Uspomene i Razgovori s biskupom Strossmayerom Izidora Kršnjavoga kao povijesni izvor
Memoirs (“Uspomene”) and Conversations with Bishop Strossmayer (“Razgovori s biskupom Strossmayerom”) by Izidor Kršnjavi as a historical source

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the value of Izidor Kršnjavi’s manuscripts on bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer as a historical source. The author proposes that the mentioned manuscripts require a very thorough and critical approach in exploration, since they often reflect Kršnjavi’s subjective views. Moreover, a part of the manuscripts was written several years after Strossmayer died, i.e. several decades after the conversations between Kršnjavi and Strossmayer took place, based on his memories of questionable reliability. Having performed the critical elaboration, the author nevertheless rates Kršnjavi’s manuscripts on bishop Strossmayer a valuable historical source, since they shed light upon extremely important and less known moments of his private life as well as his public ecclesiastical and political work within a wider framework of Croatia and Slavonia as constitutional parts of the Habsburg Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) and even wider European framework from the middle of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. To the scholars studying Strossmayer’s work, the manuscripts provide valuable information on his attitude towards the options related to regulation of state and juridical affairs in the Monarchy on the eve of and after its dualistic reorganisation in 1867/1868. They confirm the already known theses about Strossmayer as a fierce opponent of the Hungarians and the dualistic system, but also provide us with the important data on his concepts of federation-based reorganisation of the Monarchy stemming from the idea of Austroslavism and South-Slavism, with Croatia as the core of Southern Slavs’ unification. The author pays special attention to Strossmayer’s views of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the time of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878), because it is his main area of expertise. In the end, the author concludes that I. Kršnjavi’s manuscripts portrait bishop Strossmayer as a prominent member of Croatian and European intellectual and cultural elite, who remained a lone figure in Croatian history considering his influence on some of the key moments of European history during the second half of the 19th century, especially the events related to the Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878) and shaping of the Catholic Church at the time of and after the First Vatican Council (1869/1870) because of a strictly limited influence of Croatian politics on the shaping of the external affairs of the Monarchy – a bishop of the Renaissance profile, as Kršnjavi rightfully noticed and maintained.

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