Introduction
This article offers the first detailed analysis of an archival source containing notes on Modern Greek language and literature, preserved among the papers of the Hellenist Karl Benedikt Hase (1780–1864) in Weimar, Germany. The authors identify the archival source (GSA 108/35) as a student notebook from Hase's time in Paris, containing notes on Modern Greek from a course held by Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison (1750–1805) in 1801-2. The article sets the scene (I) by considering the notebook's historical context, its place in the life of Hase, and the history of Villoison's Greek courses in nineteenth-century Paris. The article proceeds (II) to a detailed study of the archival source itself, offering a description of the notebook and analysis of its contents. This analysis focuses on the principal text addressed in Hase's notes: Alexander Amiras’ Greek translation of Costin's History of the Kingdoms and Princes of Moldavia. The article's third section (III), finally, compares Hase's student notes on Amiras/Costin with his later article on the same text, published in 1827 at the height of Hase's career as Professor of Modern Greek in Paris. A brief conclusion draws together this study's results, which bear on the early history of Modern Greek pedagogy in Paris, the development of Hase's own ideas concerning Greek language and literature in the footsteps of his teacher Villoison, and the lasting influence of Amiras’/Costin's History as a text for instruction in Modern Greek in nineenth-century France. Three images of the archival source are appended.
I. Historical context
Karl Benedikt Hase arrived in Paris at the age of twenty-one, having walked from his native Thuringia across central Germany in the autumn of 1801.Footnote 1 The young man brought with him excellent knowledge of an array of languages, including Latin, Ancient Greek, and Arabic, but also of Modern Greek, a language he had learnt from Greek-speaking peers during his time at the University of Jena.Footnote 2 If Hase's initial motives for heading to France were generally ‘revolutionary’,Footnote 3 it was his promise as a scholar that kept him in France. By 1814, he held a post in the manuscript department at the (then) Bibliothèque Impériale, was employed as a teacher to Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (the future Napoléon III) and his brother Napoléon-Louis,Footnote 4 and had begun the process of becoming a naturalized French citizen.Footnote 5
Hase would go on to become a leading scholar of Greek in Paris.Footnote 6 Following his early publications (hailed as models of Byzantine textual criticismFootnote 7) he began teaching Modern Greek in 1815 at the École des langues orientales, before taking the chair officially in 1819.Footnote 8 In the mid-1830s, Hase took a leading role in the preparation of Firmin-Didot's expanded edition of Étienne's Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a monument of classical Greek learning which would occupy Hase until his death.Footnote 9 By the pinnacle of his career as a Hellenist, Hase was renowned also as prominent figure of the French academy at large. By 1832, he was appointed head of the manuscript department at the (then) Bibliothèque Royale,Footnote 10 formed part of the academic commission for France's military and research undertakings in the Morea (1828–1833) and Algeria (1839–1841),Footnote 11 and took up the chair of Comparative Grammar at the Sorbonne in 1852.Footnote 12 By the end of his life, Hase had become a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg (1821), a member of the French Académie d'inscriptions et belles lettres (1824), a Knight in the French Legion of Honour (1828), and he had been admitted to the Prussian order Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste (1849).
The various titles and accolades that Hase accrued at the high points of his career are well documented.Footnote 13 His academic interests and activities during the earliest years of his time in Paris remain less studied. In particular, Hase's interests in Modern Greek at the turn of the nineteenth century have received comparatively little attention. Moreover, the development of his research in this area of study is frequently overshadowed by his contributions to the fields of Byzantine and classical philology. Based on the identification of the archival object at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv (GSA) 108/35 – hereafter ‘the Green Notebook’ – as a collection of notes from Hase's time as a twenty-one-year-old on the cusp of entering his academic career, this article proposes an in-depth consideration of Karl Benedikt's earliest Parisian endeavours in Modern Greek, and the place of this training in his later scholarship. This attention to an early phase of the scholar's life promises not only to shed light on the details of Hase's passage into the French academy, but also offers primary material for a re-examination of the study of Modern Greek in early nineteenth-century Paris.
