„Lithuanica aliter“: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje

TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC Prague Linguistic Circle ORCID id: orcid.org/0000-0002-1207-5582 Research areas: general and comparative linguistics, Baltic studies, Indo-European studies, comprehensive philology, structuralism, semiology. DOI: doi.org/10.35321/all85-06 LITHUANICA ALITER: THE APPLICATION OF COMPREHENSIVE PHILOLOGY IN LITHUANIAN STUDIES Lithuanica aliter: Encompassing Philology as to be applied to Baltic Studies ABSTRACT Drawing on Ilja Lemeshkin’s book Lithuanica aliter (2019), the author explains what comprehensive philology, developed by the contemporary Prague Linguistic Circle, is and shows how it is applied in Baltic studies. Although the discussion is limited to the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, its application is always carried out systematically within the context of European culture as a whole, taking into account not only the corpora of “Baltic” (in the genetic sense) languages. KEYWORDS: comprehensive philology, functional structuralism, comparative linguistics, Baltic languages, Lithuanian studies, Prussian studies. ANNOTATION Reporting on, and reviewing thoroughly Il’ja Lemeškin’s book Lithuanica aliter (Lemeškin 2019), the author explains the programme of encompassing philology as it has been elaborated in the contemporary Prague Linguistic Circle, and outlines how encompassing philology should approach – naturally, within a European cultural-historical framework, even if restricted to the 16th and the first half of the 17th century – the whole material basis of Baltic linguistics, which on its turn should never be restricted to the genetically Baltic languages only. KEYWORDS: encompassing philology, functional structuralism, comparative linguistics, Baltic languages, Lithuanian, Old Prussian. Straipsniai / Articles 117 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC I. Billėmai bhe ersinnimai (hereinafter – BBE) is the title of the series in which Ilja Lemeškin’s monograph Lithuanica aliter was published and designated as the second volume (Lemeškin 2019). In 2015, the first work in the series to appear was Studies in Old Prussian, written by William Riegel Schmalstieg (Schmalstieg William Riegel) and carefully prepared for publication by Pietro Umberto Dini (Pietro Umberto Dini) (Schmalstieg 2015), at the publishing house Vaga. Both works share the same graphic style (including the details) and are distinguished by a high standard of book-publishing culture. The fact that the first was published by Vaga, while the second was published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, should be regarded as an organisational coincidence: what matters is the consistency of the series’ BBE publications. What does this strange title mean? It is an artificial linguistic formation assembled from authentic inflected forms of Prussian words. The conjunction bhe occurs more than four hundred times in monuments of the Prussian language, and this is unsurprising: it simply means “and.” The words billėmai and ersinnimai, by contrast, are hapax legomena: billėmai (III 13¹¹₋₁₅) is found only in the passage “Almighty merciful God and Father, we speak praise and thanks to you” (Mažiulis 1981: 238); ersinnimai (III 65₁₈₋₁₉) occurs only once, in the negative form – ni ersinnimai – in the passage “before God you must confess yourself guilty of all sins, also of those which we likewise do not know” (Mažiulis 1981: 148). In the preface to the first volume, the phrase billėmai bhe ersinnimai is translated as “we speak and know” and explained as follows: “we speak about our own culture and know the contribution of world culture to the study of our culture” (BBE I = Schmalstieg 2015: 3). Thus, the objective is clearly defined: to move from a narrow linguistic environment into a broad cultural sphere. Nothing is known either about whether a third volume is already being prepared or what it will discuss, but it is a pleasure to note that both volumes – I and II – themselves give an interesting realization to the aforementioned combination of two verbs from Old Prussian: number I, Studies in Old Prussian, subtitled A critical review of the relevant literature in the field from 1975 until 2005, indeed summarizes what has been said or written about Old Prussian in recent decades; number II, Lithuanica aliter (without a subtitle), presents how the material of Old Prussian should be studied differently (in Latin aliter), that is, anew and properly, on the scale of the interconnections of European culture as a whole. Part of this difference is also the fact that the book that systematically studies the (Old) Prussian monuments is called not Pruthenica, as we might expect, but Lithuanica. The explanation will probably become clear at the end of this article. Henceforth we will call Old Prussian simply “Prussian”: there is no Middle or New Prussian. In the first BBE volume, the English formation Old Prussian is used – a calque of the German word altpreußisch, while the German word itself 118 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje was introduced into linguistics when it became necessary in German to distinguish it from the political–state-related preußisch. The author of the second BBE volume uses in Lithuanian the term Prussian language. The corpus of monuments of the Prussian language is meager: the Basel and Crete colophons, the Elbing and Grünau vocabularies, two editions of the Lutheran Catechism, and Luther’s Enchiridion. This exhausts the Prussian texts that were deliberately created to function in Prussian, becoming recorded means of acts of collective communication. Accidental monuments of the language are the glosses found in manuscripts from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and the examples given in books about the Prussians devoted to local history, published in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Neither the former nor the latter were directly intended for linguistic communication. The former arose as personal notes by the owner or user of a book¹; the latter, collected for the sake of collecting curiosities and antiquities, were intended to enhance the prestige of the writer describing the region. A separate category of Prussian-language monuments consists of personal and place names found in archival sources². The traditional linguistic view prevailing since the nineteenth century regarded all this material, especially that of an Indo-European language older still than Lithuanian, which itself was considered a standard of antiquity, as traces. Examples from Prussian represented constructions presented as reconstructions of the Indo-European language, whereas the content of the Prussian-language monuments themselves was entirely disregarded. The experience of recent decades, as William R. Schmalstieg’s BBE volume shows, is essentially no different from the practice used a hundred years ago; yet what is characteristic, and at the same time pleasing, is that Prussian-language monuments are today assessed much more cautiously in terms of quality and reliability. Ilja Lemeshkin’s BBE volume raises the method of studying the monuments in question to a qualitatively higher level. Lemeshkin examines only intentional monuments, that is, those that arose according to a particular prior design for communicative purposes (intentio), and studies all of them: he views them in a European context, taking into account their functional–communicative purpose and cultural–historical genre. In this way, the scholar naturally continues the development of a program formulated earlier: to understand monuments of ancient languages as texts, that is, as cultural–historical events created in a particular environment for a particular purpose, in accordance with certain ¹ This also applies to the surviving fragment of the Lord’s Prayer from the beginning of the fifteenth century (Mikalauskaitė 1938: 102–106; Blažienė 2015: 14–49). The fact that such an entry was made undoubtedly testifies to society’s need to possess the principal Christian text in an established form, but this does not alter the fact that the entry was made by a private individual – probably a priest or monk – on an object personally belonging to him and intended for personal use. ² Grasilda Blažienė (Blažienė 2000, 2005, 2010) deserves particular credit for newly and aliter studying the material of Prussian proper nouns. Straipsniai / Articles 119 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC of genuine social norms then in force. The fact that in Baltic studies resp. Indo-European studies this still sounds revolutionary testifies only to the ossification of a dead practice. It is desirable that such an approach become customary3. II. The discussion begins with colophons. This genre is new in Baltic