You’ve learned something about the Glagolitic alphabet, but how does it look like when it’s written on one of the most famous monuments in Croatian history? To answer your thoughts and questions, here is a short story of the Baška tablet. In 1851 a young priest named Petar Dorčić found an interesting item in the old Romanic church of St. Lucy in Jurandvor, a small village on Krk island. The item was a huge tablet, weighing around 800kg, written in the Glagolitic script. What was written on the tablet, after careful considerations of language experts, was a text that had a purpose of being the certification of the donation made by king Zvonimir to the Benedict monastery of St. Lucy. At first, it doesn’t seem anything new or weird, but the tablet was the very first document known to Croatian history that mentions the title „Croatian king“ as well as the borders of Croatian kingdom of that time. Although there were some documents from previous eras that mention Croatian kingdom, most of them were written in Latin, and this is the first known document that says the Croatian kingdom and the Croatian king in Croatian language and alphabet. The tablet is estimated to originate from the year 1100 and today resides in the Croatian Academy of Science and Art in Zagreb. It is one of the very popular souvenirs that you can get all around Croatia such as magnets, posters, small sculptures, etc.
When around Opatija, Rijeka or any place in Kvarner – do not miss the opportunity to see one of the most important artifacts of Croatian history !!!
