Matija Petar Katančić

Matija Petar Katančić (; 1750–1825) was a Croatian writer and scholar. His fields include poetry, literary theory, philology, lexicography, aesthetics, archaeology, and numismatics. He is considered the father of Croatian archaeology in modern Croatia.

Biography Matija Petar Katančić was born on 12 August 1750 in Valpovo. As a bootmaker's son, he received his initial education in his native town, to continue his further education in Pecs, Buda, Baja and Szegedin. He had begun his noviciate in Vienna and entered the Franciscan order, taking the name Petar. He completed his theological studies in Osijek, and his philosophical studies, aesthetics and poetics, in Budim.

He worked for 10 years as a professor in Osijek, and when the Germanization wave strongly hit the Osijek grammar school (in 1788), he left for Zagreb where he became a professor at the Classical Gymnasium (1788–95) and also started keeping company with the Bishop of Zagreb, Maksimilijan Vrhovac. During this time, he published a number of philological works on Croats but also published his collection of poetry in Latin and Croatian titled Fructus auctumnales (1791), which also contains a polemic in prosody titled Brevis in prosodiam Illyricae linguae animadversio.

He was later elected professor of archaeology and numismatics in Budim (1795), but on account of bad health he had to stop teaching in 1800, in order to dedicate himself to science and also to the translation of the Bible into Croatian. In 1817 he wrote the "Booklet on Illyrian poetry" - De poesi Illyrica libellus, in which he tried to justify and explain his poetic starting position. He also published a number of very important books from the area of ancient archaeology in Panonia (Slavonia).

He died in Buda, Kingdom of Hungary on May 26, 1825.

Published works Scientific works In veterem Croatorum patriam indagatio philologica (Philological research into the ancient homeland of the Croats), 1790, Zagreb Specimen philologiae et geographiae Pannoniorum (Specimen of the philology and geography of the Pannonians), 1795, Zagreb Elementa numismaticae (Basics of numismatics), 1799, Buda

Poetry Poskočnica Pana i Talije na Crnom brdu, 1788 (lost) Fructus auctumnales (Autumn fruits), 1791, Zagreb (poems in Latin and Croatian) De poesi illyrica libellus ad leges aestheticae exactus (A small book on Illyrian poetry, drawn up according to the laws of aesthetics), 1817, Buda