Император Ираклий, король Дагоберт и проблема появления хорватов в Далмации
Emperor Heraclius, king Dagobert and the problem of the emergence of the Croats in Dalmatia

Summary/Abstract: The paper attempts to reconstruct the historical context of the emergence of several early medieval toponyms derived from the name «Croat». The toponyms in question are concentrated in the Saale River region, where the ethnic areas of the Thuringians and Serbs (Sorbs) met in the early Middle Ages. Based on the account of the Chronicle of Fredegar that until the 630s the Sorbs were under the rule of the Frankish kings, who had controlled Thuringia since the 6th century, the author examines the possibility of the emergence of these Croat toponyms in the Merovingian era. As a theoretical basis for his historical reconstruction, the author uses the hypothesis that the group name «Croats» originally had a social character and was used to designate a certain military stratum in the Avar qaganate, whose members could also settle in the territories where the zones of Frankish and Avar control met. In this regard, the article offers a new interpretation of a passage from Chapter 48 of Book IV of Fredegar’s Chronicle, according to which according to which certain «peoples» living «around the borders of the Avars and Slavs» approached Dagobert, who was then the king of Austrasia, with a proposal to subjugate the peoples of the Avar qaganate to Dagobert’s authority. Viewing this account as evidence of the desire of the elites of the Avar frontier to rely on the Franks in their struggle against the Avars, the author suggests that Croats may have been among the «peoples» who appealed to Dagobert. This interpretation allows the author to support a hypothesis, once formulated in historiography, according to which the emergence of the Croats and Serbs in the Balkans in the 620s–630s was the result of diplomatic contacts between the Frankish king Dagobert and the Byzantine emperor Heraclius.

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