KRIŽANIĆ, JURAJ

The "Father of Pan-Slavism"; b. Oberh, Croatia, c. 1617; d. near Vienna, 1683. He attended the Jesuit Gymnasium in Zagreb from 1630 to 1636, studied philosophy at the University of Graz, Austria, and theology at Bologna and Rome, and after his ordination in September 1642, received a doctorate in theology. He prepared himself for the mission in which he had long been interested, converting the Russians to Catholicism. In 1647, after two years in Croatia, he traveled to Warsaw, Smolensk, and Moscow, and then went to Poland for two years. Subsequently he arrived at Vienna and visited Constantinople with an Austrian diplomatic mission. In Rome in 1652, he wrote several treatises in Latin about Russia and the Orthodox. Without permission of the Office of Propaganda he left Rome for Vienna, and by April 1659 he was in the Ukraine. In September 1659, he concealed his identity as a Catholic priest, went to Moscow, and worked for a time as a translator for the government of Tsar Alexis. In January 1661, he was exiled to Tobolsk, Siberia, where he wrote several books, notably a grammar of a proposed general Slavic language, and Politika, which appealed to the Tsar to unite all Slavs against the Germans. In March 1676 he was released and went to Vilna to join the Polish Dominicans. He died as a chaplain in the Polish army of King John III Sobieski during the Turkish siege of Vienna in the summer of 1683. Several of his books were published in Russia where he was hailed as a significant writer and an advocate of the ideal of Slavic solidarity.

Bibliography: p. g. scolardi, Krijanich: Messager de l'unité des chrétiens et père du panslavisme (Paris 1947). m. b. petrovich, "Juraj Križaniç: A Precursor of Pan-Slavism," American Slavic and East European Review 6. 18–19 (1947) 75–92.

[g. j. prpic]