Hilarion Gasparotti
Related to the famous Paulist convent in Lepoglava is Hilarion Gasparotti (1714-1762), born in the lovely town of Samobor near Zagreb. As a Lepoglava Paulist he wrote an encyclopaedic masterpiece Czvet Szveteh (The Flower of Saints) in 4 books on as many as 3,800 pages (982+923+987+896), published in Graz (written as Gradecz there, which reveals the Croatian origin of the name of Graz: grad – town) in 1752, and in Vienna in 1756, 1760 and 1761. In these books he wrote biographies of numerous saints in the beautiful kajkavian Croatian language, which he calls simultaneously slovenski jezik and horvatcki jezik. As we see, at that time Slovenian and Croatian languages were identified. On the front page Gasparotti stated that he consulted sources written in Spanish, Latin, French and German (see [Sekulic, pp 412-415]). Of course, he had at his disposal a magnificent library of the Lepoglava convent. The library and the valuables of the convent have been robbed by Austrian officials after cancelling the Paulist order in Croatia in 1786. This top monument of Croatian culture served as prison during the Yugoslav communist period.