Though the details of Hase's interest in contemporary spoken Greek have been overlooked, the fundamental significance of these linguistic interests for his first contact with French academia is at least acknowledged in an oft-related episode from his earliest days in Paris. Hase wrote of it in a letter to his German friend, Wilhelm Erdmann, dated 27 October 1801 (5 Brumaire IX).Footnote 14 That afternoon, Hase had fallen into conversation with a mamelouk at the Palais Royale: he was able to strike up a rapport with this Ottoman solider thanks to his skills in Arabic. From this conversation, Hase learned the whereabouts of the interpreter (dragoman) for the Ottoman ambassador in Paris, the Athenian Panagiotis Kodrikas (1762–1827). Having then sought out Kodrikas, Hase was able to win over this prominent figure of the Greek Enlightenment with his command of spoken Greek. Kodrikas was naturally well connected in Parisian intellectual circles, and particularly with Hellenists. He was able to write a letter of introduction for the young Hase to Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison, the French scholar renowned then (as now) for his rediscovery of the Homeric Venetus A and the resulting new edition of the Iliad.Footnote 15
It was, then, primarily through Villoison that Hase could begin to establish himself on the academic scene in Paris. He records in another letter to ErdmannFootnote 16 that Villoison soon promised him work as a copyist of Greek manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Royale, as well as a stipend for meeting to practice Modern Greek for an hour every ten days.Footnote 17 It was during these early years in Paris that the young Hase also published his first article on the topic of Modern Greek, published in the German-language Neue teuscher Merkur, which attempts to answer the question ‘Sollen wir die Neugriechen in ihrer Aussprache des Altgriechischen nachahmen?’Footnote 18 Here Hase reveals himself somewhat conservative as regards the modern pronunciation of ancient Greek, yet with a progressive view as to the value of Modern Greek as a study per se.
In his second letter to Erdmann Hase acknowledged that Villoison's motivations for employing him in this second capacity most likely stemmed from the older scholar's generosity towards a young enthusiast for the Greek language, rather than from a belief that Hase might necessarily teach him something new. Villoison had, indeed, spent nearly three years among Greek-speakers during his time with the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Choiseul-Gouffier (1752–1817), between 1784 and 1786.Footnote 19 During this time, Villoison had travelled extensively across Greece and had expanded his already extensive knowledge of the language's historical forms sufficiently to be credited with early academic interest in the Tsakonian dialect of Modern Greek spoken in the eastern Peloponnese.Footnote 20 Indeed, after a period away from Paris during the years of the Revolution, Villoison began to offer courses in Greek as an independent instructor. After considerable insistence on the part of Villoison,Footnote 21 a chair of Modern Greek was finally established at the École des langues orientales vivantes in 1804. Following Villoison's death in 1805, this chair remained unoccupied until 1819, when Hase became the first to occupy it full-time.Footnote 22
Villoison's first private Greek course was held in 1799-1800 following his return to Paris.Footnote 23 He intended to offer lectures on both ancient and later Greek authors. An advertisement for the course was published by Villoison's friend, Millin de Grandmaison (1759–1818), in the Magasin encyclopédique in autumn of the same year.Footnote 24 From the text of the advertisement, the reader learns that expectations for Villoison's private course were modest. Millin's emphatic –almost exasperated – call for interested parties to register at the earliest opportunity indicate already the limited reception that Villoison's course received.Footnote 25 In a letter to his friend (and Hase's former teacher) Karl August Böttiger in Weimar, Millin reported that the course was ‘n'autre chose que l'explication de Pindare avec d'amples commentaires philologiques’.Footnote 26
Perhaps in response to this lukewarm reception, Villoison had by the following year switched the focus of his course to Modern Greek and integrated it into the recently established École des langues orientales vivantes.Footnote 27 An advertisement for the 1800 version of the course appeared again in the Magasin encyclopédique; this time at once briefer and more descriptive about the style of teaching and the types of text that would be read:
Le citoyen d'Ansse de Villoison développera l'origine et les principes du grec vulgaire, dictera des dialogues pour enseigner à parler cette langue et expliquera ensuite le Γεωπονικὸν ou Traité d'agriculture d'Agapius et l’Ἀραβικὸν μυθολογικὸν, contes arabes traduits en grec vulgaire.Footnote 28
Villoison taught a further edition of this course in 1801-2, once again advertised in the Magasin encyclopédique,Footnote 29 before the course was discontinued.Footnote 30
Whilst Villoison's courses never attracted a large number of students, the names of the known participants at least count among acknowledged cultural specialists in early nineteenth-century Paris. In his biographical essay on Villoison for Didot's Nouvelle Biographie Générale (1852–1866), Étienne Quatremère (1782–1857) – himself a prominent orientalist and a later colleague of Hase at the École de langues orientales – lists the botanist and antiquarian Honoré Jean Casimir Rostan (1774–1833), the politician and philologist Nicolas-Maximilien-Sidoine Séguier (1773–1854), and the Ottoman Greek interpreter Panagiotis Kodrikas, alongside himself and Karl Benedikt Hase as participants in the last version of the course.Footnote 31
Hase commented on the material that Villoison selected for this Modern Greek course in a later note for the description of manuscript BnF Supplément grec 6, which contains Amiras’ Greek translation of Costin's History. Footnote 32 This description appeared in the catalogue of the BnF's Supplément grec manuscripts prepared by Hase and Emmanuel Miller (1812–1886). Hase and Miller's manuscript catalogue is still in Paris.Footnote 33 Continuing in the Latin of the general catalogue, Hase writes of Supplément grec 6:
Fragmentis ex hoc libro descriptis per annum integrum in schola sua publica, qua linguam Graecam vulgarem docebat usus est, qui nunc in vivis esse desiit vir clarissimus D'Ansse de Villoison. Footnote 34
On the basis of the ‘Green Notebook’, we can now look over the shoulder of Hase as a student in Villoison's Modern Greek course and the role this experience would play in Hase's development as a scholar: The following section II offers a description of the notebook and an analysis of its contents. Section III then turns to the relationship of Hase's student notes with his later article on the Greek text of Amiras/Costin published in 1827.
