Ivan Milčetić

Ivan Milčetić was born in Milčetići to parents Ivan and Helena.^[1] He began his primary school education in Dubašnica, but finished it in the vicinity of Pazin, continuing at the Rijeka Gymnasium. At Rijeka, one of his professors was Tadija Smičiklas, who had a strong influence on him.^[2]

About his acquaintance with the Glagolitic script, Milčetić wrote, "Glagolitism blossomed on Krk, and even in my house."^[a]

In his youth, Milčetić was a member of the Hrvatska čitaonica in Bogovići.^[3]

He was a subscriber of the Hrvatski Dom student society in 1877–1878.^[4][5]

After studying Slavistics in Prague and Zagreb, Milčetić found employment at the Zagreb Gymnasium.^[2]

When Milčetić was a university student, he did not return to his father's home, not being allowed to, but that of his poorer brother-in-law, but after a feud with his brother Mate over a college loan he stopped returning to Dubašnica except for one time with his wife in 1893 or 1894.^[3]

Some monks mistakenly believed that Milčetić became rich off his publications, and on one occasion had to return a manuscript before he could study it to a monk, who exclaimed "the brothers remain poor, while others enrich themselves".^[b] In reality, for his Hrvatski lucidar, Milčetić was paid 214 krone and 60 heller by the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and sciences, of which Milčetić gave 20 krone to Branko Drechsler, 10 to P. Petris, using the rest for teaching-related travels to Graz and Prague, and for the purchase of some works he needed.^[6]

Shortly after, he moved to Varaždin, where he met Štefanija Lendvaj, daughter of Varaždin residents Stjepan and Terezija Schleicher. At the age of 30 he married the 19 year old Štefanija in Saint Nicholas church [hr] on 8 May 1886, with his gymnasium coworker Franjo Pongračić and lawyer Pavao Čepulo as witnesses. Mijo Mužina, parish priest of Beli (later of Dubašnica),^[7] was the officiating priest.^[1][2]

In Varaždin he began a family and where he remained until his death.^[2]

In 1893, he became a corresponding member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.^[8]

He remained a paying member of the Old Church Slavonic Academy, although he was not a patron.^[9]

In 1909, he submitted a publication proposal to Matica hrvatska for a monograph Istria, Her Past and Present (Serbo-Croatian: Istra, njezina prošlost i sadašnjost), which he never completed thanks to the outbreak of WWI.^[8]

In the years leading up to and including the publication of the first part of his annotated library catalog of Glagolitic manuscripts Hrvatska glagoļska bibliografija in 1911, he was heavily preoccupied with manuscript collection and description. This first half he divided into 13 sections: missals, breviaries, psalters, lectionaries, ritualaria, fragments, partial liturgical books, works of theology, varia (especially miscellanies), homilies, history and law, verses and lexicon and grammar.^[2]

In his review of the bibliography, Vatroslav Jagić described it as a "very important if somewhat impenetrable work" that "opens the doors wide after the very incomplete bibliography of Kukuljević to the rich treasury of old Croatian Glagolitic literacy".^[c]

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Milčetić followed the example of the likes of Kopitar, Jagić, Miklosich, Rački, Vondrák and others in transcribing Glagolitic text with Cyrillic. This was primarily for practical reasons. It was both difficult to print Glagolitic text with the limited fonts available, and difficult to read for the majority even of specialists in the field of Slavistics, who rarely know Glagolitic. Miklosich himself found it slower, although his main reason was to increase readership. Ivan Črnčić [hr] preferred Latinic, employing the mixture of Latinic and Cyrillic used by Miklosich in his grammatical works. In his Hrvatska glagoļska bibliografija, Milčetić acknowledged the prevalence of Latinic, though he usually stressed there were a hundred million literate in Cyrillic. He pointed out that Cyrillic was capable of transliterating Glagolitic without modification or debate about correct orthography. Nevertheless, he opted for Latinic in his transcription of younger, generally marginal notes.^[10]

One contemporary influence on Milčetić's decision to use Cyrillic was an admiration for the continued publication of texts from Serbian manuscripts by the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, mainly by Vatroslav Jagić and Stojan Novaković. Since the death of Ivan Berčić [hr] and departure of Jagić abroad, Glagolitic was seldom used in the transcription of such texts.^[10]

In his Hrvatska glagoļska bibliografija, Milčetić promised to include in the appendix to the second part a catalogue and description of the Cyrillic manuscripts in the area. But WWI arrested future work on the catalogue, and such a catalogue of Cyrillic manuscripts in the Adriatic Littoral still does not exist. Despite that, he always transcribed Cyrillic marginal notes where he found them. His decision to include notes of both scripts set an important precedent for future descriptions.^[10]

In Cyrillic there is something originally Slavic, so as we do not lightly abandon our inherited Slavic customs, we cannot but look with some piety on Cyrillic as well, which was dear to our grandfathers, and therefore cannot be hated by us either.^[d]

