Opposition, Consolidation, Reformation

Opposition to the Settlement

In the mid- 16th century the opposition organized against the “Strangers“. The Lower Austrian rank petitioned Kaiser Maximilian II to forbid further Croatian immigration, to replace the Croatian settlers with Germans, and not to admit them to official posts. After initial concern, in December 1573 Maximilian II made a secret decree, in which he answered the group’s demands and ordered a general legal discrimination of the Croatian subjects.

Consolidation Phase

After a turbulent time of wandering and settling in completely or mostly desolate villages, or at times in new establishments (particularly in South Gradisce), a phase of economic and cultural consolidation followed.

The Gradisce Croatians brought various Croatian dialects from the cakavian, kajkavian und stokavian groups with them. Thus colloquial speech was observably different from village to another. Even written Gradisce Croatian, standardized in the 19th century, is considerably different than the modern written language of the Croatian Republic. The Croatian settlers also brought their old Slavic religious traditions with them, including the so-called Glagolitic liturgy. Proof of this is the Gradisce Croatians’ oldest written document, a handwritten entry in a Mass book in Klimpuh/Klingenbach from the year 1654. However traces of the Glagolitic language disappear quickly.

Reformation and Counterreformation - Birth of the Written Language

During the reformation, various Croatian speaking Protestant teachers and theologians were active in Gradisce, who authored the first publications in Croatian in Gradisce. The most important of these was Pastor Gregor Pythiraeus-Mekinich, who wrote two Protestant graduals in between 1609 and 1611 in Deutschkreutz, Middle Gradisce. The graduals, written in Croatian, were called “Dusevne peszne”. The activities of the Croatian Reformists had, however, only passing success in Gradisce. Nonetheless their literary fruits were the beginning of written Croatian in Gradisce.

The written Croatian language had its first heyday during the Counterreformation in the 18th century, when Bishops and Jesuits with Croatian roots brought religious works to the people. The popular piety of the Croatians was strengthened through the founding of countless new churches of pilgrimage, like the Church of Our Lady (Zvetica za Jezerom) or Maria Loretto (Lovreta) in Eisenstadt. From the flood of Croatian religious literature from this time, the works of Eberhard Maria Kragel, Ladislav Valentich and Laurentius Bogovics are particularly worth mentioning. The latter wrote the “Hisa Zlata”, the classic Gradisce Croation prayer book, which is still widely used today.

The written Gradisce Croatian language, and likewise most family names, were written according to the rules of Hungarian orthography. These names are preserved in their Hungarian spelling today. Typical name-endings are “-its”, “-ich” and “-ics”, all Hungarian spellings of the Croatian "-ic".

 

Cultural and Linguistic Development

by Johannes Graf
courtesy by http://www.hrvatskicentar.at/

2010.12.17