Croatian Latin literature

Croatian Latin literature (or Croatian Latinism) is a term referring to literary works, written in the Latin language, which have evolved in present-day Croatia since the 9th century AD. Since that time, both public and private documents have been written in a local variant of medieval Latin. Some works have been found (written between the 12th and 14th centuries) which were written in a variant more closely resembling classical Latin.

Croatian Latin literature has been found in modern-day Croatia since the 9th century, and is evident from numerous epigraphs cast in stone and even more numerous in public and private writings; some are in verse. The sarcophagus of Peter the Black (from Split) in the 11th century has an inscription pertaining to the transience of life written by the deacon Dabrus (Croatian: ). A better-known example is the tombstone inscription of Vekenega, head of the Benedictine convent of St. Mary in Zadar (d. 1111). This inscription is written on four tablets with 20 verses (hexameters and elegiac couplets), in which an unknown poet credits Vekenega's work for the convent. An inscription exists for the knez of Bribir, ( Mladen Šubić (d. 1348) in the Trogir Cathedral of St. Lawrence), consisting of 22 goliardic verses. There are also fragments of two inscriptions important in Croatian history: Knez Trpimir I (mid-9th century) and Queen Jelena of Zadar (976), starting with In hoc tumulo quiescit Helena famosa ("Jelena, the famous, rests in this grave") and ending with Icque aspiciens vir [anime] dic [miserere Deus] ("When you look here, say "God, have mercy on her soul"). The oldest document of a Croatian ruler is Trpimir's charter (852), the first record of a Croatian name in a Croatian document.

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