II. Archival evidence
The brief catalogue entry at the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv defines GSA 108/35 as a ‘Notiz- und Konzeptbuch’.Footnote 35 The volume contains 63 folia and bears no explicit date, although a supplementary note places the object between 1801 to late 1805 based on the termini ante and post quem discussed below.Footnote 36 The volume contains copies in Hase's hand of excerpts from two principal texts, occupying all but five folia of the notebook, each accompanied by notes on the vocabulary, grammar, and historical context of the respective works. These two main texts are: Nectarius of Jerusalem's (1602–1676), Ἐπιτομὴ τῆς Ἱεροκοσμικῆς Ἱστορίας,Footnote 37 and Alexander Amiras’ (1679–1740) Modern Greek translation of Miron (1633–1691) and Nicolae Costin's (ca. 1660–1712) History of Moldavia, the Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν, περιέχον τὰς ἡγεμονίας τῶν ἐν Μολδαβίᾳ ἡγεμονευσάντων αὐθέντων. Footnote 38 Occupying just under forty folia, Amiras’/Costin's Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν and Hase's notes on the text dominate the notebook's contents. Alongside these three principal sections, and occasionally interspersing them, there are also a series of scattered notes recording bibliographical details and cross-references, as well as 3 folia with an excerpt from Procopius’ Secret History (9.14.7–9.25.4) and related notes.
The following consideration of the Green Notebook now offers a description of the document's physical aspects along with an analysis of its contents. The results of this analysis allow us to draw a series of conclusions about the date of the document, the languages and pedagogical context in which it was used, and Hase's note-taking practices, as well as the topics of particular interest to the Modern Greek classroom in nineteenth-century Paris.
Dating
The notebook's folia are enumerated in the lower left corner of each recto side in pencil. This enumeration has been carried out in a second hand and is most certainly a later addition.Footnote 39 The number of folia stated in the notebook description (63) might seem inconsistent with the enumeration, which places number 1 on the front pastedown instead of the first folio. However, a single folio is missing between ff.59–60, evidently torn out, with a thin tattered paper fragment still attached to the binding. Since the enumeration foregoes this ruined folio, it is safe to assume that the page had been torn out before the numbering was added.
The notebook contains no flyleaf. The text begins on the front pastedown (i.e. f.1v) and continues until f.63v, with abundant ink marks covering most of the final page spread. In the absence of the flyleaf, where a date would commonly be provided, it comes as no surprise that Hase's notebook was initially catalogued ‘ohne Jahr.’ Hase records, however, two dates in his notebook, which help corroborate the supplementary note in the GSA description. Both dates (giving the day and the month only) use the French Revolutionary Calendar: 19 Messidor on f.4r and 11 Nivôse on f.21v. Since the Revolutionary Calendar was abolished by Napoleon from 1 January 1806, Hase's reference to this calendar system indicates a terminus post quem for the notebook.
Further, since we know that Villoison used Amiras’ Greek translation of the Costins’ History for his Modern Greek course in 1801,Footnote 40 a more precise date still for the Green Notebook can now be established. Hase arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1801,Footnote 41 and is listed among those who attended Villoison's last Modern Greek course in the same year, meaning he began to attend and to take his notes from the lessons promptly after his arrival.Footnote 42 Further, a sticker preserved in the top left-hand corner of the notebook's pastedown (f.1v) records the name of the Parisian stationer's at which Hase acquired the book in Paris.Footnote 43 The first date mentioned in the notebook is 19 Messidor (Gregorian calendar 8 July). Knowing that Villoison's course began in 1801 and ran through an academic year into the summer of 1802, this date can now be confirmed as 8th July 1802. Villoison's course due to begin in winter 1802 was then, as we have seen, discontinued.Footnote 44 According to this reasoning, Hase was using the notebook to record his language-learning efforts in Modern Greek between his arrival at Paris in late 1801 and late 1802; that is, in his first academic year there.
