FAMOUS CROATS 2004 - 400 ANNIVERSARY OF PRINTING OF BARTOL KAŠIĆ'S FIRST GRAMMAR OF THE CROATIAN LANGUAGE

The stamps have been issued in 20-stamp sheets, and the Croatian Post has also issued a commemorative First Day Cover (FDC). Bartol Kašić, Jesuit, ecclesiastical writer, translator, grammarian and lexicographer, was born on the island of Pag on August 15th 1575. Owing to the fact that his father Petar died while Bartol was still a little boy, it was his uncle, the priest of the collegiate church in Pag, who took care of the boy. Bartol Kašić was educated in the town’s Latin school in Pag and Zadar, and at the age of 15 his uncle took him to Italy, to the Illyrian collegium in Loretto, where he spent three years. After that he was sent to Rome by the superiors of the college to continue his education there, owing to the fact that he was the best student in the collegium. When the Academy of the Illyrian language(Croatian) was founded in 1599, Kašić started teaching the Croatian language, and following his superiors’ suggestions he wrote a grammar, printed in 1604 under the title Institutiones linguae illyrice libri duo – ‘Bases of the Illyrian language in two books’. The third book should have probably been a dictionary that Kašić had in the manuscript form as early as 1599, but it was never printed. As an organizer of Jesuit education, Bartol Kašić spent three years in Dubrovnik, and then went on his missionary journey in the Ottoman Empire, dressed up as a merchant. He went through Bosnia and arrived in Belgrade where he founded a grammar school for the Ragusan colony there. He reported on his journey and the hard living conditions of the Christians under the Turkish rule to the Pope and the cardinals. He returned to Dubrovnik in 1620 and stayed there until the year 1633. Despite the disapproval of the Ragusan authorities, Kašić founded the Jesuit residence there. From 1633 to his death in Rome, Kašić performed numerous duties. He died on December 28th, 1650 and was buried in St. Ignatius’s church. Except for the grammar of the Croatian language, he also published numerous books in Croatian: Način od meditacioni – ‘Ways of meditation’, Istorija Loretana – ‘History of Loretto’, Život sv.Ignacija‘ - The Life of St.Ignatius’, Perivoj od djevstva – ‘The Park of Virgins’- a hagiographic collection about the lives of virgins and martyrs. Kašić translated psalms and breviary hymns, wrote a spiritual tragedy in verse – St. Venefrida. He also wrote Život gospodina našeg Isukrsta – ‘The life of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ and Život prečiste Bogorodice – ‘Te Life of Virgin Mary’. His Ritual Rimski – ‘Roman Ritual’ printed in 1640 is of special importance – it is the first and only liturgical manual in the native language within the Catholic church. His translation of the Bible, begun in 1622 and finished after much effort and many breaks, was forbidden because of the opposition of his contemporaries, and was not printed in his lifetime, nor until much later. It was first printed in 1999. Kašić described his life in the Latin Autobiography, the first one in Croatian literature. Kašić’s grammar of the Croatian language, Institutiones linguae illyrice, is the first Croatian grammar. It was written in Latin as the common language of science and literature, education and culture, in order to enable foreigners to learn the Croatian language that they would have to use as missionaries, merchants, business people when arriving in these regions where Croats used to live then, i.e. in Croatia, Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in the wider south-Slavonic area. He wrote his grammar following the distinguished model – the Latin language. The name Illyrian, according to Kašić’s as well as his superiors’ perception, was the same as Croatian, or Slovinski, meaning Slavonic. The grammar material used, described and treated by Kašić was in fact the Croatian language reality of the 17th century, both in speech and in written books, i.e. the Chakavian and Štokavian dialects. Like in the Grammar, Kašić’s language slowly moved from the Chakavian toward the Štokavian, the same way things were moving in the entire Croatian literature of the 17th century. Kašić was the first to suggest the graphic system – every sound should be always written in the same way, with one letter (or a double letter), and is in this way predecessor to both Vitezović and Gaj. The 400th anniversary of Kašić’s grammar is the confirmation of the integrity of the Croatian language and its uninterrupted written tradition from Kašić on, even before him, up to the present days. How important this grammar was in its time becomes obvious in all the grammars that rely on it. The grammar has presently been reprinted numerous times, many disputes and studies have been published, and it was also translated into Croatian.