LIETUVIŲ KALBOS SANDAROS TYRINĖJIMAI

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXVI (1987)

VINCENTAS DROTVINAS

ON THE AUTHOR OF “CLAVIS GERMANICO-LITHVANA”

Writing a history of Lithuanian lexicography requires special studies of all the most important dictionaries. Some dictionaries have already been investigated during the Soviet period¹. The monuments of East Prussian lexicography still await researchers. Although more than one has been surveyed or at least characterized in the broadest terms², this is only a beginning: the lexicon, significance, and influence of these dictionaries on later lexicography have received little study. When discussing East Prussian dictionaries, we still rely on general bibliographical and philological information: bilingual dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are mentioned mainly as bibliographical items, phenomena in the history of Lithuanian literature, or sources of our minor folklore. The material in these dictionaries has not been fully used in the academic “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” and we know almost nothing about their lexicon as a whole. These dictionaries remain little known both lexicologically and lexicographically. More than one of them—for example, J. Brodovskis’s Lithuanian-German dictionary—was most likely lost during the wars.

In the absence of direct historical evidence about the oldest dictionaries of East Prussia, it is difficult to say anything definite. Nevertheless, the surviving³ manuscript German-Lithuanian dictionaries are: 1) “Lexicon Lithuanicum,” traditionally attributed to D. Klein, 2) the so-called Krause dictionary, and 3) “Clavis Germanico-Lithvana,” regarded as the work of F. Pretorius.

Identifying “Lexicon Lithuanicum” with D. Klein’s dictionary, as has been done until now, would be risky: we know too little both about the dictionary written by D. Klein and about “Lexicon Lithuanicum” itself. Judging from the watermarks, it was written (= copied)

¹ See the works of J. Kruopas, K. Pakalka, B. Tolutienė, and B. Vosilytė on the dictionaries of K. Sirvydas, S. Daukantas, J. Pabrėža, D. Sutkevičius, A. Juška, K. Būga, and others.

² Žr. Balasaitis A. Žodžiai ir žodynai. — V., 1984. — 142 p.; Palionis J. Lietuvių literatūrinės kalbos istorija. — V., 1979. — 316 p.; Sabaliauskas A. Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija, iki 1940 m. — V., 1979. — 252 p.; taip pat jo. Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija, 1940—1980 m. — V., 1982. — 265 p.

³ We have no more convincing information about the bilingual dictionaries of the seventeenth century attributed to Kristupas Sapūnas, Frydrichas Partacijus, and Jonas Hurtelijus, which are mentioned but most likely have not survived.

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In the fourth and fifth decades of the seventeenth century, that is, in D. Klein’s time⁴. Our investigation of the watermarks on the paper of the so-called Krause dictionary shows that it is not a seventeenth-century work: the dictionary was written (= copied) in the third or fourth decade of the eighteenth century, so it cannot be attributed to A. Krause, who lived from 1585 (1588) to 1655⁵.

In terms of its scope, lexicon, and presentation, the most significant manuscript monument of seventeenth-century Lithuanian lexicography in East Prussia is the German-Lithuanian dictionary “Clavis Germanico-Lithvana” (hereafter CGL). This two-volume work (vol. I: Aal–Luft; vol. II: Maal–Zwölfter), with a folklore supplement, “Proverbia quedam Litvanica,” and an addition of words, comprises 2,322 pages in all. The dictionary does not have a long history of scholarly study. Several opinions have been expressed about its author and the time when it was written, which we will review here.

As early as the mid-nineteenth century, F. Nesselmann conjectured in the preface to his dictionary that CGL had been written in the second quarter of the eighteenth century and called it an anonymous dictionary. Later, too, when its author was unknown, the manuscript was attributed to individuals who lived in the eighteenth century. Bibliographers reached this conclusion on the basis of two surname entries in the dictionary manuscript. The first entry, in Latin, is on blank page 9 of CGL volume I: Sum Christiani Friederici Stimeri Sal. Bor. P. Gerwi… This entry is reproduced in somewhat fuller form on the first unnumbered page of volume II: Sum Christiani Friederici Stimeri Salav. Bor. Par. Gerwischk. 1746⁶.

In the Königsberg State Archive, the dictionary in question had the shelfmarks Msc. 85 in 4 and Msc. 86 in 4. Like other sources for Lithuanian studies, it was examined by Kazimieras Būga on the eve of the First World War. The editorial board of the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” headed by J. Balčikonis, had the manuscript of this dictionary sent to Kaunas so that words could be excerpted. After the Great Patriotic War (in 1946), J. Jurginis, J. Kruopas, and other scholars found this dictionary together with the manuscripts of J. Brodovskis and K. Donelaitis and other unique Lithuanian studies materials in East Prussia, and brought them back. CGL is now held at the Central Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR.

