Bartol Kašic
Encyclopedia
Bartol Kašić was a Croatia
n linguist
. He wrote the first Croatian
grammar
and translated the Bible
and the Roman Rite
into Croatian. He is considered the father of Croatian linguistics and one of the greatest men of letters in Croatian history.
. His father died when he was a small child, so he was raised by his uncle Luka Deodati Bogdančić, a priest from Pag, who taught him to read and write. He attended the municipal school in the town of Pag. After 1590 he studied at the Illyric
College in Loreto
near Ancona
, Italy
, managed by the Jesuits. As a gifted and industrious pupil, he was sent to further studies in Rome
in 1593, where he joined the Society of Jesus
in 1595.
Kašić was made a priest in 1606 and served as a confessor in the St. Peter's Basilica
in Rome. He lived in Dubrovnik
from 1609 to 1612. In 1612/13, disguised as a merchant, he went on a mission to Bosnia
, Serbia
and eastern Slavonia
(Valpovo
, Osijek
, Vukovar
), which he reported to the pope
. From 1614 to 1618 he was the Croatian confessor in Loreto. He went on his second mission in 1618/19. In old age, he described both missions in his incomplete autobiography. His second stay in Dubrovnik lasted from 1620 to 1633. Then he returned to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life.
. By 1599 he made a Croatian
-Italian
dictionary, which has been preserved as a manuscript in Dubrovnik
since the 18th century. Some experts believe it is one of three dictionaries made by Kašić and that the other two are archived in Perugia
and Oxford
.
It qualified Kašić for further work in the area of Croatian language. Since the Jesuits took care of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire
and tried to teach in the local language, they needed an adequate textbook for working among the Croats
. Kašić provided such a textbook: he published Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (Latin; "The Structure of the Croatian Language in Two Books") in Rome in 1604. It was the first Croatian grammar
.
In almost 200 pages and two parts ("books"), he provided the basic information on the Croatian language and explained the Croatian morphology
in great detail. The language is basically Shtokavian with many Chakavian elements, mixing older and newer forms. For unknown reasons, the grammar was not accompanied by a dictionary, as was the practice with Jesuit dictionaries and grammars of Croatian.
After 1613 Kašić published several works of religious and instructive content and purpose (the lives of the saints Ignatius of Loyola
and Francis Xavier
, the lives of Jesus
and Mary), a hagiographic
collection Perivoj od djevstva (Virginal Garden; 1625 and 1628), two catechism
s etc. In the late 1627 he completed the spiritual tragedy
St Venefrida, subtitled triomfo od čistoće (a triumph of purity), which remained in manuscript until 1938.
into Croatian – more precisely, the Shtokavian dialect of Dubrovnik
. In 1625, he was charged with translating the entire Bible
. He submitted the entire translation in Rome in 1633 to obtain the approval for printing, but he encountered difficulties because some Croatians were against translations in the vernacular. The translation was eventually forbidden (non est expediens ut imprimatur).
Considering the fact that the translations of the Bible to local languages had a crucial role in the creation of the standard language
s of many peoples, the ban on Kašić's translation greatly hindered the development of the official Croatian language. The preserved manuscripts were used to publish the translation, with detailed expert notes, in 2000.
The great linguistic variety and invention of his translation can be seen from the comparison with the King James Version of the Bible
. The King James Version, which has had a profound impact on English
, was published in 1611, two decades before Kašić's translation. It has 12,143 different words. Kašić's Croatian translation, even incomplete (some parts of the Old Testament
are missing), has around 20,000 different words – more than the English version and even more than the original Bible!
Ritual rimski (Roman Rite
; 1640), covering more than 400 pages, was the most famous Kašić's work, which was used by all Croatian diocese
s and archdioceses except for the one in Zagreb
, which also accepted it in the 19th century. It was the official liturgical book
until 1929. It was the first translation of a Roman rite book into a living language and it strongly influenced the development of the Croatian language.
In fact, Ritual rimski possibly played a bigger role in the language standardization
than any Bible translation could, despite its stylistic richness and cultural importance, since the Bible was a crucial factor in this respect only among Protestant
peoples, but not among Catholic ones, as shown by the examples of French and Polish translations.
The language used in Ritual rimski is called by Kašić naški ("our language") or bosanski ("Bosnian"). Why Bosnia
n? Although he was born in a Chakavian region, he decided to adopt a "common language" (lingua communis), a version of Shtokavian Ikavian, spoken by the majority of Croats. He used the terms dubrovački (from Dubrovnik) for the Ijekavian version used in his Bible, and dalmatinski (Dalmatia
n) for the Chakavian version.
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
. He wrote the first Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and translated the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and the Roman Rite
Roman Rite
The Roman Rite is the liturgical rite used in the Diocese of Rome in the Catholic Church. It is by far the most widespread of the Latin liturgical rites used within the Western or Latin autonomous particular Church, the particular Church that itself is also called the Latin Rite, and that is one of...
into Croatian. He is considered the father of Croatian linguistics and one of the greatest men of letters in Croatian history.
Life
Kašić was born on the island of PagPag (island)
Pag is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea. It is the fifth-largest island of the Croatian coast, and the one with the longest coastline....
. His father died when he was a small child, so he was raised by his uncle Luka Deodati Bogdančić, a priest from Pag, who taught him to read and write. He attended the municipal school in the town of Pag. After 1590 he studied at the Illyric
Illyria
In classical antiquity, Illyria was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by the Illyrians....
College in Loreto
Loreto (AN)
Loreto is a hilltown and comune of the Italian province of Ancona, in the Marche. It is mostly famous as the seat of the Basilica della Santa Casa, a popular Catholic pilgrimage site.-Location:...
near Ancona
Ancona
Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche region, in central Italy, with a population of 101,909 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, managed by the Jesuits. As a gifted and industrious pupil, he was sent to further studies in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
in 1593, where he joined the Society of Jesus
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
in 1595.
Kašić was made a priest in 1606 and served as a confessor in the St. Peter's Basilica
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...
in Rome. He lived in Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
from 1609 to 1612. In 1612/13, disguised as a merchant, he went on a mission to Bosnia
Bosnia Province, Ottoman Empire
The Bosnia Vilayet was an Ottoman vilayet, mostly based on the territory of the present-day state of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as most of Slavonia, Lika and Dalmatia in present-day Croatia. It bordered Kosovo Vilayet to the south. Before the administrative reform in 1864, it was called the...
, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
and eastern Slavonia
Slavonia
Slavonia is a geographical and historical region in eastern Croatia...
(Valpovo
Valpovo
Valpovo is a town in Slavonia, Croatia. It is close to the Drava river in the region of Slavonia, northwest of Osijek. The population of Valpovo is 7,396, with a total of 11,570 in the municipality.-Demographics:...
, Osijek
Osijek
Osijek is the fourth largest city in Croatia with a population of 83,496 in 2011. It is the largest city and the economic and cultural centre of the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia, as well as the administrative centre of Osijek-Baranja county...
, Vukovar
Vukovar
Vukovar is a city in eastern Croatia, and the biggest river port in Croatia located at the confluence of the Vuka river and the Danube. Vukovar is the center of the Vukovar-Syrmia County...
), which he reported to the pope
Pope Paul V
-Theology:Paul met with Galileo Galilei in 1616 after Cardinal Bellarmine had, on his orders, warned Galileo not to hold or defend the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus. Whether there was also an order not to teach those ideas in any way has been a matter for controversy...
. From 1614 to 1618 he was the Croatian confessor in Loreto. He went on his second mission in 1618/19. In old age, he described both missions in his incomplete autobiography. His second stay in Dubrovnik lasted from 1620 to 1633. Then he returned to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life.
Literary activity
Already as a student, Kašić started teaching Croatian in the Illyric Academy in Rome, which awakened his interest in the Croatian languageCroatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
. By 1599 he made a Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
-Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
dictionary, which has been preserved as a manuscript in Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
since the 18th century. Some experts believe it is one of three dictionaries made by Kašić and that the other two are archived in Perugia
Perugia
Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....
and Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
.
The first Croatian grammar
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
and tried to teach in the local language, they needed an adequate textbook for working among the Croats
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
. Kašić provided such a textbook: he published Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (Latin; "The Structure of the Croatian Language in Two Books") in Rome in 1604. It was the first Croatian grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
.
