The Historic-Geographic Context Pertaining to the Origin of Lu i 's Map Illyricum Hodiernum

This paper deals with the first integral map of Croatian historical regions, which was made in the second half of the 17th century. The manuscript version of the map was drawn for the purposes of the Papal Illyrian (Croatian) Congregation of St. Jerome in Rome by Pietro Andrea Buffalini in 1663. The map was later printed, with appropriate changes, under the title Illyricum hodiernum in Ivan Lu i 's historiographic work De Regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae, and in Willem Blaeu's Atlas Maior sive Geographia Blaviana in 1668. Judging from the contents of these versions of the map, and the political circumstances in which they emerged, the Croatian polyhistor and cartographer Ivan Lu i contributed the most to the formation of their contents. As an outstanding expert on the history and geography of Croatia, Lu i translated his own cartographic imaginarium into a cartographic synthesis in the form of an overview map that emerged based both on a compilation of the contents of older maps, and on his personal research. In this map his primary intent was to show, in the spirit of Illyrianism linked to the Catholic Reformation, the area which during that period constituted Illyria, or rather Croatia, and also to make use of the potential that maps, as codified depictions of geographic reality, have when it is necessary to present spatial relations in the context of a historical-geographic review of the development of Croatia.