Bosnia and Herzegovina today is a complex multinational state with three major and distinct national, ethnic or religious groups who have many different, in fact opposing views on the country’s future, and even more disagreements about its past. The members of these groups – the Bosniak Muslims, the Orthodox Serbs and the Catholic Croats – stake an exclusive claim over the country’s historical heritage, seeking legitimization in the period of the Middle Ages. This lecture will present a brief outline of the political, religious and cultural development of Bosnia which will then provide the necessary context for analyzing the ways in which the medieval past of the country was manipulated in order to construct historical narratives that excluded others and deprived them of their right to interpret medieval heritage as their own. Thus, instead of serving as an integrating factor of society, medieval history is now used as just another tool for the deepening of existing divisions and amplification of already high tensions in modern Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Biographical note 
Emir O. Filipović received his PhD from the University of Sarajevo in 2014. His research areas include the history of chivalry and social elites in medieval Bosnia, as well as the complex relations between the Bosnian Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. He is currently Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the University of Sarajevo.