The question of the dictionary’s authorship has perhaps been most thoroughly investigated to date by Jurgis Lebedys⁷. On the basis of the dictionary’s illustrations and other sources cited in it, he attempted to establish approximately when it was written. After reviewing the opinions of earlier researchers, he was inclined to think that the first volume of the dictionary was written in 1672 (when the author was 48). Since T. Šulcas (Sapūnas), mentioned in volume II, was dated 1673.

⁴ The authorship of the dictionary, the manuscript’s features, and the lexicographical presentation of its words are examined in the present author’s edition of “Lexicon Lithuanicum,” published by the “Mokslas” publishing house (1987).

⁵ For more detail, see Drotvinas V. Kada parašytas vadinamasis Krauzės žodynas. — Baltistica, 1984, vol. 20 (2), pp. 163—167.

⁶ Kristijonas Frydrichas Štimeris was appointed pastor of Gerviškenai in 1746. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the dictionary belonged to Vilhelmas Teodoras Šimelpengis, precentor at Žiliai, where Pretorius had served as pastor until 1695.

⁷ Lithuanian Minor Folklore in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Proverbs, Sayings, Riddles/Ed. J. Lebedys. — V., 1956. — 631 p.

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“Compendium Grammaticae Lithvanicae,” that is, the dictionary must have been completed around 1674, or at the latest in 1675⁸. This date is now almost universally accepted. In the new edition of volume I of the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” the abbreviation C denotes “Clavis Germanico-Lithvana” (formerly the Königsberg Archive’s two-volume manuscript, I Msc. 85 in 4, II Msc. 86 in 4, written between 1673 and 1701)⁹. The date of the dictionary’s composition is given on the basis of J. Lebedys’s research. In bibliographical works, F. Pretorius is regarded without qualification or comment as the author of the German-Lithuanian dictionary preserved in manuscript¹⁰. Some linguists are not entirely convinced of this¹¹.

According to J. Lebedys, the author himself translated the biblical passages needed for the dictionary, as J. Bretkūnas’s Bible translation was unavailable to him¹². J. Palionis, however, states that when writing a German-Lithuanian dictionary at the end of the 17th century, Friedrich Pretorius drew words and expressions from J. Bretkūnas’s Bible translation¹³. Our selective comparison of the concordances used in CGL with J. Bretkūnas’s translation indicates that his Bible manuscript was probably not used to translate the sentences. The translation’s authenticity is shown by the considerable variation and abridgment in word choice, word forms and combinations, spelling, sentence constructions, and word order¹⁴. All this suggests that Pretorius translated both the Bible, or at least its concordances.

Thus, in considering when CGL was written, we should first distinguish between the years when work on the dictionary began and when it was written (= completed). It is important to establish the year in which work on the dictionary began. The dates usually taken are 1672 for volume I and 1673 for volume II—that is, the years of the most recently published linguistic work used in the dictionary. This, however, is not an incontestable claim. The year T. Schulz’s (Sapūnas’s) grammar appeared need not coincide with the year it was used; CGL need not have been written immediately after the grammar’s publication. Since no linguistic works or religious texts were published in East Prussia from 1673 to 1695, T. Schulz’s (Sapūnas’s) grammar could also have been used later. Clearly, work on CGL took more than one or two years. For, several years later, in 1690, T. Lepner noted that F. Pretorius, the oldest pastor in our Prussian Lithuania, had written a dictionary, but no publisher could be found¹⁵. As is known, no publisher emerged before F. Pretorius’s death. The simple reason was that the dictionary was unfinished. This is shown not only by the 8 blank pages left at the beginning of volume I (which, in J. Lebedys’s view, were intended for the title page and preface), but also by the relatively large number of blank pages overall: 121 in volume I, 88 in volume II, 209 blank pages in total (or 11.5% of the dictionary’s total extent). The main material of dictionary entries is usually set out on a single page; most likely, such pages were written during the “first

⁸ Minor Lithuanian Folklore..., p. 512.

⁹ Lietuvių kalbos žodynas/Ats. red. J. Kruopas. – V., 1968, t. 1, p. XVIII.

¹⁰ Lietuvos TSR bibliografija. A serija. Knygos lietuvių kalba, 1547–1861. – V., t. 1, p. 328.

¹¹ Sabaliauskas A. Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija... – V., 1979, p. 31.

