The Istanbul letters of Antun Vrančić: Croatian and English translation of selected Latin letters (1553–1568) – About the project
Following the collaborative open science policy of the QhoD project, we are publishing this important collection of documents related to the two missions of Antun Vrančić/Verancius to Constantinople in 1553/54 and 1567/68.
The sources published here are an enhanced digital version of the book The Istanbul letters of Antun Vrančić: Croatian and English translation of selected Latin letters Carigradska pisma Antuna Vrančića: hrvatski i engleski prijevod odabranih latinskih pisama, edited by Zrinka Blažević and Anđelko Vlašić. Istanbul: Oğuz Aydemir 2018. The story of the book’s preparation is extensively described in the forewords by Mr. Aydemir, Dr. Marijana Borić from the Croatian Academy of Sciences as a co-publisher, the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey in Croatia, H.E. M. Babür Hızlan, as well as the book’s editors, Zrinka Blažević and Anđelko Vlašić.
The originals of Vrančić's Latin correspondence are housed at the National Archives in Budapest and they are relatively well-known to the scientific community. A print version first appeared in Budapest in 1858–60:
- Verancsics Antal, Összes munkái. 3. kotet. Első portai követség 1553-1554 [Collected Works. Vol. 3. Mission to the Sublime Porte 1553-1554] (ed. László Szalay), Eggenberger Ferdinand, Budimpešta, 1858
- Verancsics Antal, Összes munkái. 4. kotet. Első portai követség 1555-1557 [Collected Works. Volume 4. Mission to the Sublime Porte 1555-1557] (ed. László Szalay), Eggenberger Ferdinand, Budimpešta, 1859
- Verancsics Antal, Összes munkái. 5. kotet. Második portai követség 1567-1568 [Collected Works. Volume 5. Mission to the Sublime Porte 1567-1568] (ed. László Szalay), Eggenberger Ferdinand, Budimpešta, 1860,
However, the 2018 publication has greatly amplified the visibility and accessibility of these documents by providing translations of selected Latin texts into BCS (by Prof. Zrinka Blažević) and English (by Prof. Anđelko Vlašić). In addition, the introductory study by Prof. Vlašić provided a succinct overview of the wider political context of the time when the letters were penned, along with a biography of Vrančić and his legacy.
The richly illustrated 2018 book (bibliographical record) is accessible to curious readers on the webpage of Mr. Aydemir, the book’s publisher: Direct PDF link. Here, we republished the book’s contents in standardized TEI-encoded XML format, under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license. For this republication, the QhoD team obtained explicit permission and authorization from the respective contributors and the publisher.
A key feature of the version presented here is the inclusion of the original Latin texts alongside the Croatian and English translations, with all three versions aligned at the division (div) chunk level. During the preparation of the Latin version for publication, we corrected obvious typographical errors, such as misprinted characters (e.g., confusion between u and n), missing hyphenation markers, and punctuation mistakes.
The data conversion was carried out by two digital history students, Gabrijela Martić and Edi Erceg, who volunteered during a course taught by Prof. Zrinka Blažević at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. When needed, Stephan Kurz provided support with the implementation of TEI, Git, and regular expressions. Kurz also oversaw the underlying data modeling and the frontend integration into the broader QhoD infrastructure. All individuals who were involved in the preparation of the project are acknowledged on this page.
Special thanks are extended to Neven Jovanović for bringing the pieces together, as well as to Koraljka Kuzman Šlogar and the DHH2023 team for providing the platform that made this connection possible.