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Krešimir III (Template:Lang-la) was King of Croatia from 1000 until his death in 1030. He was from the Trpimirović dynasty and founder of the Krešimirović branch of the family. He was the middle son of former King Stjepan Držislav. Until 1020, he co-ruled with his brother Gojslav.

Biography

Reign

After Croatia's King Stjepan Držislav died in 997, his brother Svetoslav Suronja had become King of Croatia. Together with his two brothers Gojslav and Krešimir, they fought between each other for the crown in a civil war. The two brothers probably used his alliance with the Byzantine Empire to ask Bulgaria for help. During that time, a Bulgarian invasion was taking place in which the Bulgarian monarch Samuil pillaged the Dalmatian cities and great parts of Bosnia. During last two years (999–1000) of the Croatian civil war, the revolters had managed to depose Svetoslav Suronja probably with some Bulgarian help, who later turned to the Venetian Doge for alliance in year 1000. Answering that political change, the Venetian Doge Pietro II Orseolo started military intervention in Dalmatia in which he will emerge victorious.

In Trogir, which was brought under Venetian control, there was a meeting between Doge Pietro Orseolo II and the deposed king, in which his son Stephen was to be taken hostage and marry the Doge's daughter, Joscella (Hicela) Orseolo, as part of the agreement made at their meeting. It is assumed that he is the same one who succeeded Krešimir III as king, but this is controversial, since the father of king Stephen is referred as Krešimir in other sources. At that point, all the Dalmatian rulers submitted to the Doge "except for the King of the Croats".

Around 1015, Krešimir was given the honorary title of patrician from the Byzantines, possibly as a token of gratitude for his policy in the Balkans.

The war between Venice and Croatia was renewed in Summer 1018, when Krešimir launched a campaign against the Dalmatian cities in an attempt to retake the lost territories. The cities requested Otto Orseolo for help, who intervened on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and managed to successfully repel these incursions from Croatia. According to surviving legal documents, the islands Krk and Rab, that were previously under Croatian control, restated their allegiance to Venice and promised to pay an annual tribute.

Krešimir III and Gojslav have spent their reign attempting to restore control over the Dalmatian cities that were now under Venetian rule. After the defeat and absorption of the First Bulgarian Empire, John Skylitzes records that, certain Croats "who had two brothers as their rulers", after approaching Basil, had subjected themselves to him, after which the tribes did as well. Later chronicler Cedrenus, makes a similar record, instead implying that the two brothers had subjected themselves to him.

Later years

On 1 September 1024, Basil Boioannes, Byzantine general and governor of the Byzantine Catapanate of Italy sailed across the Adriatic from Bari and invaded Croatia. In subsequent clashes, he captures Krešimir's wife, who was first taken to Bari, and then to Constantinople as a hostage. Although Croatia and Boioannes maybe have harbored ill will towards each other, this clash does not necessarily prove that Constantinople itself suffered poor relations with Croatia.

After the death of Emperor Basil II in 1025, Krešimir stopped paying tribute to the empire. Krešimir was succeeded by Stephen I around 1030.

See also

• Croatian-Bulgarian Wars
• Trpimirović dynasty
• History of Croatia
• List of rulers of Croatia

Literature

• Ferdo Šišić, Povijest Hrvata u vrijeme narodnih vladara, 1925, Zagreb ISBN 86-401-0080-2
• Fine (Jr), John V. A. (2006). When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Mladen Švab, Prilog kritici "kronologije" dijela pripisivanog arhiđakonu goričkomu Ivanu, Historijski zbornik, god. XXXVI pp. 119–160

Footnotes

1. Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja
2. Template:MLCC
3. Marek, Miroslav. "genealogy of Orseolo family". Genealogy.EU.
4. Fine, When ethnicity did not matter in the Balkans, pp 39-40.
5. Šišić, pp. 479
6. Šišić, pp. 482
7. Rački doc. 434
8. Cite error: The named reference fmg was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

• 1030 deaths
• Kings of Croatia
• Trpimirović dynasty
• Medieval Croatian nobility
• 11th-century monarchs in Europe
• 11th-century Croatian people
• Burials at the Church of St. Stephen, Solin