studies: the Basel colophon was discovered only in 1974, and the Cretan one as late as 1992. I. Lemeshkin’s first merit is that he unequivocally recognizes the colophon as an independent genre having nothing to do with glosses. A gloss is a note in a book completed long ago, written by the person who uses that book. A colophon is a creative act that completes the creation of a book. It should be borne in mind that before the advent of printing, acquiring a book meant commissioning a particular person to copy a particular text. For prestige reasons, which naturally increased the cost of the commission, someone else could be hired to illustrate the copy; by contrast, assembling the codex and binding it were not matters of such importance or expense. A medieval manuscript book generally has no title page, and in codices it is bound together with various other books. A particular book in a heterogeneous volume can be identified by the incipit [Latin incipit – “here begins”], with which the book begins, and by the explicitas [Latin explicit – “here ends”] or colophon [Greek κολοφῶν – “summit, completion”], with which the book ends. And it is precisely at the end of the book – and only here! – that the individual personality of the copyist may emerge: the scholar, hitherto anonymous, states when he completed his work, signs it, and adds a motivated statement about the situation that has nothing to do with references to the book’s contents. Nor is that all: by contrast with the universal Latin in which the book was written, he often adds some strange, exotic language incomprehensible to the local inhabitants. This is precisely how the Prussian colophons came into being: a medieval intellectual from Prussia created them not in his homeland, ³ The author’s revolutionary contribution in the book The Tale of Sovijus and the 1262 Chronograph (Lemeškin 2009) should be recalled. I. Lemeshkin was the first to read the well-known account of Lithuanian paganism, which Baltic scholars had long ago extracted from a chronicle written in Church Slavonic, in the context of the entire chronograph. As a result, he found in other passages of the same work its functions and structural parallels, of which no one had previously thought, and was able to interpret the chronograph, uninteresting to Baltic scholars in itself, as a gesture of state-building of extraordinary importance, at a time when the culture of the recently vanished Kievan Rus’ was consciously transmitted for the first time to serve the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 120 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje not in a neighboring country, but truly very far away – once in Tuscany, once in Crete (which at that time was administered by the Venetians). I. Lemeshkin draws attention to the fact that the discovery of both Prussian colophons is not accidental, but a natural consequence of the systematic modern cataloguing of medieval Latin codices. Let us be prepared for more of them to be found, and let us accept that of all the Baltic languages, it will be Prussian, not Lithuanian or Latvian, that appears in medieval colophons. Having critically assessed everything published about colophons so far and thoroughly analyzed the colophons in the context of the manuscript sources under study (the colophon genre) – including the identification and substantiation of folklore works, which qualifies as another original merit of the author – I. Lemeshkin arrives at the following comprehensive interpretation. • The Basel colophon, so called after the place where it was found, was written in Siena on the night of January 5–6, 1369 [during the vigil of Epiphany]. Its Prussian section is a Christmas song of the Three Kings, addressed to a local person – from Siena, Tuscany, Italy – named Antonio Bonachi. The book and the colophon that concludes it, the French scholar Nicole Oresme’s (≈ 1322–1382) treatise Questiones metheororum, were copied by an unnamed Prussian from Lithuania’s Grand Duke Butautas–Henry’s entourage, which accompanied Emperor Charles IV on his triumphal journey through Italy in 1368–1369. I. Lemeshkin discusses Butautas and the group of Prussian intellectuals accompanying him in detail: he also points to other colophons in which a Prussian intellectual signed his name, without using his native Prussian language there. For my part, I would add that the fact that the copyist did not sign the Basel colophon – an obvious and undoubtedly conscious violation of the genre’s rules – accords with the fact that in the Prussian section of the colophon, the Christmas song, he addresses a certain person by name, the Italian Antonio Bonachi, who is thereby associated with the completed book in place of the copyist (as the commissioner or owner of the book). • The Cretan colophon originated on November 12, 1440, in the city of Chania. It concludes the treatise Logica parva by the Italian humanist Paul of Venice (≈ 1368–1428/1429). The Prussian section of the colophon concerns the maijos, that is, the rites of erecting the May tree and driving cattle to the first spring pasture. The copyist, a German named Petrus Wickerau, did not himself know Prussian, and therefore copied the Prussian text with errors. Drawing on his thorough knowledge of folklore works and their poetics, I. Lemeshkin reconstructs and interprets it convincingly. The heuristic significance of the Cretan colophon is that it testifies to the value of the protograph: Wickerau considered it necessary to copy even the incomprehensible Prussian section that had been in the original colophon; ordinarily, scribes did not copy the colophons of the works they transcribed, but created their own. What protograph, then, is being referred to in Crete in 1440? It is a book that the Prussian Petrus Turnau, a Prague Straipsniai / Articles 121 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC university student and supporter of the Czech Hussites, possessed, or perhaps even copied himself. In 1422 he spent several months in Crete, specifically in Chania, and after returning to Hussite Prague wrote a Latin account of the Greek Church. Petrus Turnau’s fate and travels are described in detail in the Inquisition records. The trial against him was held in 1425 and cost him his life. Looking at Europe during the period under study, it may be said that Petrus Turnau is indeed the only Prussian documented as having stayed in distant Crete during the period in question. The Basel colophon, like the exotic part of the Cretan colophon, was created by Prussian intellectuals copying the most modern scholarly works by living contemporaries: these were not canonical but rather rebellious texts. Their copyists worked for an exclusive circle of clearly profiled clients and therefore had to be exceptionally well acquainted with the latest achievements of scholarship. Thus, in Europe in the second half of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, there lived Balts, specifically Prussians, who not only studied at European universities but also belonged to the transnational republic of European intellectuals. Who were they? Where and from what income did they live? 1. Lemeshkin establishes that the anonymous author of the Basel colophon was an educated Prussian from the entourage of Butautas, son of Lithuania’s Grand Duke Kęstutis. He lived with him in Prague and accompanied him on journeys through Europe. In the fourteenth century, only a Prussian could become a Baltic who was educated in Latin. A sufficiently strong ethnic Baltic urban estate existed only in Prussia, which was also recognized as part of Latin Europe. Livonia too belonged to Latin Europe, but demographically it was much weaker and, ethnically, scarcely had a Baltic urban estate at all. Lithuania, demographically the strongest of all the Baltic lands, was still pagan to Latin Europe, and this changed only at the very end of the fourteenth century, symbolically marked by the founding of a Lithuanian college at the University of Prague in 1397. Petrus Turnau, the creator or addressee of the Prussian section of the Cretan colophon4, already belongs to Prague of a different period, an intellectually Reformation-oriented Prague, once again of European dimension. Turnau attended particular schools in Prussia and Lusatia, studied philosophy in Prague and law in Bologna. After staying in Crete, he returned to Prague via Venice, where he wanted to begin an academic career, but did not succeed. He tried his luck in Silesia and eventually ended his career teaching at the cathedral school in Speyer, in the Palatinate. There he was tried and in 1425 burned by the Inquisition for his Reformation orientation and public proclamation of Hussite ideas. His Latin account of the Greek Church, written in Prague in 1423, has 4 It is impossible to determine which of these roles – creator or recipient – Petrus Turnau performed in the original. It matters only that Turnau in any event belonged to an exclusive club of Prussian intellectuals who exchanged playful messages throughout Europe in professionally copied books. 