CONSERVATIVE

LÁSZLÓ SZALAI/GNU LICENSE V. 1.2
Stradun (Main Street) in the centre of Dubrovnik.
Dubrave (Oh beautiful, dear sweet Freedom, / The gift
in which the God above has given us all blessings, /
Oh true cause of all our glory, / Only adornment of
this Grove.)
To all of which the cynic could answer that this
is all very well, but that Dubrovnik was in no sense a
democracy. And that’s true. Only adult male patricians
could hold political power and significant office. Their
sovereignty was exercised through the Great Council.
Moreover, from the 15th century till the end of the
Republic it was the increasingly oligarchic Senate, and
the families represented there, who largely controlled
the Government—the Rector, elected for just a month,
held a purely honorary role.
On the other hand, Dubrovnik was indeed free
in other senses. It was from the late 13th century at
least firmly founded upon a rule of law. Within the
governing elite there was a large measure of equality.
Ingenious measures, combining use of elections and
selection by lot, and involving strict prohibitions on
cabals and campaigning, were implemented to prevent
concentrations of power.
Although the nobility exercised political control
it did not behave oppressively. Above all, it did not
stand in the way of a large body of very wealthy
merchants from the citizen class—also known as the
popolo grosso—from achieving high social status.
We don’t know much about how the lower
classes in Dubrovnik lived for most of the Republic’s
history, except that, as elsewhere, it will have been
harshly. But again there were mitigating circumstances.
For example, serfdom of a fully developed kind was
unknown on the Republic’s territory.
While it is true that peasants in some areas were in
practice tied to the land, this never involved subjection
to the lord’s justice: all of Dubrovnik’s citizens enjoyed
direct recourse to the Republic’s courts. Moreover,
those who lived in or near Dubrovnik itself enjoyed
the benefit of a remarkable proto-welfare state and
National Health Service.
Dubrovnik was proud of its healthy climate and
life-style. The 15th century Tuscan Philip de Diversis,
who served as the city’s school master, claimed to have
met rosy-faced, fighting-fit Ragusans of 90 or 100
years old—which also perhaps testifies to the Ragusan
sense of humour.
Anyway, Dubrovnik showed from an early date
a strong and enlightened interest in public health.
From the 13th century Dubrovnik had a succession
of doctors—Jews, Greeks, Spaniards, Germans and
Italians, rather than Ragusans—who were employed
by the town and required to provide free treatment to
those who needed it. There were also surgeon-barbers
and pharmacists.
Commercial considerations as well as public
health ones required that special measures were taken
to cope with the risk of imported disease. Dubrovnik
was ahead of the other states of its day, even Venice,
in instituting quarantine regulations and providing
quarantine stations, called Lazzaretti. The first Ragusan
quarantine law is dated 1377. The quarantine station
moved from one site to another, finishing up in today’s
Lazzaretti on Ploče in the 17th century.
Dubrovnik founded a hospice for the destitute,
known as the Magnum Hospitale, in the mid-14th
century, near the convent of St. Clare at Pile. In the
16th century it was transformed into a hospital in the
modern sense.
Dubrovnik had a more enlightened attitude
towards children born out of wedlock than did any
of its neighbours. Illegitimate children were, as often
as not, recognized, and grew up in the father’s family
and even inherited property. But some of course did
not—particularly those born to the poor.
Dubrovnik’s orphanage, set up in 1429 to look
after foundlings, was one of the first in Europe. It
was situated opposite the Mala Braća. Two specially
designed, wheel-like devices, one on each side of the
orphanage, were used to draw in a baby anonymously
from its mother.
The impulse is clear from the statute which
declared it an “abomination and inhumanity to cast
out little human beings who, because of poverty or for
some other reason, are thrown out around the city like
brute beasts without knowledge of their parents, for
which reason they often die without the sacrament of
baptism, or come to some other ill”.
The orphanage was founded for this and—the
24
Summer 2015