Pavel Josef Šafařík

Pavel Josef Šafařík (born May 13, 1795, Kobeliarov, Slovakia, Hungary—died June 26, 1861, Prague, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [now in Czech Republic]) was a leading figure of the Czech national revival and a pioneer of Slavonic philology and archaeology.

Šafařík was director of the Serbian Orthodox grammar school at Novi Sad before settling in Prague in 1833. In 1841 he refused an invitation to occupy the chair of Slavonic philology at Berlin, preferring to remain a private scholar in his own country.

Erudition and scholarly integrity characterize a series of influential works on the history and languages of the Slavs: Geschichte der slavischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten (1826; “History of the Slavic Languages and Literature in All Dialects”); Slovanské starožitnosti (1837; “Slavic Antiquities”), better known in the German translation Slawische Altertümer (1843); Über den Ursprung und die Heimat des Glagolitismus (1858; “Concerning the Origins and Provenance of the Glagolitic Alphabet”); Geschichte der südslawischen Literatur (1864; “History of South Slavic Literature”).

Although his work on the origins and migrations of the Slavs has been superseded, it was of great value in its time. His philological works can still be read with profit; in his belief in the priority of the Glagolitic alphabet over the Cyrillic, he was far ahead of his time.