The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) prohibited the slave trade and proclaimed that every slave found on its territory would be set at liberty and treated like a free man.

This position of the Southern Slav lands on the road between the East and the West exercised during days of the Nemani¢ dynasty a beneficent influence upon the economic and commercial as well as upon the spiritual and social development of the Serbian States. We see that in all these countries, which through centuries formed the dividing line between the East and the West, both influences, always contending, made strong impression upon their political and religious life, and sometimes, as in the arts, were most happily blended together. Thus Serbian religious architecture, still preserved in many beautiful churches, represents a variety of the Byzantine art often showing the strong influence of the Romanesque art. Decani and the Patriarchal Church of Ipek, both dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, are the finest specimens of those artistic influences blended together in a whole ensemble by an artist of no mean merit. Some of the Southern Slav architects and master-masons were educated in Italy; others perhaps in Constantinople.

The same can be said of the Ragusan building art and poetry. Here the main influence was Italian, but the. artist never blindly or slavishly followed his model. He was never

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