Arturo Cronia - veľký slavista a priateľ Slovákov
Arturo Cronia - a Great Slavist Scholar and Friend of Slovakia

Summary/Abstract: In this commemorative article the author briefly sketches the life and academic activities of one of the most prominent Italian Slavist, Prof. Arturo Cronia. He was born in Zadar (Croatia), studied Slavic philology at Steiergratz and Prague and obtained his Ph. D. at the University of Padua in 1921. In 1929 he took up the professorial chair of Italian Language and Literature at the Masaryk University in Brno and at the same time was the chairman of Italian Studies at the Komenský University in Bratislava. In 1932 he was appointed as Professor of Italian Language and Literature at the Charles University in Prague. In 1936 he returned to Italy and was made the Director of the Institute of Slavic Philology and the Professor of Serbian and Croatian Language al the University of Padua. On this post he remained till his death in 1967. In addition to his teaching duties he was an outstanding research scholar. His principle field of interest was the Croatian and Czech philology and literature. However, he wrote also a few, but significant, studies and articles on Slovak issues. In these he corrected many misconceptions of Czech and Western Slavists who failed to recognise the ethnic individuality of Slovak nation and•the separate identity of its language. He was the driving force behind the establishment of the Italian Institute in Bratislava in 1942 and of the Lectorship of Slovak Language and literature (attached to his Institute of Slavic Philology at the University of Padua) in 1946. This lectorship - at Cronia's recommendation - was in 1967 elevated to the status of a separate Department ofCucho-Slovak Language and Literature; and in 1976 renamed as the Department of Czech and Slovak 'Language and Literature. In 1967 - 1983 its Head was Prof. Milan S. Ďurica, the author of this tribute.

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