Language and pedagogical context
Hase used four languages in the Green Notebook: Greek, Latin, French, and German. His notes in these languages range from brief one-liners to passages of more than one page in which Hase alternate between two or more languages. This sort of code-switching is typical of Hase, as has been observed elsewhere on the basis of the his ‘secret diary’.Footnote 45 It is nonetheless possible to distinguish broadly Hase's preferred uses of each language and his respective preferences for these notes’ mise-en-page.
The principal language of the notebook is Greek, predominantly in its early modern spoken form, with occasional sections in classical Greek. In the sections of the volume dedicated to the two principal source texts, Hase follows largely the same layout: each page spread contains a copy of the Greek source text on the verso side, with comments on vocabulary, grammar, and historical context on the facing recto. Since we know from the advertisements for Villoison's course that dictation and philological explanation of text was the primary focus,Footnote 46 it is safe to assume that these pages of facing text and commentary derive from classroom exercises. Indeed, the larger part of Hase's (infrequent) spelling irregularities in the notes are clearly the result of copying from dictation (‘φωνεύσουσι’ for ‘φονεύσουσι’ (f.11v.),Footnote 47 for example, ‘νὰ μὴν ἀνακαθεύσω’ for ‘νὰ μὴν ἀνακατέψω’ (f.12v.), or ‘διοίκησιν’ for ‘διήγησιν’ (f.28r)). Moreover, a significant number of the comments on the dictated text deal with issues of pronunciation and phonetic change (e.g. ‘ἄμποτε ex ἄν ποτε’ (f.19r.) and ‘ἦλθεν. Saepe dicunt ἦρθεν’ (f.52r).Footnote 48
As these examples demonstrate, Hase often used Latin for notes on linguistic points, especially on vocabulary and grammar (e.g. ‘τροπάρια et στιχάρια, hymni sacri, qui in ecclesiis Graecorum cantantur’ (f.56r);Footnote 49 ‘στρατήγος [sic], praetor, non semper dux militum nonnunquam etiam civium’ (f.38r)).Footnote 50 Hase also used Latin for bibliographical references and occasional quotes (e.g. f.15r ‘Praesentemque viris praesentant omnia mortem. Virgil’).Footnote 51 French is also employed extensively for these themes (e.g. for vocabulary, ‘θερμαίνεσθαι, embraser’ (f.40r); ‘μνῆμα, monument gallice’ (f.41r)); and for comments on lingustic idiom (e.g. ‘νὰ μὲ συμπαθίζῃς, excusez moi, en grec moderne’ (f.8r)). But also especially for notes on contemporary Greek life and culture (e.g. ‘λογοθέτης. Il y en avoit quelquefois douze à Constantinople, entre autres un λογοθέτης τοῦ δρόμου, qui étoit inspecteur des postes’ (f.24r), and ‘οἱ πρωτογέροντες sont encore à présent les chefs des Maniotes’ (f.30r)). With our knowledge of Villoison's years of travel in Greek-speaking areas,Footnote 52 it is now possible to hear his voice in these moments of explanation and clarification in the Parisian lecture hall. Alongside these Latin and French comments, we occasionally see Hase using his native German for longer comments, which appear to be the result of independent research (e.g. a note on the grave of Thessaloniki's patron saint, ‘Grabmal des heiligen Dimitrios, die in einer Kirche in Thessaloniki ist, und die die Grabschrift eines gewissen Spanduni aus dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert war’ (f.56r)).
