Juraj Dragišić (–1520), known in Italian as Giorgio Benigno Salviati (), was a Bosnian Franciscan theologian and philosopher of the Renaissance. He was educated in Italy, France and England. He lived and worked in Rome, Urbino, Florence and Dubrovnik (Ragusa), in addition to a long diplomatic stay in Germany. He held several high Franciscan offices and in his later years was the bishop of Cagli (1507–1520) and titular archbishop of Nazareth (1512–1520).
A prolific Neo-Latin writer, Dragišić wrote mostly on theology and philosophy. He was partial to the dialogue form. Theologically he was a Scotist and philosophically a Platonist. He readily entered into live controversies, defending Bessarion against charges of heresy, entering the Plato–Aristotle controversy, debating the problem of future contingents and the problem of evil, defending the prophecies of Girolamo Savonarola, defending Johannes Reuchlin and the Talmud and defending Duke Francesco Maria of Urbino against the charge of murder.
Life Origins Juraj's native surname, Dragišić (Draghisic), is known only from two letters, one from Pope Innocent VIII (1490) and another from the Republic of Florence (1491). He himself never uses his family name in his surviving writings. In the earliest surviving documents, he is also called de Argentina or de Burgo Argentina after the Latin name of Srebrenica. He used this name himself, as well as many others indicating his Balkan origin: de Bosnia, Grecus de Bosnia ('the Greek of Bosnia'), Macedonus ('the Macedonian'), de Macedonia, etc.; ; .
There was a noble Dragišić family in Bosnia, but it is unknown if Juraj was related to them. The sons of Duke Ivaniš Dragišić were prominent in the reign of King Thomas of Bosnia (). The coronation of his son, Stephen II, was attended by a Marko Dragišić. Juraj's father's name was Laetus, which is a Latinization of a Slavic name, either Radoslav or Veselko. No Dragišić of those names is otherwise recorded.
Dragišić was born in Srebrenica in the Kingdom of Bosnia, but the year of his birth is uncertain.; . Several data have been used to estimate his birth year: his being a deacon in 1464, the minimum age for which was 20, yielding a birthdate of 1444; his claim to have been 23 years old when he wrote in defence of Bessarion, usually dated to 1469–1471, yielding a birthdate in the years 1446–1448; and his ordination as a priest in 1469, the canonical age for which was 25 for Franciscans, placing his birth no later than 1445.; . gives the date range 1444–1446.
The only direct information on Dragišić's early life is that which he included in his De natura angelica, published in 1499. He joined the Franciscan convent in Srebrenica, which was subject to the custos (custodian) of Usora. He would have received a basic education at the convent.; . He was probably a Conventual Franciscan, since they were the dominant faction in the Balkan provinces.
Sometime between 1462 and 1464, Dragišić fled Srebrenica for the coast during the Ottoman invasion of Bosnia. Although it is sometimes held that he fled as a child with his family to Dubrovnik, (Dubrovnik, 1463); (Dubrovnik, 1463); (Dubrovnik, October 1464). this seems to be based on a misreading of the preface to De natura angelica. He seems rather to have settled first in Jajce and then in Zadar. (Jajce, 1462); (Jajce, 1464); (Zadar). In September 1464, , vicar general of the Observant Franciscans, stopped in Zadar and was invited to participate in a provincial council being held by Bernardino d'Aquila on the island of Pašman. There he was petitioned to take back two Italy two young Franciscans, Dragišić, already a deacon, and the subdeacon Ivan of Jezero.; . By 1 October 1464, Dragišić was in Ferrara in Italy.
Rome and Urbino
In Ferrara, Dragišić entered the Observant Franciscan as a deacon.; ; ; ; . He studied at various times in the Franciscan studia of Ferrara, Padua and Pavia, and in the universities of Bologna, Paris and Oxford, where John Foxal was one of his teachers.; ; ; . He did not have a high opinion of the "Parisian articles" of 1277 restricting what could be taught there.
On 18 March 1469, Dragišić was ordained a priest in the cathedral of Bologna. By the end of the year, he had joined the household of Cardinal Bessarion in Rome.; . In Rome, he seems to have joined the Conventual Franciscans, a better fit for a scholar.; . In 1472, following Bessarion's death, Dragišić took up the position of rector of the University of Urbino and tutor of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the young heir to the Duchy of Urbino, whom he taught to read and write.; . He became a citizen of Urbino and was adopted into the noble Felici family.; . He sometimes appears with the surname de Feliciis. His time in Urbino lasted until 1482.. , has it extend down to late 1485.
In 1482, according to Serafino Razzi's Storia di Raugia, Dragišić (whom he calls Jure Bošnjak) stopped in Dubrovnik while returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.. , gives the year as 1487. There, according to his own account, he fell ill and gave a relic he had acquired of the left hand (or arm) of John the Baptist to two citizens for safekeeping. Back in Italy, he sold it to the Florentine merchants' guild, the Arte dei Mercatanti, who were anxious to acquire a relic to rival the Baptist's supposed right arm, given to the Republic of Siena by Pope Pius II in 1464. The Republic of Dubrovnik, however, refused to hand it over. The dispute dragged on for years, with Dubrovnik claiming that Dragišić had given them the relic while in perfect health. In 1490, the Florentines enlisted Pope Innocent VIII to write two letters on their behalf. They themselves wrote to the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II in 1491.; ; . Aelius Lampridius Cervinus wrote an epigram, Ad Florentiam postulantem laevam S. Ioannis, in defence of Dubrovnik's position. The relic is still in Dubrovnik, where it is kept in a reliquary from 1624 inside an 18th-century casket., citing .
