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A Language on the Move. The Greek

Language in the Multilingual Social

Environments of South Eastern and

Central Europe (18th Century to Early

19th Century)

Ikaros MANTOUVALOS

Assistant professor of Modern Greek History, Democritus University of Thrace,

Nea Chili

In: Daniela Haarmann / Konrad Petrovszky (eds.), Language and Society in

18th Century South Eastern Europe / Sprache und Gesellschaft in

Südosteuropa im 18. Jahrhundert, Yearbook of the Society for 18th Century

Studies on South Eastern Europe 3 (2020), 197–220.

DOI: 10.25364/22.3:2020.12

Contribution is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de

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A Language on the Move.

The Greek Language in the

Multilingual Social Environments of

South Eastern and Central Europe

(18th Century to Early 19th Century)

Ikaros MANTOUVALOS

Starting with the sociolinguistic background of the Orthodox Ottoman subjects who moved from the

central Balkans to the commercial centres of the Habsburg Empire (e.g. Trieste, Vienna, Pest, and

Miskolc) during the 18th century, this article explores the Greek language’s role in the school

education that Orthodox communities organized and discusses the emergence of language as a

cultural battlefield in which social and ethnic differences came to the fore. Collective and individual

attitudes towards language in education and church service reflect significant changes in ideology

and identity within the multiethnic (e.g. Greek, Vlach, and Serbian) Orthodox merchant

communities. More specifically, this article examines the (re)negotiation of language choices of

“foreign residents” (paroikoi) who dealt with their own multilingual traditions in an environment

that slowly shifted from functional multilingual to monolingual communities.

“Die Völker der Balkanhalbinsel grenzen eng aneinander, die Sprach-

grenzen durchkreuzen sich z. T. so daß Wanderungen der Märchen von

einem Volk zum andern notwendig stattfinden müssen. In Mazedonien z.

B. wohnen Bulgaren, Serben, Albaner, Aromunen, Griechen und Türken

neben- und durcheinander. Zwei- und mehr-sprachige Menschen gibt es

daher eine große Menge; solche vernehmen Erzählungen in einer ihnen

geläufigen Sprache und erzählen sie weiter in einer ihnen ebenso

bekannten, in deren Gebiet die Märchen dann weiter von Mund zu Mund

verbreitet werden.”1

Shortly before his death, German linguist Johann Heinrich August Leskien

(1840–1916) described the cultural osmoses of the Balkan peoples (as expressed

dynamically in popular literature) in the field of oral popular tradition. During

the period in time when European states (together with the whole world) had

already entered the orbit of the Great War, Leskien emphasised the significance

of the spoken word (also known as oral tradition) in shaping a cultural identity

in the Balkan region that possessed similarities and interconnections with

thematic motifs and descriptive techniques based on common cultural heritage.

In Leskien’s view, the area of former Ottoman Macedonia, which was the apple

of discord among rivalling Balkan nations (i.e. Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and

1 August Leskien, Balkanmärchen aus Albanien, Bulgarien, Serbien und Kroatien. Jena 1919 [1st

ed. 1915], I (Märchen der Weltliteratur, 11).

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198

Romania), still epitomised the Balkan Babel as a place of blending viewpoints,

beliefs, convictions, and intellectual values even after the two Balkan Wars. In

an area marked by the permeability of linguistic and cultural borders, words and

forms of expression impressively exemplify the cultural proximity of the Balkan

peoples. Until the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), Macedonia was part of the

Ottoman Empire and was remarkably multiethnic and multilingual. In this

region “the kind of complex multilingualism that had given birth to the famous

Balkan Sprachbund (linguistic area) survived [...] longer than in other regions

of the Balkans”,2 even after the end of the conflicts and Macedonia’s partition.

