Close as it is in nature and purpose to other religious and moralistic writings of Mairulić, yet this workas a compendium of the Bible - differs considerably from others by its literary form. From the point of view of language and style, the differences are even greater. As for the language, there are numerous double forms and greater and smaller deviations from the norms of classical Latin at all levels: from orthography and phonetics to morphology, syntax and stylistics to lexis and phraseology. Double forms are for the greatest part due to the writer’s pronounced desire towards variety, which seems at time to be an end in itself. Deviations from classical Latin are as a rule due to extensive use of various elements of mediaeval and biblical Latin. On occasion the influence of the Croatian substratum can be observed. In contrast to his other works, which are written in a more or less well- -defined Latin of the humanists, here only the introduction and the conclusion exhibit marked traits of that effluent language. The remaining text, which is a condensed version of the original model, is characterised by short sentences, often without any rhetorical embellishments, and by frequent parataxis. It is characteristic of the style of this work that the text is amply intervowen with extracts from the Bible, and the exposition — particularly of the prophets—is accompanied with a commentary. Occasional quotations of classical authors are included after the fashion of authors with humanistic -education. In addition to biblical and classical quotations, there is a number of formulations taken over from other works of Marulić. In one instance he compiled his own work to a considerable extent: the long biography of David is based strictly on the summaries (argumenta) of his Davidias. This last point can be used to date the work, at least relatively: it was written after the Davidias, towards the end of the second decade of 16th century.
