The Association of Displaced, Endangered, and Exiled People of Serbia has sent an initiative to the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Serbia, and the Serbian Orthodox Church to request the return of the baptismal font of Duke Višeslav from the Archaeological Museum in Split to Serbia, as it was intended for the Serbian medieval ruler.
“This significant cultural and historical monument, which dates back to the 9th century, is one of the oldest monuments of Christian liturgy in the Balkans, and as such, it holds deep religious and cultural significance for all Serbs,” the Association stated.
However, official Croatian scholarship regards this baptismal font as a monument to Croatia’s earliest statehood and churchhood! Along its upper edge, an inscription is carved: “This work was made by the priest Jovan in the time of Duke Višeslav, in honor of St. John the Baptist, to intercede for him and his ward.” The Croatian hypothesis claims that the baptismal font was located in the diocese of Nin and that Višeslav was the first Croatian duke, despite there being no historical source to support this. On the other hand, Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions the Serbian Duke Višeslav in his work “On the Peoples.”
“The only known Slavic ruler named Višeslav from the late 8th and early 9th century is the Serbian duke mentioned in Porphyrogenitus’ work. Along with the temporal match, the form of this name appearing on the baptismal font is the same as in the text of the Byzantine emperor. Furthermore, the land of Serbian Duke Višeslav stretched across the southern parts of the former ancient province of Dalmatia, and the most important ecclesiastical center in this area, between Split and Durrës, was Kotor, whose bishopric at this time was headed by a priest named Jovan. He is mentioned among the attendees at the church council in Constantinople in 787,” noted archaeologist Marko Aleksić.
This thesis was confirmed in 2016 by one of the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union, Dr. Nikola Jakšić, Emeritus Professor at the University of Zadar, who stated that the baptismal font of Duke Višeslav was never in Nin and was made in Venice as a gift for “some Slavic duke” to whom it was never delivered.
“It remained in Venice until World War II, when, by agreement between Pavelić and Mussolini, it was sent to Croatia,” said Jakšić. “It is not known who Višeslav was. He was certainly some Slavic duke, that is stated in the inscription. I believe he was not a Croat. At that time, there was no Croatian nobleman named Višeslav.”
PROČITAJTE VIŠE:
The old and unused baptismal font was given to the Korner Museum in Venice by Capuchin friars from the island of Đudeka in 1853. The museum’s director Lazari and European experts at the time believed it was dedicated to Serbian Duke Višeslav. An anonymous but influential Vatican author later claimed, without evidence, that the baptismal font originated from Nin. Then, in 1911, friar Don Luka Jelić, educated at the Vatican’s Pontifical College of St. Jerome, excavated around the parish church in Nin and published that he had found the foundations of the diocese where the baptismal font was located. A revision of the excavations by Croatian archaeologist Ante Suić in 1960 exposed the fraud. Suić’s report stated that there were “no even the slightest indications” that a baptistery had existed there, and furthermore, that: “The ‘baptistery’ from Nin should be removed from the catalog of monuments of our early Croatian and any other archaeology.”
The research by archaeologist Ante Suić in 1960, which exposed the fraud of friar Don Luka Jelić concerning the baptismal font of Duke Višeslav, has been ignored in Croatian and Yugoslav scholarship, as well as the stance of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Croatia (HAZU) by Ivo Petrićoli in 1984, that Jelić’s “diocese” was a product of imagination.
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Source: Novosti, Photo: Printskrin, Vikipedija