In speaking of the South Slavic literary Baroque, one normally has in mind the period between the second half of the sixteenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century. For decades South Slavic scholars, sharing the fate of their colleagues in other European countries with a Baroque heritage, encountered opposition to the notion of a literary Baroque, even outright rejection. The period was dismissed with terms such as "transition period,"' "literature of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation,"2 and simply "religious writings."3 The situation improved following World War II, when questions of the literary Baroque, Slavic as well as nonSlavic, began to receive increased scholarly attention,4 and especially after the Fourth International Congress of Slavists in Moscow in 1958, at which the South Slavic Baroque was defended by the literary historian Dragoljub Pavlovid, in an examination of the interplay of social, religious, and political factors in establishing a Baroque literature.5 The present study will be limited to literary influences on the Baroque in Inner Croatia.6 In contrast to the Dubrovnik-Dalmatian literature of the period, which drew its example from Italy, the Inner-Croatian literary Baroque was influenced mostly by Austrian and South German Jesuit Baroque. The Jesuit order in Zagreb was the heart of Kajkavian literary production. The Franciscans and Paulists, in spite of their accomplishments in raising the cultural level, remained to a large extent in the background. Only seldom did they produce a significant work. While the Jesuits studied in Graz, Vienna, or Trnava (Tyrnau), they had ample opportunity to acquaint themselves with Baroque literature.7 An example is the drama of the South Tyrolean Nikolaus Avancini, who taught rhetoric at the Jesuit gymnasium in Zagreb 1634-35. Bavarian Baroque poetry came to Inner Croatia also by way of Austria. The names of such persons as Jakob Balde, the Munich court preacher, and the early Baroque dramatist Jakob Biedermann were not unknown to Kajkavian poets. The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed a growing Kajkavian literature of a generally religious character which, unlike the realistic and slightly frivolous Dalmatian-Ragusian Renaissance literature, preferred