BOSANSKI FRANJEVCI IZMEĐU GAJA I GARAŠANINA (1836-1849) – SUPROTNOSTI DVIJE NACIONALNE POLITIKE
BOSNIAN FRANCISCANS BETWEEN GAJ AND GARAŠANIN (1836-1849) − CONTRARIES OF TWO NATIONAL POLITICS

Summary/Abstract: Being educated in Zagreb, Bosnian Franciscans came under the influence of Illyrian national ideas since 1830s. As it was the case with most South Slavs, they as well felt drawn to Serbia because of its independent state. The young Bosnian Franciscans embraced Ljudevit Gaj’s Illyrian Movement as a renaissance movement of all South Slavs, but accepted Ilija Garašanin’s Serb national politics as well. In the years to come, the two national politics differed mostly around the issue of Bosnian Catholics’ national affiliation and the political destiny of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unlike the scholars Josif Šafarik, Jan Kolar and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, who belived Bosnian Catholics were Serbs, which was the philological base of Serb national agitation, Gaj suggested the name of Serbo-Croats. This name initiated the contraries between the two national politics. Among Bosnian Franciscans, several names stood out very early. Friar Bartul Jurić, who would later convert to Orthodox faith and take the name Tomo Kovačević, turned to national agitation of Ilija Garašanin after a very poorly organized uprising against the Turks ended in disaster in 1840. Garašanin himself worked with the Illyrians and Gaj in the beginning. Kovačević would later become Garašanin’s main conspirer for Bosnian Catholics and the complete territory of Bosnia. The other notable name among Franciscans was friar Stjepan Verković who was at first the agent for Gaj, then Garašanin, and later on he would work for both of them at the same time. The third significant name was that of Ivan Frano Jukić, who was the first to notice the differences between the two agitations among the Bosnian Franciscans. In the early 1840s, particularly after the Načertanije was created in 1844, the draft of which that belonged to one of the authors Franjo Zah, Ljudevit Gaj copied personally and then sold to Meternich, the discord became more and more noticeable. As the relations grew increasingly tense, the future of Bosnia after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which was yet to happen, emerged as one of the main points of dispute. Serbia and its supporters among the Franciscans believed, as the philology then stated, that one Serb people lived in Bosnia. Starting from 1844, through voices of several leading supporters of the future Party of Rights’ ideology, notably Bogoslav Šulek and Ivan Kukuljević-Sakcinski, the Illyrians started to promote openly the idea to annex Bosnia, or at least the west of the country or the so called Turkish Croatia, to Croatia. By that time, the Croatian tendencies have replaced the Illyrian ideas. In 1848, the year of revolution and appointing of Josip Jelačić for a Croatian ban, the Old Illyrian ideas triumphed in getting the Bosnian Franciscans stand for the Croatian national idea.

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