Born to Bosnian Croat parents, he identified as South Slav and initially he supported the Serbian and later the Bulgarian national cause.

He passed his education in the Franciscan school of Tolisa (1830–1833), and then studied philosophy and theology in Zagreb University, where he was influenced by the ideas of the Illyrian movement.

In 1843, he contacted the Serbian government and in the following years he served secret missions in parts of today Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia, then under Austrian or Ottoman rule.

After 1868 his close ties with the local Slavic population led him to a progressive dissociation from the official position of Belgrade, that there lived a Serbs.

[2] In addition, owing to his collector's zeal, Verkovich saved a great number of old manuscripts, coins, objects of art, etc.

[3] This sensational Slavic Veda contained “Bulgarian folk songs of the pre-historical and pre-Christian times, discovered in Thrace and Macedonia”.