While oral tradition cut across the plurality of emerging nationalisms, written

language would become a tool in the rivalry of national identity claims towards

the end of the 19th century, thereby laying the foundation for the subsequent

dismantlement of the common Ottoman legacy of the Balkans. In this context,

Balkan intellectuals united in a systematic effort to determine the cultural

constituents of each individual nation they dedicated their work to. In the era of

the late Enlightenment (spanning roughly the late 18th to the early 19th century),

Balkan intellectuals participated in a similar effort to sharpen the self-

conception of the Balkans “as a composite mosaic of nationalities rather than a

unified Christian community” within the Ottoman framework.3

In this article, my intention is not to engage in the broad field of study about the

national awakening of the Balkans in the 18th century by examining the role of

language in the 19th century. Instead, I will focus on social multilingualism in

the region of Southeast and Central Europe in the 18th and early 19th century,

and I will emphasise the study of the Greek language in the multilingual

environments of the Balkans, particularly in the broader region of Macedonia

and the Habsburg Empire. By following the Orthodox Balkan subjects of the

Ottoman Empire from their place of origin to the urban commercial centres of

the Habsburg Monarchy, this study aims to map the phenomenon of

multilingualism in the diaspora and to decipher ideological processes and

identify changes in the Orthodox commercial milieus.

Although the Greek language controversy of the Enlightenment is not discussed

in this study, it is worth noting that “the Greek language question” during the

period of the Enlightenment and in the early decades of the 19th century refers

to the fierce controversy between intellectual circles regarding the question of

which variety of Greek (e.g. ancient-style, Demotic, common dialect, or other

intermediate language types) constitutes the basis for the written Modern Greek

language. The origins of the language question can be traced back to the diglossia

2 Jouko Lindstedt, Multilingualism in the Central Balkans in late Ottoman times. In: Slavica

Helsingiensia 49 (2016), 51–67, 51. The term Sprachbund (the German term is also used in

English) was coined by the Russian linguist Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy to designate

phenomena of convergence of unrelated languages through language contact. The term is widely

accepted though not uncontested by leading Balkan linguists, such as Brian Joseph, Helmut

Schaller or Victor Friedman.

3 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Imagined Communities and the Origins of the National Question in

the Balkans. In: European History Quarterly 19 (1989), 149–192, 152. For the Greek case, see

the synthetic monograph by Paschalis Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution. The Making

of Modern Greece. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London 2013.

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of Attic Greek and Modern Greek vernacular, the double-language that emerged

in Byzantine culture.4

The position of the Greek language in the multinational, multilingual

environment of South Eastern Europe prior to Balkan nationalism

When did language start to become a factor in the collective self-understanding

of the Christian populations of the Ottoman Balkans? Although not central to

my analysis, this question initiated my search for more information about the

Greek language’s use in the 18th century. Paschalis Kitromilides observed that,

during the period of the Enlightenment,

“the older conception of a unified Orthodox Christian society that defined

alien elements in religious terms had already receded with the gradual

articulation of a sense of distinct historical identity among Serbian-

speaking and Romanian-speaking intellectuals in areas bordering on the

Habsburg Empire, and among Greeks of the diaspora and of the

commercial urban centres of the Ottoman Empire”.5

In this context, the 18th century term Ρωμηός (Romios = Roman), once associated

with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople’s claim for universal

leadership over Orthodox Christianity, was increasingly used only in reference

to Greeks, while Γραικός (Graekos = Greek) acquired a national meaning – a

shift which also affected the contemporray conception of Greek language and the

diversity of idioms subsumed under this term.6 From the 18th century onwards,

Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Vlachs (Aromanians),7 who were once

described collectively as “Romios” or even “Graekos” to indicate their affiliation

with the religious community of the Rum millet8 and of an “Orthodox

Commonwealth” in South Eastern Europe,9 became accustomed to the idea of

4 From the wide-ranging literature, see, by way of example Gunnar Hering, Die Auseinander-

setzungen über die griechische Schriftsprache, in: Maria A. Stassinopoulou (ed.), Gunnar Hering.

Nostos. Gesammelte Schriften zur südosteuropäischen Geschichte. Frankfurt/Main 1995, 189–

264; Peter Mackridge, Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766−1976. New York 2010.