These comments, scholarly references, translations, and definitions in French, Latin, and German thus form the paratextual comments to the Greek primary sources on the facing page. The first source text appears on ff.4r–20v, and begins with a French title: Histoire de St. Nil, et des ces aventures dans le desert du Mont Sinai, traduite en grec moderne par Nectaire, patriarche de Jerusalem (see image 1 in the appendix below). The text is split into chapters, which are introduced by corresponding headings, (e.g. ‘Ὅπως ἐπουλήθη ὁ Θεοδούλος [sic]’ (f.11v)).Footnote 53 The headings are occasionally underlined (e.g. f.14v) although this mark-up does not seem to bear any semantic significance. This Histoire de St. Nil is an excerpt from the Ἐπιτομὴ τῆς Ἱεροκοσμικὴς Ἱστορίας written by Nectarius Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1677,Footnote 54 which contains a chapter on the Sinaite monks, and a section on Saint Nilus of Sinai (d. ca. 430). Comparison with the 1783 edition of the Ἐπιτομὴ confirms that these sections of Nectarius’ work formed the source text transcribed by Hase.Footnote 55 The excerpts preserved in the Green Notebook begin in medias res, with the a section from the chapter ‘Ὅπως ἐγένετο καὶ ἐγλύτωσε τὴν σφαγὴν ὁ Θεόδουλος’ (ff.4r).Footnote 56 The source text is reproduced accurately, with minor omissions, and only scattered spelling irregularities most likely the result of dictation.Footnote 57
The recto-side notes on the excerpts from the Ἐπιτομὴ comprise brief vocabulary remarks (e.g. a comment on f.8r with names of spiritual entities in Greek folklore ‘βρουκόλακας’, ‘καλαῖς κυράδες’, ‘στοιχεῖα’ [sic], written in a vertical list and glossed as ‘esprits et revenans en Grèce’ (f.8r)), bibliographic references,Footnote 58 and contextual remarks elaborating on subjects mentioned in the source (for instance, a note about mastic trees, ‘Trois sortes d'arbres de Mastic à Chio. In provinciae eius arbores etiam proveniunt, sed sine fructu’ (f.5r)).Footnote 59 These notes provide a privileged ‘glance over the shoulder’ of a student attending Villoison's Greek language courses, previously known only from brief descriptions in contemporary publications.
The second source text begins on f.22v with a lengthy title, ‘ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΚΟΝ, περιέχον τὰς ἡγεμονίας τῶν ἐν Μολδαβίᾳ ἡγεμονευσάντων αὐθέντων […] ἐν ἔτει ἀπὸ Χριστοῦ ͵αψκθ. μην. Φεβρουάριον’ (see image 2 in the appendix below).Footnote 60 This history of Moldavia was originally composed by the Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin (1633–1691) and later expanded by his son Nicolae (1660–1712). The text was then translated into Modern Greek (alongside some additional anonymous materialFootnote 61) by Alexander Amiras, an official at the court of Moldavian prince Grigore III Ghica.Footnote 62 Hase's Green Notebook contains the title, the prologue, most of chapter 6 on the origins of Dacians, and a brief excerpt from chapter 9.
Hase's choice of page layout alters slightly for the initial pages in this section: the source text takes up half a page, which is separated with a horizontal line from the rest of the notes making up the second half of the page and the facing side (see image 3 in the appendix below). Hase's notes deal with the same topics as those upon which we have commented above, but now add more extensive remarks on Greek phonology and grammar. For instance, on f.23r Hase includes a paragraph on consonant shifts in Attic and Doric Greek, whilst ff.34r–35v contain a grammar section with examples of less common verbal phrases, as well as examples of words which can have contradictory meanings, e.g. ‘ἀργός, strenuus, otiosus, et iners’,Footnote 63 ‘περιϊδεῖν et περιορᾷν, negligere et circumspicere, ita et περιόπτεσθαι’.Footnote 64 Compared to the notes on St. Nilus, these extended linguistic sections are indicative of both the course's and Hase's progress in the analysis of source texts.
