South Slavic National Renaissance

From Slavic.info

Among the southern Slavs also, the program of national renaissance goes back to Herder and the German philosophy of enlightenment. One of the earliest humanitarian philosophers was the Serb Obradović (1739-1811), a monk who worked indefatigably at self-culture, one to whom a book was dearer than the sound of monastery or church bells. He was succeeded by the Slavist Vuk Karadjić ; and subsequently, in the thirties and forties, by Gai, who under Kollar's influence was the founder of Illyrism. In the year 1848 Illyrism acquired a strong political trend through its antagonism to the Magyars, which was fostered by Vienna, and through the fate of the Serbs under Turkish rule.

The national unification of the Serbo-Croats was long hindered by the religious differences between the Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs. Juraj Križanić, a Croat priest, in the 17th Century had preached panslavism; but not until quite recently did Croats and Serbs make the first attempt to subordinate their religious differences to the joint national interest, encountering thereupon, vigorous nationalist and ecclesiastical opponents in Buda-Pesth and in Vienna (the Serbo-Austrian conflict).