5 Kitromilides, Imagined Communities, 154.

6 On the terms “Graikos”, “Romios” and “Hellen” confusions they generate, see Dimitris Livanios,

The Quest for Hellenism: Religion, Nationalism and Collective Identities in Greece (1453–1913).

In: The Historical Review/La Revue Historique 3 (2006), 33–70; Olga Katsiardi-Hering /

Anastasia Papadia-Lala / Katerina Nikolaou / Vaggelis Karamanolakis (eds.), Έλλην, Ρωμηός,

Γραικός. Συλλογικοί προσδιορισμοί και ταυτότητες. Athens 2018.

7 Vlachs and Aromanians are used interchangeably in this article. Regarding the Vlachs of

Macedonia and Epirus, see indicatively Asterios Koukoudis, Οι μητροπόλεις και η διασπορά των

Βλάχων. Thessaloniki 2000 as well as Gustav Weigand, Die Aromunen. Ethnographisch

philologisch-historische Untersuchungen über das Volk der sogennanten Makedo-Romanen oder

Zinzaren. Vol. 1–2, Leipzig 1894, 1895.

8 For the use of the term “millet”, see Paraskevas Konortas, From Ta’ife to Millet: Ottoman Terms

for the Ottoman Greek Orthodox Community, in: Charles Issawi / Dimitri Gondicas (eds.),

Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy, and Society in the Nineteenth

Century. Princeton 1999, 169−179.

9 See Paschalis M. Kitromilides, An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural

Encounters in Southeastern Europe. Aldershot 2007.

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national difference based on linguistic difference. However, the common Greek-

speaking culture of the Balkans’ intellectual elite “did not disappear until both

the ecumenical heritage of the Orthodox Church and the cosmopolitan

humanism of the Enlightenment were destroyed in south eastern Europe by

nationalism later in the 19th century”.10

During the first centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, new elites arose from

the historical matrix of the Γένος των Ρωμαίων (Nation of the Romans),11 or Rum

millet, and became active in the Church, in education, and in European

commerce by using Greek as their preferred language. Greek took on a role in

the Ottoman period because of its religious symbolism as a distinctive marker

vis-à-vis Arabic (the language of Islam) and Latin (the language of

Catholicism).12 However, ancient Greek also served as the official language of

the Orthodox Church. Thus, from the 15th century to the second half of the

18th century, both ancient Greek and the so-called “learned language” of the

Byzantines never ceased to serve as written languages.13 The Ottoman conquest

of Constantinople (1453) effectively enabled the Ecumenical Patriarchate to

expand its jurisdiction alongside the spread of Greek.14 In this context, the

Orthodox Church perceived itself as the sole authentic institution of the

conquered populations of the Balkans “as a preserver of religion, language, and

local traditions”.15

However, is it appropriate to speak of the ecclesiastical Greek language’s

imposition in the Balkans and local church leaders’ resistance to its use? It is

true that the Ecumenical Patriarchate preferred Greek to other languages in the

liturgy and in the ecclesiastical administration, but the Patriarchate did so in an

ecumenical self-understanding as a multilingual institution. The Greek

language generally dominated in liturgical and ecclesiastical matters. For

example, it replaced Church Slavonic in large (but not all) parts of the Ottoman

Balkans.16 However, from the 15th to the 18th century, the Church, and

specifically the local bishops and metropolitans, did not prevent the local clergy

from celebrating the Devine Liturgy in the Slavonic language or from

worshipping Bulgarian saints in the Bulgarian-speaking area. In fact, in what

Olga Todorova described as a “more cosmopolitan period”,17 the Ecumenical

Patriarchate approved (or at least permitted) the publication of translations of

10 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Orthodox Culture and Collective Identity in the Ottoman Balkans

During the Eighteenth Century. In: Δελτίο Κέντρου Μικρασιατικών Σπουδών 12 (1997), 81−95, 88.

11 This word, whose meaning was primarily religious, as it refers to all Orthodox Christians,

regardless of ethnic origin, “linguistically carries connotations of lineage through blood and

ancestry, and remains notoriously untranslatable”. Livanios, The Quest for Hellenism, 49.

