Croatia celebrates 30 years of independence… by stealing a dozen Italian historical figures

by Emanuele Mastrangelo – 23/02/2021

Source: History On The Net

 

Ius soli retroactive in Zagreb, where a dozen Italians (plus several Serbs, Slovenes and Austro-Germans, some very famous, as we will see) were "enlisted" as "greats of CROATIAN history". This is the spectacle we are witnessing at the great exhibition for the thirtieth anniversary of Independence, at the Meštrović Pavilion in the capital. The exhibition is dedicated to 38 "great Croatian personalities who changed the world". They were chosen, the curators say, "because they were of Croatian origin, or because they were born or worked in the territories of today's Croatia considered their homeland».

Well, it is time to go and see who some of these "great Croats" are. Among them we find at least a dozen Istrians and Dalmatians whose national identity is at best ambiguous. That has always been a border land - and it is objective - where multilingualism was the master. But it is not possible to forget that the Language Italian was the current language at least until the mid-nineteenth century, and alongside it coexisted dialects Latin and Slavic. Those who were literate were certainly Italian speakers (not necessarily ethnicity Italian, but certainly of Language Italian) and only with the Habsburg occupation did German begin to appear alongside Italian as a common language. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Slavic languages ​​were mostly vernacular. In some cases – such as that of Chakavian, one of the three dialects of Croatian – Slavic grammatical structures with large chunks of vocabulary taken from Latin, Venetian and Italian.

Let us now analyze the characters that Zagreb claims to be considered “Croatian”.

Marco Polo

The first name is a bomb: Marco Polo (1254 -1324). The great Venetian traveler, one of the very first Italians to open the way to the exploration of the extra-European world, has been considered “Croatian” for years. Reason? An unproven birth in Curzola (which, however, in 1254 was firmly part of the Serenissima). Marco Polo “Croatian” is a real historical theft, complete with a fake “birthplace” of the explorer on the island of Curzola. However, despite denials also by Croatian academics Zagreb's chauvinism does not let go of this fanciful thesis.

San Girolamo

Sophronius Eusebius Jerome (347-419/420) is considered "Croatian" only because he was born in a small village of what was then Roman Illyria, Stridon. Among the Fathers of the Church, Jerome is the translator into Latin of the Greek and Hebrew scriptures. Needless to say, the Saint could not have had any blood or linguistic ties with the Croats, having lived about three centuries before the arrival of the first Slav in the region.

Pope Sixtus V

Saint Jerome brings us directly to the next character, considered “Croatian” probably only because during his ecclesiastical career he held the office of Cardinal Presbyter of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni, a Roman church patron of the Croats (Croatians and Slavonians are synonyms). We are talking about Felice Piergentile from the Marche, better known as Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590).

Roger Boscovich

In palmares of the "Croats" a good number of Dalmatians end up there, especially those from Ragusa. Ragusa is one of the most border cities: an Italian municipality that lived in competition with Venice (which occupied it between the 13th and 14th centuries, shaping its institutions), Ragusa is considered the "Fifth Maritime Republic". However, it is objectively a city with many identities, in which the Italian element coexists (moreover, an Italian immense Venetian, precisely because of the rivalry with the Serenissima) of the ruling class with the Slavic ones (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin) and Balkan in general (Morlach, Wallachian, Greek, Armenian and Albanian). At the end of 1500 and then in the following century Ragusa suffered two devastating earthquakes. The city never recovered from these two blows and slowly the Italian element was overwhelmed by the Slavic one, despite the perfect coexistence of the two. When Napoleon put an end to the thousand-year life of the maritime republic, between 1804 and 1806, in Ragusa Italian was still the official language, even if a large part of the population commonly spoke Slavic languages.