122 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje to be interpreted in view of the broad interest of Hussite intellectuals in alternative Christian practices. The Baltic intellectual Petrus Turnau is one of the last Prague Prussians: Hussite Prague was already clearly oriented toward Lithuania in the Baltic sphere. Ethnic Prussians belonged to Prague in the second half of the fourteenth century, which at that time offered them exceptional conditions. A new university, founded in 1348, operated here. It was the capital of Latin Europe – the permanent residence of the Holy Roman Emperors Charles and Wenceslas5. For free Prussian youths, the University of Prague was the nearest institution, naturally determined by their place of residence. In the matriculation registers of the faculties of philosophy and law, I. Lemeshkin finds numerous students who spontaneously signed themselves as Prussians (the lists of the other faculties – medicine and theology – have not survived). Moreover, from 1365 the “King of Lithuania in exile,” Butautas–Henry, resided in Prague: son of the reigning Grand Duke Kęstutis, nephew of the reigning Grand Duke Algirdas, against whom he had rebelled politically. The emigrant Butautas was baptized as a Catholic in Königsberg, and after his military action in Lithuania failed, he fled to Prague to the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire6, whose then wife Elizabeth of Pomerania was (circumstances being favorable) his cousin’s daughter, that is, a close relative of Butautas. While in Prague, Butautas–Henry was directly connected with the emperor and accompanied him not only on his journey through Italy in 1368–1369. He undoubtedly had his own Europe-oriented political program. Butautas–Henry maintained a court in Prague, and since, as an exile, he had no military power, he had even more to rely on courtiers and diplomats. There were no Lithuanians with a European education beside him, but there was no shortage of educated Prussians, especially in Prague. It was natural that Butautas turned precisely to them: linguistically and culturally, they were closest to him. I. Lemeshkin provides data on how many Prussians were among Prague’s townspeople in the 1370s and what important offices they held. Perhaps the most eloquent example is that when in 1390 John of Jenštejn, Archbishop of Prague and the second most powerful figure in the country after the king, felt that he was dying, “the priest Peter, called the Prussian,” came to hear his confession and administer the sacrament of anointing. Within the bounds of a philological study encompassing all of Europe, the researcher revealed that the true history of Butautas coincides with the literary narrative of a fourteenth-century German verse romance, first ⁵ By name, Charles of Luxembourg was the first king of Bohemia, while he was the fourth as Holy Roman Emperor; Wenceslas of Luxembourg was the fourth king of Bohemia and the first Holy Roman Emperor. ⁶ As is known, little time had passed since the event when, in 1358, Emperor Charles sent his personal envoy, the Archbishop of Prague, to the newly enthroned reigning grand dukes with a generous political proposal. Unfortunately, he received no assent at that time. Straipsniai / Articles 123 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC published in 1826 under the title Littauer, in the literary narrative of its final third. In 1899, Germanists attributed authorship of this poem to Schondoch, who wrote the poem Königin von Frankreich. This merely confirms that the Lithuanian Butautas was a well-known and important figure in Europe while in exile in Prague. In searching for traces of Butautas–Henry and his entourage, I. Lemeshkin makes a significant historical and archaeological discovery. The scholar established that it is known where Butautas was buried in Prague, that he was buried in the same grave where his brother Survila–John had previously been laid to rest (about whom nothing had been known until now), and that this grave has remained untouched. Nothing prevents the site from being investigated archaeologically. This is a significant event on a European scale, because it is a unique and earliest documented anthropological and genetic trace, the remains of the ruling Gediminid dynasty from which the Jagiellonians of Lithuania, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary descended. Another historical connection in Europe deserves attention. Butautas’s son Vaidutis – a newborn infant at the time of his young father’s revolt – remained with his mother in Lithuania, where he was raised and educated at his grandfather Kęstutis’s court. Having become a young man, he fled to his father in Prague. On the journey he learned that his father had just died of the plague, which at that time had engulfed Prague, and therefore continued onward to Paris. There he completed university, from where his uncle Jogaila, Butautas’s cousin and later king of Poland, summoned him to Kraków to head the local university. The Lithuanian Butautas recruited Prussian intellectuals into his political service because Lithuanian intellectuals did not yet exist at that time; his own son Vaidutis was the first ethnic Lithuanian – a European intellectual – to enter the political service of the king of Poland. III. Monuments of the German–Prussian lexicographical genre lead into an entirely different world. The Elbing and Grünau vocabularies were written in Prussia, but their histories and fates differed. The Elbing vocabulary is known from the sole copy in Codex Neumannianus⁷. The latter entered the library of the city of Elbing as the bequest of the respected local citizen Abraham Griniūnavas (1740–1823), a collector of books and antiquities and, above all, a member of a famous merchant family with an old history. The codex itself, from the middle of the fifteenth century, is a copy of an earlier original. The Grünau glossary, in turn, derives from the Preußische Chronik. Simon Grünau (≈ 1470–1530/1537) described historical events up to 1529–1530; thereafter ⁷ The codex was named after Ferdinand Neumann, who first described it in the Elbing library in 1825. 124 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje until the end of his life the chronicler continued to expand and update his compilation. The author witnessed the major changes of his time (the secularization of the Teutonic Order and the introduction of Lutheranism as the state religion in Prussia), so Grünau’s chronicle became an important source for the history of Prussia and was published and rearranged several times. Consequently, the lexicographical appendix to the Chronicle exists in several versions: German–Prussian, Prussian–German, and Prussian–Latin. Yet both the Elbing and Grünau vocabularies are merely lifeless copies of much older works. The fact that Elbing’s Codex Neumannianus consists of three legal compilations and, finally, a vocabulary encouraged the overly direct assumption that the book was initially used in court (Bezzenberger 1874: 1225; Trautmann 1910: XXIV–XXV). Elbing was indeed the seat of a commandery of the Order, but the vocabulary’s structure and lexical resources do not correspond to such a purpose. I. Lemeshkin offers a different, broader, and much more convincing explanation, based on the linguistic practice of the Hanseatic League, well documented since the thirteenth century. The Hanseatic League was a developed trading network in the North and Baltic Seas, and this resulted in abundant and systematically conducted interlinguistic contact. Low German, the principal language of the Hanseatic League, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was still close both to the northern languages (which were only gradually differentiating according to the state formations of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway), and to the Dutch languages (which, on the other hand, were not affected by the formation of states), and perhaps even to both English languages (two different standards existed, associated with the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland). At the same time, the Hanseatic merchants also had to encounter unrelated languages: French (northern, langue d’oïl) in the west, and Russian (again northern) in the east. French, the prestigious language of high literature and monarchical courts, already possessed a developed system of language learning and language dissemination at that time. Low German merchants learned related Germanic languages by sending their sons to families with whom they were connected by commercial ties in other Hanseatic cities, so