12 Raymond Detrez, Pre-National Identities in the Balkans, in: Roumen Daskalov / Tchavdar

Marinov (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Vol. 1: National Ideologies and Language

Policies. Leiden, Boston 2013, 13–65, 48.

13 Hering, Die Auseinandersetzungen, 189.

14 Paraskevas Matalas, Έθνος και Ορθοδοξία. Οι περιπέτειες μιας σχέσης. Από το «ελλαδικό» στο

βουλγαρικό σχίσμα. Herakleion 2003, 22–23.

15 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans. New York 2009, 164.

16 Roumen Daskalov, Bulgarian-Greek Dis / Entanglements, in: Daskalov / Marinov (eds),

Entangled Histories, 149–239, 153.

17 As cited in Detrez, Pre-National Identities in the Balkans, 43–44.

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original works into languages other than Greek. However, the image of an

almost idyllic “Orthodox ecumenical diversity” of the pre-national Balkans does

not appear to be valid, as demonstrated by the concurrence between the “holy

languages” (i.e. between Greek and “Slavo-Bulgarian” throughout the Ottoman

period).18

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople reached the zenith of its

“conquering course” in the 18th century, to which the institutional shaping of an

all-embracing Rum millet contributed decisively. At the same time, this

development was coupled with the growing dominance of Phanariots19 in the

Orthodox world and the “Hellenization” of the Empire’s Christian elite. In the

second half of the 18th century, the hitherto autonomous archbishops of Peć and

Achrida (Ohrid) were abolished, which led to the submission of all Orthodox

communities to the political-ecclesiastical power of the Ecumenical

Patriarchate.20 In this light, it is easier to understand why Greek textbooks were

written to teach Albanians, Vlachs, and other Orthodox ethnic groups,21 as will

be examined below.

For the leading circles of Phanariot descendants, the self-proclaimed “archontes”

(lords),22 the use of ancient Greek was a conscious choice dictated by their

relationship with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. As P. Kitromilides observed,

“The first Phanariots were in fact convinced lovers of antiquity”.23 A typical

example of these Phanariots is Alexander Mavrokordatos (1641–1709), the

founder of the most important Phanariot dynasty, who wrote his texts and letters

in ancient Greek and encouraged his children to perfect their knowledge of it.24

As lords (Rom. hospodar) and high officials of the Danubian Principalities,

members of Phanariot families supported the Princely Academies (High School)

of Bucharest and Iași,25 which provided higher education in Greek to Orthodox

young people of various origins from the entire Ottoman Empire.26 At the same

time, in the urban centres of Wallachia (Valahia) and Moldavia, editions of Greek

18 This dispute was carried out on the main site of Orthodox ecumenism, the Aghion Oros (Holy

Mount), from the first half of the 16th century. Matalas, Έθνος και Ορθοδοξία, 23−24.

19 Phanariots were members of wealhty Greek families in Phanar (Φανάρι), the Greek quarter of

Constantinople (Istanbul), and constituted the first bourgeois nucleus of Greek society in the

Ottoman capital. They wielded considerable influence on the Patriarchate and, indirectly, over

the entire Greek community. See, indicatively, Radu Florescu, The Fanariot Regime in the

Danubian Principalities. In: Balkan Studies 9 (1968), 301–318; Symposium: L'Époque

Phanariote. À La Mémoire De Cléobule Tsourkas. Thessaloniki 1974; Socrates C. Zervos,

Recherches sur les Phanariotes. À propos de leur sentiment d’appartenance au même groupe

social. In: Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes 27/4 (1989), 305–311; Christos G. Patrinelis,

The Phanariots before 1821. In: Balkan Studies 42 (2001), 177–198.

20 Konortas, From Ta’ife to Millet, 170–171.

21 Wace Thompson / Maurice Thompson, The Nomads of the Balkans. An account of Life and

Customs among the Vlachs of Northern Pindus. London 1914, 224.

