page_title: Bartol Kašić
section_title: The first Croatian grammar
hierarchical_section_title: Bartol Kašić / Literary activity / The first Croatian grammar
caption_attribution_description: Naslovnica prvog izdanja prve hrvatske gramatike iz 1604.
context_page_description: Bartol Kašić was a Jesuit clergyman and grammarian during the Counter-Reformation, who wrote the first Croatian grammar and translated the Bible and the Roman Rite into Croatian.
context_section_description: 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. In 1582 Marin Temperica wrote a report to general Claudio Acquaviva in which he emphasized the importance of the Slavic language understandable all over the Balkans. In this report of Temperica requested publishing of the Illyrian language dictionaries and grammars. Based on this request, Kašić provided such a textbook: he published Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo ("The Structure of the Illyrian Language in Two Books") in Rome in 1604. It was the first Slavic language 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.
  In periods 1612–1613 and 1618–1620 Kašić visited various regions of Ottoman Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. 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 catechisms 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.
caption: The first edition of Kašić's grammar in Rome in 1604.
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