Croatian History

Juraj Dragisic (Georgius Benignus, 1445? – 1520) was a Croat born in Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia (known by the Greater Serbian slaughter of Muslim Slavs in 1995 that the international community watched with fingers crossed, though it had been “UN protected area”). As a young Franciscan, when Bosnia fell in the Turkish hands in 1463, he escaped across Zadar to Italy. Due to the generous support from several Italian noble families he obtained excellent university education in Rome, Bologna, Florence,…

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Simun Kozicic Zadranin (or Benja), the bishop of Modrus, was a humanist, Glagolitic writer and Glagolitic typographer with his printing house in the city of Rijeka. He is known for his speech about the insupportable pressure of the Ottoman Empire on Croatia to the participants of the Lateran Council in 1513. The same purpose had his speech De Corvatiae desolatione (On Devastated Croatia) held in the presence of the Pope Leon X in 1516. For additional information see here.  1516…

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Toma Niger (Toma Nigris, bishop of Skradin and later bishop of Trogir) as an emissary of Ban Petar Berislavic, was on a diplomatic mission to the Roman Pope and to the Emperor Charles the Fifth in Brussels in 1520, to appeal for help to the defence of Croatia against the Turks. The same year the Croatian Ban was killed in the battle against the Turkish army at the town of Korenica.

Prince Bernardin Frankapan, born and educated in the Glagolitic environment, was an important promoter of the Croatian Glagolitic literature. He founded the Glagolitic scriptorium for translating the Bible in the town of Ozalj. In his speech Oratio pro Croatia held in Nürenberg in 1522 he sent a dramatic appeal to the German State Council and to Europe to help the Croats in their struggle against the attacks of the Ottoman Empire. Simun Kozicic Zadranin wrote for him that “even under…

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One of the greatest promoters of Protestantism in Europe was Flacius Illyricus (Matija Vlacic, born in Labin in Istria, 1520-1575). As a young Croatian philosopher, at the age of 24 he was appointed to be a professor of Hebrew and Greek at the University of Wittenberg, the center of Protestantism. The bibliography of his work is enormous – three hundred books and brochures. His “Catalogus testium veritatis” (Magdeburg, 1555) represents a tremendous historical documentation, probably the best polemical book of…

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A Croatian Jesuit Mark Antun de Dominis (born as Marko Domnianich on the island of Rab, 1560-1624) ranked among the greatest European philosophers and scientist of his time. His career of a university professor started in Padova. He was especially esteemed in England, where he was invited by king James I. There he lived at the Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury and was appointed to be the Windsor Dean and the king’s chancellor. Dominis arrived to London in December…

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A Croatian theologist, ecumenist, panslavist and musicologist Juraj Krizanic (1618-1683) was trying to initiate the dialog on the unification of the Russian Church with Rome. He dreamed about an open and peaceful dialog with Orthodox Christians. His major works are “Razgovory ob vladatelstvu” or “Politika” (written in panslavic Esperanto that he invented as a combination of his native Croatian, Russian and church-slavonic), written during his 15 year exile to Siberia and the panslavic grammatical book “Gramatično iskazanie ob ruskom jaziku”…

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A Croatian Jesuit Nikola Plantic (born in Zagreb, 1720-1777) studied in Zagreb, Graz, Vienna and Trnava in Slovakia. He was teaching logic and philosophy at the Jesuit University in Cordoba in Argentina. In some books we can read that Plantic allegedly had an important role in the formation of the unique Jesuit Kingdom in Paraguay, established for the wellbeing of native Guarani Indians. It is true that the Jesuits managed to organize prosperous economic and cultural life, including printing in…

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Ivan Pastric (Ioannes Pastritius, Givanni Pastrizio, 1636-1708), Croatian theologist and Hebraist in Rome, redactor of glagolitic books, was born in Poljica near the city of Split. He was cofounder of the Academy of Council in Rome (1671), and among the first members of the famous Accademia dell’Arcadia (since 1691, only six months after its foundation). Giulio Bartolocci, his professor, claimed for Pastric to be the greatest connoisseur of Hebrew language in Rome, and a fine interpreter of Talmud. Congregation de…

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Benedikt Rogacic (1649-1719), was esteemed Jesuit, writer and poet from Dubrovnik, who was writing in Latin and Italian. Among his ethical works we mention his poem Euthymia sive tranquilitate animi (Rome, 1690), in which he celebrates the peace of mind in verse. His most important prose work is L’Uno necessario (five folumes, Rome 1697-1708). Both these works had a great success, especially the first one, which had numerous reprints and several translations up to these days. See an article by…

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