Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, part I: Religious books among priests in the Diocese of Senj around the middle of 18th century

Rad obrađuje pitanja suvremenosti i internacionalnosti knjiga koje je svojim župnicima preporučivao senjsko-modruški biskup Juraj Vuk Čolić za podizanje razine njihova obrazovanja. Usprkos siromaštvu i nepristupačnosti župa ti podatci pokazuju zanimljivo visok stupanj naobrazbe i brige za duhovno uzdizanje svećenika da bi oni bili sposobniji za katehezu naroda. Ta je pojava u skladu s promjenama koje su se odvijale po čitavoj Europi kao posljedica zahtjeva Tridentskoga koncila za obrazovanjem i svećenika i naroda radi utvrđivanja vjere, iskorjenjivanja praznovjerja itd.The mid-eighteenth-century canonical visitations by Juraj Vuk Čolić, the Bishop of Senj, contain interesting information on the religious education of priests active in his diocese. In this paper I focus on the books recommended by the bishop to be read among his priests and the books that the priests reported to possess. I also try to identify the described books and their authors. Because the Diocese of Senj suffered poverty, occupation of its territory by the Turks and finally recovery from the consequences of war, it is interesting to see that these books are both modern and international. Most of them were authored by Jesuits (hence the title, which is the motto of the order) and were written in the hundred years preceding the bishop’s visitations, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century. Significantly, a number of books were written by Croatian authors, who not only translated popular European publications, but also created their own. All this shows that the spirit of the spiritual growth, which spread all over Europe after and according to the demands of the Council of Trent, also reached one of the poorest and most remote areas in Croatia, thanks to the efforts of the bishop Čolić, as well as his predecessors (especially Ivan Antun Benzoni)