Born in Varcar Vakuf in 1834, his father Anto came from the town of Uskoplje, and his mother was Agata Stipić from Varcar Vakuf. His father died early and he was raised by his uncle from his father's side, Fra Grgo Knežević, who was buried in Ivanjska village. Fra Antun Knežević studied in Fojnica, Rome, and Siena and became friar on 26 April 1851. His first Mass was on 21 September 1856.
Views, opinions and engagements
Antun Knežević was one of the main proponents of Bosniak nationhood, and he fiercely advocated against imminent Croatization of Bosnian Catholics on one side, as well as imminent Serbianization of Bosnian Orthodox people on the other, as he called them Catholic Bosniaks and Orthodox Bosniaks in his work. His position and doctrine was that all Bosnians or Bosniaks are one people of three faiths, and that up to the late 19th century no Croats and Serbs lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although Fra Antun Knežević was not a unique phenomenon in this sense, he was certainly among the most articulate, having a strong impact along with Fra Ivan Franjo Jukić from whom he took the idea, and who was his teacher and mentor earlier in his life. Since the 17th century many other members of Franciscan order in Bosnia accepted the idea of a Bosniak identity, nurturing it within the brotherhood and carrying it over into the 18th and 19th century. But it was these two, Fra Knežević and his mentor, Fra Jukič, who left the deepest mark on Bosnian culture and history, while championing the notion that Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims are one nation, and Bosnia and Herzegovina a country with deep cultural and historical roots. Like Jukić before him, Knežević too articulately expressed his feeling of national belonging, which he always and primarily defined as Bošnjak in such a way as to include all three religious groups inhabiting Bosnia and Herzegovina. The only other cultural identity he recognized was Illyrian, as a cultural supra-identity of all South Slavs, hence his interest and activity as a member of the Illyrian movement. He was a great opponent of any foreign occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in his time to the occupation by Turkey and by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fra Antun Knezević in 1877 started the construction of the Franciscan monastery in Jajce. He also opened the first public school in Bosnia in his own house.
Knežević died on 22 September 1889 in Kotor Varoš while celebrating a folk Mass. His bones were transferred to Jajce in 1955. Later friars of Jajce monastery moved the bones of Fra Antun Knežević to the nearby, new church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Jajce.
Letters
, Bosnian historian fra. Antun Knežević's letter to Béni Kállay
