Božidar Petranović (18 February 1809 – 12 September 1874) was an outstanding Serbian author, scholar, literary historian, and journalist of the 19th century. He is also mentioned as Teodor (Greek version of Serbian Božidar) Petranović in some publications.
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.[1] He was also educated in Graz together with Ljudevit Gaj.[1]
Božidar Petranović was the founder and publisher of the first Serb literal and scientific paper in Zadar, entitled the "Serbian-Dalmatian Magazine" (Srbsko-Dalmatinski Magazin).[1] 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".[1] He later hired the Dubrovnik Orthodox priest Djordje Nikolajević as an editor of Magazin, and the two promulgated Ljudevit Gaj-Vuk Karadžić's language reforms.[1]
Petranović also wrote very interesting studies on Rousseau, Voltaire and Matthias Bel in the Serbian Journal (Srpske novine) in 1838.
He is the author of Bogomili: Crkva Bosanska ("Bogomils: The Bosnian Church", published by Demarki-Ruzier, Zadar), 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.
His ambitious history of world literature, Istorija književnosti (published by Danilo Medaković in Novi Sad, 1858), 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 literatures 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 (Petranović: Rukovodstvo). 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, particularly Jovan Skerlić, Bogdan Popović and Pavle Popović.
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.