VIDEO: Oldest incunabulum in Croatia is discovered in Zadar

St. Francis Monastery in Zadar (Photo: Maestralno/Public domain)

ZAGREB, 24 Jan (Hina) – The guardian of the St. Francis Monastery in Zadar, Friar Stipe Nosić, three days ago discovered the oldest incunabulum in Croatia, long thought to be lost, and he made his discovery public on Thursday.

“Among the roughly 100 incunabula held in our Franciscan monasteries, this is the oldest. It is a fragment of just four pages of the Latin Bible (Vulgate), printed in 1462 in Mainz at the press of Johannes Fust and Peter Schöffer,” said Nosić.

He explained that the text, printed on two parchment sheets, was first registered in the monastery library in 1916 by the antiquarian and bibliophile Ernst Philip Goldschmidt from Vienna.

“This incunabulum was also listed in Josip Badalić’s book ‘Inkunabule u Narodnoj Republici Hrvatskoj’ (Incunabula in the People’s Republic of Croatia) under the library signature of St. Francis Monastery, ‘I – 8’. Scholars Šime Jurić and Vatroslav Frkin wrote about it in 1985 and 1990, but it is unclear whether they actually saw it,” he added.

Nosić also noted that the Franciscans, who have lived in the St. Francis Monastery in Zadar for the past 20 years, did not know where it was located. “For this reason, the Zadar conservators, in the 2010 inventory of the monastery’s art collection, noted that it was missing,” he said.

The recovered fragments include a passage from the Book of Amos and a leaf from the Gospel of Mark, with hand-painted initials in black and red, typical of the earliest printed books.

“There is really no price that can be put on this incunabulum. It is invaluable for Croatian culture, as it is universally recognised as the oldest printed book in Croatia,” Nosić said.