¹² Minor Lithuanian Folklore..., p. 509.

¹³ Jonas Bretkūnas. Rinktiniai raštai/Par. J. Palionis ir J. Žukauskaitė. – V., 1983, p. 25.

¹⁴ This subject merits a dedicated textual-critical study.

¹⁵ Lepner Th. Der Preußche Lithauer. – Königsberg, 1690, S. 115.

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editorial phase.” The pages intended for additions—that is, for inserting new headwords or supplementing existing ones—were filled in to varying degrees: volume I of the dictionary has 158 pages with one or two additions or other supplements, and volume II has 122, for a total of 280, or 9% of the text. Adding the blank and partly started pages, we find that one fifth of the dictionary’s pages contain no text.

The additions appear to have been made later, but in the principal author’s own hand. Presumably, if the author of CGL had known the linguistic characteristics of a word while writing the main text, he would have entered them there and then. The small additions in several other hands are another matter. Though few, they could only have been made over a longer period, after the main text of CGL had been written and the dictionary had passed into other hands.

Of course, the date when CGL was written does not directly depend on whether it was fully completed. It is important to bear in mind that it would hardly have been possible for one person to compile such a vast dictionary in 2–3 years. There was no precedent in Lithuanian lexicography (apart from the manuscript German-Lithuanian “Lexicon Lithuanicum,” two or three times smaller and more elementary); there was no lexicographical tradition, and, finally, compiling a dictionary was not F. Pretorius’s principal occupation. For these reasons, in the absence of documented facts, defining the date of CGL’s composition so narrowly is hardly justified. In view of all this, it is more appropriate to consider the dictionary to have been in preparation for longer than has been claimed until now.

The period when CGL was written might also be clarified by establishing when its paper was made. Analysis of the dictionary paper’s watermarks shows that it bears four kinds of watermark.

1. Watermark No. 1 depicts three finches perched on an oak tree and the letters NK. Paper bearing one, two, or three finches (in German Einfinkenpapier, Zweifinkenpapier, Dreifinkenpapier) was produced by the Finken paper mill in East Prussia from 1680 until the end of the 18th century. The number of finches indicated only the sheet size. A CGL sheet is half a sheet of “Three-Finch Paper” (38 cm × 42 cm)¹⁶. The format of CGL given by librarians (20.2 cm × 16.3 cm) is inaccurate—it is considerably smaller than the actual dimensions. The letters NK represent the first and last initials of the name of the mill’s founder and master (N)icolaus (K)rüger¹⁷. The fact that paper bearing finches was widely used in Lithuania as well helps identify this watermark¹⁸.

¹⁶ Laucevičius E. Popierius Lietuvoje XV–XVIII a. – V., 1967, p. 138 (vandenženklių atlaso pozicija Nr. 2172). Dėl įrišimo vandenženklis atsidūrė skirtinguose puslapiuose ir sunkiai per vidurį matomas.

¹⁷ Žr. Kohtz H. Die Herkunft ostpreussischer Papiermacher//Papiergeschichte. Mainz, 1954, Jahrgang 4, S. 3; taip pat jo: Papiermachen und Familienforschung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Ostpreußens//Ostdeutsche Familienkunde. Göttingen, 1954, H. 3, S. 119.

¹⁸ The documents mentioned by E. Laucevičius are: 1) Manuscript Department, Scientific Library of Vilnius V. Kapsukas University, F–7, fol. 2 – an entry in the Samogitian court books in Raseiniai in Old Belarusian, dated July 1, 1683, a statement by Bazyliaus Skirmantas and his wife that the widow Judita, formerly Rasmusavičienė, daughter (wife) of Mikalojus, Songailienė, should acknowledge the pledge agreement; 2) Manuscript Department, Scientific Library of Vilnius V. Kapsukas University, F–7, fol. 2 – an entry in the castle court books of the Duchy of Samogitia in Old Belarusian and Polish, a document dated November 18, 1636, by which Konstantas Lukas Šemiota and his wife, formerly Komorovska, pledge to Krizostimas Ostrovskis the Viečiškės volok and the land of the Lydvėnai estate. – In: Popierius Lietuvoje…, p. 205.

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2. Watermark No. 2 features lilies and a crown (in German Lilienpapier). So far, it has not been possible to find and identify this watermark. The watermark most similar to CGL watermark No. 2 is watermark No. 2172 in the aforementioned atlas by E. Laucevičius, found in a document written in Panevėžys in 1685¹⁹.

