VENETIAN SUPREMACY 95
overlordship from about 1222 until some time between 1320 and 1330, when it was added to the Banat of Bosnia under Hungarian suzerainty. Hlum was divided into a number of zupe, like the other Serb lands, under different feudal families. Stagno and the Punta was ruled by that of the Branivoj, with whom the Ragusans had hitherto lived on terms of friendship and commercial intercourse. The Republic sent them an annual gift of 100 ipperperi,* which may, however, have been blackmail to secure immunity from piracy, to which so many of the Slave tribes were addicted.
It is probable that the Ragusans had had their eyes on this district for some time, and in 1320-21 they gladly obeyed the injunctions of the Venetian Senate to act against the pirates of Stagno and Cattaro.2 About 1323, for some unrecorded reason,3 a quarrel broke out between Ragusa and the
Branivoj ; and on April 8, 1325, instead of sending the usual gift, the Republic decreed warlike preparations against the lord Branivoj and his sons “ qui fecerunt offensionis multas, depredationes, et rubarias contra comune et speciales personas civitatis Ragusii.” A few
BAS-RELIEF OF ST. BLAIZE, NEAR THE PORTA PLOCE
             1	Gelcich, ibid.
2	Mon. Slav. Mer., i. 204, Misti, adann. 1320-21.
3	It may have been the acts of piracy alluded to.