that the sons would become directly accustomed to the local language. The same practice was followed in other cases, when German nobles sent their sons to courts where French was spoken. However, the same practice was also applied in Russian Hanseatic cities—Novgorod and Pskov. I. Lemeškin quotes the legal norms of the period regulating the sending of language students to Russia (for example, a young man could not be older than twenty), as well as handwritten Rusiškąsias knygeles, which were compiled and distributed for these purposes (they were German–Russian dictionaries arranged by topic, which also sometimes included conversations). The author discusses all three surviving Rusiškąsias knygeles and reveals their structural identity and kinship with both Prussian dictionaries. There were many Baltic townspeople in Prussia, ruled by the Teutonic Order, and they were economically strong as well: otherwise, we could not explain where those Straipsniai / Articles 125 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC dozens—indeed, about two hundred—of Prussian young men enrolled at European universities came from. Such inhabitants were attractive to the Hanseatic League as well, and it was therefore worthwhile for merchants to learn the Prussian language. It is precisely under these conditions that the legal context of the Elbing dictionary finds its place. In 1246 Elbing was granted Lübeck law, which was unfavorable to the local ruling Teutonic Order, since it removed Elbing’s port and city from its jurisdiction and linked them to the international commercial law of the Hanseatic League. Lübeck law also clearly regulated the institution of the language student by statute. In the entire Codex Neumannianus, the first and largest part is Lübeck law (p. 100); after it were added other legal codes used in the region, Polish (p. 70) and Prussian (p. 20), and finally a German–Prussian dictionary (p. 17). All the parts making up the compendium were last recopied in the mid-fifteenth century. If one takes into account that Codex Neumannianus remained in the possession of an old merchant family until 1823, one may assume that it was hardly a book used by the order’s komtur. Much more likely, it was an inherited and archived relic of the distant past belonging to a family affiliated with the Hanseatic League and engaged in international business. Prūsiškosios knygelės, like the Rusiškosios knygelės from Novgorod and Pskov, began to appear from the thirteenth century onward and, as long as they were used for their intended purpose, were continually recopied, being altered and supplemented each time. In linguistic terms, the Russian ones remained necessary for a long time. This is attested by three surviving copies of the work, still in use, made independently of one another between 1546 and 1607. By then, unfortunately, the Prussian cities had long since been Germanized or Polonized. The Prussian language was still alive among the peasants, that is, far from the sphere of the Hanseatic merchants’ interests. The Prussian dictionaries have reached our time only as copies of a dead lexicographical work, copied after its death: the orderly German merchant of the mid-fifteenth century commissioned the recopying of an archival item that was regarded as family property, perhaps even as a source of family pride⁸. The monk documenting the revolutionary changes of the first half of the sixteenth century, which brought about the religious, political, and economic flourishing of the German language, felt the need to show that the local Prussian language differed considerably from German and, to substantiate this, recopied something from an ancient “Prussian booklet,” one of the sources available to him. ⁸ Kol Prūsiškoji knygelė was useful; it gave the family a competitive advantage, so the merchant family protected it and did not allow it to pass freely from hand to hand. Ownership of copies of the legal codes of the localities belonging to the family, with which it traded, likewise constituted a similar competitive advantage. 126 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje IV. The final body of intentional monuments of the Prussian language consists of books printed in the sixteenth century. I. Lemeškin correctly notes that the book production of the Duchy of Prussia at that time is important—indeed essential—for all three Baltic languages: Prussian, Lithuanian, and Latvian. Unfortunately, in assessing the author’s work with this material, one probably has to acknowledge that Lithuanica aliter is not yet a book that, in a single stroke, incorporates the discoveries in this field into a new and distinctive whole; nevertheless, it is precisely such a prolegomenal book (philological, with an extensive section also on the multilingual prints of Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) that one may expect from our colleague I. Lemeškin⁹. The development of Baltic-language prints from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries is correctly indicated in Lithuanica aliter (chapter 1), but unfortunately only in general terms. The heuristic potential—that the Duchy of Prussia had a state monopoly on printing from the very beginning—remains merely a hint. In Lithuanica aliter, J. Lemeškin confines himself to two separate and specialized questions (chapters 6 and 7), which are secondary from the standpoint of the whole, without sufficiently motivating why he examines them. The aforementioned (final) chapters discuss two printed catechisms that are distinctive among Baltic prints because, contrary to the practice of the time, they do not indicate the author’s surname: the Prūsiškasis katekizmas published in Königsberg in 1545 (a second, revised edition appeared in the same year), and the Lietuviškasis katekizmas, also published in Königsberg in 1547. Most attention is devoted to the question of authorship. The 1547 Lietuviškasis katekizmas is called Mažvydas’s after Jan Safarewicz recognized the acrostic MARTĪNVS MASVĪDJVS in the Lithuanian verse preface, that is, the name of a historical personage (Safarewicz 1939). After 1547, Mažvydas published several prints under his own name; books in which he is explicitly identified as the author continued to be published after his death. While still alive, in 1559 Mažvydas published another book “anonymously”—Forma chriẽstima—in which he likewise signed himself by an acrostic (also discovered by the twentieth-century Polish scholar Jan Safarewicz (Safarewicz Jan) in 1946). I. Lemeškin disagrees with J. Safarewicz’s conclusion that Martynas Mažvydas’s acrostics are imperfect: that they begin not with the first stanza or contain surplus letters. Since he views M. Mažvydas as a fully-fledged, European-educated sixteenth-century humanist, knowledgeable about and adhering to the cultural conventions and norms of the period, he therefore also interprets the apparently inappropriate, surplus letters. The graphemes S and M, which in J. Safarewicz’s opinion “spoil” the 1559 ⁹ Such a book, I. Lemeškin’s monograph Baltistika в перспективе целостной филологии / Baltistika visuminės filologijos požiūriu / Baltistika v pojetí celostní filologie, the Prague Linguistic Circle plans to publish in its traditional series Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague. Straipsniai / Articles 127 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC acrostic in the print MARTINVS[S] MASWJDAS[M], the researcher interprets as SignificaMus, that is, “[we] mark / signify,” and illustrates that this verb form—the authorial plural—was at that time a widely used gesture by which an author blessed his work. This can essentially be accepted, but one would like to know why the author chooses the morphologically more complex verb significare rather than the simpler signare (in which case the S–M acrostic combination would mean SignaMus), which in medieval ecclesiastical Latin meant “to make the sign of the cross.” It is precisely from signare that German segnen, Czech žehnat, Polish żegnać, and Lithuanian žegnoti are derived. In the 1547 acrostic, I. Lemeškin interprets the “nonfunctional” initials of the first two lines B–I, followed by the personal name MARTINVS MASVJDIVS, as the academic title Baccalaureus Juris, which, in turn, aptly complements the secular name. At the end of the same catechism under examination, he identifies another acrostic, B–I–T–P, which he interprets as Baccalaureus Juris Titulum Posuit. He firmly supports this interpretation with the practice widespread in Europe at the time. One may agree that the formula Baccalaureus Juris Titulum Posuit was used as an author’s farewell, but it is unclear why Lemeškin translates it as “made the sign of the cross; blessed” (p. 305, 362). In the reviewer’s opinion, it would be simpler to translate it merely as “signed.” All the acrostics identified by