3. In its elements, watermark No. 3 is very similar to watermark No. 2; it is simply a modification of it. Although E. Laucevičius presents more than 120 watermarks with various heraldic lilies, this watermark on CGL paper is also absent from the atlas, most likely because not all East Prussian sources were used in compiling it. In any case, paper bearing lilies (alone or with other attributes) was produced very widely in Lithuania and Poland. The double heraldic lily was an element in the coats of arms of nearly 120 families. For the 18th century alone, E. Laucevičius lists 10 variants of watermarks with lilies. There is no doubt that lilies were depicted in watermarks earlier as well, that is, in the last quarter of the 17th century. Thus, we could say that the paper bearing watermarks Nos. 2 and 3 was most likely made at approximately the same time.

4. Watermark No. 4 depicts a laurel wreath with a crown above it and crossed branches and the letters DVG (DOG?) below. Usually, the letters indicate the surname and first name of the owner or master of the paper mill. So far, it has not been possible to determine the significance of the attributes in this watermark.

Thus, analysis of the CGL paper watermarks has so far contributed little to establishing the dictionary’s exact date of composition. Nevertheless, even today we can revise our conclusions about when CGL was written.

If some of the paper was made after 1680, and if that paper is not some special supplement added later than all the other paper in the dictionary²⁰, we must assume that all the paper (at least when considered separately, volume by volume) is no earlier. Even supposing that the paper used for the documents of 1683 and 1686 could have been made two or three years earlier, is it not nevertheless too bold to continue maintaining that CGL in its entirety was written in 1672 (1673)—1675? On the evidence of the paper’s watermarks, this date should be moved ten years later, and CGL should be regarded as a work of the 1680s.

The revised date of CGL’s composition does not conflict with the contemporaries’ view that F. Pretorijus could have been its author. Nor are there any other counterarguments capable of refuting these contemporaneous testimonies. On the contrary, what is known about F. Pretorijus’s philological qualifications and commitment to Lithuanian studies, together with the nature of the dictionary itself and its lexicographic quality, suggests that in the second half of the 17th century there was no one comparable to F. Pretorijus.

F. Pretorijus’s biblical and everyday colloquial vocabulary in CGL, and the way it is presented, best represent the vocabulary of 17th-century East Prussian writings (and, in part, dialects). For all these reasons, “Clavis Germanico-Lithvana” deserves every kind of attention from lexicographers and specialists—

¹⁹ See the Manuscripts Department of the Scientific Library of Vilnius V. Kapsukas University, F—8, 423, fol. 3, format 33 cm × 20 cm, written in Polish on September 19, 1685 (not 1681, as E. Laucevičius states)—a document in which the Zagrobski and Ciemnolonski families acknowledge the right of the Upytė elder, Petras Blūšys, to Palėvenė (watermark on the third page of the document).

²⁰ Dictionary leaves on paper bearing three cocks were found only twice: on pages 228 (229)—234 (235) and 244 (245)—250 (251) of the first volume of CGL.

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to the attention of linguists. It is gratifying that the long-standing plan—to publish „Clavis Germanico-Lithvana“²¹ alongside other lexicographic monuments—is finally being implemented. The Central Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR plans to publish the four-part edition of F. Pretorijus’s dictionary, prepared by the author of this article, with an index of Lithuanian words.

ON THE AUTHOR OF THE „CLAVIS GERMANICO-LITHVANA“ DICTIONARY

Abstract

The article is devoted to clarifying the authorship and circumstances of the writing of „Clavis Germanico-Lithvana“, the largest German-Lithuanian manuscript dictionary in East Prussia in the 17th century.

The dictionary’s scope and content corroborate the testimony of contemporaries and provide grounds for concluding that the author of „Clavis Germanico-Lithvana“ was Friedrich Pretorius (1624—1695), a translator of hymns, a member of the commission for revising D. Kleinas’s grammar and hymnal, and an outstanding scholar of the Lithuanian language.

The article states that the author himself translated into Lithuanian the concordance to M. Luther’s German Bible for the dictionary, rather than using earlier translations.

In essence, F. Pretorius’s dictionary was a translation dictionary with no parallel in Lithuanian lexicography. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the period when the dictionary was being prepared and the time when it was actually written. Identification of the watermarks established that the paper used for the dictionary was manufactured no earlier than 1680; consequently, the date of „Clavis Germanico-Lithvana“’s composition should be moved forward by ten years, from 1672—1675.

²¹Palionis J. Achievements of Lithuanian linguistics during the years of Soviet rule. – Kalbotyra, 1958, vol. 1, p. 13.

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