Matija Divković
It was there that Divković wrote his first work, Christian Doctrine for the Slavic People, and started to translate One Hundred Miracles or Signs of the Blessed and Glorious Virgin.
[4] Matija Divković published his works with the advice and support of Bartul Kačić-Žarković, bishop of Makarska (1615–1645), who managed some parishes in Bosnia.
One Hundred Miracles… is a loose translation of the medieval legends of John Herolt (Promptuarium discipuli de miraculis B. M. Virginis, Venice, 1598).
[1][9] Such medieval writings, found in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Old Herzegovina, like the Gršković's Apostle, the Hrvoje's Missal, the Hval's Codex, the Venetian Apocalypse, belong to the Bosnian literature, and are considered the written heritage,[2] but not a literature in the strict modern sense.
As a translator, he was not meticulous about being faithful to his sources, which means that he modified them to bring them closer to the folk mixed idiom of the Eastern-Bosnian Štokavian dialect and Ikavian–Ijekavian accent, spoken between Olovo and Kreševo in Bosnia.
While the other Counter-Reformers went along with the times, using rationalism to lure people, Divković went back to the Middle Ages to attract his public through retelling of the biblical stories and ancient legends with characteristic medieval imagination.
Divković's didactic prose abundantly uses "fiery" imagery of hell and purgatory for sinners and paradisical bliss for the just, while his sermons abound with the tales about miracles and the supernatural.
In his native Bosnia and Herzegovina, Divković is considered to be "father of literature",[1] but he left his mark on all Slavic communities between Slovenia and Bulgaria.
This prevalence of the Shtokavian among writers and public intellectuals of that time, especially ones belonging to Illyrian movement, was the main reason dialect prevailed as the basis for the development of standard language in all the variants of Serbo-Croatian, i.e. Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian.