Children of this border town, many Ragusa residents can be considered both Italian and Slavic. And among these, the most famous is undoubtedly the astronomer and mathematician Ruggero Boscovich (1711-1787), born in Ragusa to an Italian mother and a Bosnian father, who moved to Italy at the age of 14. Boscovich, who was a Catholic priest, is one of the greatest intellectuals of his time: mathematician, astronomer, man of faith and science. He was undoubtedly bilingual (he also spoke Serbo-Croatian, but in his family he preferred Italian), he wrote most of his scientific works in Latin – the language of science at the time – but also in Italian and French. In his correspondence with Voltaire, the philosopher wrote to him in Italian. He was a member of the Accademia dei Quaranta, otherwise known as the Italian Society. It is interesting that even the Serbs consider Boscovich as “their” scientist, since his father was of Serbian origin. Boscovich preferred to define himself as “Dalmatian”, thus claiming a regional rather than national origin (a very… Italian attitude!). It should also be noted that of his five brothers, two – Anna and Pietro – were good Slavic poets, while another – Bartolomeo – was a scholar and poet, but of Italian language.

Blessed Cotrugli

Benedetto Cotrugli (1416-1469), also from Ragusa, was a merchant and diplomat as well as an economist ante litteram. Unlike Boscovich, whose hybrid Italo-Slavic nature is objective, Cotrugli is yet another case of robbery in all respects, since throughout his life he wrote and expressed himself in Italian: he signed Blessed Cotrugli o Benedictus Cotrullus (o from Cotrullis) and the Slavic name – Benedict Kotruljevic – it would in fact be a nineteenth-century invention.

George Baglivi

Another Ragusan is the anatomist Giorgio Baglivi (1668-1707). His original name was Giorgio Armeno, because according to some historians his father belonged to that ethnic group, while his mother, Anna de Lupis, was Italian. Orphaned, he moved to Puglia, where he was adopted by the doctor Pietro Angelo Baglivi, who gave him his new surname. He was one of the greatest doctors of his time but he always practiced only in Italy and Western Europe and wrote all his works in Latin. Nevertheless, Croatians consider him the father of medical science in their country…

Marine Ghetaldi

The mathematician Marino Ghetaldi (1568-1626) also belonged to a noble family from Dubrovnik. All his works were written in Latin and there is no reason to think that he could be considered a Croat. Moreover, there is no evidence of his Slavicized name – Marin Getaldić – before the 40s, when the nascent Croatian national identity was taking its first steps. And to look for some noble father…

Marco Marulo

The poet from Split Marco Marulo (1450-1524) is another case of ambiguous identity. The Croats consider him "their Dante" only because almost nothing of his production in Italian has survived, even though Ariosto called him "divine". The most logical hypothesis is to consider him a border figure, with an undefined national identity (also because the Croatian identity in 1500 simply did not exist, while the Italian one was already established). He was certainly from a noble family and his father and brothers were very loyal to Venice. In any case, his poem in the "Illyrian language" as Dalmatian Serbo-Croatian was called at the time, is considered a notable work.

Fausto Veranzio

Not far from Split, in Sebenico, another man of letters was born whose nationality the Croats claim: Fausto Veranzio (1551-1617). Veranzio was bishop of Csanad, linguist, historian and inventor (among other things, he was responsible for the parachute, the cable-stayed bridge and the suspension bridge). A polyglot, he spoke Italian, Latin, German, Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian. Cesare Cantù in his “History of the Italians” defines him as a “Venetian from Sebenico”. Niccolò Tommaseo says that Veranzio was given “to Italian civilization”.

Julius Clovio

The miniaturist Giulio Clovio (1498-1578) is an example of an uncertain identity determined by the Italian cultural predominance. Born in Novi, in Croatian Dalmatia, Vasari tells us that his parents were of Macedonian origin. In all likelihood, therefore, he was a “Morlach” or “Wallachian” of those who fled before the advance of the Turks in the Balkans. Novi di Dalmazia was a city with a Venetian-Italian presence even if it never belonged to the Serenissima. However, his predisposition for the arts meant that Italy became Clovio's mecca. He studied with Giulio Romano and worked for the Contarini and especially for the Farnese. He was the protector of the Spanish painter El Greco. Considered one of the most eminent miners of his time, even if often defined as “Croatian” or “Illyrian” (for example on his grave) or “Macedonian”, there is no doubt that he spent his entire life in the Italian cultural environment, being a full part of it. It is very sad that the Wikimedia Commons page with his works reports the name translated into Croatian – Julije Klović – even though he had signed with his Italian name all his life and the Slavicized form of his name is a recent creation.

