Juraj Divnić

Juraj Divnić (Giorgio Difnico, Juraj Divnić, Georgius Diphnicus, c. 1440 – 1530) was bishop of Nin. He was one of the more important Catholic bishops of Croatian origin in his time.

Life
Juraj Divnić was born in Šibenik on about 1440, and was part of the known Divnić family, which settled in Šibenik in the 14th century from Skradin. He studied Laws probably in Italy and entered in the ecclesiastic career. On 3 July 1464 he became titular of the church of St. Mary Magdalene in the peninsula of Mandalina (now into the town of Šibenik). In the same year he was made beneficiary also of the estates of a church in the island of Zlarin.

On 19 March 1479 he was appointed bishop of Nin. He received the minor orders in Venice on 1 May 1479; in the following two days he was ordained deacon and priest; and in the next Sunday, the 9 May, he was consecrated bishop in the patriarchal church of Venice by Patriarch Maffeo Gherardi.

In 1482 Juraj Divnić visited Rome. In 1486 he was authorized by the pope to live in the near Zadar. He participated to the wars for defending the Croatia from the Ottomans, being a witness of the Battle of Krbava and defending Nin during the siege of 1499. He did not participate to the Lateran Council of 1512 – 1517 not to leave his flock, threaded by Ottomans. Juraj Divnić approved the Marian apparition occurred in May 1516 in a little island near Nin, known as Our Lady of the Hare.

Due to his old age, in 1523 Juraj Divnić asked Pope Adrian VI to be allowed to retire and be succeeded by his nephew Jakob. The Pope agreed but ordered that he maintained the title of bishop of Nin. In 1528 he restored the Cathedral of Nin (now Church of St. Anselm), supplied new religious furnishings, and prepared his tomb. He died in Zadar on 8 August 1530, and he was buried in the side chapel of Our Lady of the Hare, in the cathedral of Nin, where is still present his sepulchral inscription.

Works
His only literary work which has survived is a long letter written in Latin on 27 September 1493 to Pope Alexander VI about the Battle of Krbava, where the Croatian army was destroyed by the Ottoman cavalry. The Latin text is preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana, Ms Lat. Cl. X cod. 174, and it was translated in Croatian in 1983.