I. Lemeškin are consistently interpreted according to the structure of the works analyzed and convincingly substantiated by their functional identity in many other European prints of the same period. However, a problem remains, one that has not yet been solved. In his Latin letters (of which there are thirteen), M. Mažvydas consistently signs with all the titles he had acquired, but never Baccalaureus Juris. Worse still, immediately after the publication of the 1547 Catechism, that is, in 1548 and 1549, M. Mažvydas signed in Latin as another kind of bachelor: Artium Baccalaureus. In later letters he already uses higher titles: “future shepherd of Christ’s lambs,” “servant of God’s word,” “shepherd,” “parish priest.” As a recent university graduate, M. Mažvydas was simply a bachelor of philosophy; as an appointed state official of Lutheran Prussia, he was a priest administering a particular parish. In this capacity, he addressed the duke in writing as the highest state official. It is clear from the character of the letters that, if M. Mažvydas had also held a bachelor’s degree in law, he would have used it, but this did not happen. That M. Mažvydas would have adorned the catechism with a title he did not possess is simply inconceivable. Therefore, the author should also show what in the Duchy of Prussia in the first half of the sixteenth century—a state that was Luther’s Reformation laboratory for all Europe, and in which, unlike in Latin Europe, secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were not separate, so that the supreme state code was called simply Kirchenordnung—actually meant legal studies and a bachelor’s degree in law. 128 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje His conjectures baccalaureus in iure canonico or utriusque iuris baccalaureus (Lemeškin 2019: 333) are rather a counterargument in this context. In the anonymous 1545 Prūsiškajame katekizme, whose textual structure is very simple, even impoverished, I. Lemeškin draws attention to the fact that the graphic frame of the title page, identical in both editions, is artistically highly complex and rich in astronomical, and therefore astrological, symbols. In this respect, the book differs sharply from other books published in Prussia at the time. Speaking about the astronomical aspect of the publication’s design, I. Lemeškin recalls the fact that in 1543 the treatise De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium was published—a work that had shaken Europe long before its publication (reports and excerpts from it had been circulated) and immediately elicited a response in European universities. Moreover, the author of the work, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), was a neighbor of Royal Prussia. The 1545 Prūsiškajame katekizme, unlike the 1547 Lietuviškajame katekizme, contains no section in which an acrostic could be applied. The author therefore devoted most attention to the symbolism of Psalms 19 and 87. Those psalms are emphasized in the very first line of the two-page German preface (valid for both editions), and so the researcher discusses the meaning of these psalms and their significance in Luther’s theological-political argumentation. Since the psalms are clearly attributed to specific and different persons (Psalm 19 to David, Psalm 87 to the descendant of Korah), the author, taking into account the Mannerism of contemporary European humanist allegories, takes another step—he interprets the emphasized digits of the psalm numbering as an indirectly expressed authorial name: David Kore, where Kore (Core) means a Curonian (Latin Cori, Corres, German Correlant), that is, an inhabitant of the Curonian Spit. The Prūsiškojo katekizmo pratar­mėje states that the Prussian language is purest precisely in this territory, and therefore the language of the book being published also originated there. This well-founded hypothesis is, in turn, linked to the fact that among the first students matriculated into the newly opened University of Königsberg in 1543 was a certain person listed as number 12, Dauid Reiman, Pruthenus. The numbers of the other Prussians are already 100, 181, and 257, but immediately before Reiman, listed as numbers 10 and 11, two Lithuanians enrolled. These are the first three ethnic Balts entered in the University of Königsberg. I. Lemeškin adds that it would be interesting to find more archival data about David Reiman. The same can be said of his Lithuanian fellow students. V. From a methodological point of view, in the book Lithuanica aliter the author clearly advocates comprehensive philology. This is the current form and a distinctive developmental phase of functional structuralism, Straipsniai / Articles 129 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC which the Prague Linguistic Circle cultivated and developed for almost a hundred years. Comprehensive philology—in Czech celostní filologie, French philologie englobante, German Ganzheitsphilologie, English encompassing philology, Italian filologia totale, Russian целостная филология—is consistently semiological: it works with Ferdinand de Saussure’s two-sided sign and works with it differentially. In F. de Saussure’s conception, a sign does not signify what lies beyond it, but is itself the bearer and carrier of values of all kinds. What concrete value a sign brings in any particular case always depends on the communicative situation in which it is used. The value of a sign is consistently relational, that is, differential: we perceive and assess how the general meaning of the communicative situation changes when one sign is used in place of another. The mutual correspondence of perceiving and assessing signs—these are not two different processes but one indivisible process—can be achieved only by comparing signs within constant defining domains (Czech definiční obor, French ensemble définitoire, German Definitionsmenge, English defining domain), whose structures and functions depend on social norms. Yet, on the other hand, a text as an entity, through its own structure, influences and even directly determines in which of the many possible defining domains a particular sign will in fact be evaluated in a given case. Ultimately, comprehensive philology is comprehensive because it consistently proceeds from the whole to the parts: the initial sign is the entire text (work), perceived as a social phenomenon, that is, a cultural-historical event conditioned by social norms. Parts emerge from this whole, and these parts are themselves also signs; from smaller signs, still smaller signs can be distinguished. The process of distinguishing signs is always finite, and dividing the comprehensive sign into elementary signs is not the aim of interpretation. The oldest monuments of the Baltic languages, as texts-works, are likewise signs. The principal defining domain in which I. Lemeškin examines them is genre—the primary and determining domain. The extraordinary importance of genre is determined by its functional nature: it is genre that determines what roles the creator of the text and the recipient play in relation to one another and what the subject of the text can be at all. It is precisely the connection with genre that legitimizes the fact that Lithuanica aliter confines itself to intentional, that is, consciously created, monuments of language. Unconsciously arising linguistic monuments are small linguistic formations transferred from texts in which they initially functioned within a particular genre into other texts of a different generic nature, in which their primary function is not evaluated and is sometimes even obscured. I. Lemeškin’s principal contribution is that he consistently and at the same time quite naturally discusses the monuments under analysis in the context of the historical course of Europe. The genres of the earliest monuments of the Baltic languages are genres of the European Middle Ages or early modern period. To understand the monuments of the Baltic languages correctly and fully, they must be examined within European defining domains and compared with Danish, Czech, 130 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje French, and many other linguistic monuments. Two European Middle Ages are immediately important for the monuments of the Baltic languages: the Latin (Roman) and the Greek (Byzantine). They should be distinguished and understood as independent, though intersecting and interacting, cultural spaces. This is what I. Lemeškin does: his Lithuanica aliter (2019) devotes most attention to the Latin Middle Ages, Sovijaus sakmė ir 1262 metų chronografas is clearly oriented toward the Greek Middle Ages. The latest book, Pranciškaus Skorinos portretas (2020), tells of how, after these Middle Ages had ended, the two cultural worlds were able to act together. Let us now examine I. Lemeškin’s methodology in greater