Everything about Gjon Buzuku totally explained
Gjon Buzuku (
16th century) was an
Albanian
Catholic clergyman who wrote the first known printed book in
Albanian.
Gjon Buzuku was born in the village of Ljare (Kraja) in Bar, Montenegro close to Northern Albania (Kraje is located on the shores of Lake Scutari). He probably lived in or near
Venice. There are claims that he was the
bishop of two
dioceses in north Albania or that he was a
monk.
From
March 22,
1554 to
January 5,
1555 he wrote a translation of the Catholic
missal into the
Gheg dialect of Albanian. He published it as a book of 188 pages. The
Apostolic Library in the
Vatican holds the only known copy of the book. It is missing the
frontispiece and the first 16 pages, which explains why the title and year of publication of the work are not known.
The book was discovered in
1740 by
Gjon Nikollë Kazazi, the Albanian
archbishop of
Skopje. In other libraries there are three photocopies from the original, one of them in
Tirana. In
1996, the librarians were not able to locate the book, which had been used in
1984 for the last time.
Eqrem Çabej wrote a monograph on the book in
1968.
The place the book was printed is thought to be either
Venice or
Shkodër.
The book contains the liturgies of the main
holidays. There are also texts of prayers and rituals and
catechetical texts. Every page contains two columns. The initials are decorated. The grammar and the vocabulary are more archaic than in the Gheg text from the
17th century. The text is very valuable from the viewpoint of the history of language. The vocabulary is quite rich. The archaic text is easily read due to the circumstance that it's mainly a translation of known texts, in particular the
Bible. Most of the
Gospels of Matthew,
Luke and
John were translated in the book. It also contains passages from the
Psalms, the
Book of Isaiah, the
Book of Jeremiah, the
Letters to the Corinthians, and many illustrations.
The
orthography is peculiar. The
Latin alphabet with some additional letters is used. The consequent character of orthography and grammar seems to indicate an earlier tradition of writing.
In Albanian, the book is known as
Meshari (
The Missal). All we know about the author is from the book's
colophon written by Buzuku himself in Albanian. Language used is a pre-runner to the Official Gheg Albanian Language. However, it's clear that the dialect of Malësia e Madhe (The Great Highland) was used. Even today one can hear words and expressions from Malësia older people that sound as if jumping from the pages of the missal.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gjon Buzuku'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://gjon_buzuku.totallyexplained.com">Gjon Buzuku Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
