engleski

How the Slavic pre-Christian worldview influenced the subsequent spatial organization around two forts in north-western Croatia

There are two forts in north-western Croatia, separated by a distance of mere 4.25 km. While a number of historical documents are preserved for the first of these, Bela, much less is known about the other fort, situated on the Gradišče hill above the village of Margečan, for instance, its name, date or builder. Nevertheless, we observe them together, connected at three levels. The major differences observed between the two forts point to different and complementary functions, naturally, supposing that they simultaneously served the same lords. While Bela was a secure and comfortable seat of the preceptor or castellan of the Knights Hospitaller, the fort at Gradišče may have been a fortified manor of sorts, in which tributes were stored, and doubling, when need arose, as a refuge for the local populace. However, the size of the territory of the Hospitallers—and this includes also the possession of the Gradišče fort—can be reconstructed based on later sources: the starting point is the assumption that the land given to the new owners was of more or less the same size as that held by the Hospitallers. Our intention here is to point to traces in the space on the basis of which we may demonstrate that the territory of the two mentioned forts had probably been strongly homogenized within a Slavic, pre-Christian community, whose worldview conditioned a specific organization of space, leaving at the same time trace in the later organization of this territory. In other words: the selected position for the church of St. Margaret on the riverbank between the two forts observed the sacred principles that had been set earlier. Similar “mythological tripartite structures” have been discovered at several places (especially) in Croatia, as well as in certain other Slavic countries. We may expect to find the same structures in other Slavic countries, including Slovakia.

Pusta Bela ; Gradišče ; Margečan ; the Knights Hospitaller ; Slavic mythology ; mythological tripartite structures ; sacred triangular spatial structures.

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