| Peter Pavel Glavar | |
| Birth Date: | 2 May 1721 |
| Birth Place: | Ljubljana |
| Death Date: | 24 January 1784 |
| Occupation: | Roman Catholic priest beekeeper writer businessman |
Peter Pavel Glavar (2 May 1721 – 24 January 1784) was a Carniolan Roman Catholic priest, beekeeper, writer, and businessman.
Glavar was born in Ljubljana as an illegitimate child of the Maltese noble Pietro Giacomo de Testaferrata and a local servant.[1] While Testaferrata did not acknowledge him, he contributed to his upkeep; the boy was raised in Vopovlje in northern Carniola. A quick study, he was sent to seminary in Ljubljana and (in about 1738) Graz, where he was granted a master of liberal arts (Latin: magister artium liberalium) degree,[2] and became acquainted with the economic theories of the French physiocrats. His education was broad, and he was fluent in several European languages.
Glavar returned to Carniola around 1743. He settled in Komenda in northern Carniola, where he established a school in 1751, and erected a benefice building with a library in 1752. The library still stands and comprises around 2,000 books from a multitude of fields of science and arts. A mighty lime tree in Komenda was presumably planted by Glavar in 1748 and has been named after him.[3] Glavar was a supporter of poor students, and a patron of the arts; he commissioned the painter Franc Jelovšek to decorate the beneficiary house and the parish church. From 1754 until 1760,[4] Glavar edited the first Slovene-language parish family book, recording the actuarial data of the inhabitants of Komenda. In 1761–66, he erected the high-baroque St. Anne's Church in Tunjice.[5]
In 1766, Glavar bought Lanšprež Castle (German: Landspreis) in Gomila near Mirna in the central Carniola, where he kept an apiary with about 200 quite profitable hives. He also established a beekeeping school there, and wrote several texts on beekeeping. These included the Pogovor o čebelnih rojih (Discourse on Bee Swarms) from 1776–78, notable as the first Slovene-language scholarly text; lost for almost two centuries, a copy was discovered and published only in 1976.[6]
Glavar died at Lanšprež Castle in 1784, aged 62. His assets were distributed among the poor, and used to endow the Glavar Hospital in Komenda in 1804.
In 2006, RTV Slovenia produced a documentary about him.[7]