Authored by Petrit Latifi

Summary: The middle decades of the eighteenth century saw the borderlands of the Venetian Republic along the southern Adriatic consumed by a continual low-grade war of retaliation, murder, and negotiated truce. In the reports of Venetian officials stationed at Cattaro (Kotor), one finds a vivid record of how Albanian communities—some long settled in the coastal enclaves, others displaced by Ottoman pressure—became both subjects and scapegoats within Venice’s delicate diplomacy with Montenegro and the Ottoman Sanjak of Scutari. The dispatches of Vincenzo Gritti, the Provveditore Straordinario of Dalmatia and Albania between 1747 and 1750, preserve a remarkable administrative ethnography of these border Albanians, who oscillated between Venetian protection and suspicion. This may represent the earliest recorded Albanian–Montenegrin ethno-religious conflict.

Border issues

Gritti’s letters to the Venetian Senate, preserved under Senato Secreta, Dispacci Provveditori Straordinari da Cattaro, depict a frontier where peace depended on the personal authority of local clerics and captains rather than the distant might of Venice. The bishop Sava Petrović, metropolitan of Montenegro, appears repeatedly as both mediator and agitator, described by Gritti as a man “of good nature and well inclined to public concerns,” yet also one whose loyalty was divided between Venice and the Court of Russia that showered him with gifts [1]. His ability to threaten excommunication gave him an unmatched hold over the “indomitable people” of the Montenegrin highlands [2].

In this unstable environment, Albanian armed bands—“only twenty-six men at arms” in one 1747 report—were alternately courted and expelled by Venetian officers [3]. Many had taken refuge in Perasto and Castel Nuovo, harboring feuds with Montenegrin clans from Gneusi (Njeguši). The Venetian administration, conscious of its limited coercive capacity, pursued a policy of arbitration and dispersal: dividing Albanian groups between coastal communes to “satisfy the resolution of the Public Authority without shedding blood” [4].

Yet such administrative rationality met the fierce realities of honor and revenge. As Gritti lamented, “the general composition aborts in the act of concluding,” for “in those extremely fervent souls, little matter suffices to cause very serious fires difficult to extinguish” [5].

Albanians and the Venetian Peace

The Venetian view of the Albanians vacillated between fear and dependence. On one hand, they were indispensable as soldiers and laborers in the maritime cities; on the other, they embodied the dangers of highland violence entering the urban sphere.

The Albanians of Cattaro, whom Gritti accused of plotting vengeance for the deaths of their chiefs, were described as “implacable,” setting “continuous ambushes” against nobles of the city suspected of favoring them [6]. In moments of crisis, Venetian authorities proposed to ban or divide the Albanian population among the lesser towns of the province—a policy that anticipated later eighteenth-century strategies of internal exile in Dalmatia [7].

Nevertheless, Albanians also served as Venice’s most reliable intermediaries with the Montenegrins. Many were bilingual in Albanian and the Illyrian (Serbo-Croatian) tongue, and acted as interpreters or capitani di contea in mixed districts like Lustiza, Rissano, and Teodo.

When the Senate ordered that peace oaths (fedi) be exchanged between Montenegrin and Venetian subjects in December 1749, it was the Albanian captains Vukë Kostë of Kërtolla (recorded as Vuco Costich of Cartoli in venetian documents), Gjoni or Ndue Gjonaj of Lustiza (recorded as Ivanovich) and the priest Mikel Boroja (recorded as Michiel Borovich) who signed the documents “in the name of all who, not knowing how to write, make the sign of the Holy Cross” [8]. These signatures, countersigned by the Venetian interpreter Nicolò Bonicelli, symbolized the fragile inclusion of the Albanians within the Republic’s legal order.

The politics of mediation

The figure who most embodied Venice’s attempt to domesticate frontier violence was Bishop Sava Petrović. Gritti repeatedly appealed to Sava to “interpose his authority” and reconcile Albanians with Montenegrins; yet he also accused the bishop of exploiting his spiritual influence for political gain [9].

The Venetian strategy thus oscillated between flattery and threat, offering the bishop “some visible demonstration of approval” while reminding him of the Republic’s surveillance [10]. In this theater of diplomacy, religion, and revenge, Albanians became the litmus of Venice’s capacity to govern diversity: their obedience was both a measure and a means of frontier order.

By 1750, Gritti reported a temporary “principle of calm,” with oaths of mutual passage and arbitration between Albanians and Montenegrins [11]. Yet the peace was as precarious as the mountains themselves. Venetian control remained limited to the fortified coastal strip, while the highland clans beyond Budua and Cettinje followed their own codes of justice.

As Gritti observed with weary realism, “moderation passes for baseness and sloth among them” [12]. His dispatches, written in the cautious Italian of an imperial bureaucrat, nonetheless preserve the human texture of a frontier where empire, faith, and kinship collided.

Conclusion

The Venetian reports from Cattaro between 1747 and 1750 provide one of the earliest continuous accounts of Albanian–Montenegrin relations under the shadow of Venice’s Adriatic empire. They reveal a world in which political authority was negotiated daily through letters, oaths, and small gestures of conciliation. For the Albanians—alternately exiles, soldiers, and citizens—these years marked both a test of survival and a rehearsal for the more turbulent century to come.

Notes

[1] Vincenzo Gritti to the Venetian Senate, Cattaro, 1747, Senato Secreta, Dispacci Provveditori Straordinari da Cattaro, filza 19, Venetian State Archives.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gritti to the Senate, “…the other Albanians, however consisting all of only 26 men at arms,” Cattaro, 1747.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., dispatch of 1747 describing the failure of reconciliation between Pastrovichi and Zuppani communities.
[6] Gritti to the Senate, Cattaro, 1748, report on Albanian ambushes outside the city.
[7] Ibid., proposal to “withdraw and divide the Albanians in this inferior Province.”
[8] “Faith between the Albanians of Cartoli and the Montenegrins,” 2 December 1749, translated copy attached to dispatch of 25 February 1750, Senato Secreta, Dispacci Provveditori Generali in Dalmazia e Albania, filza 179.
[9] Gritti to the Senate, Cattaro, 1747, urging Bishop Sava’s intervention.
[10] Ibid., 24 February 1748, suggesting visible tokens of approval toward Bishop Sava and local chiefs.
[11] Gritti to the Senate, 9 January 1750, reporting the inclusion of Albanians in the peace oath with the Montenegrins.
[12] Gritti, Cattaro, 1749, on the inhabitants of Risano: “moderation passes for baseness and sloth.”

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