Jurij Japelj (1744-1807), scholar
Jurij Japelj / Georg Japel (1744-1807) was a Slovenian scholar.
Biography
Jurij Japelj was born April 11, 1744 at Kamnik [Slovenia], then part of the Habsburg Empire.
He joined the Jesuit Order and was ordained a priest in 1769 in Trieste, where he remained until the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. He then served as personal secretary of the Bishop of Ljubljana Karl Herberstein. Together with Blaž Kumerdej, he led a team which between 1784 and 1804 completed a new translation of the whole Bible into Slovenian.
In 1799, Japelj became the director of the seminary in Klagenfurt [Austria], where he died on October 11, 1807, shortly after being appointed Bishop of Trieste.