BULIĆ, FRANCESCO - Archaeologist, b. at Vranjić (Vragnizza), near Split, on 4 Oct. 1846, d. at Zagreb on 28 July 1934.
Having completed his ecclesiastical studies at the seminary of Zadar (1869), he attended the University of Vienna, where he took his degree in classical philosophy (1873), and returned there later in 1877 to complete his epigraphic studies. For the rest of his life he lived in his homeland, where he took an active part in the civil administration, but above all he devoted himself to teaching and to archaeological studies, as director of the lyceum of Split (1883-96), director of the archaeological museum (1883-1920), and provincial curator of monuments (1913-26).
Following the example of De Rossi, he devoted himself by preference to the study of the Christian antiquity of Dalmatia, which he succeeded in bringing out of the shadows, especially in the very important center of Salona. The results of his excavations and explorations are recorded in vol. VII and following of the Bollettino di archeologia e storia Dalmazia (Split 1878 ff.), a periodical which from 1920 (vol. 43) appeared with a Croatian title and with a subtitle and summaries in French, having M. Abramić as co-editor. But B., although by his Croatian origin he was an ardent Slavophile and an opponent of Italian aspirations (which he also fought as Yugoslav delegate to the Paris Conference), was not sectarian in the field of culture and zealously protected the Latin and Italian historical-archaeological heritage of Dalmatia. Even after 1920 he continued to write, almost exclusively, in Italian in his journal.
His merits lie above all in militant archaeology. But for lack of a broad and deep archaeological and architectural culture he did not attain that synthesis of the antiquities of Salona which in the last years of his life others, using his excavations, began to produce. His publications are essentially ecclesiastical and fragmentary. Worthy of note alongside the Bollettino are the Inscriptiones quae in C. R. museo archeologico Spalati asservantur (Split 1886, followed by some auctaria up to 1894), and Stridone luogo natale di s. Girolamo, in Miscellanea Geronimiana* (Rome 1920, pp. 253-330). A great part of B.'s work was the organization and successful outcome of the First Congress of Christian Archaeology of 1894. His merits were widely recognized and his publications and his character much appreciated. He was a corresponding member of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology and of the Institut de France, and an ordinary member of the German Archaeological Institute and of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.
In 1921 a very rich Strena Buliciana was offered to him. Commentationes gratulatoriae Francisco Bulić ob XV vitae lustra feliciter peracta oblatae a discipulis et amicis a. d. IV non. oct. MCMXXI (Zagreb 1924).
Bibliography2 works
Antonio Ferrua