Hase's note-taking practices and topics of interest
Another striking feature of this section is the arrangement of Amiras’/Costin's text within the notebook itself. Beginning after the excerpts from Nectarius on f.22v, both the text and notes on Amiras’/Costin's Prologue continue until the grammar section just mentioned (ff.34r–35v), resuming thereafter on f.36r. The prologue and Hase's facing notes then occupy all pages until f.56v, where chapter 6 begins. Hase's copy of chapter 6 continues until f.60r, until the text stops abruptly in the middle of a phrase: ‘Μασσαγέται εἶναι οἱ [sic] ἕνα γένος […]’.Footnote 65 The following folia (ff.61v–63r) contain a section from the 1663 edition of Procopius’ Historia Arcana (f.61r)Footnote 66 with notes.Footnote 67 To the surprise of the later reader, the continuation of Amiras’/Costin's chapter 6 is preserved in fragments scattered throughout preceding pages of the notebook. The order of these ‘misplaced’ fragments of chapter 6 can be reconstructed as follows: ‘καὶ ἦλθον, ὅταν ἀκόμι’ (f.9r);Footnote 68 ‘ὁ δὲ αὔγουστος ὁ καῖσαρ’ (f.20v); ‘ὁ μέγας εἰς τῆν περὶ ἐθνῶν ἱστορίαν’ (f.21v); ‘γότθους, ἔλαβεν εἰς γυναῖκα’ (f.22r); ‘διὰ νὰ στερεώσῃ τὸ βασίλειον τῆς Μακεδονίας’ (f.54r); ‘μαρτυρεῖ καὶ ὁ Ἱερώνυμος’ (f.35v); ‘ὑπο [sic] φόρων αὐτοῦ’ (f.37r); ‘καὶ ἐπέρασε τὸ γληγορώτερον μετὰ στρατεύματά του ὁ Φούσκης […] καὶ ὡς νικήτην [sic] νὰ τὸν τιμήσωσιν’ (f.3r). The final lines of chapter 6 are missing from the notebook, only to be replaced with a fragment from chapter 9: ‘ἕνας ἱστορικὸς, ὀνόματι Ἀενείας [sic] Σίλβιος […] ὁ καῖσαρ εἶχεν ἐξορίσει ἀπὸ τὴν Ῥώμην εἰς τὸ ἀσπρόκαστρον (Ἀκκερμάν)’ (ff.3r–3v).
What might have prompted Hase to split the latter part of the Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν's chapter 6 across these haphazard spots throughout the notebook? As noted above, Hase tended to use the recto side of the notebook's folia for commentary. Occasionally his notes on a given passage of the original text did not fill a complete folio, leaving him with empty spaces dotted throughout the notebook. By the end of Amiras’/Costin's chapter 6, it appears likely that Hase had run out of blank pages for the original text. Engaged in Villoison's lecture, he thus improvised and used the empty spaces left on the earlier folia of his notebook. Apart from this scattered order of the text, Hase copies the source text again accurately. Certain sentences have been omitted (most likely simply skipped by Villoison as he dictated the text the students). This hypothesis is further corroborated by inconsistencies between the source text and Hase's notes, such as divergent punctuation, inconsistent word segmentation, interpolated vowels and diphthongs, as well as occasional corrections, as noted above.
Results
Based on this description of the physical form of the notebook and our analysis of its contents, the ‘internal’ evidence already points to the fact that Hase was using the notebook during Villoison's 1801-2 course on Modern Greek. A further piece of evidence allows us to further corroborate these results. In 1827, Hase published an extensive study of Amiras’/Costin's Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν,Footnote 69 which is now explored in the following section of the present article. The manuscript source on which Hase based his published study is still preserved in at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France under call-number Par. Suppl. gr. 6.Footnote 70 That this is the same manuscript that Villoison used for the class in 1801/02 can be confirmed by a moment in which the student recorded the page number of the source text, which the class had reached in a given session: ‘page 28’.Footnote 71 The Greek text of Amiras/Costin recorded in the Green Notebook after this note corresponds to the relevant passage of the Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν in BnF Par. suppl. gr. 6. p. 28, thus placing Villoison, the manuscript, and Hase (with the Green Notebook) in the same lecture theatre in 1801-2.
III. Hase's article on the Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν (1827)
Amiras’ translation of Costin's History of the Kingdoms and Princes of Moldavia would not, however, remain merely a brief episode in Hase's student life. The piece was, indeed, to become a text of lasting interest for his scholar's subsequent academic activities, both in teaching and in his published work. Having identified the Green Notebook as Hase's student notes from Villoison's course, we can now compare these notes with Hase's later work, and assess the impact of Villoison's instruction on his own scholarship.
