Marko Krizin

Marko Krizin, known in Croatian as Marko Križevčanin and in Latin as Marcus Crisinus, was a Catholic priest and martyr of the early seventeenth century. He was born in 1589 in Križevci, in the Kingdom of Croatia under Habsburg rule. Accounts of his life describe him as coming from a Croatian family of notable, often said to be noble, standing. He was educated in Jesuit schools of the Habsburg lands, studying in Vienna and then at the University of Graz, where he obtained a doctorate in philosophy. He was later sent to Rome to the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum, which trained clergy for the German and Hungarian provinces. There he completed theological studies, received a doctorate in theology, and was ordained a priest before returning to Central Europe.

After his return he was incardinated in the Archdiocese of Esztergom, the primatial see of the Kingdom of Hungary. Esztergom itself then lay in Ottoman-held territory, so the archbishop and cathedral chapter functioned from other centers, above all Trnava (Nagyszombat). Krizin was appointed a canon of the Esztergom chapter and served as rector of the seminary at Trnava, forming priests for a Church pressed by Protestant advances and by Ottoman occupation of much of the kingdom. He belonged to the generation of clergy associated with the Catholic restoration promoted by Archbishop Péter Pázmány. He remained a diocesan priest and never entered a religious order, unlike the two Jesuits with whom he would later die.

In 1619 the Calvinist prince of Transylvania, Gábor Bethlen, rose against the Habsburgs. The royal free city of Košice (then Kassa) in Upper Hungary passed into the hands of his forces. Krizin had been sent there to administer the estates of the Esztergom chapter and to support Catholic life in the city. He lodged with two Jesuit missionaries already working in Košice, the Pole Melchior Grodziecki and the Hungarian István Pongrácz. After the change of control, soldiers and local authorities demanded that the three priests abandon the Catholic faith and accept Calvinism. They refused.

On 7 September 1619 the three men were seized, tortured, and put to death. Krizin was beheaded. Their bodies were thrown into a drain or cesspit. Catholics soon regarded the killings as martyrdoms suffered for refusal to leave the Roman Church amid the religious wars of the period. The remains were later recovered, in part through the efforts of the Catholic noblewoman Katalin Pálffy, and were preserved as relics and eventually translated to places of veneration, including Trnava.

Devotion to the Martyrs of Košice spread in Hungary, Croatia, Poland, and the Slovak lands. Pope Pius X beatified the three priests on 15 January 1905. Pope John Paul II canonized them on 2 July 1995 in Košice, presenting them as witnesses of fidelity and as a bond among the Christian peoples of Central Europe. Their feast is kept on 7 September. Marko Krizin is especially commemorated in Croatia as a native priest-martyr, and together with his companions he is associated with the city and church of Košice.