Andrea Meldolla

The Dalmatian painter Andrea Meldolla (1510-1563) is another example of how the ius soli cannot easily be applied to those lands. Although born in Zara (others say in Sebenico) he was from a family from Romagna. Throughout his life he was nicknamed “Lo Schiavone” precisely because he was born in Dalmatia, despite his Italian origins and his career entirely in Italy. Also in this case the name “Andrija Medulić” is a modern invention from the mid-nineteenth century.

Francesco Patrizi

The philosopher Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597) was born in Cherso. The scant biographical information about him comes from a letter written (in Italian) by his own hand: his family would be partly of Bosnian origin, having escaped the Turkish advance. However, since he was a child he learned to read, presumably in Italian. He knew Croatian, however, because he was a member of the brotherhood of San Girolamo in Rome, which was open to “Illyrians, Dalmatians and Slavs”. In any case, he lived and worked in Italy and wrote his works in Italian and Latin and the Croatian name appears to be yet another modern translation.

John Biagio Luppis

Giovanni Biagio Luppis (1813-1875), inventor of the torpedo, was born in Fiume when the city was part of the Napoleonic empire. He was, however, a faithful subject of the Austrian (and then Austro-Hungarian) empire to which Fiume returned with the Congress of Vienna. His parents were respectively originally from Parenzo – his father – and Ragusa – his mother. A naval officer, for his services and inventions he was created baron in 1869 with the title of “Von Rammer” (of the Sinker). Of Italian language and culture, but a loyal Habsburg soldier, he died in Milan, where he is buried.

Appendix: Other “robbed”

Among the people that Zagreb considers "Croatian" there are also people of great historical importance. However, they have nothing "Croatian" about them except the current geographical location of their birth role.

The first “Croatian” was the philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of Anthroposophy. Of German family and culture, he lived his entire life between Austria, Germany and Switzerland, where he died and is buried. All the works of this great thinker between the two centuries are written in German.

Then there is the pioneer of space exploration Herman Potočnik (1892-1929). Born in Pola to a Slovenian family, he grew up and lived in Austria. He was an engineer officer in the Imperial and Royal Army and his only work is written and signed with the German pseudonym by which he is universally known, Hermann Noordung: in this treatise – “Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums – Der Raketenmotor” (“The Space Navigation Problem – The Jet Engine“) – launched the idea of ​​the space station (in particular the wheel station, with which to have artificial gravity thanks to the centrifugal force of rotation) and the geostationary satellite.

Finally, there could not be left out the physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), born in Smiljan, a village in Croatian Kraina at the time inhabited by Serbian population. His family was Orthodox. In 1891 Tesla obtained US citizenship after emigrating overseas.

Addendum

Croatia does its job: a small nation with almost no autonomous history (a small independent kingdom for a few decades around the year 30, then a Hungarian banovina, an Austrian military borderland, finally part of Yugoslavia and – apart from the parenthesis of Paveli's Kingdom of Croatia – only XNUMX years of independence) it rightly searches for its noble fathers. It does so by forcing history, certainly, but not differently from how other nations have done it, including ours, when they indiscriminately recruited in the past.

But the real wrong is not of those who take something, but of those who abandon it. And we must then ask ourselves why Italy has practically given up on defending its good right on these characters, as the case of Wikipedia - where the Croatian lobby reigns supreme - demonstrates. Woe to the vanquished, but even worse, woe to those who give up.