Ivan Franjo Jukić (1818 – 1857). Travel Prose as a Reflection of His Life and Work
Ivan Franjo Jukić (1818 – 1857). Travel Prose as a Reflection of His Life and Work

Summary/Abstract: The beginnings of the Croatian literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina are closely linked with the literary and cultural activity of the Franciscan order that settled there as early as in the 13th century. The first well-known author from the region was Juraj Dragišić (1448 – 1520), a  humanist scholar and philosopher from Srebrenica. Respected in European humanist circles, this prolific author composed philosophic and theological works in Latin, spent some time in Dubrovnik, Paris and Oxford and travelled extensively throughout Europe. As Franciscans settled in this Balkan province, the church leaders as well as the Hungarian king, who ruled Bosnia at the time, expected them to fight the heresy spread by the Bosnian church, the so-called crkva bosanska (ecclesia Bosnae). The beginnings of the literary tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina in vernacular were marked by its first printed book in 1611, an instructive prose work “Nauk krstjanski” written by the Franciscan Matija Divković (1563 – 1631) in bosanica – a version of Cyrillic script used at the time in Bosnia and Croatia. The author himself assisted the printing srocess in Venice, as no printing facility was available at the time in Bosnian territories. Throughout the 18th century, the Franciscan monks authored several chronicles with themes of universal history, the history of Bosnia and the history and survival of the Franciscan order in its most important monasteries in Fojnica, Sutjeska and Kreševo.

• Details
• Contents