The following article by Dr. Miho Demović has been published in

Zlatko Pavetić (ed): The Journey of Paul the Apostle to Rome led over the Croatian Island of Mljet (Melita) / Put apostola Pavla za Rim vodio je preko hrvatskog otoka Mljeta (Melite), Proceedings of the academic conference held on Mljet (Melita) 15 October 2011 / Zbornik radova znanstvenog skupa održanog na Mljetu (Meliti) 15. listopada 2011., Zagreb, 2015., ISBN 978-953-58133-0-9, 356 pp, in English and Croatian, hard cover, with color photos and maps

We express our gratitude to Dr. Demović for his suggestion to publish this article on the web.

TWO MILLENIA OF DUBROVNIK TRADITION OF SAINT PAUL'S SHIPWRECK IN THE WATERS OF CROATIAN ISLAND OF MLJET

Dr Miho Demović



(The article has more than 60 pp, appearing on pp. 109-174). Below, we provide concluding pages only, pp. 170-174.)



CONCLUSION


On the basis of our presentation we can claim the following with certainty:

1. Croats have the ancient tradition that St Paul was shipwrecked, as described by St Luke the Evangelist in chapters 27 and 28 of the Acts of the Apostles, in the waters of the Croatian Island of Mljet. All contrary opinions taken by Croatian scientists like Rudolf Vimer, Frane Bulić and others, as well as the philo-Maltese writers who claimed there was no tradition in Croatia about the described shipwreck, should be rejected as non-scientific and should some writers step out after the publication of this work to represent such an opinion or those malevolent, the above presented clearly shows that such tradition existed and still does, for which reason the Croats could not have stolen from Malta but vice versa.

2. The location of St Paul’s shipwreck cannot be determined on the basis of archived documents, to the best of the modern knowledge, but on the basis of the analysis of chapters 27 and 28 of the Acts of the Apostles and the ancient tradition of the people who live in the area where the shipwreck took place. Reasonable analysis of the text in all its details shows that the shipwreck did indeed take place in the waters of the Croatian Island of Mljet. These particulars were presented in this work with five separate scenes which shed light on the sequence of events of the described shipwreck.

The first scene shows that the planned naval route of St Paul’s vessel from Caesaria to Rome led along the coast of northeast waterway towards Otranto, that is, the location where the Balkans and the Apennine peninsula are the closest and where it could be crossed from the east to the west Otranto side, as well as that it had not been planned to sail the open seas of the Mediterranean because at the time when the shipwreck took place, sailing ships did not have any navigational possibility to sail in the open seas.

The second scene shows that the stormy wind which in the old codices (some) is called euroclydon and (in the others) euroakilon tore down on St Paul’s ship in the southeastern part of the island of Crete as follows from the temporal mark not long thereafter after they sailed from the port Fair Havens which is in the southeastern part of Crete. This temporal marking not long thereafter allows us to approximately specify the location where the stormy wind tore down onto the vessel in the southeastern part of Crete because judging by the expression not long, the ship could not have sailed far from the mentioned port. Since the wind pushed the vessel towards the west, near the smaller Crete Island Cauda it obviously follows that it was of eastern or southeastern direction. Accordingly, by the laws of nature, the wind could have blown the ship to the Adriatic Sea until the island of Mljet as described by St Luke in the referenced text.

The third scene represents historical, geographical and climatic characteristics of the place where the shipwrecked occurred, which are fully consistent with the geographical, historical and climatic characteristics of the island of Mljet, starting from the level shore of the bay, strait described as the narrowing and other particulars.

The fourth scene shows that the locals on the island to which the castaways swam were Barbarians, that the island was called Melita as the Greeks and Romans used to call the Croatian island of Mljet, that the island where the shipwreck took place was inhabited by vipers and as it is known, there are no such snakes on Malta, but on Mljet. Similarly, St Luke addressed the Roman governor Publius by the title princeps insulae which is the title born by the representatives of the Roman authority among the Illyrian tribes etc.

The fifth scene indicates that the castaways, having spent the winter on the island, continued on board the new ship towards Rome, stopped in the Syracuse port on Sicily and after three days continued their voyage it seems around Sicily. This can be concluded by the verb circumlegeresail around, most likely so as to avoid dangers of foul weather and known whirlpools of Scylla and Charybdis in the Strait of Messina.