Florence In 1483 or 1485, Dragišić moved to Florence, where he was adopted by the Salviati family and received a chair in theology at the . have him lecturing at Florence in 1483 and receiving his chair on 5 March 1485, but has him move there only in 1485. , places him in Florence only "from around 1486". At the Studio, he befriended Marsilio Ficino. On 25 May 1488, the chapter general of the Franciscan order appointed him rector of Santa Croce for a term of three years and inquisitor of Florence for two.
On 23 June 1489, a public debate between the Franciscans and Dominicans was held in Santa Reparata on the question of whether or not the sin of Adam was the greatest of sins. Dragišić took part on the Franciscan side, arguing that it was not the greatest sin. On 30 June, Lorenzo de' Medici invited Dragišić and the Hungarian philosopher Nicolaus de Mirabilibus to a banquet in the Palazzo Vecchio to continue the debate. Dragišić published an account of this second encounter.; . Lorenzo hired him to tutor his son Piero in philosophy. He also asked him to judge the orthodoxy of the Apologia of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, which was dedicated to Lorenzo and defended thirteen theses condemned by a papal commission. Dragišić found in favour of Pico.
In 1490, Dragišić was named Franciscan minister provincial of Tuscany. In 1492, he conspired to replace Francesco Sansone as minister general of the order.; . The idea is first seen in a letter of to Piero de' Medici early in the year. On 5 July, Dragišić turned down a two-year chair in theology at the University of Pisa and travelled to Rome. He offered Pope Alexander VI 4,000 ducats—500 from himself and the remainder supplied by the Medici and Salviati families—to make him minister general. The plan failed and Sansone deprived him of all his offices in the order, appointing Pietro da Figino as minister provincial. In 1493, riots broke out around Santa Croce in response to Piero's interference Franciscan affairs. After the fall of Piero de' Medici in 1494, Dragišić fell victim to the repression of Medici supporters and was imprisoned for eleven days. He was forced into exile in Dubrovnik until 1500. and . , places him in Dubrovnik only from 1497.
From exile to archbishop
In Dubrovnik, Dragišić worked as a lecturer and as the vicar of the Archbishop Giovanni Sacco. In 1500, he attended the general chapter in Terni where Sansone's successor was elected. In a sign of his return to favour and prestige in Italy, he preached a sermon in the Apostolic Palace in Rome on 1 January 1501 in the presence of the pope. In 1503–1504, he was the custos of the Sacro Convento in Assisi. In 1504, he was elected rector of Santi Apostoli in Rome. In 1505, he was named commissar general of the Franciscan province of Austria. In 1506, he became a professor of theology at the University of Rome.
On 21 May 1507, Pope Julius II appointed Dragišić bishop of Cagli. From the summer of 1507 until January 1509, Dragišić was part of a diplomatic mission headed by Cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal to the court of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, on behalf of the papacy. In 1509, Maximilian ordered the destruction of all copies of the Talmud in his domains. This order was opposed by Johannes Reuchlin and Dragišić came to Reuchlin's defence. In December 1512, he was promoted to the prestigious but titular archbishopric of Nazareth, the actual seat of which was in Barletta because Nazareth itself was in partibus infidelium.; ; . He continued to be bishop of Cagli and reside in Rome.; .
From 1512 to 1517, Dragišić attended the Fifth Council of the Lateran, where he was "among the twenty-four prelates elected by their fellow prelates to sit on the conciliar deputations." With the election of Giovanni de' Medici as Pope Leo X in 1513, he hoped to obtain a cardinal's hat, but never did.; . Leo did appoint him to the commission that drafted the bull Apostolici Regiminis (19 December 1513). In July 1516, Leo named him to a commission to investigate Reuchlin's .; . He was the first member of the commission to vote in favour of Reuchlin. In 1517–1518, through his contact with the brothers Guillaume and Denis Briçonnet, he was connected to the reform-minded circles centred on the Milanese Oratorio dell'Eterna Sapienza and the . He died in 1520, either in Barletta or in Rome.
Works Dragišić wrote in Latin. Many of his writings are unpublished and only available in manuscript. It has been debated whether Dragišić, as a thinker, was more of a medieval scholastic or a Renaissance humanist. In fact, he had a foot in both worlds and his writings reveal a combination of new and old ways of thinking. Theologically he was a Scotist and philosophically a Platonist. The authors he cites most frequently in his writing are John Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Francis of Meyronnes, Godfrey of Fontaines and Landolfo Caracciolo.
Roman period, 1469–1471
Dragišić wrote three works during his time with Bessarion, two of them now lost. In 1469–1471, during the dispute between Bessarion and George of Trebizond, he wrote a treatise in defence of Bessarion, Defensorium Bessarionis (or Defensio Bessarionis).; . He lamented the fact that more capable men, like Giovanni Gatto and Fernando de Córdoba, had not risen to the cardinal's defence. The work pleased Bessarion, who gave him the nickname Benignus, meaning 'kind' or 'benevolent'.. , suggests "a good egg" for an equivalent English expression. According to , this nickname was misinterpreted as a Latinized surname by later Croatian writers, who slavicized it as Dobrotić or Dobretić. The only copy of the Defensorium, made by , was lost by Dragišić during a trip to England.; . Although lost, there is evidence that it was used by Calderini and Niccolò Perotti in their response to George of Trebizond written in early 1470.