The author first describes the historical circumstances in which Collegium Ungarico-Illyricum was established and in which it operated between 1553 and 1781, linking Croatia, through its leading Church and secular figures, with the oldest European university - that of Bologna. The author then goes on to explain the purpose and main objectives of the College and – by sketching the life and work of some of its students - to illustrate its impact on the complex fabric of Croatia's political, intellectual and generally cultural history of that period. The idea of the College was motivated by the restoration policies of the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent, designed to check the infiltration of Protestantism into Croatia from Germany and Hungary and to buttress the Croatian national and state identity in the face of Turkish threats. The greater part of the paper is devoted to the College's role in the second half of the seventeenth century and later, when the direct threat of further Turkish advance had already subsided and when the students of that institution played a very significant role in the propagation of modern ideas and social trends into Croatia, thus helping to bring the country back into the orbit of the European civilization. This slow and prolonged process is traced in the intellectual biographies of some prominent students, including Baltazar Dvorničić Napuly (1560-1624), Benko Vinković (1581-1642), Juraj Križanić (c. 1618-1683), Baltazar Adam Krčelić (1715-1778), Nikola Škrlec (1729-1799), Mihalj Šilobod Bolšić (1724-1787), and Maksimilijan Vrhovac (1752-1827).