In almost 200 pages and two parts ("books"), he provided the basic information on the Croatian language and explained the Croatian morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
in great detail. The language is basically Shtokavian with many Chakavian elements, mixing older and newer forms. For unknown reasons, the grammar was not accompanied by a dictionary, as was the practice with Jesuit dictionaries and grammars of Croatian.
After 1613 Kašić published several works of religious and instructive content and purpose (the lives of the saints Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish knight from a Basque noble family, hermit, priest since 1537, and theologian, who founded the Society of Jesus and was its first Superior General. Ignatius emerged as a religious leader during the Counter-Reformation...
and Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier, born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary born in the Kingdom of Navarre and co-founder of the Society of Jesus. He was a student of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits, dedicated at Montmartre in 1534...
, the lives of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
and Mary), a hagiographic
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
collection Perivoj od djevstva (Virginal Garden; 1625 and 1628), two catechism
Catechism
A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
s etc. In the late 1627 he completed the spiritual tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
St Venefrida, subtitled triomfo od čistoće (a triumph of purity), which remained in manuscript until 1938.
Translation of the Bible
In 1622, Kašić started translating the New TestamentNew Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
into Croatian – more precisely, the Shtokavian dialect of Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
. In 1625, he was charged with translating the entire Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. He submitted the entire translation in Rome in 1633 to obtain the approval for printing, but he encountered difficulties because some Croatians were against translations in the vernacular. The translation was eventually forbidden (non est expediens ut imprimatur).
Considering the fact that the translations of the Bible to local languages had a crucial role in the creation of the standard language
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
s of many peoples, the ban on Kašić's translation greatly hindered the development of the official Croatian language. The preserved manuscripts were used to publish the translation, with detailed expert notes, in 2000.
The great linguistic variety and invention of his translation can be seen from the comparison with the King James Version of the Bible
King James Version of the Bible
The Authorized Version, commonly known as the King James Version, King James Bible or KJV, is an English translation of the Christian Bible by the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611...
. The King James Version, which has had a profound impact on English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, was published in 1611, two decades before Kašić's translation. It has 12,143 different words. Kašić's Croatian translation, even incomplete (some parts of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
are missing), has around 20,000 different words – more than the English version and even more than the original Bible!
The Roman Rite
Roman Rite
The Roman Rite is the liturgical rite used in the Diocese of Rome in the Catholic Church. It is by far the most widespread of the Latin liturgical rites used within the Western or Latin autonomous particular Church, the particular Church that itself is also called the Latin Rite, and that is one of...
; 1640), covering more than 400 pages, was the most famous Kašić's work, which was used by all Croatian diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
s and archdioceses except for the one in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
, which also accepted it in the 19th century. It was the official liturgical book
Liturgical book
A liturgical book is a book published by the authority of a church, that contains the text and directions for the liturgy of its official religious services.-Roman Catholic:...
until 1929. It was the first translation of a Roman rite book into a living language and it strongly influenced the development of the Croatian language.
In fact, Ritual rimski possibly played a bigger role in the language standardization
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
than any Bible translation could, despite its stylistic richness and cultural importance, since the Bible was a crucial factor in this respect only among Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
peoples, but not among Catholic ones, as shown by the examples of French and Polish translations.
The language used in Ritual rimski is called by Kašić naški ("our language") or bosanski ("Bosnian"). Why Bosnia
Bosnia Province, Ottoman Empire
The Bosnia Vilayet was an Ottoman vilayet, mostly based on the territory of the present-day state of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as most of Slavonia, Lika and Dalmatia in present-day Croatia. It bordered Kosovo Vilayet to the south. Before the administrative reform in 1864, it was called the...
n? Although he was born in a Chakavian region, he decided to adopt a "common language" (lingua communis), a version of Shtokavian Ikavian, spoken by the majority of Croats. He used the terms dubrovački (from Dubrovnik) for the Ijekavian version used in his Bible, and dalmatinski (Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
n) for the Chakavian version.
Works
- Razlika skladanja slovinska (Croatian-Italian dictionary), Rome, 1599
- Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (The Structure of the Illyrian (Croatian) Language in Two Books), Rome, 1604
- Various hagiographies; collection Perivoj od djevstva (Virginal Garden; 1625 and 1628) *Two catechisms
- Spiritual tragedy St Venefrida, 1627, published in 1938
- The Bible, 1633
- Ritual rimski (Roman Rite), 1640