22 Zervos, Recherches sur les Phanariotes, 307.

23 Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution, 47.

24 Ibid., 47–48.

25 See Ariadna Camariano-Cioran, Les Académies princières de Bucarest et de Jassy et leurs

professeurs. Thessaloniki 1974.

26 Detrez, Pre-National Identities in the Balkans, 55.

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publications were actively printed not only during the Phanariot period but also

before and after the period of Phanariot hospodars.27

An important factor in the spread of Greek in the central Balkans was the use of

the Greek alphabet for other languages, including the Vlach, Albanian, and

occasionally even Slavic idioms, that had yet to acquire a written form.28 For

brevity’s sake, I will focus on the Vlach language (Aromanian), which will be of

great concern in the next chapter, which is centred on conflicts that arose within

the multiethnic merchant communities of the Habsburg Empire. Until the end

of the 18th century, efforts were made to create a written alphabet of the Vlach

language,29 which was realised, inter alia, in dictionaries compiled in

Moschopolis (today Voskopoja).30 Two intellectuals and teachers from

Moschopolis, Theodoros Anastasios Kavalliotis (1718–1789) and Daniel

Moschopolitis (1754–1825), responded to the demand of non-Greek-speaking

pupils for bilingual textbooks to learn Greek. Within the Moschopolitan and the

broader multilingual Balkan environment, the teachers attempted to spread

knowledge of the Greek language and culture by writing textbooks about the

need to teach languages. The trilingual Greek-Albanian-Vlach dictionary, the

Πρωτοπειρία (First Lessons) (Fig.1), was published in Venice in 1770 and was

compiled by Kavalliotis during “the Renaissance of Moschopolis”.31 The

dictionary’s publication was obviously motivated by social utilitarianism with

the intention of bridging the linguistic gap between the heterogeneous

population of the Moschopolis area and the Balkans more generally. Conceived

as a textbook for the New Academy in Moschopolis,32 the trilingual dictionary

represented the city’s dominant social group of powerful merchants and

landowners who, for financial and ideological reasons, were oriented towards the

Greek language and culture.

27 Florin Marinescou / Maria Rafaila, Το ελληνικό έντυπο στη Ρουμανία (1642–1918), in: Πρακτικά

Διεθνούς Συμποσίου (Proceedings of an International Symposium, 16–20 May 2001). Το έντυπο

ελληνικό βιβλίο 15ος–19ος αιώνας. Αthens 2004, 265–278.

28 Maria Nystazopoulou-Pekekidou, Ξενόγλωσσα κείμενα με ελληνική γραφή. In: Ερανιστής 10

(1973), 69–111, 72–90; E. A. Zachos-Papazachariou, Βαλκανική Βαβέλ, in: K. Tsitselikis (ed.),

Γλώσσες, Αλφάβητα και εθνική ιδεολογία στην Ελλάδα και τα Βαλκάνια. Athens 1999, 17–95, 54–

70, with a comprehensive blibliography.

29 About the efforts to codify the Aromanian language, see Agathoklis Azelis, Versuche zur

Verschriftlichung des Aromunischen um die Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert. In: Das

achtzehnte Jahrhundert und Österreich 10 (1995), 73–83. See also the contribution by Joachim

Matzinger in the present volume.

30 Moschopolis in present Albania today was one of the largest cities in the Balkans and a

flourishing centre of trade and urban culture until 1769, when it was destroyed by Albanian

bands. On the history of Moschopolis, see Ioakeim Martinianos, Η Μοσχόπολις, 1330–1930.

Thessaloniki 1957.

31 Michael Kreuz, The Renaissance of the Levant. Arabic and Greek Discourses of Reform in the

Age of Nationalism. Berlin, Boston 2019 (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Tension,

Transmission, Transformation, 13), 47.

32 It is worth noting that, in addition to the Academy, there was also a printing house. See Max

Demeter Peyfuss, Die Akademie von Moschopolis und ihre Nachwirkungen im Geistesleben

Südosteuropas. In: Studien zur Geschichte der Kulturbeziehungen in Mittel- und Osteuropa 3.

