well as the Avars, attacked
Constantinople. Both of them withdrew, the former being defeated at
sea and the latter failing under the city walls. The Avars, having
thus shown that they were vulnerable, had to bear an attack on a grand
scale made upon them by the Slovenes, this attack being more shrewdly
organized than any other transaction in which the Slovenes had as yet
engaged. And they still appeared to be reluctant to form even a
loosely knit State; they roamed about the Balkans and the adjacent
countries to the north-west, seeking for lands that were adapted to
their patriarchal organization. Not until the ninth century did they
set up what might be called Governments on the Adriatic littoral,
where they had no hostility to fear from the last remaining Romans,
who were refugees in certain towns and islands.

TWO EARLY STATES

The two most important of these Slav States were, firstly, that one,
the predecessor of our modern Croatia, which extended from the mouth
of the Ra[vs]a (Ar[vs]a) in Istria to the mouth of the Cetina in
central Dalmatia, and, secondly, to the south-east a principality,
afterwards called Ra[vs]ka, in what is now western Serbia. In a little
time the Slavs began to have relations with the towns of the Dalmatian
coast and with the islands which were nominally under the sway of
Byzantium, but in consequence of their remoteness and their exposed
position had succeeded in becoming almost independent republics.

ECCLESIASTICAL ROCKS

Now Christianity had been definitely introduced into Dalmatia in the
fourth century, but it was not until several centuries later that it
made any headway with the Slavs, of whom the Croats, in the ninth
century, were baptized by Frank missionaries. The arrival of the
Slavs, by the bye, had been sometimes looked upon with scanty favour
by the Popes: in July of the year 600 we find Gregory I. saying in a
letter to the Bishop of Salona that he was much disturbed at the news
he had just received "de Sclavorum gente, quae vobis valde imminet,
affligor vehementer et conturbor." Similarly, the Council of Split
branded the Slav missionaries as heretics and the Slav alphabet as the
invention of the devil.[6] ... While the Croats were falling[7] under
the dominion of the Franks, the holy brothers St. Cyril and St.
Methodus, who had been born at Salonica in 863, were carrying the
first Slav book from Constantinople to Moravia, whither they travelled
at the invitation of t