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 |