Wissenschaftspolitik in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Berlin 1976, 114–128; idem., Die Druckerei von

Moschopolis, 1731–1769. Buchdruck und Heiligenverehrung im Erzbistum Achrida. Wien, Köln

1989 (Wiener Archiv für die Geschichte des Slawentums und Osteuropas, 13).

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Fig. 1: Theodoros Anastasios Kavalliotis Πρωτοπειρία (1770), p. 1333

A similar effort to publish a dictionary34 was made for the four-language Greek-

Vlach-Bulgarian-Albanian dictionary, Εισαγωγική Διδασκαλία (Introductory

33 Source:

<digitool.bibmet.ro:1801/view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=100486.xml&dvs=161634468317

2~423&locale=de&search_terms=kavalliotis&adjacency=N&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/nmets

.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=4&divType=&usePid1=true&usePid2=true>, 21.03.2021.

34 At the beginning of the 19th century, a doctor and a modern Greek poet, Ioannis Vilaras (1771–

1823), compiled a dictionary entitled Στοιχεία ελληνο-αλβανικής γραμματικής και ελληνο-

αλβανικοί διάλογοι (Elements from the Greek-Albanian grammar and Helleno-Albanian

dialogues), in reality constitutes a method for learning languages. His eighty-six pages of

bilingual grammatical notes were designed to teach other Greek-speakers Albanian. Robert

Elsie, Albanian literature in Greek script. The eighteenth and early nineteenth-century

Orthodox tradition in Albanian writing. In: Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991), 20–

35, 33.

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Instruction) (Fig. 2), which was most likely published in the 1790s in Venice.35

The editor of this dictionary, D. Moschopolitis, invited Orthodox people who did

not speak Greek to become Hellenized linguistically and culturally, “with the

argument that this transformation would open up avenues of social mobility”.36

From the outset, D. Moschopolitis determined the dictionary’s goal, which was

linguistic instruction for beginners. Therefore, it is not accidental that the

Εισαγωγική Διδασκαλία, in contrast to Kavalliotis’s three-language dictionary,

was written in the vernacular form of Modern Greek (except for the title and

prologue).37

Fig. 2: Εισαγωγική Διδασκαλία (1802, second edition), p. 138

35 Aggeliki Konstantakopoulou, Η ελληνική γλώσσα στα Βαλκάνια (1750–1850). Το τετράγλωσσο

λεξικό του Δανιήλ Μοσχοπολίτη, Ιωάννινα 1988, 64–66.

36 Kitromilides, Imagined communities, 153.

37 Konstantakopoulou, Η ελληνική γλώσσα στα Βαλκάνια, 61.

38 Source: Central Academy Library, Athens,

<http://editions.academyofathens.gr/epetirides/xmlui/handle/20.500.11855/419>, 21.03.2021.

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For the Vlachs from the broader region of Macedonia and Epirus, the issue of

learning the Greek language had a particular meaning, given that Vlach had no

written tradition. Despite all efforts to codify their language, the wealthiest

urban Vlach dwellers sought to enter the Greek cultural community because of

their familiarity with the Greek language. Moreover, in the multiform national

issues and the multilingual environment of the Balkans, the phenomenon of

bilingualism or multilingualism constituted a basic condition in the field of

communication. The use of Greek greatly exceeded the geographical boundaries

of the closely united Greek-speakers for social and financial reasons, especially

in the Church and in the education. In 1815, Kyrillos Liverios (c. 1785–1853),

“one of the intellectuals who participated in the Greek Revolution”39 of 1821,

referred to the bilingual Vlachs and the general Greek linguistic predominance

in the Balkans when he wrote: “In the cities of these Vlachs, many merchants

can also be found whose family language is corrupted Vlach, but they all speak

Greek (γραικικήν), while the liturgy and ecclesiastical books are all in ancient

Greek (εις το ελληνικόν)”.40

As a concluding point, I would like to emphasise the importance of the Greek

language in Balkan merchants’ commercial communication and financial

transactions. The phenomenon of the Balkan “Hellenophonia” reached its peak

when secular and ecclesiastical wealthy people who spoke different languages

than various Ottoman subjects participated actively in commercial dealings

armed with the Greek language. In his classical study of Balkan commercial

migrants, Traian Stoianovich refers to the “Hellenization” of the upper strata of

