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Illyrians, Romans, and Slavs
Before the arrival of the Slav peoples in the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries ce, the area now known as Montenegro was inhabited principally by people known as Illyrians. Little is known of their origins or language, but they are claimed today as ancestors by the modern Albanians. Along the seaboard of the Adriatic, the movement of peoples that was typical of the ancient Mediterranean world ensured the settlement of a mixture of colonists, traders, and those in search of territorial conquest. Substantial Greek colonies were established on the coast during the 6th and 7th centuries bce, and Celts are known to have settled there in the 4th century bce. During the 3rd century bce an indigenous Illyrian kingdom emerged with its capital at Skadar (modern Shkodër, Alb.). The Romans mounted several punitive expeditions against local pirates and finally conquered this kingdom in 9 ce, annexing it to the province of Illyricum.
The division of the Roman Empire between Roman and Byzantine rule—and subsequently between the Latin and Greek churches—was marked by a line that ran northward from Skadar through modern Montenegro, symbolizing the status of this region as a perpetual marginal zone between the economic, cultural, and political worlds of the Mediterranean peoples and the Slavs. As Roman power declined, this part of the Dalmatian coast suffered from intermittent ravages by various seminomadic invaders, especially the Goths in the late 5th century and the Avars during the 6th century. These soon were supplanted by the Slavs, who became widely established in Dalmatia by the middle of the 7th century. Because the terrain was extremely rugged and lacked any major sources of wealth such as mineral riches, the area that is now Montenegro became a haven for residual groups of earlier settlers, including some tribes who had escaped Romanization.
Medieval South Slav kingdoms
The South Slav peoples of the region were the ancestors of today’s Serbs and Montenegrins, though the degree of differentiation between those two groups remains controversial. The peoples were organized along tribal lines, each headed by a župan (chieftain). In this part of the Adriatic littoral, from the time of the arrival of the Slavs up to the 10th century, these local magnates often were brought into unstable and shifting alliances with other larger states, particularly with Bulgaria, Venice, and Byzantium. Between 931 and 960 one such župan, Česlav, operating from the županija of Zeta in the hinterland of the Gulf of Kotor, succeeded in unifying a number of neighbouring Serb tribes and extended his control as far north as the Sava River and eastward to the Ibar. Zeta and its neighbouring županija of Raška (roughly modern Kosovo) then provided the territorial nucleus for a succession of Serb kingdoms that in the 13th century were consolidated under the Nemanjić dynasty. (See also Serbia: Medieval Serbia.)
Although the Serbs have come to be identified closely with the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, it is an important indication of the continuing marginality of Zeta that Mihiajlo of Duklja, the first of its rulers to claim the title of king, had this honour bestowed on him in 1077 by Pope Gregory VII, head of the Western, or Roman Catholic, church. It was only under the later Nemanjić rulers that the ecclesiastical allegiance of the Serbs to Constantinople, and thus to Eastern Orthodoxy, was finally confirmed. On the death of Stefan Dušan in 1355, the Nemanjić empire began to crumble, and its holdings were divided among the knez (prince) Lazar Hrebeljanović, the short-lived Bosnian state of Tvrtko I (reigned 1353–91), and a semi-independent chiefdom of Zeta under the house of Balša, with its capital at Skadar. Serb disunity coincided fatefully with the arrival in the Balkans of the armies of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1389 Lazar fell to the forces of Sultan Murad I at the Battle of Kosovo.
After the Balšić dynasty died out in 1421, the focus of Serb resistance shifted northward to Žabljak (not far from Podgorica). There a chieftain named Stefan Crnojević set up his capital. Stefan was succeeded by Ivan Crnojević (Ivan the Black), who, in the unlikely setting of this barren and broken landscape and pressed by advancing Ottoman armies, created in his court a remarkable, if fragile, centre of civilization. Ivan’s son Djuradj Crnojević built a monastery at Cetinje, founding there the see of a bishopric, and imported from Venice a printing press that produced after 1493 some of the earliest books in the Cyrillic script. During the reign of Djuradj, Zeta came to be more widely known as Montenegro.
Under the prince-bishops
In 1516 a shift occurred in the constitution of Montenegro that many historians regard as having ensured its survival as an independent state. The last of the Crnojević dynasty retired to Venice and conferred the succession on the bishops of Cetinje. Formerly, the loyalty of minor chieftains and of the peasantry to their rulers had been unstable. It was not unusual for political control throughout the Balkans to pass from Slav rulers to the Ottoman Turks, not because of the defeat of the former in battle but because of the failure of local magnates to secure the support of their subjects. In Montenegro the position of vladika, as the prince-bishop was known, brought stability to the territory’s leadership. The link between church and state elevated it in the eyes of the peasantry, institutionalized a form of succession, and excluded the possibility of compromising alliances with the Turks.
Nevertheless, this period was a difficult one for the small, then landlocked Montenegro, which was almost constantly at war with the Ottoman Empire. Cetinje itself was captured in 1623, in 1687, and again in 1712. Three factors explain the Ottoman failure to subdue it completely: the obdurate resistance of the population, the inhospitable character of the terrain (in which it was said that “a small army is beaten, a large one dies of starvation”), and the adroit use of diplomatic ties with Venice.
From 1519 until 1696 the position of vladika had been an elective one, but in the latter year Danilo Nikola Petrović was elected to the position (as Danilo I) with the new provision of being able to nominate his own successor. Although Eastern Orthodox clergy are generally permitted to marry, bishops are required to be celibate; consequently, Danilo passed his office to his nephew, establishing a tradition that lasted until 1852.
Two important changes occurred in the wider European context for Montenegro during Danilo’s reign: the expansion of Ottoman territory was gradually reversed, and Montenegro found in Russia a powerful new patron to replace the declining Venice. The ebbing of the Ottoman tide proved significant for Montenegrin religious identity, which appears to have been particularly unstable throughout the 18th century. In spite of the establishment of an Orthodox theocratic polity and the apocryphal mass slaughter of those who had converted to Islam (the “Montenegrin Vespers” of Christmas Eve, 1702), there is contested evidence that Montenegrin lineages shifted in a very fluid manner not only between the Roman Catholic and Muslim faiths but also between Montenegrin and Albanian identity. It seems that, given the uncertainty over who held power in the region, diversity was often regarded as a kind of collective insurance policy. Montenegro’s Orthodox identity gradually stabilized, however, as Ottoman power declined. Roman Catholicism retained a toehold in the area, and only in modern times have Montenegrin Catholics identified themselves as Croats.
The replacement of Venice by Russian patronage was especially significant, since it brought financial aid (after Danilo I visited Peter the Great in 1715), modest territorial gain, and formal recognition in 1799 by the Ottoman Porte of Montenegro’s independence as a state under the vladika Petar Petrović Njegoš (Peter I). Russian support at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, following the final defeat of French emperor Napoleon I, failed to secure for Montenegro an outlet to the sea, even though Montenegrins had participated in the seizure of the Gulf of Kotor from French forces in 1806.