Abstract The Zagreb Bishop Stephan II (1225-1247) was one of the most prominent people of the Croatian public life of his time for his achievements in religious and political fields. He may have been born between 1190 and 1195, as there are no reliable data of his origin or where he was educated. After completing his studies in 1224, he was Chancellor at the Court of King Andrew II. In 1225, as Stephen II, he was appointed Bishop of Zagreb to restore the Bishopric, which had been neglected in religious, financial and educational terms. In the course of 22 years of his bishop’s service, he thoroughly reorganized its administration, founded numerous parishes and ecclesiastic institutions, as well as his own office, modeled after the King’s. Joined by the Slavonian duke Coloman, he founded new urban settlements and encouraged by the Holy See, worked on fighting the heretic teaching of Bosnian Christians. With Duke Coloman, he started setting up a union of the Zagreb and Split churches into one metropolitan see which would be independent of the Hungarian church hierarchy – an ambitious project which was not possible to carry out due to resistance of the Hungarian Court and ecclesiastic organizations. Bishop Stephen II paid special attention to education of his clergy and the work of the Zagreb cathedral chapter. One among his great achievements was founding of new Čazma as bishops’ residence and an assembly chapter (loca credibilia) in it with ten canons. He brought mendicant orders, the Paulists, Dominicans and Franciscans, to the Bishopric. He had numerous churches, chapels and monasteries built in the Gothic style. He had lived to witness a short invasion of Mongolians into Hungary-Croatian Kingdom, after which he had the severe consequences of devastation restored. He was a very learned person and high state prelate, devoted to the Hungarian Court and a favourite of the Roman popes at the time, with great reputation in ecclesiastic circles. The Bishop died in Čazma on July 10, 1247 and it is there that he was probably buried. Due to his merits for the overall revival and reform of the Zagreb Bishopric and the Croatian North, Bishop Stephen II was recorded as late as a hundred years later in the annals of Croatian Church as a famous person (sollemnis homo) with particular merits for the Zagreb Bishopric.
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