Pjetër Bogdani
Encyclopedia
Pjetër Bogdani known in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 as Pietro Bogdano, is the most original writer of early literature in Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

. He is author of the Cuneus Prophetarum
Cuneus Prophetarum
Cuneus Prophetarum is a philosophical, theological and scientific treatise written by Pjetër Bogdani, an Albanian philosopher, originally published in Padua in 1685 in the Albanian and Latin language...

 (The Band of the Prophets), 1685, the first prose work of substance written originally in Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

 (i.e. not a translation).

Life and work

Born in Gur i Hasit, Kukës District
Kukës District
The District of Kukës is one of the thirty-six districts of Albania. It has a population 45,616 and area of 938 km². The district's only urban municipality is Kukës, which also is where the districts administrative headquarters are located...

, Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...

 about 1630, Bogdani was educated in the traditions of the Catholic church to which he devoted all his energy. His uncle Andrea Bogdani
Andrea Bogdani
Andrea Bogdani also known as Ndre Bogdani was an Albanian scholar and prelate of the Roman Catholic Church.Andrea Bogdani was born in the beginning of the 17th century near Prizren, Kosovo. From 1656 to 1677, when he resigned he served as Archbishop of Skopje, while from 1675 to 1677 he also...

 (ca. 1600-1683) was Archbishop of Skopje and author of a Latin-Albanian grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, now lost. Bogdani is said to have received his initial schooling from the Franciscans at Chiprovtsi
Chiprovtsi
Chiprovtsi is a small town and municipality in northwestern Bulgaria, administratively part of Montana Province. It lies on the shores of the river Ogosta in the western Balkan Mountains, very close to the Bulgarian-Serbian border...

 in modern northwestern Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 and then studied at the Illyrian College of Loreto near Ancona
Ancona
Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche region, in central Italy, with a population of 101,909 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region....

, as had his predecessors Pjetër Budi
Pjetër Budi
Pjetër Budi , known in Italian as Pietro Budi, was a bishop of Sapë and the author of four religious works in Albanian. He is a noted and respected figure of Albanian cultural history...

 and Frang Bardhi
Frang Bardhi
Frang Bardhi was an Albanian bishop and author of the early eras of Albanian literature.-Life:He was born in Kallmet or Nënshat in the northern Albanian Zadrima region near Lezhë...

. From 1651 to 1654 he served as a parish priest in Pult
Pult
Pult is a municipality in the Shkodër District, Shkodër County, northwestern Albania....

 and from 1654 to 1656 studied at the College of the Propaganda Fide
Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples
The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome is the congregation of the Roman Curia responsible for missionary work and related activities...

 in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 where he graduated as a doctor of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

. In 1656, he was named Bishop of Shkodra, a post he held for twenty-one years, and was also appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Antivari (Bar
Bar, Montenegro
Bar is a coastal town in Montenegro. It has a population of 17,727...

) until 1671.

During the most troubled years of the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

-Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n war, 1664-1669, he took refuge in the villages of Barbullush and Rjoll near Shkodra. A cave near Rjoll, in which he took refuge, still bears his name. Eventually he was captured by the Ottomans and imprisoned in the fort of Shkodër. The bishop of Durrës, Shtjëfen Gaspëri later reported to the Propaganda Fide that he was rescued by the brothers Pepë and Nikollë Kastori. In 1677, he succeeded his uncle as Archbishop of Skopje and Administrator of the Kingdom of Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

. His religious zeal and patriotic fervour kept him at odds with Turkish forces, and in the atmosphere of war and confusion which reigned, he was obliged to flee to Ragusa (Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...

), from where he continued on to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 and Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

, taking his manuscripts with him. In Padua he was cordially received by Cardinal Gregorio Barbarigo, Bishop of Padua at that time, whom he had served in Rome. Cardinal Barbarigo was responsible for the church affairs in the East and as such he had a keen interest in the cultures of the orient, including Albania. The cardinal had also founded a printing press in Padua, the Tipografia del Seminario, which served the needs of oriental languages and had fonts for Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 and Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

. Barbarigo was thus well disposed, willing and able to assist Bogdani in the latter's historic undertaking.

After arranging for the publication of the Cuneus Prophetarum, Bogdani returned to the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

 in March 1686 and spent the next years promoting resistance to the armies of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

, in particular in Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

. He and his vicar
Vicar
In the broadest sense, a vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior . In this sense, the title is comparable to lieutenant...

 Toma Raspasani
Toma Raspasani
Toma or Tomë Raspasani was an Albanian Franciscan monk and vicar.- Life :Born in Skopska Crna Gora in 1648 after studying in Italy he was appointed parish priest in Prizren in 1679. Later he served as the vicar of Pjetër Bogdani, Archbishop of Skopje...

 played a leading role in the pro-Austrian movement in Kosovo during the Great Turkish War
Great Turkish War
The Great Turkish War refers to a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and contemporary European powers, then joined into a Holy League, during the second half of the 17th century.-1667–1683:...

. He contributed a force of 6,000 Albanian soldiers to the Austrian army which had arrived in Pristina
Pristina
Pristina, also spelled Prishtina and Priština is the capital and largest city of Kosovo. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous municipality and district....

 and accompanied it to capture Prizren
Prizren
Prizren is a historical city located in southern Kosovo. It is the administrative center of the eponymous municipality and district.The city has a population of around 131,247 , mostly Albanians...

