Friar Filip Grabovac – friar, priest, writer

A fierce patriot, in his texts he wrote about the difficult state of the Croatians in the Venetian Republic.

Grabovac opposed Croatism to the spreading of Italianism (the Italian urban and classicist spirit rooted in the local military elite). The members of this military elite (to whom heroism had long been lost) exposed Grabovac to the Venetian rulers who subsequently incarcerated him.

Because of his work Best Instruction of Illyrian or Croatian People and Language, from 1747, in which he opposes particularly sharply the injustice and damage the Venetian rule brought upon Dalmatia, he is exiled in the notorious Venetian dungeon Sotto i piombi after which his book and all his manuscripts are confiscated.

Around his feet we can see chains whilst his finger points towards Rome with the message There I await the victory of the truth.

* More information in the audio guide