THE DALMATIAN COAST of the Adriatic and its vast Balkan hinterland were an integral part of the medieval European world, both in a geographical and historical sense. However, due to language issues and scarcity of sources, the whole region has been overlooked by western historiography, and has thus remained beyond the imagined borders of medieval Europe. Consequently, this book will be devoted to the wider region of Southeast Europe, which was physically framed by the eastern Adriatic coast in the south, the edges of the Pannonian plain in the north and west, and the shores of the Black Sea to the east, while being politically and culturally shaped by the Venetian Republic, Hungarian Kingdom, and the Byzantine Empire. Within this region, particular emphasis will be placed on topics pertaining to the history of the medieval Bosnian state, since it shared a lot of common features with contemporary European societies while simultaneously exhibiting some very distinctive peculiarities. As the central political entity within the broader region, situated on the ridge where ancient Roman emperors split their imperial domains into eastern and western parts, and where boundaries between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity were demarcated deep into the Middle Ages, it was heavily influenced by both sides of this civilizational divide. But as a small, landlocked country, Bosnia managed to preserve its individuality, characterized above all by religious plurality, the existence of an indigenous ecclesiastical organization, recognized neither by the Pope in Rome or the Patriarch of Constantinople, and by a persistent viability of certain ancient customs which defined its remarkable position.

Few western historians have devoted their careers to the research of the medieval past of this region, while domestic medievalists only sporadically published their papers in English, French, German, or other world languages. For these reasons, this collected volume covers a number of different themes and a broad chronological scope. Another feature of this volume is that all the contributors belong to a younger generation of medievalists, who have already published their research papers, to a greater or lesser extent, in major world languages, and have therefore already initiated the process of integrating the history of medieval Bosnia and Southeast Europe into dominant general narratives of the Middle Ages.