Božidar Petranović was a Serbian author, scholar, journalist, and one of the leading historians of Serbian literature and a distinctive proponent of world literature. He is also mentioned as Theodor Petranović in some publications. He is regarded as one of the early Serbian bibliographers.
Biography
Born in Šibenik, Dalmatia, Božidar Petranović was one of the first Dalmatian Serbs to be educated in the newly constructed Metropolitanate of Karlovci's Gymnasium of Karlovci. He was also educated in Graz together with Ljudevit Gaj. Božidar Petranović was the founder and publisher of the first Serb academic and scientific paper in Zadar, entitled the "Serbian-Dalmatian Magazine". In 1838, Petranović claimed that the greater part of the population of the Kingdom of Dalmatia was "of Serb name" and spoke "true Serbian dialect". He later hired the Dubrovnik Eastern Orthodox priest Djordje Nikolajević as an editor of Magazin, and the two promulgated Ljudevit Gaj-Vuk Karadžić's language reforms. He also corresponded with authors Niccolo Tommaseo, Francesco Dall'Ongaro, journalist Pacifico Valussi, Ivan August Kaznačić, Medo Pucić, and Stipan Ivičević. Throughout 1848-1849, Petranović argued that to secure a better economic future it was necessary to transfer Dalmatia into a commercial haven between sea and hinterland, between the Mediterranean and Balkan trade by lifting maritime custom taxes. In this pursuit, Petranović, along with Stipan Ivičević and Zora dalmatinska editor Ante Kuzmanić, tried to found a Dalmatian-Bosnian newspaper. Ivičević also sought to convince Habsburg authorities to set up a railroad line that connected Dalmatia directly to Mostar, Sarajevo, and Belgrade. Petranović also wrote very interesting studies on Rousseau, Voltaire and Matthias Bel in the Serbian Journal in 1838. Also, in 1838, he claimed Dubrovnik's literary tradition for Serbia since Dubrovnik's authors "wrote in Serbian, but with Latin letters.". Petranović is the author of Bogomili: Crkva Bosanska, a book that received considerable attention from European and Russian scholars when it was first published in 1867. In it, he claimed that the Bosnian Church was part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but with the advent, spread and influence of Bogomilism, some members of the Serbian Orthodox Church broke away and acquired heretical beliefs. With the ensuing Turkish invasions of the 15th Century, persecuted Bogomils were more apt to espouse Islam than the rest of the Christian population, than to fight for their survival against the invading Islamic, Asiatic hordes. Similar theories were proposed by Vaso Glušacat the beginning of the 20th century, and contemporary historian Dragoljub Dragojlović in his 1987 book. His ambitious history of world literature, Istorija književnosti, conceived at least fifteen years before its publication, proposed a radically different and more elaborate historical concept of literature—a work on the influence of foreign literature on the development of Serbian literature. Petranović published Part I as a book and fragments of Part II in literary periodicals; in an announcement of his book, he stated that the national culture had neglected literary history. His overview included ancient Jewish, Chinese, Indian, Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Paleo-Christian literature. He was a lonely figure, but by the end of the 19th century, several historians of literature defended his universal approach, arguing that his approach to literature was necessary for a better understanding of the national literature. Ljubomir Nedić, Svetozar Marković, Bogdan Popović, Pavle Popović, Jovan Skerlić, Slobodan Jovanović and Branko Lazarević all took a particular liking to him. By the early twentieth century, this led to the founding of a Department of World Literature in the School of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade; its first professor was Svetomir Nikolajević, later Professor in the School of Philology at the University of Belgrade. Petranović died in Venice on 12 September 1874.
