Juraj Križanić

Juraj Križanić
Born	C. 1618 Obrh, near Ozalj, Croatia
Died	12 September 1683
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Juraj Križanić (c. 1618 – 12 September 1683), also known as Yuriy Krizhanich or Iurii Krizhanich (Russian: Крижанич, Юрий), was a Croatian Catholic missionary who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slavist.

Križanić was born in Obrh, near Ozalj (in present-day Croatia) in 1618, a period of political turmoil and of Turkish invasions into Croatia. He attended a Jesuit grammar school in Ljubljana and a Jesuit gymnasium in Zagreb from 1629 to 1635. His father died when he was 17 years old, at approximately the same time he graduated from the gymnasium. He began attending the University of Bologna in 1638 to study theology and graduated in 1640. Shortly after graduating Križanić began attending the Greek College of St. Athanasius, a center in Rome for the training of Catholic missionaries who would work with Orthodox Christians, from which he graduated in 1642. By the end of his life he was proficient in ten languages. While Križanić had a strong desire to travel to Moscow with the ambitious goal of uniting the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, he was assigned missionary duties in Zagreb, where he was a teacher at the Zagreb Theological Seminary as well as a priest in several neighboring towns.

Križanić managed to secure permission from the papacy for a brief visit to Moscow from 25 October to 19 December 1647. as part of a Polish embassy. However, he was not able to secure permission for a prolonged stay until 1658 (it was retracted shortly after being issued, a fact that Križanić simply ignored) and he did not arrive in Moscow until 17 September 1659. Another author said that he pretended to be an Orthodox Serb. He was assigned the duty of translating Latin and Greek documents and preparing an improved Slavic grammar. However, he was exiled to Siberia on 20 January 1661. The reason for his exile is still unknown. Possible explanations put forward have included the fact that he was a Roman Catholic priest, his criticism of Russian society and of the Greeks, with whom Patriarch Nikon was attempting reconciliation, and other political and social motives. Križanić postulated that he was exiled because of "some foolish thing" he had said to someone, and that whatever he had said had been mentioned to the authorities.

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