After Villoison's death, Hase had taken over teaching responsibilities in Modern Greek at the École des langues orientales by 1816, even before he was awarded the full chair in 1819.Footnote 72 Following in the footsteps of his teacher, the prospectus for Hase's Modern Greek course was printed in the Magasin Encyclopédique in 1815. Here, we learn that Hase too used Amiras/Costin’ text as teaching material for this course:
[…] M. Hase ouvrira, le lundi 15 Janvier 1816, un Cours de Grec moderne à l’École royale et spéciale des Langues Orientales Vivantes près de la Bibliothèque du Roi; il fera connaître l'origine et les principes du grec moderne, démontrera l'utilité de cette langue pour l'intelligence des Scholiastes et des Auteurs anciens, donnera quelques règles pour faciliter la lecture des Manuscrits grecs des derniers siècles, et expliquera ensuite l'Histoire de la Moldavie, composée par Myron, et traduite en grec moderne par Alexandre Amira. […].Footnote 73
The introductory lecture for this course was subsequently published in 1816.Footnote 74 In this lecture, Hase drew initially on the stereotypical comparison of ‘degraded’ and ‘vulgar’ Modern Greek with the ‘pure’ ancient language.Footnote 75 By the middle of the article, however, Hase has shifted his position to formulate a defence of the usefulness and necessity of studying the modern tongue, not only for effective communication with contemporary Greek speakers, but also for access to the literary, scientific, theological, and historical works composed in the later forms of the language.Footnote 76 On this last point Hase wrote provocatively, ‘l'histoire des peuples du moyen âge ne s’éclaircit pas moins par la connoissance de cette langue’.Footnote 77
This argument also features prominently in the introductory section to Hase's article on Amiras’/Costin's text, published as ‘Histoire inédite de la Moldavie’ in 1827. Hase in his introduction to the Greek text laments once again the lack of attention to later forms of Greek: ‘la connaissance du grec modern n’étant pas aussi répandu parmi les savans, qu'il seroit peut-être à souhaiter qu'elle le fût’.Footnote 78 Indeed, the passages that he presents for close reading appear to have been selected for justifying the historical importance of Amiras’ Greek translation of Costin's work per se. Access to the original Romanian text (Hase used the adjective ‘moldave’Footnote 79) of the History was apparently challenging even for Hase from his privileged position at the French Bibliothèque Royale. Indeed, he had only been able to exchange with scholars who had seen a later Latin version of the text.Footnote 80 Moreover, we learn that Amiras’ Greek translation was commissioned directly by Grigore III Ghica, and perhaps overseen by the younger Costin himself. Son of a Phanariot family and keen to emphasize the prestige of his Greek roots, Ghica wanted to make a Greek version of the history of his principality available to fellow Hellenic speakers.Footnote 81 The Greek text thus represented an ‘official’, easily accessible version of the History,Footnote 82 and it was crucial for Amiras’ translation – according to Hase's analysis – that the Greek steer clear of classicizing ‘pomp’ and rather focus on ensuring clarity for readers.Footnote 83 In these passages we hear, then, echoes of Hase's claims for the value of Modern Greek both as a language of historical research and as a means of scholarly communication.
As we now know from the evidence of the Green Notebook, students in Villoison's course of 1801/02 had been exposed to brief sections of the text: the prologue; a portion of chapter 6 text on the Dacians; and an excerpt from chapter 9 on Italy and the origins of the Moldavians. Hase's 1827 article now attempted, however, to cover (albeit briefly) all 82 chapters of the Amiras/Costin manuscript. This it does in three principals sections: After the introduction (the themes of which we addressed above), the first section offers a detailed analysis of chapters 1–19, with longer quotations of the Greek text accompanied by a French translation.Footnote 84 Here Hase's moments of close-reading demonstrate his primary interest in the text as a historical source. The second section offers a list of the remaining 62 chapter titles, again with translations, where the titles’ descriptive form offers considerable insight into the chapters’ contents.Footnote 85 The final section forms the appendix to the article. Here Hase presents the Greek text with interpretative notes of a series of longer passages (from chapters 9–10, 13, 16, 24, 35, 48, 65, 81, and the treaty signed between Grigore III Ghica and Mengli II Giray (1678–1740), Khan of Crimea, preserved at the end of the Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν), that he considers particularly informative for historians.Footnote 86
Whilst, then, in Hase's reasoning for his choice of excerpts, we hear again an emphasis of the importance of Modern Greek for historical scholarship, his explicit reflection on Amiras’ Greek also reveals significant information about his thoughts on the language itself. Here once more we see the influence of Villoison's teaching in 1801-2 directly. At the beginning of Amiras’/Costin's Prologue (a passage that appears both in the Green Notebook and in the article), Hase added three notes to the Greek text printed in 1827, two of which make the nature of this influence particularly clear. The first note refers to the first sentence of the Prologue, which includes a typical address to the reader as ‘ἀγαπητέ μοι ἀναγνῶστα’.Footnote 87 In the Green Notebook, Hase had made a note on ἀγαπητός explaining that the word is often used in Greek with a dative just as with Latin carus (mihi).Footnote 88 In the 1827 article, Hase now develops this basic comparison with Latin syntax (presumably made initially by Villoison as part of his teaching) to posit the theory that the first phrases of Costin's original composition were, in fact, based on an older Latin text, of which we now hear echoes in Amiras’ Greek translation.Footnote 89 The second note shared by the Green Notebook and the printed article is that on the form of the third-person singular present εἶναι (for which Hase prefered the form ᾖναι in the printed text). In the Green Notebook, Hase had recorded a note in Latin on the same issue, remarking that the ancient infinitive form had been generalized in the present tense.Footnote 90 By the time of his article's publication, his remark on the word was now merely orthographical, recording Amiras’ preference for the form εἶ- over ᾖ- in the manuscript.Footnote 91 Presumably over the twenty-six years between Villoison's course and his article, Hase had now read enough Modern Greek to know this was ultimately a spelling preference and did not say much about etymology.
