Juraj Križanić
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Juraj Križanić, also known as Yuriy Krizhanich (ca. 1618 - September 12, 1683) was a Croatian Catholic missionary who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slavist and anti-Normanist.
Križanić studied in Zagreb, Bologna, and Rome. In 1647, he arrived in Moscow with the idea of promoting the union of Eastern and Western churches. His mission failed as his ideas were taken as dangerous, interpreted as converting from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. Križanić returned to Russia 12 years later, still seeking to arrange the union of Slavic nations under leadership of the tsar.
After two-year-long stay in the Russian capital, he was taken into custody and transported to Tobolsk in Siberia. There he lived for 15 years, surviving on a state stipend and working on the treatises On Divine Providence, On Politics, and On Interpretation of Historic Prognostications. In these books, written in his self-devised "Common Slavonic language" (a Pan-Slavonic grammar named Grammatitchno Iskaziniye), he set forth a comprehensive program of reforms required for the Russian state. His Politics was published by Bezsonov (Russia in the Seventeenth Century, 1859-60). His appeal to the Czar to head the Slavs in the fight against the Germans shows a remarkable political foresight. He returned from Siberia in 1676, and after that date little is known of him. He died during the Battle of Vienna.
His works, which also include writings on music and economics, were re-discovered and printed in the mid-19th century.
[edit] References
- Vatroslav Jagić: Istoriia slavianskoi filologii, St. Petersburg, 1910
- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