3. Interpretation of philo-Maltese writers should be discarded, as according to them the noun syrtis is a proper name for the gulf in the northern Africa - Major and Minor sirte, because the wind described in the Acts of the Apostles threw St Paul's ship towards the west, and not, if observed from Crete, towards the east where those gulfs are located. Also, the interpretation that Adriatic sea stretched all the way to Africa, and particularly the name Siculo – Adriatico mare, should be discarded, just like the claim that the name Barbarians can be applied to the residents of Malta or the claims of those self same writers that St Paul destroyed the poisonous snakes on Malta and performed many amazing Maltese miracles.

4. The results of the reasonable analysis of St. Luke’s text are in accordance with the ancient DTSPS (Dubrovnik Tradition of St Paul's Shipwreck) confirmed by the oral tradition, archeological research of old Christian churches, liturgical texts of the book of rites, paintings of numerous painters, recordings of historians, verses of poets and toponyms and anthroponyms characteristic of Dubrovnik area and other particulars of which we spoke here.

AFTERWORD

At the end of this work, and on the basis of the presented evidence, I hold it my obligation to ask the publishers of the Bible throughout the world not to allow the interpreters to translate the name of the island where St Paul was shipwrecked as Malta but with the name of the Croatian island of Mljet, or at least with its old name Melita in the future. Similarly, the expression syrtis should not be written as a proper noun because it is a general noun with the meaning of reef or ridge. Subjective interpretation of those and other expressions should in the future be made in the notes (footnotes) so that the translated text does not contain words of doubtful trustworthiness.

SUMMARY

The tradition in Dubrovnik about the shipwreck of St Paul the Apostle in the waters of Croatian Island of Mljet is almost two millennia old. Its earliest origin could be taken as the year 60 AD when the Illyrian inhabitants of Mljet, named Barbarians by the author of The Acts of the Apostles, warm-heartedly welcomed 276 shipwrecked victims from a large merchant vessel transporting wheat from Alexandria to Rome, that was carried away by gale-force wind before reaching the island of Mljet and breaking into pieces stranded onto a reef.

St Paul the Apostle who was allegedly brought before the Imperial Court in Rome, was also aboard, as a prisoner. Memories of what the natives of Mljet had seen then has been conveyed from generation to generation saying that St Paul was saved on the island of Mljet and the tradition has survived for two millennia, to this very day. This tradition is widely spread not only in Croatia but also throughout the Christian world. Thus some serious biblicists consider the Island of Mljet a true site of St Paul's shipwreck.

Many prominent scholars have written on this subject, and a significant national and foreign literature followed. Memories in connection with this dramatic event from St Paul's life are numerous, longstanding, versatile and multilayered, national and international, so we can truly say that it is a Croatian issue which equally attracts the attention of local and foreign scholars.

This event was reflected in Croatia not only in scholarly writings but also in literary works and visual arts. Attempts were also made in the past, especially by the Order Of Knights of St John of Malta, to silence the Ragusan tradition of St Paul's and declare it nonexistent. That was the reason why the author decided to carry out research into its past and publish the results of his research in this work entitled 'Two millennia of the Ragusan tradition of St Paul's shipwreck in the waters of the Croatian Island of Mljet.'

Discussion is divided into two time periods: The First Millennium and The Second Millennium.

Description of the shipwreck by Saint Luke in The Acts of the Apostles, chapters 27 and 28, which is analysed by usual scientific method served as a starting-point to the author's historically radical defining of the significance of all key words in the text. Analysis, according to the author, suggests that all scenes are entirely in accordance with historical, geographical, meteorological, oceanographical and navigational characteristics of the island of Mljet and there is no doubt that the event really took place in the waters of the island of Mljet. In consistence with the above he completely rejects the possibility that this event took place in the waters of Malta which lies between Sicily and Africa, since all the key description words are contradictory to its historical-mapping and oceanic and navigational characteristics.

Namely, a gale-force wind described in the Acts of the Apostles, could not throw a ship by natural forces without navigator's assistance, neither does it lie in the Adriatic Sea, nor had the Barbarians lived there, or vipers bred there. Therefore, all efforts by those advocating the theory of the said shipwreck to adapt key words to the historical and geographical characteristics of the Island of Malta, lack scholarly support and should be rejected as such.

Agreement in the description of the shipwreck from the Acts of the Apostles with the natural and historical features of the Island of Mljet is supported by tradition and written records in the Dubrovnik region, passed from one century to another continuously through two millennia. At the beginning, memories were transferred by the word of mouth in the form of stories and legends, and since the 6th century onwards by written records of historians, men of letters, visual artists and other scholars. First of all, the author tells several stories that he had been told by the locals of Mljet, not only to himself, but also to some other scholars who had even recorded some legends in writing. For example, the story of the reef where the ship was wrecked, places where St Paul was then fed by the natives of Mljet with barley bread, and quenched his thirst with the local wine, about the stretch of the sea abounding in a variety of fish, blessed by St Paul after the shipwreck, etc. Tradition also has it that an early Christian church in the vicinity of Korita had existed. Foundations have recently been unearthed by archaeologists, who established that it had been built on the foundations of a Roman villa rustica. In addition to this church of St Paul's, several foundations of other early Christian churches, undoubtedly a number of them, had existed there, since the same had been mentioned in a last will from the beginning of the 7th century, preserved in Milan.

