Priest Martinac () was a 15th-century

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

n Glagolite scribe,

calligrapher Calligraphy () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an exp ...

and illuminator. He originated from the Lapčan family. In 1484–1494 in Grobnik he copied the ''Drugi novljanski brevijar'' ("The Second Novi Vinodolski Breviary") for the Pauline monastery in

Novi Vinodolski Novi Vinodolski (, often also called Novi or ''Novi del Vinodol'' o ''Novi in Valdivino'' in Italian) is a town on the Adriatic Sea coast in Croatia, located south of Crikvenica, Selce and Bribir and north of Senj. The population of Novi is 3,9 ...

, a Glagolitic codex in 500 folios. Column gaps were filled with his writings. The most famous is the one from 1493 – ''Zapis popa Martinca'' ("The Record of Father Martinac") in which he describes the difficult situation in Croatia after the defeat of the Croatian nobility at the Battle of Krbava Field. That record is attested in folios 267 a–d and is written in a mixture of a Croatian vernacular and

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

. It is inspired by the biblical

Book of Judith The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic Church, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Christian Old Testament of the Bible but Development of the Hebrew Bible canon, excluded from the ...

and describes the atrocities of

Ottoman Turks The Ottoman Turks () were a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group in Anatolia. Originally from Central Asia, they migrated to Anatolia in the 13th century and founded the Ottoman Empire, in which they remained socio-politically dominant for the e ...

as they as "flocked unto the people of Croatia" (''nalegoše na ezikь hrvatski''). Martinac's account of the battle is generally recognized as the beginnings of Croatian patriotic poetry.

Gallery

File:SecondNovljBrev.jpg, ''Drugi Novljanski Brevijar'', 1484–1494 File:Zapis popa Martinca.jpg, ''Zapis popa Martinca'', 1493

References

Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 15th-century Croatian Roman Catholic priests Medieval European scribes Manuscript illuminators 15th-century Croatian writers {{Croatia-reli-bio-stub