Debate with Mužina

With a polemic written on 24 June 1903 and published anonymously in Naša sloga on 9 July,^[11] Milčetić's former friend Mijo Mužina, that Milčetić had not published more of Paval Bogović's chronicle, accusing Milčetić of not returning it when asked. Milčetić did return it, however, to his friend Pavao Milovčić,^[12] catechist in Dubašica,^[13] parish priest of Dubašnica, started a public dispute with him after refusing to read the Hrvatski lucidar he sent him because its Glagolitic text had been transcribed in Cyrillic. To an extent, the two had fallen out with one another earlier. Milčetić claimed it was because of a financial question, whereas Mužina claimed it was because of things he wrote about his brother Jura Mužina in some "books". As recently as 1896, Mužina had assisted Milčetić with his Ženidbeni običaji, but Mužina had become frustrated with him over a matter concerning the chronicle of Paval Bogović-Šimov in 1897.^[e] It was not enough to sour their relationship, however, so Milčetić sent Mužina a copy of his Hrvatski lucidar^[12] not long before Mužina published his polemic.^[3] In it, he related the death of Paval Bogović-Šimov,^[f] exalting the villager turned chronicler him for his equal literacy in Glagolitic and Latinic. Mužina accused Milčetić of taking a manuscript from him and never returning it, causing Bogović some distress. At length, he then criticised Milčetić's use of Cyrillic in its transcription, and his use of terms other than "Croatian" to describe its language, such as "Slavic".^[11]

Milčetić defended his use of Cyrillic in transcription as adherence to the scientific norm at the time, employing Miklosich's 1874 defence of his own use of Cyrillic in transcription, justifying it over Glagolitic because few scholars could read Glagolitic and because the Cyrillic typefaces available allowed for more accurate transcription than Glagolitic. Then he pointed out the irony of Mužina, still anonymous, refusing to read Cyrillic when Bogović himself was known to have been literate in Cyrillic. Milčetić recalled an occasion from around 1870 when he and Mužina's older brother Josip had returned home from afar with a Serbian book,^[g] which Milčetić made fun of when he saw Cyrillic, only to be reprimanded by the elder Mužina, "but that is our language!" (Serbo-Croatian: tr je to naš jezik!).^[12] He decried Mužina's selectivity in referring to him as a "thief" of documents from Krk for borrowing them when both Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski and Martin Štiglić had done so from Dubašnica, in addition to Ivan Berčić, Ivan Črnčić, and Dragutin Parčić [hr].^[6]

In a response dated 30 August 1903 and published in Naša sloga, Mužina began with personal attacks, but eventually defended himself from the accusation of hating Cyrillic, paying his respect to it inasmuch as it was used by Croats, but continuing to arguing Milčetić ought to have transcribed Glagolitic text in Glagolitic, unaware of the deficiencies of the Glagolitic typefaces available. In contrast to his brief defence of Cyrillic, Mužina asked Milčetić rhetorically why he called the language of Cyrillic books "ours" (Serbo-Croatian: naš) and not "Croatian", accusing him of clumsily using of "Serbian" in reference to the Cyrillic book his older brother had brought home, but just after adducing to his arguments against Cyrillic the "treacherous actions of certain Serbs against us Croats"^[h] (reflecting his views on the events surrounding Zagreb revolt [hr]), and later passionately expressing his frustration with the use of terms like "Slavic", "Yugoslav", "Glagolitic", "Serbian", "Serbo-Croatian", "Naški", and others instead of "Croatian" as he was taught in school to call it and as his mother called it.^[i] Mužina himself learned Glagolitic in 7th and 8th grade in Rijeka, and again for 3 years at the Diocesan Seminary [hr] in Zadar, and to have sung his First Mass from a Glagolitic missal in 1873, then "almost always"^[j] thereafter, claiming to have written his parish register entries in Glagolitic in all three parishes he served in (Poljica, Beli, Dubašnica) until he beginning of the 20th century. Since the editor refused to publish a rebutal, the public debate ended there.^[3]

Milčetić donated 10 krone to Naša sloga in December 1905.^[14]

He died 27 August 1921 and was buried in Varaždin, predeceasing his older contemporary Vatroslav Jagić, who as a native of Varaždin was also buried there when he himself died just short^[k] of 2 years later.^[2]

His personal library included a number of rare books, such as a copy of Jurij Dalmatin's Agenda, now kept at the Library of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences [hr] as R-1430,^[15] along with the Dil drugij Katekisma od gliubavi i od X. zapovydyh,^[16] as well as of Pavao Posilović's Cviet ot kriposti duhovni i tilesnie.^[17]

Select books owned by Milčetić:

A bust of made by sculptor Ratko Petrić was commissioned by the Varaždin chapter of Matica hrvatska and given to the Malinska-Dubašnica chapter of Matica hrvatska, who placed it in front of the Kuća dubašljanske baštine.^[2]

Stjepan Damjanović called him "one of those activists in the research of glagolitism whose name will be mentioned as long as glagolitism itself".^[l]

He left a diary.^[29]