Croatian History

Ivan Krstitelj Lalangue (= John the Baptist Lalangue), a native of Luxembrug born in 1743, found his new homeland in Croatia in the lovely city of Varazdin, where he was working as a physician until his death in 1799. He wrote an interesting book “Medicina ruralis iliti Vrachtva ladanyszka”, 374 p., a medicinal manual which represents an important monument of the Croatian (kajkavian) literature. It contains a botanical dictionary with a description of 160 medicinal herbs in Croatian, including their…

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Julije Bajamonti (1744-1800) was medical historian, writer, translator, encyclopaedist, historian, philosopher, and musician. He composed the first opera in Croatia (performed only once), wrote the History of Split (unfinished and unpublished). Bajamonti helped Alberto Fortis with his journey round Dalmatia, and with his discovery of Hasanaginica. His wife was a Split commoner Ljuba. After the fall of Venice in 1797 he urged that Dalmatia should be annexed to Croatia (and Austro-Hungary). In his speech in 1797 he said that Austria…

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The beginning of the Bosnian historiography is represented by a work of rev Filip Lastric (1700-1783), Bosnian Franciscan and Latinist, “Epitome vetustatum provinciae bosniensis”, published in Venice in 1765. His “Testimonium Bilabium”, published also in Venice in 1755, has been studied in detail by a young Italian scholar Ruggero Cattàneo, see the summary of his extensive work in Italian in Croatian

Adam Patacic, bishop of Petrovaradin and Calocz archbishop (in Hungary) wrote Latin-Croatian and German dictionary in 1772-1779: “Dictionarium latino-illyricum et germanicum” (illyricum=Croatian, in the kajkavian dialect).

Rev. Marijan Lanosovic published his “Neue Einleitung zur slavonischen Sprache”, with the German-Croatian dictionary. The first two editions appeared in Osijek in 1778 and 1789, and the third in Budim (today’s Budapest) in 1795.

Josip Voltic (Voltiggi, 1750-1825), an Istrian writer and lexicographer, published the Illyrian (Croatian)-Italian-German dictionary in Vienna in 1803.

A three language encyclopaedic lexicon (Latin, Croatian, Italian) of Joakim Stulli (1730-1817), Franciscan from Dubrovnik, written in three parts on 4721 pages, was an important source of traditional Croatian words, especially in medicine. It was finished in 1810, after more than a half of century of systematic work. Its second, Croatian part, contains about 80,000 lexical units. The dictionary describes among others the meaning of Illiric: Illiric = Croatian.

The Illyrian (Croatian)-French dictionary, prepared by Sime Starcevic (from Udbina in Lika), has been published by the French rulers in Trieste in 1812.

Nicolo Tommaseo was an important writer, lexicographer and politician, born in Sibenik, of Italian nationality (1801-1874). In 1830 he published “Nuova dizionario di sinonimi della lingua italiana”, and his voluminous “Dizionario della lingua italiana” in 1865-1879. He was also translating from Latin and Greek into Italian. In 1841-42 he published his “Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici, greci”. In accordance with his Dalmatian autonomistic views, he believed in the separate “Dalmatian nationality”, and was against the unification of Italy, and against…

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Bohoslav Sulek (1816-1895), Slovak by birth, one of the most important Croatian linguists and lexicographers, made an enormous contribution to the enrichment of the Croatian literary language. He invented several hundred new terms that can be seen in his extensive dictionaries: German – Croatian (1860), Croatian – German – Italian Dictionary of Scientific Terminology (1874/75) and other. Many of them are now everyday Croatian words. Some of them also entered other South Slavic languages, including Serbian.