/: Starokršćanska arheologija

ĆiroTruhelka: Ancient Christian Archeology

PREFACE 

It is surprising that Ćiro Truhelka's book 'Ancient Christian Archaeology' has not seen a single reprint since its first edition was published by the Croatian Literary Society of St. Jeronimo in 1931. But the fact that no book before or after Truhelka's 'Old Christian Archaeology' has been published under that title or at least of the same or similar thematic scope and content.

Fortuna in its library Croatia rara brings this valuable book which is a classic textbook of early Christian archeology with characteristic examples. These examples are the most valuable part of the book, because most of them (localities) of Truhelka were either discovered by me or I attended the excavations. Of course, he sticks to proven archaeological methods and procedures, with each thesis and making a new judgment he synthesizes several scientific branches - archaeology, history, art history, numismatics, iconology, ethnology, theology, and all other auxiliary sciences, depending on the problem he is considering.

Truhelka is a big name in Croatian archaeology; he stands alongside Don Fran Bulić, Grga Novak and other important Croatian archaeologists. In 1886, as a twenty-one-year-old young man, he came to Sarajevo, the capital of the newly occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, after attending high school in his native Osijek, and in Zagreb, he completed philosophy, archeology and art history at the University of Zagreb. In those years, immediately after the Austrian occupation, many workers, officials, engineers, educators and intellectuals from the entire Monarchy came to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria wanted to demonstrate progress on the example of the backward Balkan province, which was a 'dead end' even in the Turkish Empire. Truhelka did a great job. His enterprising and imaginative involvement left its mark most in the National Museum in Sarajevo, where Truhelka managed the ethnographic, prehistoric and medieval collection, but in the chronic lack of experts he dealt with and took care of almost all the collections in the museum. As a curator, he arranged Bosnian pavilions at exhibitions in Budapest (1896), Brussels (1897) and Paris (1900). In 1905, he succeeded Kosta Hörmann as director of the National Museum and editor of the National Museum Gazette (until 1920).
It is thanks to Ćira Truhelka that the National Museum in Sarajevo got a new building in 1913, where it is still located today. Many heirs and living students of Ćira Truhelka were extremely looking forward to the opening of the renewed permanent exhibition of the museum in 2001, for the first time after the war in BiH.
Ćiro Truhelka was transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje after the First World War, in 1922, where he was appointed professor of archeology and art history. He retired in 1931, and spent the last years of his life in Zagreb, where in 1942 he published his 'Memoirs of a Pioneer'. He died that same year.
Truhelka is, of course, also an archaeologist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. His oeuvre of books and scientific articles mainly refers to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dalmatia. He also excavated prehistoric archaeological sites, Illyrian graves and castles; the most famous localities are the one on Glasinac and the Sojeničar settlement in Donja Dolina. They bring him the recognition of the anthropological congress in Vienna and membership in that society. His research of Roman and early Christian monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the main subject of the book "Old Christian Archeology". As an archaeologist, he also contributed to the creation of the ethnological collection of the Sarajevo museum, and during his career he learned the Albanian and Turkish languages, which served him in some of his research. Truhelka probably contributed the most to the study of the history of medieval Bosnia; he researched its material culture (stećka), its script (bosančica), topography, numismatics, as well as social and religious conditions that period of the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ćiro Truhelka fits the ideal profile of an Austrian educator; he is diligent and performs all the tasks entrusted to him, he is ready to change his workplace and even his place of residence, if he is asked to do so, for the general good. Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina achieved a certain amount of progress in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to such people, i.e., the few members of the educated citizenry, which enabled later industrialization, traffic opening and cultural awareness. Recalling the beginnings of his work at the National Museum in Sarajevo, Truhelka is unusually honest in his 'Memories':
"I very often envied my colleagues in the work on building the Sarajevo museum: each of them had their own special discipline; he could specialize there and achieve success in a limited field of work, while I had to take care of all the other collections, which from the beginning had no specialists. At first, even for natural and Roman, and later for prehistoric, medieval and ethnographic, and thus by force of chance I somehow became a polyhistorian, who had to go into different heterogeneous professions."
Truhelka's dedication and acceptance of a wider scope of work than the narrow circle of his interest led him to the title of 'father of Bosnian archaeology'. However, after his death, he was buried in Zagreb, at the Mirogoj cemetery, but his name was written in Bosnian script on the tombstone made in the shape of a stećak.

In Zagreb, June 9, 2008
Ivan Sršen