Alberto Fortis

Did You Know?

• In May 1770, Fortis travelled to the northern Adriatic islands of Cres and Lošinj with British jurist John Symonds and Neapolitan botanist Domenico Cirillo.
• Fortis was denied the Chair of Natural History at the University of Padua in 1777 due to conservative opposition to his liberal views on science and religion.
• In 1785, Fortis was appointed official mineralogist to the Bourbon Court of Naples under King Ferdinand IV, tasked with reforming the local saltpeter industry.

Life

Born Giovanni Battista Fortis, he took the religious name Alberto and came into the world in Padua on either 9 or 11 November 1741. His travels took him extensively through Dalmatia, and his most famous work, Viaggio in Dalmazia, first appeared in 1774, with a London edition following in 1778. The book’s standout section describes Morlachia, a historical region in present-day Croatia named for the Morlach people who lived there. Within it, Fortis introduced the ballad “Hasanaginica,” which he presented as a Morlach, or Vlach, song.

Scholar Larry Wolff later argued that Fortis actually wrote it as poetry of the South Slavs rather than specifically of the Morlachs. Fortis believed the Morlachs had kept their ancient customs and clothing, noting ethnographic markers like traditional dress, the gusle instrument, and epic singing. He also published several examples of Morlach songs. Although the Slavic-speaking Morlachs called themselves Vlachs, Fortis rejected any link between them and the Latin-speaking Vlachs.

His account of the Morlachs, translated into French, English, and German, captured European attention and sparked a literary trend called Morlachism. Croatian writer Ivan Lovrić, in his work Osservazioni di Giovanni Lovrich sopra diversi pezzi del viaggio in Dalmazia del signor abbot Alberto Fortis coll'aggiunta della vita di Soçivizça, accused Fortis of numerous factual mistakes. Lovrić tried to correct these errors and pointed out similarities between the Vlach language and Romanian.

Travels into Dalmatia helped introduce Dalmatian culture to Europe during the rise of Romantic interest in folklore. The Dalmatian hinterlands became symbolized by “Hasanaginica,” the folk ballad Fortis first recorded. In 1795, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in London. He died in Bologna eight years later, on 21 October 1803.