Medo Pucić

Orsat "Medo" Pucić, (, ; 12 March 1821 – 30 June 1882) was a Ragusan writer and an important member of the Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik.

Biography Orsat Pucić was born on in Dubrovnik, then in the Austrian Empire. He was descended from the House of Pucić, an old noble family of Republic of Ragusa. His brother was Niko Pucić. He attended the lyceum in Venice, where in 1841 he became acquainted with Ján Kollár, Pucić was impressed with pan-Slavist ideas, and went on to join the Illyrian movement. Pucić was a member of the Serb Catholic movement.

left|frame|Medo Pucić He studied between 1841 and 1843 in the University of Padua, and then from 1843 to 1845 he studied law in Vienna and was a Knight Hospitaller of the Sovereign Order of Saint John. In 1843, desiring to get in touch with his Slavic roots, he renamed himself "Medo" from his original baptized name of Orsat.

Pucić lived in the cities of Lucca and Parma between 1846 and 1849, serving in the Habsburg courts. Pucić was in active contact with cultural and political circles of Central Croatia, the rest of the Austrian Empire, and different countries of Europe. In March 1848 Pucić threw his lot with Adam Mickiewicz who was in Rome at the time trying to convince Pope Pius IX to endorse a Polish national revolution against the Habsburgs. In 1858 Medo Pucić published the first volume Serbian Documents (Spomenici Srpski) in Belgrade which consisted of documents written by Rusko Hristoforović (1395-1423) of the Serbian Chancellery in Dubrovnik.

After 1860 when the political life in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was revived, he took part in the Serbian and Croatian national movements in Dalmatia and the politics in Croatia proper. Pucić's pan-Slavic (or pan-South-Slavic) idea was based on the principle of unification of Croats with the Slavic tradition in Dubrovnik. Pucić was a vocal supporter of the unification of all the South-Slavic lands within the Habsburg monarchy around one nation, called later Yugoslavia.

Medo Pucić was the first person to publicly call himself a Serb, while at the same time believing that the Croatian name for the language he spoke was merely a synonym of the Serbian name, so he was effectively an adherent of slovinstvo, a pan-Slavic view of South Slavic nationalities.

In 1868, he moved to Belgrade to become a teacher to the young prince Milan Obrenović IV until he came of age in 1872. Pucić expressed his ideas of Slavdom in his first poems, Slavjanstvo Bosanske dvorije in 1841 and another in 1842 dedicated to Ján Kollár. Talijanke (The Italian Ones), 1848 (elegies) Spomenici srpski od godine 1395. do 1423. (Serbian monuments from Year 1395 to 1423), book I, Belgrade 1858 and book II, Belgrade 1862 Dei canti popolari illirici, discorso detto Adam Mickiewicz, Zara 1860 Giovanni Gundulich. vita (Ivan Gundulić), from Favilla journal, Trieste, 1843, №XIX, p. 293-301 Pjesme (Poems), 1862 and 1879 Karađurđevka, 1864 Kasnachich G. (Giovanni) Augusto e O.P (Orsato Pozza) sugli slavi from giornale Dalmazia 1847 n. p. 43 Le nozze di Platone, o dialogo dell amore, tradotto nell´occasione delle nozze di sua sorella Anna (con Marino Giorgi) dal Conte Orsato Pozza, Trieste 1857 Compendio della storia di Ragusa dall´originale italiano di G. Resti per cura di O. Pozza, Zara 1856