Bartol Kašić

This article needs to be revised: Kašić did not call his language »Croatian«, but »Illyrian« or »Slavic«. The translation of these terms as "Croatian" is ahistorical and misleading.
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Bust of Bartol Kašić in Pag

Bartol Kašić (born August 15, 1575 on Pag , Croatia ; † December 28, 1650 in Rome ; also: Bartul Kašić , Bartholomaeo Cassio or Bartholomaeus Cassius , occasionally with the addition of Bogdančić or Pažanin ) was a Croatian Jesuit , Bible translator, writer and linguist .

Life

Bartol Kašić was born on the Adriatic island of Pag in 1575. He lost early his father and was then by his maternal uncle Luka Deodati Bogdančić, a pager , added clergy, which he read and learned to write. In 1595 he joined the Jesuit order in Rome. Even as a student he was interested in the Croatian language and wrote a handwritten Croatian-Italian dictionary. From 1609 to 1612 he taught grammar in Dubrovnik . In 1612 he was sent by the Pope on a missionary trip to the areas under Ottoman rule, Bosnia , the Sanjak of Smederevo , Belgrade , Vukovar and Osijek . In 1618 Kašić was sent on a second missionary trip. He did not return to Rome for good until 1635, where he died in 1650 .

Services

In addition to literary and linguistic works, Kašić's work also includes numerous translations and revisions of theological works of the Counter-Reformation .

In 1625 Kašić began translating the New Testament on his own . In 1625 he was commissioned by the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide to translate the ( Vulgate ) Bible completely into Croatian. In 1631 he sent the handwritten manuscripts to the Congregation in Rome. However, printing the Bible was ultimately rejected again.

Title page of the Croatian Roman Rituals, 1640

The translation of the Bible was written in the contemporary language of Dubrovnik in Latin script. The commission set up to assess the translation was concerned that, in their opinion, the text was "neither in the scriptures of St. Jerome nor that of St. Cyril ". At the time, Glagoliza was ascribed to the former and the Cyrillic script to the latter . Since the translation of Kašić was intended as a Bible for the (south-west) Slavs , according to some church representatives it should also be written in the (according to the opinion of the time) original script of the Slavs as well as the traditionally used Church Slavonic language. In 1633 Kašić traveled personally to Pope Urban VIII in Rome and initially received permission to print his translation of the Bible. The Holy Office was commissioned after renewed conflict with the decision in this dispute and concluded: It is not useful to provide a translation of the Scriptures in the Illyrian folk or new language, written in Latin characters to print ( "Non est expediens ut imprimatur versio Sacrae Scripturae facta lingua illyrica vernacula, seu nova, characteribus latinis ” ). Ultimately, the printing of the Bible translation was rejected and the work was not printed. According to surviving manuscripts, Bartol Kašić's Croatian Bible appeared in print for the first time in 1999.

One of the most important translations of Kašić into the Croatian language is the Ritval rimski (1640), a translation of the Roman Ritual , which was used until 1929. This work took over the role in the Croatian language, which the translation of the Bible into the respective vernacular played for other peoples: it contributed to the unification and standardization of the Croatian language.

Bartol Kašić gained special importance as the author of the first Croatian grammar , which appeared in 1604 in Latin under the title Institutiones linguae Illyricae . The primary purpose of the grammar was to serve as a handbook for missionaries to help them learn the vernacular . Kašić first described the Croatian script and in particular the grapheme - phoneme relationships in the grammar . By eliminating irregularities and ambiguities, Kašić contributed to the standardization of Croatian orthography . In addition, the grammar also described the declension , conjugation, and syntax of Croatian. Kašić did not describe a specific regional dialect, but instead represented a štokavian - čakavian compensatory language in its grammar , as it was used in the literature of the time.

Works (selection)

• Institutionum linguæ illyricæ libri duo , Rome 1604.
• Ritual rimski, istomaccen slovinski , Rome 1640.

literature

• Elisabeth von Erdmann-Pandžić: Three anonymous dictionaries of the Croatian language from Dubrovnik, Perugia and Oxford. To the collection of the »disiecta membra« of the early opus by Bartol Kašić . Bayerische Verlagsanstalt, Bamberg 1990, ISBN 3-87052-622-X
• Darija Gabrić-Bagarić: Bartol Kašić, Venefrida. A tragedy . Sources and contributions to Croatian cultural history Volume 4, Bayerische Verlagsanstalt, Bamberg 1991, ISBN 3-87052-624-6
• Gerhard Neweklowsky: A few remarks on the oldest Croatian grammar . In: Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch, 25 (1979), 56–62.
• Reinhold Olesch: Institutiones linguae Illyricae / Bartholomaeus Cassius [reprint]. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Vienna 1977, ISBN 3-412-03777-X
• Hans Rothe and Christian Hannick: Biblia sacra: versio illyrica selecta, seu declaratio Vulgatae editionis Latinae . F. Schöningh, Paderborn 1999-2000, ISBN 3-506-71679-4