600 YEARS OF HRVOJE’S MISSAL

The stamp has been issued in 20-stamp sheets. The Croatian Post has also issued the commemorative First Day Cover (FDC). Motif: Miniature from Hrvoje’s Missal, 1403-4, represents a scene from the life of Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ and the Good Samaritan with the walls of Diocletian’s palace in the background. Hrvoje’s Missal is a manuscript written in the Glagolitic script for the Bosnian duke and warlord after he was also made duke of Split (dux Spalatensis), somewhere between the years 1403 and 1404. Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić was born as the eldest son of duke Vukac Hrvatinić, probably in the year 1350 in Kotor (the present-day Kotor Varoš). King Tvrtko I Kotromanić named him grand duke and presented him with the estate of the parish of Lašva. After the death of King Ludovic I, whose devoted knight he had been, Hrvoje participated in the dynastic conflicts in Hungary. He was the opponent of King Sigismund of Luxembourg and an ally of King Ladislaus of Naples who entrusted him with the ruling of Dalmatia and Croatia. After being crowned in Zadar in 1403, Ladislaus named Hrvoje his regent for Hungary, Croatia and Dalmatia, and it was then that he was made duke of Split. He received into his estate the islands Brač, Hvar and Korčula, and he also tried to conquer Dubrovnik which at time acknowledged the reign of King Sigismund. When he entered the conflict with the Bosnian king Ostoja, being a very powerful feudal lord Hrvoje helped unseat Ostoja from the throne, and then Tvrtko II came to the throne. Together with Tvrtko II he organized a campaign against Sigismund and Hungary, the event that had a tragic ending with the defeat of the Bosnian troops and a massacre of the Bosnian nobility near Dobor in 1408. Hrvoje was forced to change sides and join King Sigismund’s camp, and from this point his power declined. King Ostoja was then brought back to the Bosnian throne. After the parish of Sana and the islands Brač, Hvar and Korčula were taken from him, Hrvoje again joined forces with the Bosnian nobles, and in the year 1415 invited the Ottomans to help them in the final reckoning with the Hungarian army and Sigismund. The Hungarian army was indeed defeated, but this victory cleared the way for the Turks to come to Bosnia, and then make repeated raids into Slavonia, eventually reaching inland as far as Zagreb. One of the best known Glagolitic copyists of liturgical codices, Bartol Krbavac, was forced to leave Lika and resort to more peaceful regions. To translate freely his medieval report: “I had, therefore, been forced to go to exile because of the war curseded Hrvoje, together with his Bosnians, Beneventians and Turks, waged against the Hungarian King Sigismund, who was a staunch defender of Christian faith”. After the year 1416, Hrvoje’s name was never mentioned in historical documents again. There were two books written for Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić: Hrvoje’s Glagolitic Missal that was transcribed by the copyist Butko, and the Cyrillic anthology of various texts, mostly biblical ones, known as Hval’s anthology, on account of the copyist’s name. Hrvoje’s Missal was written somewhere between the years 1403-4. There are 247 parchment sheets in the manuscript. The most luxurious and beautiful illuminations of all are to be found in the Glagolitic codex. It was written for St.Michael’s church in Split, which can be proved by the large miniature of the saint. There are some hundred miniatures altogether and 380 richly ornamented initials. The illuminations can be traced to an older model created in the area where the influence of the Byzantium and Rome became intertwined (Benevento in southern Italy).The equestrian portrait of Hrvoje has been painted over complete pages, with a flag and coat-of-arms, and there is a separate coat-of-arms, too. The ornaments include floral, animal, heraldic and human motives. The calendar is decorated with allegorical images of months and scenes showing work performed in the field and house. There are three miniatures with the image of Jesus Christ, with Diocletian’s palace in Split depicted in the background. There are instances where new influence can be detected in the language of the calendar: some new signs replace the Glagolitic ones (ki instead of iže, ča instead of čto, kadje instead of ideže), and there are also ikavian forms; in the text some old traditions are shown, and there are also some older rituals: first trimming a boy’s hair, then blessing oats and salt for the horses, the wedding ceremony for the nobility, etc. After Bosnia had fallen under Turkish rule, the codex had probably somehow found its way into the library of Corvinus in Buda, after that it went to Constantinople, to the Topkapy Sarayi library, where it can still be found. In 1848 there was the first written reference to the missal, and the next one was written in 1854. In 1891, the Bosnian government published a study about the missal and its illuminations (Jagić, Thalloczy, Wickhoff). After that all traces of the codex disappeared, only to be found after many years in the library to which it belongs. Hrvoje’s Missal, the facsimile and the Latinized transliteration, was published in 1973 by joint efforts of publishers in Graz, Ljubljana and Zagreb. The ladies cooperators from the Old-Slavonic Institute, B.Grabar, A.Nazor, M.Pantelić, under the guidance of Vjekoslav Štefanić, compared the transliterated basic text with three other Glagolitic missals, and in this way Hrvoje’s missal was made accessible to the cultural public with both its wonderful appearance in facsimile and its contents, the missal texts. Josip Bratulić