Stjepan Konzul Istranin

The South Slavic Bible Institute was established in Urach in January 1561 by Hans von Ungnad who was its owner and patron.[5] Within the institute Ungnad set up the printing press which he referred to as "the Slovene, Croatian and Cyrillic printing press".[5] The manager and supervisor of the Institute was Primož Trubar.[5]

After being invited by Trubar,[6] 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.[3] Trubar engaged Istranin and Dalmatin as translators to Croatian and Serbian language[7] to translate his Slovenian language translation of New Testament and print it in Latin, Glagolitic script and Cyrillic script.[8] The types for printing of the Cyrillic script texts were molded by craftsmen from Nuremberg.[9] 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.[10] Trubar had idea to use their books to spread Protentantism among Croats and other South Slavs.[4]

Language used by Dalmatin and Istranin was based on northern-Chakavian dialect with elements of Shtokavian and Ikavian.[11] People from the institute, including Trubar, were not satisfied with translations of Dalmatin and Istranin.[11] For long time they tried to engage certain Dimitrije Serb to help them, but without success.[12] Eventually, they managed to engage two Serbian Orthodox priests, Jovan Maleševac from Ottoman Bosnia and Matija Popović from Ottoman Serbia.[12]

According to a list of books kept in the University Library of Tübingen, Istranin and Dalmatin printed 25,000 books in Tübingen and Urach.[13] The most important book they published was translation of New Testament based on the Trubar's translation.

• Antun Dalmatin
• List of Glagolitic books