Josef Vajs

A page of the Assemani Gospel. The manuscript was published in a facsimile edition by Josef Vajs and Josef Kurz in 1929.

Josef Vajs (born October 17, 1865 in Dolní Liboc (now a district of Prague), † July 2, 1959 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak Catholic priest. He was a professor at the Charles University in Prague and editor of Church Slavonic liturgical texts and written monuments.

Life

Vajs was born in a suburb of Prague in 1865 as the son of the carpenter Josef Vajs and his wife Marie. In 1885 he graduated from high school in Prague. He then studied theology in Rome until 1890 . He was ordained a priest there on December 21, 1889.

After his return, Josef Vajs worked as a clergyman in Prague; he also attended lectures by the Slavists Jan Gebauer and František Pastrnak . In 1912 he qualified as a lecturer. In 1918 he was appointed associate professor and in 1919 full professor. Until his retirement in 1937, Josef Vajs taught Old Church Slavonic and Slavic liturgy at the Charles University . He died in Prague in 1959.

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Since 1897 Vajs has regularly visited the Croatian island of Krk and researched the Glagolitic literature there and the preserved written monuments. This preparatory work culminated in a four-year study trip to Krk (1902–1906). He edited texts from the Old Testament , breviaries and missals in Church Slavonic. In 1905 he published a missal in Rome for the Croatian dioceses in Glagolitic script. In Prague, too, Vajs held services in the Old Slavonic rite and provided the necessary liturgical books.

The compilation of all Old Church Slavonic texts on the Bohemian patrons Wenceslaus and Ludmilla , published by Vajs in 1929, has remained a reference work to this day. Also in 1929, together with Josef Kurz, he published the Evangeliarum Assemani , a Glagolitic Gospel text from the 10th century, in a facsimile edition. In 1935–1936 his four-volume reconstruction of the oldest Slavic Gospel translation that Cyril and Methodius had created for the Slav mission in the 9th century was published . 1948–1952 he worked on the Old Church Slavonic Dictionary ( slovník jazyka staroslověnského ). His last significant work was an annotated edition of Josef Dobrovský's work Cyril and Method, the Slavs Apostles , in which he summarized the research history of Cyril and Methodius from the times of Dobrovský to his present.

Josef Vajs was a member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts , the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences , a corresponding member of the South Slav Academy in Zagreb and an honorary member of the Slavic Institute in Prague. He was papal prelate , canon of the collegiate chapter at Prague Castle and honorary canon of the cathedral chapters in Zagreb, Split and Krk.

literature

• Tkadlčík, Vojtěch: Pražský slavista Josef Vajs . Teologické texty 1995/6, p. 215.

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about Josef Vajs in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• Literature by and about Josef Vajs in the catalog of the German National Library