Original scientific paper
Friar Laurentius de Gliubuschi: Alendar(ović), Sitović, Šitović
Vlado Pavičić
; Ljubuški, Croatia
Abstract
During his lifetime, friar Lovro Ljubušak was a man of exceptional repute amongst his fellow brothers both for his pastoral, preaching and educational work but also because of his writing. He drew special attention to himself because of his “exotic” origins from a Muslim family and his voluntary conversion which occurred during the Morean war. Since he singed his published works and the manuscripts with which we are as of now acquainted only using his name and the place of his origins, which some biographers attribute to his desire to hide his Muslim origins, a certain insecurity and disagreements as to his original surname has “crept” into the relevant literature. Thusly some “baptized” him with the surname Šitović, others thought it was Sitović, while more recently an opinion has arisen that his original surname was Alendar. In addition, the dilemma between Šitović and Sitović was marked by a mistaken etymology. Some who argued for the Šitović variant maintained that friar Lovro took the name from chieftain Šimun Talajić who had captured his father and held the friar as a hostage while those who preferred the Sitović variant derived it from the profession of one who makes sieves (sito). After going through the registers of birth in the monasteries in Zaostrog and Makarska, the author not only found the inscription of the surname in the Šitović form but also friar Lovro’s signature in his own handwriting by way of which he takes on this name. Continuing this investigation in the Zadar archive, the author discovered an entry identifying Mehmed Šitović as a former landowner in the Ljubuški-Vrgorac area during the period of the Morean war when the capture of Hasan’s (friar Lovro’s) father took place, when he was being held hostage and when he converted from Islam to Catholicism. On the basis of these findings he concludes that friar Lovro’s original surname was Šitović putting to rest the extant etymologies of the surnames.
Keywords
friar Lovro Šitović; Ljubuški; Vrgorac; surnames; Franciscan order; Morean war; conversion; registers of birth
Hrčak ID:
31838
URI
Publication date:
22.10.2008.
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