Jovan Nenad
Jovan Nenad | |
---|---|
Emperor of the Serbs | |
Reign | 1526 – 1527 |
Born | c. 1492 Lippa, Banate of Severin, Kingdom of Hungary (now Romania) |
Died | 26 July 1527 Sedfal field, near Szeged |
Religion | Eastern Orthodoxy |
Jovan Nenad (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Ненад; Hungarian: Fekete Iván or János; ca. 1492 – 26 July 1527), known as the Black[a] was a Serb military commander in the service of the Kingdom of Hungary who took advantage of a Hungarian military defeat at Mohács and subsequent struggle over the Hungarian throne to carve out his own state in the southern Pannonian Plain. He styled himself emperor (tsar).
Jovan Nenad is attributed by Serbian historians as the founder of Vojvodina and the leader of the last independent Serbian state before the Ottoman conquest.
Origin
An ethnic Serb, he was born ca. 1492 in
Military career
In the Battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, the Ottoman Empire destroyed the army of Hungarian-Czech King Louis Jagellion, who was killed on the battlefield. After this battle, the Kingdom of Hungary became divided in three parts: Royal Hungary in the north and west became a Habsburg province, Transylvania in the east became an independent state, while the former central and southern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary were absorbed by the Ottoman Empire. As King Louis had no children, Hungary was divided into two parties: one elected John Zápolya, a respected Hungarian noble, while the other declared for the King of Hungary a Habsburg, Ferdinand, Louis' brother-in-law. A part of this struggle was the leader of Serb mercenaries, Jovan Nenad.[1]
Right after Mohács, Jovan Nenad appeared between Tisza and Danube as a leader of a Serb regiment. He quickly drove the Ottomans from Bačka and parts of Banat and Syrmia, which he then ruled independently. At first he sided with the Zapolyai, but after the Hungarian nobility of Bačka estranged him from John Zápolya, who also refused to acknowledge Nenad's territory, he decided to support the Habsburg pretender, Ferdinand, in the beginning of 1527. The conflict with the Hungarian nobility arose when Hungarian refugees were refused to return to their rightful properties in Bačka, which Nenad saw as his. With his forces he continued to pillage Hungarian estates and villages and terrorized the Hungarian population. This turned against him not just the Hungarian nobility but the villagers and peasants as well.
He named
Jovan Nenad considered the struggle around the Hungarian throne just a temporary occupation, his primary task being the fight against the Ottomans for the liberation of the Serb lands. In the first half of 1527, Ferdinand was outside of Hungary, preparing for what would become the
In an attempt to unite with the forces of Ferdinand, Jovan Nenad was severely wounded in Szeged. In his retreat towards Senta, he was intercepted and murdered in the village of Tornjoš. His head was delivered to Zápolya. Soon after his death, the remainder of his army dispersed. Afterward, Radoslav Čelnik led the remains of the army to Ottoman Syrmia,[contradictory] where he ruled until 1530 as an Ottoman vassal, and then as a Habsburg subject.
Legacy
As time passed, Jovan Nenad became a mythical figure to the Serbs.[4] Many Serbian historians consider him the founder of contemporary Vojvodina, although in reality his insurrection was too short-lived and his reign too tumultuous to have a lasting impact. [citation needed] Subotica, the province's second largest city (which was once his capital) erected a monument to him bearing the inscription "Your thought has prevailed" (Твоја је мисаo победила/Tvoja je misao pobedila).
In popular culture
In the 1942 Hollywood film Cat People, a small statue of Jovan Nenad (albeit referenced as "King John of Serbia"), plays a central role in developing the underlying mythological basis of the film's plot.[5] The statue is of Jovan Nenad on horseback holding up an impaled cat on his sword.[6]
See also
- Starina Novak (1530s-1601), hajduk leader
- List of Serbian rulers
- List of rulers of Vojvodina
- Serbs of Vojvodina
- Rascians
Annotations
- Đorđe Branković(1645–1711) called him Jovan Črnović (Јован Чpновић).
References
- ^ a b c Ćorović 2006
Za Zapolju se izjasnio i "car" Jovan Nenad, jedna neobična i još uvek misteriozna ličnost, koja se pojavila u ovaj mah među Srbima. On je izbio na površinu posle turskog povlačenja, koje je u južnim oblastima ostavilo pravu pustoš. Među srpskim beguncima, koji se behu sklonili u Gornji Banat izbi oko Lipove taj mrki i hrabri čovek, za koga niko nije pravo znao ni ko je ni odakle je. On se sam izdavao za potomka srpskih i vizantiskih vladara i uzeo je naziv cara. Kao unapred obeležen nekom višom silom za nešto neobično ljudi su nalazili to, što je on imao "na telu jednu crnu prugu u širini jednog prsta, koja je počinjala kod desne slepoočnice i išla u pravoj liniji sve do stopala desne noge."
- ^ Istorisko društvo NR Srbije; Istorisko društvo, Novi Sad; Stanoje Stanojević (1930). Glasnik. Vol. 3. p. 137.
- ^ Dejan Djokić 2023, p. 170.
- ^ Dejan Djokić 2023, p. 169.
- ^ "Quotes of "Cat People"". Imdb. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
- ^ "Cat People". Midnight Only. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
Sources
- ISBN 9782825119587.
- ISBN 978-1-107-02838-8.
- ISBN 9781405142915.
- Ćorović, Vladimir (2006). Историја Срба. Дом и школа. ISBN 9788683751303.
- Fodor, Pál; Dávid, Géza, eds. (2000). Ottomans, Hungarians, and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. Leiden: Brill.
- Gavrilović, Slavko (1993). "Serbs in Hungary, Slavonia and Croatia in struggles against the Turks (15th-18th centuries)". Serbs in European Civilization. Belgrade: Nova, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Balkan Studies. pp. 41–54. ISBN 9788675830153.
- Isailović, Neven; Krstić, Aleksandar (2015). "Serbian Language and Cyrillic Script as a Means of Diplomatic Literacy in South Eastern Europe in 15th and 16th Centuries". Literacy Experiences concerning Medieval and Early Modern Transylvania. Cluj-Napoca: George Bariţiu Institute of History. pp. 185–195.
- Jireček, Constantin (1918). Geschichte der Serben. Vol. 2. Gotha: Perthes.
- Stojkovski, Boris (2015). "Between Habsburgs and Ottomans - Jovan Nenad movement in 1526-1527". Балканот: луѓе, војни и мир. Скопје: Институт за национална историја. pp. 73–82.
External links
- (in Serbian) Još jednom o caru Jovanu Nenadu