Antun Vrančić, Croatian church prelate, diplomat and writer (Šibenik, May 29 1504 – Prešov, Slovakia, June 15 1573).

As a young man he went to Hungary, where bishop Petar Berislavić, who was his mother’s cousin, took care of his education; he became the canon of Skradin and the archdeacon of Veszprém. Upon the death of Peter Berislavić he enters a circle around Ivan Zapolja, who sends him to study in Padua, Vienna and Krakow. For years he was assigned diplomatic missions in leading European countries. In 1549 he entered the service of Ferdinand I Habsburg; from 1553 to 1557 he was the king’s negotiator in Constantinople. He was the bishop of Pécs and Eger, the archbishop of Ostrog, the primas of Hungary and the cardinal. He corresponded with the most prominent European humanists (Aonio Paleario, P. Giovio, Ph. Melanchthon, N. Zrinski).

A versatile literary worker, a writer of travel books describing Eastern European countries, a poet latinist, an archaeologist (Roman inscriptions, in Ankara he found and published August’s autobiographical document Res gestae divi Augusti) and a biographer (biography of Petar Berislavić); he was one of the most prominent personalities of Croatian history of the 16th century.

Source: Croatian Encyclopaedia of The Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography