Pavle Radinović

His scribe was Radosav Milosalić, mentioned in Pavle's charter from 25 March 1387, during the reign of king Tvrtko I.[3]

After Tvrtko's death, Pavle greatly expanded his realm, and held besides the hereditary territory around the rivers of Krivaja and Prača, the town of Borač near Vlasenica, the market of Prača, the mine of Olovo.

In 1392, Radič Sanković and his brother Beljak tried to sell Konavle to the Republic of Ragusa.[4] The same year on May 15, Radič issued a charter to Ragusan merchants enabling them to trade in his territories.[5] However, a council meeting was convoked by the king or nobility that objected the sale; Vlatko Vuković and Pavle Radenović were sent against Radič in December 1391 after receiving the council's blessings.[6] The two captured Radič and occupied Konavle, dividing it between themselves, despite protests from Ragusa.[6] The holding of Konavle meant that Pavle held several custom offices towards Ragusa, one of which was shared with Vlatko on Konavljanske Ledenice. Vuković died shortly after this, and was succeeded by his nephew Sandalj Hranić, who continued to struggle against Radič.[6]

When Stephen Dabiša (r. 1391–1395) died in September 1395, he had designated King Sigismund of Hungary, the husband of his cousin, Queen Mary, as his successor. Mary, however, had predeceased Dabiša, dying in May the same year. The Bosnian nobility refused to recognize Sigismund as king, as his right had rested in his status as Mary's husband. Instead, the nobility installed Jelena Gruba, his widow, and member of the Nikolić family, as the successor to her husband.[7]

In 1397, his charter secured free trade and protection of Ragusans in his lands, for which he became honorary citizen of Ragusa. In foreign politics, he, as the other magnates of the Kingdom of Bosnia, supported Ladislaus of Naples in his struggle to wrestle the crown of Hungary from Sigismund of Luxemburg.

He and other magnates such as Hrvoje Vukčić (?-1416) and Sandalj Hranić nominally served Queen Jelena Gruba, and were de facto rulers of the kingdom, especially Pavle who was queen's personal advisor.[2]

Pavle participated in the decision to crown Ostoja as king in 1398. By the turn of the 14th century, he also held Trebinje, the Vrm župa (county) with the city of Klobuk and half of Konavle with Cavtat.

On April 22, 1404, Ostoja released a charter to the Republic of Venice regarding trade, and at this time Ostoja's court was composed of knez Pavle, vojvoda Vukmir Jurjević, vojvoda Pavle Klešić, vojvoda Radič Sanković and knez Radoje Radosalić. Of the "magnate triumvirate" that dominated Bosnia, only Pavle remained supporting Ostoja.[8] Hranić captured and blinded Radič, and held him in prison until his death in 1404.[6] The area of Nevesinje to the coast was taken by Hranić.[6] Ostoja was deposed in 1404, and Tvrtko II was crowned the new King of Bosnia.

After the demise of Ladislaus of Naples and his sale of the right to Dalmatia to the Republic of Venice in 1409, many nobles allied themselves with Sigismund and worked to depose Tvrtko II, who had supported Ladislaus, and they managed to return Sigismund's pretender Ostoja to the throne. Hranić also allied himself with Emperor Sigismund in mid-1411 and decided to establish closer connections with Sigismund's important ally Stefan Lazarević by marrying his widowed sister Jelena (who was the mother of Balša III, the ruler of Zeta), divorcing Hrvoje's niece Katarina (December 1411).[9][10][11]

Pavle appointed knez Brailo Tezalović his protovestijar sometime in 1411. He was ready to sell his part of Konavle to the Ragusans in 1414, but this was never done.

Political map delineating zemlje of Bosnian Kingdom, ca. 1412.

The best source for the circumstances surrounding the events of Pavle's assassination is a letter written by Ivan Gundulić, Ragusan diplomatic representative who was in Sutjeska in August 1415, where he attended a meeting of Bosnian noblemen at the stanak.[12]

A conspiracy against Pavle must have been hatched in the background of the stanak, held in Sutjeska in August 1415 and attended by all the major noblemen except for Hrvoje Vukčić.
At the end of the month, in the morning of August 24, 1415, King Ostoja and his son left Sutjeska on a horseback. With them on their departure were Knez Pavle and his son Petar, Duke Sandalj Hranić, Duke Pavle Klešić, Duke Vukmir of Zlatonosović's, Župan Dragiša of Dinjčić's and Sandalj's brother, Knez Vuk Hranić. They departed together in the procession that moved from the royal court in Sutjeska towards Bobovac Fortress along the Bukovica river.[12][2]

Nothing foreshadowed the event that was to follow. During a walk, at the location called Parena Poljana, somewhere in the canyon of Bukovica between the royal court and the city-fortress Bobovac, a brawl erupted when Sandalj suddenly drew his sword, which was a cue to King Ostoja, who jumped on Pavle's son Petar and bound him, and Vukmir Zlatonosović, who immediately attacked Pavle who tried to escape but was caught by Sandalj's men, led by his brother, Vuk Hranić, and decapitated on site. Pavle succeeded in wounding Vukmir above the right shoulder but caught by a surprise and outnumbered he was unable to defend himself more effectively. It seems as if Pavle walked into a Sandalj's trap oblivious of his alleged misdeeds.[12][2]

Four men died that day and several people from Pavle's entourage were captured along with his son Petar. Vuk Hranić tied up Pavle's protovestijar, Brailo Tezalović, while a merchant from Prača, Pribislav Muržić, was captured by other Sandalj's men. Only a retainer of Pavle, krstjanin Vlatko Tumurlić, survived and escaped by seeking shelter in a Franciscan home, and later took Pavle's corpse to his estate in Vrhbosna, where he was buried at the location called Pavlovac near present day Kasindo, few kilometers south of Sarajevo.[2] Petar was at first brought to Bobovac, and was supposed to be blinded, but for some reason this did not happen. Pavle's lands were promptly divided between the conspirators,[12][2] but Petar and his brother Knez Radosav Pavlović will successfully repel all attempts of takeover from happening.

Duke Sandalj justified the murder to an astonished witness, a Ragusan diplomat Ivan Gundulić who had written account of this whole affair, by accusing Pavle of bringing much misfortune to the Bosnian kingdom, saying: [12][2][13]

"Did you expect to see this? This is how we, by the grace of God, do justice just like your lordship in Dubrovnik, because in Dubrovnik the punishment for treason is beheading, so I do the same with other faithful Bosnians."
—  excerpt from Ivan Gundulić's letter written to his superiors in Dubrovnik

It is obvious that this move by Sandalj and his men surprised both Knez Pavle and his son because, despite the fact that they too had the entourage of their own, they were relatively easily subdued. Pavle walked into a Sandalj's trap oblivious of his misdeeds, or he believed that nobody was aware of them or that they were not worthy of such a brutal punishment.[12]

Historiography account this brutal political reckoning between the two opposing currents in internal Bosnian affairs, one pro-Hungarian and other pro-Ottoman, to the fact that Pavle joined forces with Grand Duke of Bosnia, Hrvoje Vukčić, and participated in the overthrow of King Ostoja in favor of King Tvrtko II.[12][2] Hrvoje was at his peak as a powerbroker around the time of the Battle of Lašva, when he led Bosnian troupes in alliance with Ottoman Turks in thorough defeat of large Hungarian-Croatian army,[14] but whose power seem to be started to diminish already around the time of the assassination. This means that Tvrtko II, who was pro-Ottman, had the support of Pavlović's However, there were other reasons to account for, such as Pavle's politics toward Konavle which differed from Sandalj's significantly.[12]