detail. Prussian colophons. The colophon is an inseparable functional element of every medieval book. This also applies to the narrower genre of the medieval scholarly book, which, since we are speaking of the Roman rather than Byzantine Middle Ages, is inevitably written in the international Latin language10. The functional necessity of the international Latin language in the colophon (and only there) can be emphasized still further by consciously using the vernacular, especially if it is incomprehensible to local inhabitants. I. Lemeškin correctly sees a parallel between a Prussian colophon in a scholarly Latin book intended for a certain influential Italian and a Danish colophon in an equally scholarly Latin book intended for the archbishop of Cologne. Moreover, the part of the colophon written in the vernacular creates space for thematic contrast: the scholarly Latin book is exclusively philosophical, whereas the colophon highlights this by being frivolously drunken or cheerfully erotic11. I. Lemeškin illustrates how the Prussian and French colophons alike ask for wine. A specific Baltic question arises: what would a Prussian with a European education take up if he wished to add something highly distinctive in his native language to a scholarly Latin book? Unlike the Frenchman or Czech, who already possessed their own secular vernacular poetry, the Prussian had only folk poetry at his disposal. The latter is part of a semi-pagan rural world (the erecting of ritual trees, the first driving of livestock to pasture in spring) and can only partly be transferred to unambiguously Christian towns (Christmas songs, specifically songs for the feast of the Three Kings). Prussian dictionaries. Having correctly assigned them to the European genre of that period—linguistic aids for Hanseatic merchants—I. Lemeškin was able to interpret adequately two written monuments preserved in copies that, by the time of their late transcription, no longer performed their original function. The most recent 10 It is true that on the periphery of Latin Europe, in Ireland and Iceland, there are scholarly books written in the local language: they are rare and exclusively philological rather than philosophical in nature. 11 This is the same as a medieval stonemason, emphasizing the sacredness of a Gothic church, carving on its wall a little figure with its buttocks sticking out, defecating onto the ground. Straipsniai / Articles 131 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC interpretation is also useful because it reveals a medieval cultural space encompassing both Latin and Greek Europe. In this respect, the Hanseatic League of northern Germany is reminiscent of the Republic of Venice. Baltic prints. In considering the authors of the first Baltic prints, I. Lemeškin, consistently taking their predecessor Francysk Skaryna into account, views them as creators of the new European genre—the printed book. In this role he treats them very seriously and responsibly, with all the consequences that follow. He believes that these authors knew all the subtleties of the new, progressive genre at the time and actively applied them: among other things, the symbolism of acrostics, numbers, and printer’s ornaments. In this respect, however, I. Lemeškin’s treatment is also the easiest to dispute: the possibilities of a genre are the cultural property of the broad public, but how many of the genre’s devices are used in a particular work depends on the abilities of the individual creator, or even solely on his will. The symbolism of the 1545 Prūsiškojo katekizmo simbolika, as I. Lemeškin has coherently set it out, is possible only within the structural relations of a specific European genre; yet one cannot claim (and I. Lemeškin does not do so here) that it is actually obligatory in this case. The sustained reading of the acrostics in the 1547 Lietuviškajame katekizme—as also in the 1559 Formoje krikštyto—is essentially coherent and consistent, since it finds support in the European genre¹²; at the same time, it must also be considered and compared with all the information we know about the author as a historical person. In the case under discussion, let us develop the comparison with Francysk Skaryna, whose example the author himself also followed. Doctor of medicine P. Skaryna was sufficiently prosperous and well provided for throughout his life: he could afford to study at several European universities, became acquainted with the art of the Transalpine world (German, including Dutch and Czech) and the Cis­alpine world (Italian), acquired his own printing presses, and hired freelance artists and craftsmen to implement his project... The author of the 1547 Lietuviškojo katekizmo autorius, bachelor M. Mažvydas, was undoubtedly as zealous a Christian as P. Skaryna, but he did not have the same material resources, formal education, or social connections. All these factors constrained his work. M. Mažvydas repeatedly appealed to the Prussian authorities, asking them to grant him a modest source of income so that he could devote himself entirely to religious and educational activity, but the Prussian state gave him a farm so that he would support himself and earn his livelihood, and refused to continue addressing his problem¹³. It is worth noting how much M. Mažvydas managed to accomplish despite the difficult circumstances of his personal life. The anonymous ¹² I. Lemeškin relies on Adrian Cappelli’s classic dictionary of Latin abbreviations (Cappelli 1928), created on the basis of bookish Italian production. ¹³ The Prussian state applied exactly the same cultural policy to its other intellectuals. It will be shown below that the laboratory of Europe’s Lutheran Reformation was characterized by truly extraordinary cultural obtuseness. 132 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje The author of the 1545 Prūsiškojo katekizmo was probably much closer in his fate to M. Mažvydas than to P. Skaryna. What P. Skaryna could afford in Prague or Vilnius was unimaginable in Königsberg. VI. Baltic studies inevitably needs a work that, through the prism of comprehensive philology, would assess the entire corpus of Baltic prints from the sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Let us consider what here awaits its interpretation. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It is appropriate to begin with the immense Latin book production that affirmed statehood. The first Lithuanian book is the Vilnius canon Martynas Radomas’s Agenda, printed in Gdańsk in 1499 in two versions at once. This Agenda is Lithuanian because it was created in Lithuania for the needs of the Diocese of Vilnius, with the aim of organizing ritual practice in the territory of Lithuania. Next come several dozen Latin publications, printed mostly in Kraków but also in Rome, which Lithuanian Catholic humanists—Lithuanian because they served the highest representatives of the Lithuanian state14—wrote in praise of and political support for Lithuania on the international stage. Can one imagine publications more Lithuanian than these? Per negationem this is confirmed by two Lithuanian Protestant prints issued in quick succession by the Königsberg printing house and addressed to Lithuania itself: in 1543, Abraomas Kulvietis addressed the Queen of Poland (and Grand Duchess of Lithuania) with the Latin Confessio fidei; while in 1547 the anonymous Katechismus addressed the entire Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The anonymity of the 1547 Lithuanian Catechism is determined by the structure and function of a book that speaks to the state with merciless severity from its highest to its lowest layer. The introductory Latin couplets command the mighty empire: take this and follow it, otherwise terrible consequences will befall you. If these lines had been published by a specific person, this would have amounted to a declaration of war. The Latin preface, with equally direct insolence, addresses the clergy of Lithuania: the situation is terrible, and you are responsible for it; if you did not know this until now, you know it from me now, and from now on you yourselves alone will be guilty of inaction. Only afterward does the book speak in Lithuanian to the people of Lithuania and tell them, pleasantly but revolutionarily: the state is unable to care for your salvation, so care for it yourselves; I, the book, will be your first helper. Let us compare all this with P. Skorina. He too addressed the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy, yet he diplomatically remained silent regarding the structures of the Lithuanian state and church... 