Maksimilijan Vrhovac (23 November 1752 in

Karlovac Karlovac () is a city in central Croatia. According to the 2011 census, its population was 55,705. Karlovac is the administrative centre of Karlovac County. The city is located on the Zagreb- Rijeka highway and railway line, south-west of Zagre ...

– 16 December 1827 in

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

) was the bishop of

. He was one of the ideological architects of the

Croatian national revival The Illyrian movement ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Ilirski pokret, Илирски покрет; sl, Ilirsko gibanje) was a pan-South-Slavic cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian inte ...

, and is notable for founding the

Maksimir Park Maksimir Park is the oldest public park in Zagreb, Croatia. It forms part of the city's cultural heritage and is a habitat for many different plant and animal species. History Founded in 1787, Maksimir Park was the first large public park in S ...

in 1787, one of the first major public parks in Southeast Europe. Vrhovac was a member of the

Freemasons Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

Family

His father, Aleksa, was captain of the frontier-guards near the Austrian- Ottoman border. For his merit, he was awarded with nobility by the Austrian empress

Maria Theresia Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina (german: Maria Theresia; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was ruler of the Habsburg dominions from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position ''suo jure'' (in her own right). ...

Education

After he graduated school in Graz, Vrhovac joined the army, but soon left when he realized that he did not qualify for this occupation. Instead, he joined the seminary in Zagreb. Vrhovac studied in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

, and became a vice-

rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

, and later rector, at the seminary in Zagreb, as well as a professor of

dogma Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Islam ...

at the Academy in Zagreb.

Emperor Joseph II Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: ''Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam''; 13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from November 29, 1780 un ...

promoted him to rector of the seminary in Pest before he returned to

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

as a bishop.

Promoter of "Illyrian" language

In 1808, Vrhovac requested the

Croatian Parliament The Croatian Parliament ( hr, Hrvatski sabor) or the Sabor is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of Croatia. Under the terms of the Croatian Constitution, the Sabor represents the people and is vested with legislative power. The Sabor ...

to open his library to the public. In the 1810s, he worked on translating the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

into the Kajkavian Croatian language. Other contributors in the program were Antun Vranić, Ivan Nepomuk Labaš, Ivan Gusić, Ivan Birling, Stjepan Korolija, and Tomaš Mikloušić. In 1810, he visited Vienna. During his stay,

Jernej Kopitar Jernej Kopitar, also known as Bartholomeus Kopitar (21 August 1780 – 11 August 1844), was a Slovene linguist and philologist working in Vienna. He also worked as the Imperial censor for Slovene literature in Vienna. He is perhaps best known f ...

requested that Vrhovac organize a collection of local songs, but this attempt was not successful. To promote the Ilyrian language, Vrhovac established a printing house and printed books on the

Kajkavian Kajkavian (Kajkavian noun: ''kajkavščina''; Shtokavian adjective: ''kajkavski'' , noun: ''kajkavica'' or ''kajkavština'' ) is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia, Gorski Kotar and nort ...

and

Štokavian Shtokavian or Štokavian (; sh-Latn, štokavski / sh-Cyrl, italics=no, штокавски, ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. It ...

dialects. Vrhovac continued to pursue his own perception of the language and people. After Napoleon captured the territory of Austria-Hungary, he issued a proclamation in 1813 to "natives across Sava" ( sh, prekosavskim domorocima), emphasizing that there were no more borders between Croats in Croatia, Dalmatia, and the Coastal region. After the defeat of Napoleon in Russia and the return of Austria-Hungary to its borders from 1806, the court in Vienna resented Vrhovac for his earlier behavior. Vrhovac was a distinguished opponent of the expansion of Hungarian influence to South Slavs. In 1814, Vrhovac's cannon Mahanović, following the instructions of Vrhovac, published a work titled ''Observationes circa croaticam ortho-graphiam'' without taking in consideration the position regarding čakavian being only a dialect of Croatian as presented by Jernej Kopitar. Nevertheless, Mahanović did somewhat follow the idea of Kopitar to develop a unified

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

for all South Slavic languages.

Footnotes

References

* Franjo Šanjek: "Kršćanstvo na hrvatskom prostoru" (Zagreb, Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1996, str. 406.) * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Vrhovac, Maksimilijan 1752 births 1827 deaths Roman Catholic bishops in the Austrian Empire People from Karlovac Bishops of Zagreb