommodating the pilgrims; instead,
many of them - together with the locals
- were persecuted and imprisoned, just
because they said that Our Lady was
appearing. However, the local people
were hospitable and had their standards.
Liberation
The communist tyranny fell in 1990,
when the Croatian people unanimously
decided for the independence and breakaway
from the artificially created Yugoslavia.
This, certainly, didn't tie in with
the idea of Great Serbian, so the Yugoslavian
army, made up primarily of Serbs, militarily
attacked Slovenia on the 25th of June
1991 (the tenth anniversary of Our Lady's
apparitions), then Croatia and afterwards
Bosnia and Herzegovina, desiring to
suffocate independence. Several hundred
thousands lost their lives during this
bloody war. The world could have stopped
this bloodshed. It didn't do this because
of their respective interests. The E.E.C.
kept on condemning the warring sides,
hoping to wash its hands and save Yugoslavia
as a multinational state, which could
be used to further their own aims. James
Baker, the Prime Minister of the Bush
administration, even permitted the Yugoslav
army to attack Slovenia.
European and world powers sought out
and still seek their own interests in
these areas. Because of that, they tried
and continue to try to fog-up this war
presenting it as a civil war in which
all were equal. The truth is, however,
completely different and very simple:
The Serbs, wanting to create the Great
Serbia, attacked other peoples which
up until then had lived with them in
the same state. They were able to do
this because, in ex-Yugoslavia, all
the power was in their hands. The major
world powers had chosen them as the
"policemen" of the Balkans,
and because of this, they looked benignly
on their actions. Even when they had
committed the first genocide, as in
Vukovar, the major world powers didn't
want to stop them. They only began to
stop them when they exceeded every measure,
and began to injure the reputation of
their protectors.
The warfare between Croatians and the
Moslem community in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(in 1993) began as a series of misunderstandings,
but also out of a desire of some foreign
intelligence services to occupy as much
as possible of the territories in Bosnia
and Herzegovina and to consolidate there.
The Croatians simply desired that no
one other than themselves govern them
anymore. They wanted to have their own
schools, to be allowed to call their
own language Croatian, while remaining
in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Moslem
community, the largest in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, led by a fundamentalist
leadership, wanted to administrate the
new state according to the Islamic law
and to impose its rule upon the others.
For this reason, they brought into the
country the Islamic soldiers - mudjahedins
- from all over the world, who committed
terrible crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This war, however, was stopped very
rapidly because it was really not needed.
Today, Medjugorje is a part of the
state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because
of the communist administration and
the terrible war, the infrastructure
of Medjugorje is still underdeveloped.
This however, didn't stop pilgrims from
coming here, even during the cruelest
clashes of the war. Many of them brought
aid, thus helping the Croatian people
to remain where they were. The Croatian
people will never forget this. Today,
pilgrims are coming more and more. They
want to experience this time of grace
with their whole hearts, and not let
it pass them by.
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