Juraj Križanić

Juraj Križanić, also known as Jurij Križanič, Yuriy Krizhanich, Iurii Krizhanich, and Yury Krizanitch, was a Croatian Catholic missionary and polymath who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slavist. His ideal, often misunderstood - even today - was to bring about a union of the churches, which Rome and Constantinople had tried to do without success for centuries. He believed that this might come about through closer relations between Slavic Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox Church, and supported the idea that all Slavs had a common language and ethnic origin.