Jurij Japelj

Jurij Japelj, also known in German as Georg Japel, (11 April 1744 – 11 October 1807) was a Slovene Jesuit priest, translator, and philologist.

He was part of the Zois circle, a group of Carniolan scholars and intellectuals that were instrumental in the spread of Enlightenment ideas in the Slovene Lands.

Born in the Upper Carniolan town of Kamnik, then part of the Habsburg monarchy (now in Slovenia), he studied in Jesuit schools in Ljubljana, Gorizia, and Graz.

With the support of Bishop Herberstein, Japelj started translating religious texts into Slovene.

He rejected the innovations of the Franciscan friar Marko Pohlin, and returned to the language of 16th-century Slovene Protestants, especially Jurij Dalmatin and Adam Bohorič.