. There, however, he and much of his army were met by another equally formidable adversary, the plague. Bogdani returned to Pristina but succumbed to the disease there in December 1689. His nephew, Gjergj Bogdani, reported in 1698 that his uncle's remains were later exhumed by Turkish
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 and Tatar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...

 soldiers and fed to the dogs in the middle of the square in Pristina. So ended one of the great figures of early Albanian culture, the writer often referred to as the father of Albanian prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...

.

Poetry

It was in Padua in 1685 that the Cuneus Prophetarum, his vast treatise on theology, was published in Albanian and Italian with the assistance of Cardinal Barbarigo. Bogdani had finished the Albanian version ten years earlier but was refused permission to publish it by the Propaganda Fide which ordered that the manuscript be translated first, no doubt to facilitate the work of the censor. The full title of the published version is:

"Cvnevs prophetarvm de Christo salvatore mvndi et eivs evangelica veritate, italice et epirotice contexta, et in duas partes diuisa a Petro Bogdano Macedone, Sacr. Congr. de Prop. Fide alvmno, Philosophiae & Sacrae Theologiae Doctore, olim Episcopo Scodrensi & Administratore Antibarensi, nunc vero Archiepiscopo Scvporvm ac totivs regni Serviae Administratore"

(The Band of the Prophets Concerning Christ, Saviour of the World and his Gospel Truth, edited in Italian and Epirotic and divided into two parts by Pjetër Bogdani of Macedonia, student of the Holy Congregation of the Propaganda Fide, doctor of philosophy and holy theology, formerly Bishop of Shkodra and Administrator of Antivari and now Archbishop of Skopje and Administrator of all the Kingdom of Serbia).


The Cuneus Prophetarum was printed in the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

 as used in Italian, with the addition of the same Cyrillic characters employed by Pjetër Budi and Frang Bardhi. Bogdani seems therefore to have had access to their works. During his studies at the College of the Propaganda Fide, he is known to have requested Albanian books from the college printer: "five copies of the Christian Doctrine and five Albanian dictionaries," most certainly the works of Budi and Bardhi. In a report to the Propaganda Fide in 1665, he also mentions a certain Euangelii in Albanese (Gospels in Albanian) of which he had heard, a possible reference to Buzuku's missal
Gjon Buzuku
Gjon Buzuku was an Albanian Catholic clergyman who wrote the first known printed book in Albanian.Gjon Buzuku was born in the village of Ljare in the Bar district, close to Northern Albania , then Ottoman Empire. He probably lived in or near Venice, Italy...

 of 1555.

The Cuneus Prophetarum was published in two parallel columns, one in Albanian and one in Italian, and is divided into two volumes, each with four sections (scala). The first volume, which is preceded by dedications and eulogies in Latin, Albanian, Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

 and Italian, and includes two eight-line poems in Albanian, one by his cousin Luca Bogdani and one by Luca Summa, deals primarily with themes from the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

: i) How God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

 created man
Man
The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...

, ii) The prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

s and their metaphors concerning the coming of the Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

, iii) The lives of the prophets and their prophecies, iv) The songs of the ten Sibyls. The second volume, entitled De vita Jesu Christi salvatoris mundi (On the life of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

, saviour of the world), is devoted mostly to the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

: i) The life of Jesus Christ, ii) The miracles of Jesus Christ, iii) The suffering and death of Jesus Christ, iv) The resurrection and second coming of Christ. This section includes a translation from the Book of Daniel
Book of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a book in the Hebrew Bible. The book tells of how Daniel, and his Judean companions, were inducted into Babylon during Jewish exile, and how their positions elevated in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The court tales span events that occur during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar,...

, 9. 24-26, in eight languages: Latin, Greek, Armenian, Syriac
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...

, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian and Albanian, and is followed by a chapter on the life of the Antichrist
Antichrist
The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...

, by indices in Italian and Albanian and by a three-page appendix on the Antichità della Casa Bogdana (Antiquity of the House of the Bogdanis).

The work was reprinted twice under the title L'infallibile verità della cattolica fede, Venice 1691 and 1702 (The infallible truth of the Catholic faith).

The Cuneus Prophetarum is considered to be the masterpiece of early Albanian literature
Albanian literature
The Albanian literature is the literature written by Albanians.-Renaissance:The expansion of the Ottoman Empire pushed many Albanians from their homeland during the period of the Western European Renaissance humanism...

 and is the first work in Albanian of full artistic and literary quality. In scope, it covers philosophy, theology and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 (with digressions on geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

, astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

, physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

). With its poetry and literary prose, it touches on questions of aesthetic and literary theory. It is a humanist work of the Baroque Age
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 steeped in the philosophical traditions of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, St Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

, and St Thomas Aquinas. Bogdani's fundamental philosophical aim is a knowledge of God, an unravelling of the problem of existence, for which he strives with reason and intellect.

Bogdani's talents are certainly most evident in his prose. In his work we encounter for the first time what may be considered an Albanian literary language. As such, he may justly bear the title of father of Albanian prose. His modest religious poetry is, nonetheless, not devoid of interest. The corpus of his verse are the Songs of the Ten Sibyls (the Cumaean, Libyan, Delphic, Persian, Erythraean, Samian, Cumanian, Hellespontic, Phrygian, and Tiburtine), which are imbued with the Baroque penchant for religious themes and Biblical allusions.

Legacy

Pjetër Bogdani is depicted on the obverse
Obverse and reverse
Obverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags , seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, obverse means the front face of the object and reverse...

 of the Albanian 1000 lekë
Albanian lek
The lek is the official currency of Albania. It is subdivided into 100 qindarka , although qindarka are no longer issued.-Names:...

banknote issued since 1996.

External links

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