The
South Slavic Bible Institute was established in
Urach in January 1561 by Hans von Ungnad who was its owner and patron. Within the institute Ungnad set up the printing press which he referred to as "the Slovene, Croatian and Cyrillic printing press". The manager and supervisor of the Institute was Primož Trubar. After being invited by Trubar, Istranin went to Urach where he cooperated with Antun Dalmatin who knew well
Cyrillic script and who was invited to Urach to be manager of the printing press. Trubar engaged Istranin and Dalmatin as translators to
Croatian and
Serbian language to translate his
Slovenian language translation of
New Testament and print it in
Latin,
Glagolitic script and
Cyrillic script. The types for printing of the Cyrillic script texts were molded by craftsmen from
Nuremberg. The books they printed at Urach Printing House were planned to be used at entire territory populated by South Slavs between river
Soča and
Black Sea. Trubar had idea to use their books to spread Protentantism among Croats and other South Slavs. Language used by Dalmatin and Istranin was based on northern-
Chakavian dialect with elements of
Shtokavian and
Ikavian. People from the institute, including Trubar, were not satisfied with translations of Dalmatin and Istranin. For long time they tried to engage certain Dimitrije Serb to help them, but without success. Eventually, they managed to engage two Serbian Orthodox priests,
Jovan Maleševac from Ottoman Bosnia and
Matija Popović from Ottoman Serbia. According to a list of books kept in the University Library of Tübingen, Istranin and Dalmatin printed 25,000 books in Tübingen and Urach. The most important book they published was translation of New Testament based on the Trubar's translation. ==See also==