Historical Facts Regarding the Croatian King Dmitar Zvonimir in Vladimir Nazor’s Poetry

Sa？etak Vladimir Nazor started writing poems about Croatian kings in 1903 in Zadar and he completed them by the year 1930. The poems were based on historical sources and traditions. This article deals with the story about King Dmitar Zvonimir. After the death of King Petar Kre？imir IV, Croatia was in state of chaos. In 1074, the unsatisfied chose Slavac for their king, who was captured by the Norman commander in November of 1075. Croatia was left without a king. In mid 1075 Dmitar Zvonimir was almost unanimously elected the king of Dalmatia and Croatia. In 1065 he married Jelena, the daughter of the Hungarian King Bela I. During the reign of Zvonimir, the Croatian people lived in prosperity and they remembered him as a ‘good king’. He was a loyal ally of Pope Gregory VII. His son Radovan died while Zvonimir was still alive. According to The Chronicle of Priest Dukljanin (12th century), the Hungarian-Polish chronicles from the 13th and 14 centuries and The Chronicle of Croatian Franciscan Ivan Tomasic from the 16th century, the king was killed in 1089 by his associates during a parliament assembly at the site of the Five Churches in Kosovo polje near Knin, where he had gathered the associates to read them a letter from the Pope, who wanted Zvonimir to send troops to liberate the tomb of Christ. In 1886, Ferdo ？i？i？ wrote down the legend of the violent murder of the king. There is a story in the tradition of Croats about the curse of Zvonimir, who, while dying, cursed his people by saying that a foreign language would rule over them for a thousand years. The story about Croatian King Dmitar Zvonimir in the poetry of Vladimir Nazor is in complete harmony with the historical sources