The Armenian, Ananias of Shirak, also stated in his Geographia from the beginning of the 7th century, that St Paul had been shiprwrecked near the Island of Mljet. Likewise, the Byzantine emperor historian from the end of the 9th century in his renowned work 'On Administring the Empire' also mentioned the same fact. Both these ancient writers maintain categorically that St Paul's shipwreck took place in the waters of the Island of Mljet. St Paul's stay in the Illyricum, together with his disciple St Luke were mentioned by the first Christian writers, St Jerome (345 – 42), St Gregory of Nazianzus (330 – 390), and some others. Widely developed cult of St Paul and St Luke in the Dubrovnik region suggests that dedication of congregation of former bishoprics of Epidaurum and Ston are not habitual, and not to be encountered elsewhere in the Catholic world, which also recalls the roots of St Paul's stay in the area. It seems that St Paul himself had nominated the first bishops in those two ancient Roman cities of the province of Illyricum. At the time of destruction of Epidaurum and Ston, St Paul's image in the sacral visual arts accompanied St Blaise, the patron saint of Dubrovnik, the new seat of bishopric. Thus, goldsmiths engraved images of St Paul and St Luke in enamel onto the precious reliquary of the arm of the patron saint of Dubrovnik. They also adorned the Saint's vestments with enamel images of St Paul. Likewise, they presented St Paul next to St Blaise, their patron, on the polyptich of a renowned Ragusan Renaissance painter, signifying that it was not under protection of St Blaise alone, but also, by St Paul. A town quarter of Ston, called SUPAVO, treasured the cult of St Paul, as it stands near Mljet, facing the site of St Paul's shipwreck. The small church of Our Lady, named OUR LADY OF ST PAUL, most likely as a church of St Paul must have been located, the foundations of which are still searched for by archaeologists. A similar toponym, is to be found in hinterland of the ancient Epidaurum, the modern Konavle called PAVLJE BRDO (Paul’s Hill) with the church built on foundations of a former early Christian church.Memories of the shipwreck on Mljet are also carried by poets such as Junije Palmotić (1607 – 1657) and Jerononim Kavanjin (1641 – 1714) who through their lofty verses in their historical epics recall memories of St Paul's shipwreck as for example the following verses from the Palmotić's drama Pavlimir:

“On the end of the green island of Mljet
This is a port , my king renowned,
from the wicked and accursed sea
Saint Paul has already sheltered
on this very island.
Into the righteous flames he shook off
the aggressive venomous viper,
that had fastened on his hand.”

When the Maltese knights showed aspirations to take over the legend of St Paul’s shipwreck and transfer it from the island of Mljet to Malta, a number of scholars reacted disputing their theories as for example the historian of Dubrovnik Serafino Razzi (1531 – 1606), the archaeologist Jakov Salečić of Korčula, and writer and scholar Ignjat Đurđević (1675 – 1737), then Stjepan Šuljaga (1719 – 1790), a philosopher and in modern times Vicko Palunko (1842 - 1921).

They have all left valuable treatises. Ignjat Đurđević, undoubtedly the most prominent among them, created quite a storm on the European cultural scene by his work 'Divus Paulus apostolus'. Apart from the Croatian writers, many world biblicists had made their contribution to the tradition of St Paul's shipwreck on Mljet, so that although the Maltese knights succeeded at their time in imposing their invented statements that Malta was the site of St Paul's shipwreck, there still are some European scholars who come forward with their support for the Mljet theory of his shipwreck.

It is worth mentioning that St Paul's cult had its reflection in music, so that liturgical Sanctoral Musical Items of The Commemoration Mass of St Paul in the Beneventan Missal of the Ragusan Cathedral dates from the 12th century. We also have a composition Sanctae Paule Apostole by the contemporary Dubrovnik composer Marin Santor. The proceedings published in this Compendium from the scientific conference which took place from 10 to 13 November 2008, could be taken as a strong contribution to the credibility of the Dubrovnik tradition of St Paul's shipwreck in the waters of Mljet.




The shipwreck of St Paul the Apostle on Croatian island of Mljet

Croatian Science

Croatia, An Overview of Its History, Culture and Science