Dubrovnik family Mikočić-Utvičić in Bosnia in the 15th century

Abstract

The development of mining and credit trade in Bosnia during the Idth c. and especially in the 15th c. attracted a number of people from Dubrovnik to Bosnian mining and trading centres in order to live and work there. Among those were the members of the family Mikočić-Utvičić originally from Dubrovnik. Some of their members lived and worked in Foča where they were dukes, consuls, judges and held other functions in numerous Dubrovnik colonics and towns of medieval Bosnia and Hum. Although they lived in Foča, their activités spread to other towns in Bosnian and Hum in the lands of Pavlovid and Kosaca. They intermarried with prominent local families, such as the family Tezalović, people who were respected at the court of duke Pavle Radcnović and then of the his sons, Petar and Radosav Pavlovid. Their presence and their activities contributed to the transfer of the ininflucnce of Dubrovnik in culture, government, trade and other segments of life, which had reached the town under Mount Srđ from the West and spread to Bosnia from there through such mediators. The most prominent member of this family who lived and worked in the Dubrovnik colony in Foča was Radić Utvičić-Mikočić who held the positions of duke, consul and judge in Foča and was also an intermediary in important negotiations between the government of Dubrovnik and Pavlovid concerning some important matters of economy, even in buying and extending the lands of the Republic of Dubrovnik in Konavlc. This urban family from Dubrovnik was engaged in ecstensivc credit trading, both with the citizens of Dubrovnik and the local people who thus look part in the flow of economy in Bosnia. They supplied Dubrovnik traders with profitable goods, primarily prccius metals and other trade goods. This family was one in a long scries of migrations from the south to the north, from Dubrovnik to Bosnia and Hum, of whom there were many in that period.