Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea

The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja (Serbo-Croatian: Ljetopis popa Dukljanina) is the usual name given to an alleged medieval chronicle written by an anonymous priest from Duklja. Its oldest preserved copy is from the 17th century, while it has been variously claimed by modern historians to have been compiled between the late 12th and early 15th century. Historians have largely discounted the work based on inaccuracies and fiction, nevertheless it contains some semi-mythological material on the early history of the Western South Slavs. The section of The Life of St. Jovan Vladimir, is however believed to be a novelization of an earlier work.

The work was allegedly made by an anonymous "priest of Duklja" (presbyter Diocleas, known in Serbian as pop Dukljanin). The work is only preserved in its Latin redactions from the 17th century. Serbian historian Tibor Živković, in the monograph Gesta regum Sclavorum, concluded that its main parts dated to ca. 1300–10. Dmine Papalić, a nobleman from Split, found the text which he transcribed in 1509–10, which was then translated by Marko Marulić into Latin in 1510, with the title Regnum Dalmatiae et Croatiae gesta.Mavro Orbin, a Ragusan historian, included the work, and other works, in his Il regno de gli Slavi (ca. 1601); and then Johannes Lucius in ca. 1666. The Latin redactions claim that the original was written in Slavic.

The chronicle, written in Latin, was completed between 1299 and 1301 in the town of Bar (in Montenegro), then part of the Serbian Kingdom. Its author was presbyter Rudger (or Rudiger), the Catholic Archbishop of Bar (Antivari), who was probably of Czech origin. He is thought to have lived around 1300 because the perception of Bosnian borders coincides with an anonymous text, the Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis (Cracow, 1916), that has been dated to the year 1308. Latest research shows that he flourished in ca. 1296–1300.