Illyrian (South Slavic)

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Illyrian and Slavic were the commonly used names throughout the Early Modern Period of the Western South Slavic dialects, or, sometimes, of the South Slavic languages as a whole. [1] It was used especially in the territories that are now Croatia during the 19th century. [2]

The term was most widely used by speakers in Dalmatia, who used it to refer to their own language. It was used by both Catholic and Protestant writers. [2] Some, such as Juraj Šižgorić writing in 1487, extended the term to South Slavic languages as a whole; his views are that "the people from Bohemia to the Adriatic and Black seas down to Epirus speak the same language, Illyrian." [2] 16th-century prelate Antun Vrančić also used the term to embrace all South Slavs, and noted that the people of Belgrade (today in Serbia) spoke Illyrian – ″The local inhabitants who speak the Illyrian language call it Slavni Biograd, which means ‘renowned’ or ‘glorious,’Thracians" and "Bulgarians". [2] Writing in 1592, bishop Peter Cedolini applied the term even more widely: he believed all the Slavs had a single common language, which he called Illyrian. [2] Some used the term "Slavic" when writing in proto-Serbo-Croatian and "Illyrian" as a synonym when writing in Romance languages. [2]

Various 16th-century travellers in Dalmatia reported that local church services were not carried out in Latin but Illyrian. [2] In general, no clear distinction was made between the vernacular language and Church Slavonic – names such as Illyrian, Slavonic, Slavic, Croatian, and Dalmatian were applied to both lects without distinction. [2]

Jesuit Bartol Kašić, as part of his missionary work, sought to find a common South Slavic language that would be understandable to all. [2] He initially turned to a form of Chakavian, which he named Illyrian; later he switched to Shtokavian, which he instead called Slavic (slovinski), having already used the name Illyrian with a different signification. [2] In 1604 Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (the structure of the Illyrian language in two books; 200 pages) was published in Rome. This grammar was used as a textbook by Jesuits who had been sent on a mission in the Balkans. Bartol Kašić adopted the South Slavic dialect of grammar in Shtokavian, signling out the subdialect of Dubrovnik that was his vernacular. [3]

As a national term, "Illyrian" had no fixed meaning; sometimes it was applied to Slavs as a whole, sometimes South Slavs as a whole, sometimes only Catholic South Slavs, while occasionally (particularly among certain Habsburg officials) it was specifically applied to the Orthodox Serbs. [2] A notion of pan-Slavic "Illyrian" national identity, often with "Illyrian" as its language, remained strong among intellectuals in Croatia from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, eventually culminating in the pan-South Slavic Illyrian movement of the 1800s. [2] Many saw themselves as part of a narrow Croat community within a much broader Illyrian nation. [2]

Notes

  1. Florence Lydia Graham (2020) Turkisms in South Slavonic Literature. Turkish Loanwords in 17th- and 18th-century Bosnian and Bulgarian Franciscan Sources. Oxford University Press, ISBN   9780198857730, p. 17.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Fine, John V. A. (2006) When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods, pages 236–239, 255–264, 270–271, 274, 276–278
  3. Bartol KAŠIĆ (Pag, 15. VIII. 1575. - Rim, 28. XII.1650.), Institutiones linguae lllyricae (1604)

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