14 They themselves were of various nationalities: Lithuanians, Poles, Spaniards, Italians, Germans... Straipsniai / Articles 133 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC The second half of the sixteenth century in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was characterized by the activity of centers patronized by local nobles: Brest, Nesvizh, Ostroh. All these centers were non-Catholic: Calvinist, Arian, Orthodox. Major works were published there, including Bible translations into Ruthenian or Polish. The changing relationship between Ruthenian and Polish religious print illustrates well how the languages used in Lithuania changed from a functional point of view. It was only in 1575 and 1580 that the first permanent printing houses appeared in Vilnius, both Catholic. In the earlier of them, known as the Jesuit press, the first—and already very late—Catholic reaction to Protestantism was published some time later: in 1585, Catechismus catholicorum, written in Latvian and only in Latvian; in 1595, Daukša’s Kathechismas, written in Lithuanian and only in Lithuanian, which became the first book published in Lithuanian in Lithuania. It should be added that the first Orthodox printing house was also established in Vilnius in 1575⁵, where in 1588 such a fundamental Lithuanian work as the Third Lithuanian Statute was published in Ruthenian, and in 1598 the Calvinist Polish and Lithuanian Catechism. From 1567 to 1629, Riga also belonged to the state of Lithuania and Poland; its first printing house was established in 1588. Depending on the authorities and political circumstances, it served Catholics or Lutherans. With regard to Baltic books, it is significant because in 1615 it reissued, with extensive German paratexts, three Protestant Latvian prints—Enchiridion, Undeutsche Psalmen, Euangelia und Episteln—which had first been published in Königsberg in 1586–1587. On the other hand, in 1622, in royal Prussia (not the duchy), an anonymous four-language manual, Agenda Parva, was published in Latvian, Estonian, Polish, and German, intended for the Catholics of Livonia. Another printing house in the territory of historic Livonia was opened in Tartu only in 1631¹⁶. We cannot describe the historical lands of Terra Mariana in greater detail here. The Duchy of Prussia is exceptional in that its production has been documented historically in great detail and with great consistency. Moreover, from 1554 Prussia had a book monopoly: there was only one printer, who printed for the state. Strictly speaking, one cannot be dazzled by the cultural generosity of the Prussian state, which became Europe’s laboratory of Luther’s reforms. The fact that the wonderful cultural projects of Lithuanian intellectuals, which active Lithuanians successfully implemented in the Duchy of Prussia, had no benefit or effect because the Prussian state showed no interest in them and allocated no funds is deeply etched into the history of the Lithuanian language ¹⁵ P. Skorina’s printing house in Vilnius (1522–1525) was merely an episode and an example of an unsuccessful business. ¹⁶ From the perspective of the Baltic countries, Livonia was by no means backward: the first printing house in Finland was established even later, in Turku in 1642; both printing houses—in Tartu and in Turku—were founded on the initiative of the king of Sweden, who had just established universities in these cities. 134 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje for their publication17. It was only because of the state’s indifference that J. Bretkūnas’s Bible (1590), a complete 1,900-page translation of Holy Scripture, whose manuscript had been reviewed and approved for publication by a special ecclesiastical commission, was not published; nor was the original collective Lithuanian clerical postil, the Wolfenbüttel postil (completed in 1573), nor Bretkūnas’s translation of Corvinus’s authoritative postil (Postilla Corvinii in Euangelia Dominicalia, translated in 1589). None of these works reached readers during the period in question, which was irreparable damage inflicted on the Lithuanian language. In retrospect, we were at least fortunate that both Bretkūnas’s Bible and the Wolfenbüttel postil survived in manuscripts, whereas the Lithuanian translation of the Corvinus postil disappeared (we have only a letter dated October 14, 1589, in which J. Bretkūnas asks the duke for money to publish it). It is difficult to estimate how many more Lithuanian texts were created and lost at that time, since during its Enlightenment period the Prussian state blocked their continued existence. It is important to analyze the corpus of Prussian prints from the functional perspective of languages as well. It contains German, Polish, Prussian, Latin, and Lithuanian; Latvian is absent18. It is known that the Duke of Prussia invited Lithuanian and Polish intellectuals to his country with the aim of using them to spread Lutheranism to Lithuania and Poland—neighboring Catholic countries with which he was formally linked by vassal relations. The 1547 Lithuanian Catechism, as described earlier, is an exemplary means of such export. When it became clear that the Lutheran Reformation in Lithuania was unsuccessful, the duke employed his own Lithuanian intellectuals to evangelize the local Prussians in the villages. Looking at the ecclesiastical ordinances, Kirchenordnungen, which, as is known, were the highest laws of the state (their source and predecessor was Luther’s 1523 Formula missæ et communionis), the following sequence of regulatory waves can be observed: (1) in 1525, only German; (2) in 1544, German, Polish, and Latin; (3) in 1558, German, in 1559 Lithuanian19, and in 1560 Polish; (4) in 1568, German, and in 1571 Polish. 17 Even Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the most distinguished figure of the Duchy of Prussia, had to publish all his Critiques (1781–1790) abroad—in Riga and Libau; only at the end of his life could he publish his final books, moral and religious treatises, in Königsberg (1793–1798) (Hoskovec 2002). 18 Three Latvian prints were published in Prussia in 1586–1587 as a technical foreign commission: everything was initiated and paid for by the Duke of Courland, who, to speed up the work, also sent an editor and a proofreader to Königsberg; a second edition of the same books appeared in Riga (1615). 19 This is Mažvydas’s second anonymous work, Forma chrikštima. Straipsniai / Articles 135 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC The first wave, announcing the secularization of the Teutonic Order and the beginning of Luther’s Reformation, was purely German. Latin appeared only with the second wave, together with German and Polish, but not with the others. Lithuanian appeared together with German and Polish in the third wave, but not in the fourth. In the latter, there were only German and Polish. What does this mean? The only fully-fledged local languages were German and Polish; there were no others. The Prussian state never considered the Prussian language politically. The local inhabitants who spoke Prussian were always objects, not subjects, of state administration; elementary catechization was deemed sufficient for them. Lithuanian was a newcomer in Prussia. The unexpected use of Latin (it was the language of prints intended for export) in the second wave of Prussian ordinances (there was no question of exporting this genre) is most easily explained by the fact that it was intended precisely for the Lithuanians who had just been invited and arrived in Prussia and who knew neither German nor Polish. And the fact that Lithuanian was no longer used after the third wave of ordinances shows that in the meantime its significance in Prussia had declined to that of a language used for the pastoral needs of politically insignificant inhabitants20. Essentially, it can be said that in Prussia Lithuanian functionally replaced Prussian, which by then had lost educated and politically full-fledged users (whose earlier existence the author so successfully revealed in the monograph Lithuanica aliter). This is also attested by the unique paratextual structure of Luther’s translation of the Enchiridion, published in Prussia in 1561. The book begins twice: on page 17, a detailed title page is printed, followed by (pages 19–24) the author’s customary preface, respectfully dedicated to the duke; however, after the first title page (page 1), we read, as the first part of the book in sequence, a long prologue by the duke himself (pages 3–16). This fact alone has no analogue in any other Prussian print. Yet even more astonishing is the purpose of the duke’s prologue. The duke (pages 14–15) strongly urges his clergymen (in fact, these were his officials responsible for local administration) to seek intelligent Prussian boys, gifted in scholarship, and persuade their parents to let the boys study so that one day they might become clergymen who would administer their parishes in Prussian without interpreters. The duke undertakes to support the boys materially while they study and to pay them a stipend. Through this prologue, the 1561 Prussian Enchiridion is simply unique in Europe... The subsequent structure of Prussian prints testifies that the duke’s appeal received no response, and therefore the Prussian state decided to use Lithuanian for the pastoral care of its local Baltic population. 