The directory «Plots»

Ritter Vitezović Pavao
(1652—1713)

Pavao Ritter Vitezović, writer, poet of verses written in Croatian and Latin, writer of treatises, historian, lexicographer, printer and publisher, descended from the family of a border-land officer of Alsatian origin. He was born on January 7, 1652 in Senj, where he started his education to continue it in Zagreb, at the Jesuit gymnasium with Juraj Habdelić among his teachers. After that he went to Rome and then to Wagensperk where he stayed with Johann Weikhard Valvasor. There he learned many skills connected with the art of printing. He was the representative of Senj at the parliamentary sessions in Sopron, where he managed to obtain from the king the chart granting rights to his native town. Vitezović served under Banus Nikola Erdödy, and up to 1699 participated in the wars against the Turks. In 1691 he was appointed district vice-prefect for Lika, and was awarded the title of the “golden knight”. In 1694 he took over the running of a printing shop where he started printing Croatian and Latin books. Among the first books he had published was the historical chronicle Kronika ali spomen vsega svieta vikov, which aroused great interest for Croatian history. A.Kačić Miošić used the chronicle when writing his work Korabljica (small sailing-ship). Vitezović used to publish calendars, and also published a collection of proverbs in verse, Priričnik, which was later being re-printed all through the 19th century. He reacted to the current events, so he published Senjčica, a booklet of verses where he described the victory of the people of Senj against the French navy, and later a similar booklet Novljančica which was lost. He then wrote a grammar of the Croatian language which had unfortunately not been preserved. Only the second part of his Croatian-Latin and Latin-Croatian dictionary survived. Under the peace treaty of Karlovac (1699) he was made member of the committee in charge of defining the boundaries of Croatia, Bosnia and Dalmatia . He then wrote and published his book Croatia rediviva, hoping that, under the protectorate of King Leopold, those boundaries which he considered just and based on history would be determined. His other works from this period are Stemmatographia, the draft and preliminary groundwork for his fundamental encyclopedic work De aris et focis Illyriorum. In 1706 a fire destroyed his printing shop, and owing to a property dispute he was deprived of the management of the state printing works. His family suffered and Vitezović, hurt, impoverished and depressed left for Vienna. He died there in strained circumstances and poverty on January 20, 1713. The Hungarian Chamber took over his papers. Queen Maria Theresa issued a decree by which his papers were returned to Zagreb and handed over to Adam Baltazar Krčelić to help him in his historical work. Vitezović published his first poems in Croatian in Valvasor’s work Die Ehre des Herzogsthum Krains: Pozdrav Hrvatice and Pozdrav Dalmatinke (Honour of the Dukedom of Krain: the Croatian woman’s greeting and the Dalmatian woman’s greeting). He published Odiljenje Sigetsko (Saying farewell to Sziget) in Linz in 1684, when he also changed his German family name Ritter into the Croatized version Vitezović. In these poems the defenders of Sziget are saying farewell to the city just as the city is parting from both the world and the defenders. The finest among the poems is Gospodična Sofija i oral (Miss Sophie and the eagle). Vitezović also wrote numerous Latin verses, primarily anagrams addressed to eminent people, and then published these under the title Epistulae metricae. In Stemmatographia (heraldry), along with the copperplate engravings of each particular coat of arms, there are Latin hexameters giving descriptions and meanings of the signs on the coats of arms of the countries which, in his opinion, belonged to Illyria, i.e., his ‘revived’ Croatia. He had also written Latin verses to relate the history of the two blood-stained centuries of Croatia fighting against the Turks - Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo (1702). In this book Vitezović gave vent to his feelings of love for his native land. Thanks to Pavao Ritter Vitezović, the library of the Slovenian polyhistorian Valvasor was brought to Zagreb, and it became the nucleus from which the Metropolitana has been developed. Vitezović also put the printing shop which printed the necessary Croatian and Latin books into working order, and in this way Zagreb proved that it was the veritable metropolis of Croatia. Vitezović also suggested certain graphic reforms of the Latin script which then prompted Ljudevit Gaj to introduce a simple and practical Latin script that he proposed in 1830, and which, with some small changes, is still in use nowadays.

Josip Bratulić

Croatia, 2002, Pavao Ritter Vitezović

Croatia, 2002.12.13, Zagreb. Pavao Ritter Vitezović