Language, Identity, and Otherness in Medieval Greece. The Epigraphic Evidence in Studies in Byzantine Epigraphy 1, ed. by Andreas Rhoby and Ida Toth, Turnhout: Brepols 2022, 113-150. (original) (raw)
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IJOT, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OFTURKOLOGY RESEARCH and STUDIES OF ISLAMIC INSCRIPTIONS, 2021
This paper is studying the bilingual and trilingual inscriptions of Ottoman buildings in Greece, and their production contexts. In terms of multi-language, these inscriptions are divided in seven groups: 1) Arabic–Ottoman, 2) Arabic–Persian, 3) Ottoman–Persian, 4) Ottoman–Greek, 5) Arabic–Greek, 6) Ottoman–Italian, and 7) Ottoman–French–Greek. This group of multi-language inscriptions reflects the complexity of cultures and identities in Greece under the Ottomans with special refrence to their impact during the last decades of the Ottoman rule. This paper deals with 19 inscriptions representing this pattern; including foundation, informal ‘personal’ and religious inscriptions written in two or three languages. These inscriptions belong to 16 Ottoman buildings of varying functions: five mosques, one tekke, one türbe, three fountains ‘çeşme’, four residential buildings –one mansion and three houses–, one commercial building, and one clock tower ‘saat kulesi’. Most of these inscriptions date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They are concentrated in Crete, Agean islands and Northern Greece. These multi-language inscriptions date and are all located outside the boarders of the first Greek ‘Hellenic’ State which was founded in 1832. This group of multi-language inscriptions outlines the history of the last stage of the Ottoman dominance of Greece. It reflects upon the uprising of the Greek power and the presenence of other powers except of the Ottomans and the Greeks. These powers were rather of cultural influence such as the Italian and French.
Byzantine identity: territory and language
Byzantine identity was mainly determined by the adherence to the Orthodox faith and the Roman state, whereas the classical Greek played an important role for social promotion in the administration, particularly after the 6 th century. The paper tries to prove: 1) that the concept of national homeland-prerequisite for the modern idea of nation-state-was alien to this identity feeling; 2) that Classical Greek was not felt as a national language of the 'Rhomaioi' (the Byzantines) until the end of the Middle Ages.
Formation of the Greek Writing Systems in Ancient Greece in the Context of European Identity
Journal Phasis - Greek and Roman Studies, 2016
Ancient Greece represents one of the most significant regions in terms of forms of writing and the scale of their application. Existence of diverse writing systems is confirmed in Aegeida, which follow each other chronologically, but it is not also excluded that they used to function simultaneously in a certain period of time. At the same time, it is possible that an earlier system may represent a prototype for another. Pictographic script [and hieroglyphic script developed from it later] is the earliest among the writing systems confirmed in the Aegean Sea basin. There is a controversy about the origin of the Cretan hieroglyphic system in scientific literature until now. Possibly, the Minoan system must have been originated without a genetic connection with foreign scripts; however, its minor formal resemblance with the Egyptian hieroglyphs is not excluded. H. Haarmann considers the Cretan and the old European, namely Paleo-Balkan pictographic parallels as convincing. In the pe...
The Hellenicity of the linguistic Other in Greece
Throughout the 20th century, Greek linguists, historians and ethnologists have attempted to demonstrate that speakers of Aromanian, Albanian and Slavic languages who live in lands that are claimed to be Greek are essentially Hellenes. I focus on the arguments that have aimed to demonstrate that these languages are not really foreign languages but are closely related to Greek. I show how linguistic data have been misinterpreted or distorted in order to prove the Greek nationalist case that what appears superficially to be the Other is essentially a variant of the Hellene that can readily be assimilated into the homogenized Hellenic national body. Key words: Greece, nationalism, linguistics, minority languages, Aromanian, Slavic.
Born in the middle of the twelfth century in Apulia (Italy), Nikolaos of Otranto received a notable education in a Greek speaking environment. Thanks to his proficiency in both Latin and Greek, he participated as an interpreter in several diplomatic discussions between Rome and Constantinople concerning the ecclesiastical union. The three Syntagmata (ca. 1222–1225) are the result of this experience. The text summarizes the theological dialogue between the two Churches after the Schism (1054) with a focus on the Orthodox argumentation. Nikolaos composed the treatise two-columned in two languages, Greek and Latin. According to R. Jakobson (1953), bilingualism [...] is the fundamental problem of linguistics. It may induce some difficulties in textual criticism, too. The case of bilingual authors that write monolingual texts is customary. What happens, though, when they write bilingually? In which language did Nikolaos first pen the three Syntagmata? Did he compose in both languages simultaneously, or sequentially? Textual signs of the two surviving autographs could answer these questions.
LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY. HISTORICAL SOCIOLINGUISTIC PATTERNS IN THE GREEK OF LATE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS
This workshop will be firstly focusing on the definition of HSL. Successively, it will be outlining two main targets of our HSL research on Medieval Greek (MedGreek), namely studies on linguistic phenomena (such as on loanwords, and on “Atticized” / “Koine” Greek), and on hermeneutics, also looking at historical socio- pragmatics and semiotics. Eventually, compelling desiderata in this field will be discussed: for example, in order to undertake HSL studies on MedGreek, it is necessary to systematically analyze collections of then-current Byzantine linguistic and pragmatic descriptions of MedGreek (such as Medieval classroom texts), as well as the context in which these texts were produced (studies on manuscripts and Medieval book culture help us with this task). Since HSL research is only possible when huge amounts of data are an-hand and comparable, this workshop will stress the importance of searchable databases and how they should be designed.
Trade and Colonization in the Ancient Western Mediterranean: The Emporion, From the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period, ed. by E. Gailledrat, M. Dietler, and R. Plana-Mallart, Montpelier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2018
This article challenges the concept of “Hellenization” – the claim that Greek culture, religion, and language was imposed on non-Greeks – by examining cross-cultural interactions and transformations in commercial settlements. More specifically, the article investigates the linguistic practices of multicultural harbor towns by examining a series of 6th and 5th century BCE inscriptions from a commercial settlement in Spain and some Roman-period texts that comment on linguistic practices in Iberia and Gaul. The inscriptions suggest that scripts, loan words, and literacy were markers of neither ethnicity nor “Hellenization.” On the contrary, they highlight the cooperation between Greek and Iberian traders and the partnerships that formed in conducting commerce. Literary sources offer a radically different view of interactions among ethnic groups in commercial settlements. They cast the relationship between Greeks and non-Greeks in Iberia and Gaul as a civilizing one, with Greeks introducing Greek culture and teaching indigenous populations to speak and write in Greek. This trope, I argue, is commonplace in Roman-period texts and reflects a deliberately Roman imperialist perspective rather than a Greek practice.
Those who work with topics related to Modern Greek identity usually start discussing these issues by quoting the famous Georgios Gemistos Pletho (c.1360-1454): we, over whom you rule and hold sway, are Hellenes by genos (γένος), as is witnessed by our language and ancestral education. Although Woodhouse thought of Pletho as the last of the Hellenes, others prefer to denounce him the last of the Byzantines and the first and foremost Modern Greek. During the 14th and 15th centuries, a number of influential intellectuals in the Eastern Roman Empire preferred the term Hellene (Ἓλλην) to identify themselves, instead of the formal Roman (Ρωμαῖος) and the common Greek (Γραικός). According to the prevalent view of modern scholarship, the shift should not be interpreted only as a statement of proto-national identity, but also as the outcome of growing archaism. As Vryonis pointed out, the historian Critoboulos used to call the Balkan nations with their archaic names: Byzantines became “Hellenes,” Albanians became “Illyrians,” etc. Chalkokondyles followed in the same path. Furthermore, in order to lament the decline of their Empire, byzantine intellectuals tended to compare their sad present to the glory of ancient Greece. Besides archaism, proto-nationalism and Hellenism, I suggest that a careful reading of the sources would lead us to reappraise the ways 15th century intellectuals perceived identity. Whilst I do not accept Vakalopoulos’ views on diachronic Hellenic identity, I support that, in the 15th century, Byzantine scholars attempted to create an identity based on cultural and historical continuity and otherness. Moreover, Laiou’s definition of Greek identity as a resultant of language, history, tradition and interests does not cover the case of 15th century Byzantine philosophers, since the latter strived to enrich and enlarge Greek identity with additional elements. It is worth noting that those philosophers who fled to Italy deliberately chose to describe themselves as Greeks (Greci/Γραικοί) or Hellenes (Ἓλληνες) and not as Romans (Ρωμιοί/Ρωμαῖοι), according to the Byzantine official terminology. During the 15th century a major shift occurred in the Byzantine intelligentsia and its prominent members revisited matters of identity. In this paper, I attempt to scrutinize the ways Byzantine philosophers of the 15th century, who lived in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and in Italy, perceived identity and otherness. In my research, I include not only Greek, but also Latin sources, since their works is written in both languages.