They wrote the “Baptism Formula”, the oldest document of Albanian writing that we know to this day. It is a short Albanian sentence (Unte’ paghesont premenit Atit et birit et spertit senit) in the middle of a Latin writing, a circular letter of the archbishop of Durrës, Pal Engjëlli, a close collaborator of Skanderbeg. It is a formula that families had to use to baptize their newborn children when they could not take them to church. The formula is written in the dialect of the North and in the Latin alphabet, close to what Buzuku used in his work. The Latin manuscript with the “Formula of Baptism” was found in the “Laurenziana” library in Florence by the Romanian historian Nikola Jorga and was published by him in 1915. (In the photo: Formula of Baptism, 1462.)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 1 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 713.
Graphic processing: AHCF
