Ján Kollár and Slavic traces in Italy in the light of the Italian travel Genre

Abstract

The topic of the article is related to the second unfinished book of travel notes by the Czech and Slovak educator and poet Jan Kollar (1793-1852), emerging as a result of his trip to Italy in 1844. It was preceded by essays reflecting the impressions of a trip there in 1841, in which the author, citing curious arguments, puts forward the thesis that Upper (Northern) Italy belonged to the Slavic space in the Middle Ages, In the treatise Staroitalia slavjanská (“Old Italy Slavic”, 1853), Kollar extends the settlement of the Slavs to the whole of Italy, including Sicily. Special attention in the unfinished essays is paid to Rome. Considering it as the cradle and guardian of the great European culture, the faithful Kollar managed to “discover” a lot of Slavic traces there, including in St. Peter's Cathedral, in the Lateran Basilica and in other monuments of the ancient city. However, pan-Slavism did not prevent Kollar from connecting the identity of the Slavs with the Christian world, with an educated Christian Europe.