Robert Elsie

Albanian Literature | Early Authors

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Page from Matrënga's "Christine Doctrine", 1592.

Lekë MATRËNGA   Lekë Matrënga (1567-1619), known in Italian as Luca Matranga, was an Orthodox cleric of the Italo-Albanian community of Sicily. He was also the author of the second major work of early Albanian literature entitled E mbsuame e krështerë, Rome 1592 (Christian Doctrine), which is a twenty-eight page catechism translated from the Latin. Matrënga’s work contains an introduction in Italian - the catechism itself - being religious instruction on church doctrines in the form of questions and answers, and an eight-line poem which constitutes the earliest specimen of written verse in Albanian.