20 No one could be found to purchase the publication of the 1559 Lithuanian ordinance, so for several centuries it lay in Königsberg Castle in the state-services collection. 136 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lithuanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje VII. In conclusion, it is appropriate to answer the question raised at the beginning of the article: why did the author call the book, which examines Prussia’s cultural and historical space in a broad European context, Lithuanica aliter? Because examining Prussian alone is laughably meager, while examining Lithuanian while restricting oneself to the language itself is altogether impossible. Prussia’s historical space was in many respects extremely important for the development and functioning of the Lithuanian language, and only from this perspective can we properly understand how it developed and functioned in its native Grand Duchy. The historical formation of Lithuanian is distinctive in that it proceeded in parallel within two traditions of statehood. The historical formation of Latvian was essentially determined by the fact that Latvian statehood never existed before 1918. European statehood as a cultural and historical whole can be understood and described only in a pan-European context. Comprehensive philological Lithuanian studies can be nothing other than an undertaking encompassing all of Europe. LITERATŪRA BBE – Billėmai bhe ersinnimai I–II, tęstinė serija, Vilnius: Vaga (nuo 2015 m.), Lietuvių kalbos institutas (nuo 2019 m.). Blažienė Grasil̇da 2000: Die baltischen Ortsnamen im Samland, Stuttgart: Steiner. 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Straipsniai / Articles 137 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC Hoskovec Tomáš 2010: Celostní filologie jako program (na příkladu baltistiky). – Časopis pro moderní filologii XCII (1–2), 10–17. Hoskovec Tomáš 2012: Poetika a filologie. – Poetický Cikháj v Brně 2010, Brno: Tribun EU, 13–27. Hoskovec Tomáš 2012a: La linguistique textuelle et le programme de philologie englobante. – Verbum XXXII (2), 193–218. Hoskovec Tomáš 2016: K zásadám nových pražských thesí. – Cesty rozumění, ed. by M. Konečná, Brno: Institut pro hermeneutiku, 154–161. Hoskovec Tomáš 2017: Thèses de Prague 2016. – Texto! Textes & Cultures XXII, Nr. 1, 1–17. Hoskovec Tomáš 2018: … und wenn die Sprache einmal gebührend abgegrenzt wird? – Texto! Textes et cultures XXIII, Nr. 2, 1–11. Hoskovec Tomáš 2018a: Jazyk, ideální slovníkové heslo. – Litikon III, Nr. 2, 331–344. Lemeškin Il’ja 2009: Sovijaus sakmė ir 1262 m. chronografas: pagal Archyvinį, Varšuvos, Vilniaus ir I. J. Zabelino nuorašus, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas. Lemeškin Il’ja 2019: Lithuanica aliter, Vilnius: Lietuvos kalbos institutas (Billēmāi bhe ersin̄in̄rai II). Lemeškin Il’ja 2020. Портрет Франциска Скорины. К 550-летию со дня рождения книгоиздателя (1470–2020) / Pranciškaus Skorinos portretas. 550-ąsias gimimo metines minint (1470–2020) / Portrait de Francisk Skorina. En commémorant le 550e anniversaire de sa naissance (1470–2020). Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague nouvelle série, vol. 10, Vilnius–Prague: Institut national de langue lituanienne; Cercle linguistique de Prague. Mažiulis Vytautas 1981: Prūsų kalbos paminklai 2, Vilnius: Mintis. Mikalauskaitė Elzbieta 1938: Priešreformacinių laikų prusiško Tėve Mūsų nuotrupa. – Archivum Philologicum 7, 102–106. Nesselmann Georg Heinrich Ferdinand 1873: Thesaurus Linguae Prussicae. Der preussische Vocabellvorrath, soweit derselbe bis jetzt ermittelt worden ist, nebst Zugabe einer Sammlung urkundlich beglaubigter Localnamen, gesichtet und zusammengestellt, Berlin: Harrwitz und Grossmann. Safarewicz Jan 1939: Un acrostiche de Mažvydas. – Prace Filologiczne 18, 7–8. Safarewicz Jan 1946: Dwa drobiazgi litewskie. 1. Kilka uwag o wersyfikacji litewskiej, 2. Nie znamy akrostich Mažwida. – Inter Arma: zbiór prac ofiarowanych Prof. 138 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV Lituanica aliter: visuminės filologijos pritaikymas lituanistikoje Kazimierzowi Nitschowi w siedemdziesiątą rocznicą urodzin (1 II. 1944) przez przyjaciół, kolegów i uczniów, Kraków: Studium Słowiańskiego Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 59–65. Schmalstieg William R. 2015: Studies in Old Prussian, Vilnius: Vaga. Trautmann Reinhold 1910: Die altpreußischen Sprachdenkmäler. Einleitung, Texte, Grammatik, Wörterbuch, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lituanica aliter: Encompassing Philology as to be applied to Baltic Studies SUMMARY This contribution pays a tribute to the genre of review as it was cultivated one hundred and even more years ago: a scholar reflected thoroughly and very personally on a (set of) question(s) that had been treated by his fellow-scholar in a recently published book. That was an excellent way of vivid scientific communication, and a very intensive one (notice that Bezzenberger’s 1874 review of Nesselmann’s 1873 publication is over 30 pages long). Those old reviews prove useful up to now: he who wants to understand Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural phonology, but has neither enough time nor energy to read through Saussure’s extremely complicated Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (1879), may still gain supreme advantage from reading Saussure’s review of Johannes Schmidt’s long ago duly forgotten Kritik der Sonantentheorie (1895), published in 1897 in Indogermanische Forschungen; he who wants to learn what Saussure’s non-structuralist disciple Antoine Meillet, who only wrote books on particular languages, thought about this or that general linguistic issue, will still get best informed by the numerous detailed reviews Meillet, a patriarch of French linguistics, published in Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris. By his present contribution, the author renders homage to Pavel Trost (1907–1987), eminent Baltist among others, member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, and an “encompassing philologist” par excellence, even if avant la lettre, who never wrote a book, but expended his amazing wisdom on hundreds of brief notes, published all of them as personal reactions to various scientific ideas that had been formulated throughout the world. Reviewing Il’ja Lemeškin’s book Lituanica aliter (Lemeškin 2019), the author explains the programme of encompassing philology (Ganzheitsphilologie, philologie englobante), i.e. the contemporary phase of functional structuralism, which has been elaborated in the contemporary Prague Linguistic Circle. In essence, encompassing philology is a semiology of both oral and written texts. Any text, taken as a whole, is considered one particular cultural-historical event, which is subject to social norms. Any text, taken as a whole, is Straipsniai / Articles 139 TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC considered one global linguistic sign (in Saussurian sense), which subsequently may be structured into smaller (always Saussurian) signs. Whatever the size of a linguistic sign is, its value can only be determined by differentiating the sign from other signs within a particular defining set (Definitionsmenge, ensemble définitoire). For a text, the essential defining set is its genre: consequently, the earliest traces of Baltic languages are to be analysed within their peculiar genre of colophon, when being confronted with all even potentially related colophons (written in Latin, German, French, Danish, etc.) that are available for the respective periods and environments; similarly, the medieval vocabularies of Baltic languages are to be viewed within the utterly utilitarian genre of Hanseatic lexicography; and finally, the politically coloured prefaces to the oldest Baltic prints are to be perceived through the relevant genre of paratexts in other European prints. Having explained all of that, the author outlines both the inner dynamism and the inherent heuristics of the historical corpora of Baltic texts that have been preserved from the 16th and the first half of the 17th century: those monuments should always be approached within a broad cultural-historical framework which encompasses other relevant European events; Baltic philology should never be restricted to the genetically Baltic languages only. Įteikta 2021 m. birželio 10 d. TOMÁŠ HOSKOVEC Pražský linguistický kroužek – Cercle linguistique de Prague Španielova 1326/35, CZ–16300 Praha, Čehija [email protected] 140 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXV