The Medieval Dalmatian Episcopal Cities: Development and Transformation

This fascinating book explores how the nobility in the episcopal cities on the Dalmatian coast during the middle ages removed the church hierarchy from positions as magistrates, judges, tax collectors and lard holders in the process of communal transformation into self-government. Joan Dusa evaluates in a unique manner how the internal development of the cities and international pressures, in the ambitions of the papacy, Byzantium, Hungary and Venice, forced the communes to secularize in defense of their political autonomy. Thus Dusa disputes contemporary historiography which attributes the traditions of political freedom found in the medieval Dalmatian cities to the privileged status they enjoyed as untampered Byzantine possessions on the imperial frontier.