Leo Petrović
Leo Petrović | |
|---|---|
| Born | Grgo Petrović 28 February 1883 |
| Died | 14 February 1945 (aged 61) |
| Cause of death | Murdered by the Yugoslav Partisans |
| Alma mater | University of Fribourg |
| Known for | Thesis on the origins of the Bosnian Church |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Medieval history |
| Thesis | Disquisitio historica in originem usus Slavici idiomatis in liturgia apud Slavos ac praecipue Chroatos dissertatio (1908) |
| Doctoral advisor | Prince Maximilian of Saxony |
Leo Petrović OFM (28 February 1883 – 14 February 1945) was a Herzegovinian Croat Franciscan and historian.
Petrović, a native of Klobuk, Ljubuški, entered the Franciscan Province of Herzegovina in 1900 and was ordained a priest in 1905. He held various monastic and ecclesiastical positions, including being a general vicar of the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno in 1943 and a Provincial of the Franciscan Province of Herzegovina from 1943 until 1945, when he was murdered by the communist Yugoslav Partisans. During World War II, Petrović helped Serbs, Jews and political dissidents, including the Yugoslav Partisans.
The first historian to rebuke the Bogomilist theory about the Bosnian Church, he promoted a thesis about the Bosnian Church having origins in the Catholic Benedictine monastic order and that it used native language and observed the Roman Rite.