BOGDANI, PIETRO

BOGDANI, PIETRO. - B. ca. 1630, d. 1688, first bishop of Scutari (Albania), then archbishop of Scopia. Author of the Cuneus prophetarum de Christo saltatore mundi et eius evangelica veritate, published in parallel Italian and Albanian texts at Padua (seminary press, 1685). It is a kind of apologetic work drawn from the Old and New Testaments and from the customary sources used in his age, with particular attention to contemporary errors and to Muslim ones, to which B.’s country was then subject. The importance of the work, however, lies in the fact that until well beyond the middle of the nineteenth century it was the only extensive work in the Albanian language, which, in B.’s text, is employed with literary elegance and possesses considerable richness.