L'opera di Francesco Maria da Lecce alla luce dei dati dell'Archivio di Propaganda Fide

Abstract

Firmly based on documents treasured in the Archive of Propaganda Fide in Rome, Gëzim Gurga reconstructs the most salient moments in the life of the missionary Francesco Maria da Lecce. The Franciscan is famous for having fathered the first ever Albanian grammar published by the title of Osservazioni grammaticali nella lingua Albanese (1716), as well as a remarkable Italian-Albanian dictionary. In his study, the author recounts the tough social and cultural conditions which the Albanian Catholics were living in during the Ottoman rule. A lot of attention, on the other hand is devoted to the efforts of the missionaries in the struggle against apostasy, to the promotion of faith and crypto-Christianity as well. Aiming at such targets, the missionaries favoured the teaching of Albanian, the printing and the publicising of Albanian books. Such countermeasures contributed to the development of the contemporary written Albanian and were inspirational to the birth of the future Albanian literature