A significant number of Hase's other student notes on this passage in the Green Notebook are also concerned with linguistic issues. There is a remark on Amiras’ use of ἀπό with the accusative (and not with the genitive as in Ancient Greek),Footnote 92 for example, or on questions of tricky later vocabulary for the classically trained student (e.g. on τατᾶς τῆς αὐλῆς, ‘dignité à Byzance’Footnote 93). These linguistic notes are absent from study of the Prologue in 1827 article, where Hase's French translation is at hand to resolve readers’ uncertainties. This is not, however, the case for the Greek texts reproduced at length in the appendix, where Hase now adds textual notes explicitly aimed at readers trained in classical Greek, who might struggle with modern forms.Footnote 94 These linguistic notes recall very clearly Villoison's practice in his course of 1801-2 – as recorded in the Greek Notebook – and offer insights on morphological, etymological, and phraseological changes, frequently from the perspective of the ancient language or with reference to other historical contexts. The reader now learns, for example, that δέν derives from ancient οὐδέν, or that μέ is from μετά but now used with the accusative.Footnote 95 Similarly πολλοὶ πασάδες is glossed as ‘des pachas’,Footnote 96 and the etymology of Modern Greek φουσάτο is given through its late Latin ancestor fossatum.Footnote 97
From his approach to Amiras’ Greek text in these sections of the 1827 article, it quickly becomes clear that Hase continued Villoison's preferred techniques for elucidating Modern Greek through comparison with ancient forms, references to cultural context, interlingual explanations, and etymologies. He also, however, expanded significantly on a number of the interpretative ideas that he had met as a student in the first year of Greek instruction in Paris. Hase's decision both to continue using the Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν in his own courses in Modern Greek at the École de langues orientales vivantes, as well as to publish a longer article on the text in 1827 – emphasizing at once the historical value of Modern Greek source material and the presentation of interesting linguistic history for the reader – demonstrates the lasting impact of Villoison's approach to the contemporary language and its literature.
Conclusions
This article's analysis of Hase's Green Notebook sheds new light on the details of Villoison's methods and interests as an instructor of Modern Greek in nineteenth-century France. Τhe resulting ‘glance over the shoulder’ of a Modern Greek student in 1801-2 offers a privileged and rarely seen perspective on Modern Greek pedagogy in this period. It sets the contours and character of Villoison's claims for the ‘utilité’ of Modern Greek, shared by a number of French Hellenists at the turn of the nineteenth century, into greater relief.Footnote 98 It also now offers new information about the impact and development of these concepts in Modern Greek pedagogy and scholarship under Villoison's successor, Karl Benedikt Hase. Hase's own work as Professor of Modern Greek at the École de langues orientales vivantes stands at the head of a long list of scholars, beginning with his students Wladimir Brunet de Presle and Emmanuel Miller, before Émile Legrand and Jean Psichari took the study of Modern Greek in Paris into the twentieth century.Footnote 99
Appendix
Fig. 1: Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv (GSA) 108/35 f.4r (Source: Klassik Stiftung Weimar)
Fig. 2: Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv (GSA) 108/35 f.22v (Source: Klassik Stiftung Weimar)
Image 3: Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv (GSA) 108/35 ff.25v-26r (Source: Klassik Stiftung Weimar)
William M. Barton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies, University of Innsbruck. Trained in Classics with a particular focus on Late Antique poetry and its reception, his current research focuses on the use of Ancient Greek from the Renaissance onwards, in particular by authors in Austria, Spain and Germany. He currently leads the FWF START project ‘ΛΑΓΩΟΣ – A Life in Ancient Greek: The Secret Diary of K. B. Hase (1780-1864)’.
Lev Shadrin is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies, University of Innsbruck. Building on his formation as a medievalist and digital humanist, his research employs digital tools, linguistic methodology, and palaeographic expertise to study K. B. Hase's use of Greek in his secret diary.
Mariia Hrynevych is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies, University of Innsbruck. Her research interests include the reception of ancient Greek and Latin literature from the nineteenth century to the present. Her doctoral work addresses the influence of Hase's forgeries on subsequent scholarship.
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