ntained their independence, whilst their
Slavish brethren, inhabiting the country between the Volga and the Don,
had submitted to the iron yoke of the all-conquering Avars. These last
were in their time expelled by the Croats and Serbs, and thus was
Slavism established from the Danube to the Mediterranean. But these
important results were not achieved without great sacrifice; and,
wearied of war and bloodshed, the successful Slavonians devoted
themselves to agriculture and industry, neglecting those pursuits which
had procured for them a permanent footing in the Greek empire. Taking
advantage of this defenceless state, resulting from their pacific
disposition, Constans II. made war upon the country of Slavonia, in
order to open a communication between the capital on the one side, and
Philippi and Thessalonica on the other. Justinian II. (685-95 and
708-10) also made a successful expedition against the Slavonians, and
transplanted a great number of prisoners, whom he took into Asia Minor.
The Greek empire having become reinvigorated for some time under the
Slavonian dynasty, Constantine Copronymus (741-75) advanced in his
conquest of Slavonia as far as Berea, to the S. of Thessalonica, which
is evident from an inspection of the frontiers of the empire, made by
order of the Empress Irene in 783. The Emperor Michael III. (842-67)
sent an army against the Slavonians of the Peloponnesus, which conquered
them all with the exception of the Melugi and Eseritoe, who inhabited
Lacedaemonia and Elis, and they were all finally subjugated by the
Emperor Basilicus I., or the Macedonian (867-86), after which the
Christian religion and Greek civilisation completely Hellenised them, as
their brethren on the Baltic were Germanised.[E] That the Latin faith
subsequently obtained a permanent footing in these provinces, is due to
the influence of the Kings of Hungary, who took the Bosnian Bans under
their special protection; and thus it happened that the Bosnian nobles
almost universally adopted the religion of their benefactors,--not so
much from conviction, it is surmised, as from an appreciation of the
many feudal privileges which it conferred, since they afterwards
renounced Christianity entirely, rather than relinquish the rights which
they had begun to regard as hereditary. The remote position of these
countries, however, and the antagonism of the Eastern and Western
Churches, combined to retard the development of the Papal doctrines,
w