In Primorsko-goranska County a rich and varied cultural and historical heritage has been preserved. Among epigraphic monuments the most famous are:

THE TABLET OF BASKA – is the most precious monument of Croatian historical and cultural heritage, and the most important testimony of Glagolitic culture.

This epigraphic inscription is of immense value for different scientific and cultural disciplines and especially for the valorization of national history since it is a sort of ‘birth certificate’ of Croats where for the first time the name Croat is mentioned together with the name of a Croat ruler – king Zvonimir (1075-1089).

The tablet contains 13 lines of text, in which the abbot Držiha wrote that the Croatian king Zvonimir himself donated to the abbatial communities of St. Lucy and St. Nicholas the uncultivated, but valuable land and that abbot Dobrovit, together with nine other abbots, built the church of St. Lucy. There are also other elements typical of an official document.

The tablet was the left side of the church septal dividing the priests in the presbytery from the congregation in the nave.

The tablet was discovered rather damaged, therefore the scientist to this day were not able to read the text in full. Until today many Croatian and foreign scientists have given their interpretations of the monument since it can be studied from many points of view, namely historic, slavistic, legal, philological, literary, economic, toponymic, paleographic, diplomatic etc.

For expert conservation and permanent scientific protection, the damaged tablet was brought to Zagreb in 1934 where it was cleaned of layers of salt and other sediments. As a ‘precious stone of Croatian language’ (prof. dr. Stjepan Ivšic) and the most valuable monument of Croatian history, the Tablet of Baška is permanently displayed in the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Zagreb, the highest scientific and cultural institution in the country.

THE VINODOL STATUTES

The Vinodol Statutes – the Croatian list of Customary law from 1288 – can rightfully be compared with other European legal documents from the Middle Ages written in the national languages, like for example the Anglo-Saxon (601-925), the Russian ‘Pravda’ (XI-XIII century) and the Sachsenspiegel (XIII century). But the Vinodol Statutes has some characteristic which put it in the forefront of these illustrious documents. It was written by the representatives of nine Vinodol municipalities (Grobnik, Trsat, Bakar, Hreljin, Drivenik, Grižane, Bribir, Novi, Ledenice) that have, in the name of those municipalities and the prince ruler, made a list of laws applied at the time in the area of Vinodol. The representatives, among other things, took care of safekeeping the interests of the local population. The Statutes are written in Glagolitic and the text from the XVI century is written in Glagolitic italics. The document is kept in the National and University Library in Zagreb.

The name Vinodol Statutes does not mean that in the area of Vinodol there was a law in the modern sense of the term. Statutes in the old Croatian terminology has the meaning of legal custom (consuetudo) which at the time of creation is considered binding for the society.