The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

life, one religion and the same customs, repeopled all the western and northern provinces of the Balkan peninsula now inhabited by them from the Isonzo (Sota) River to the AXgean. They acknowledged for centuries the suzerainty of the Roman Emperors, and adopted the Christian religion, which, together with Greek civilisation, spread among them. By degrees they formed little national States, which, as was the case in the whole of Europe at that time, were founded on the feudal system. That very system, together with the civilisation of medieval ages, was in itself a source of weakness. But the weakness coming from the feudal system was increased when, in the eleventh century, the Christian Church split in two. The Western tribes fell under the influence of Rome and became Roman Catholic; the Eastern tribes remained under the influence of Byzantium and embraced Greek Orthodoxy. The Western Roman Catholics were subsequently grouped together under the name of Croats and the Eastern Catholics at the same time formed one or more national States under the name of Serbs. In the first quarter of the ninth century the South Slay tribes for the first time passed from loose tribal federation to the higher organisation of a State. In the beginning of the ninth century the Frankish State, penetrating into the basin of the Middle Danube, had subjugated Southern Slav tribes also. At D 33