the non-Greek-speaking Orthodox Balkan peoples41 during the 17th and 18th

centuries. Albanians, Vlachs, and Bulgarians (with the notable exception of the

Serbs)42 used the Greek language in the urban and semi-urban communities of

the Balkan Peninsula as a means of social identification of their financial power

and for commercial communication when dealing in land trade.43 The need for

education led to the prevalence of the Greek language in the world of Orthodox

39 Sofia Matthaiou, Κύριλλος Λιβέριος: ένας πεπαιδευμένος στην υπηρεσία της Ελληνικής

Επανάστασης, in: Dimitris Dimitropoulos / Christos Loukos / Panajotis Michailaris (eds.), Όψεις

της Επανάστασης του 182. Athens 2018, 271–306.

40 “Εις τας κωμοπόλεις των Βλάχων τούτων ευρίσκονται και πολλοί έμποροι εξ αυτών﮲ η οικιακή των

γλώσσα είναι η βλαχική διεφθαρμένη, ομιλούσιν όμως όλοι και την γραικικήν﮲ αλλ’ η λειτουργία

και τα εκκλησιαστικά βιβλία είναι όλα εις το ελληνικόν.“ [Kyrillos Liverios], Απολογία ιστορική

και κριτική υπέρ του ιερού κλήρου της Ανατολικής Εκκλησίας κατά των συκοφαντιών του

Νεοφύτου Δούκα, συγγραφείσα παρά Κυρίλλου Κ. κατ' επίμονον ζήτησιν των ομογενών. [Pisa]

1815, 90.

41 Train Stoianovich, The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant. In: The Journal of Economic

History 20/2 (1960), 234–313.

42 During the first centuries of the Ottoman rule, the Western part of the Balkans were under the

ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Peć, which had a great influence on the formation

of their collective identity. After its abolishment in 1766 the territories were placed under

ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Vladislav B. Sotirović, The

Serbian Patriarchate of Peć in the Ottoman Empire: The First Phase (1557–94). In: Journal of

the North American Society for Serbian Studies 25/2 (2011), 143–169, 158–161; Aleksandar Fotić,

Serbian Orthodox Church, in: Gábor Ágoston, Bruce Alan Masters (eds.), Encyclopedia of the

Ottoman Empire. New York, 519–520.

43 Stoianovich, The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant, 290.

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206

merchants, who used a form of commercial Greek that combined demotic

elements and technical expressions which had been influenced by commercial

Italian.44 In short, the internal communication needs of Balkan Orthodox

merchants were served by the common language of literate persons in the

Balkans: Greek. This was perceptively recognised by one of the representatives

of the Greek Enlightenment, Iosipos Moisiodax (1725–1800), who was quite

familiar with the diaspora of Balkan merchants in Transylvania, Hungary, and

Austria. To meet the needs of commerce, Moisiodax argued in his 1779

pedagogical treatise that a good knowledge of the Greek vernacular, as well as

of French and Italian, was required.45

The Greek language in motion. The emerging diaspora in the Habsburg

Empire

As bearers of cultural capital, immigrants “brought with them their language”,

ideas, knowledge, and cultural practices to host societies of the Habsburg

Monarchy as they sought new techniques and methods of coping with the

challenges of their new environments.46 It is well known that the majority of the

“Greeks” (a category that also comprised Vlachs/Aromanians, Albanians,

Bulgarians, etc.) who moved to Habsburg Central Europe—“the ‘laboratory’ for

the pluricultural experience”47—were merchants who participated actively in

import and export commerce between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg

Monarchy, especially after the Treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz

(1718). Initially identified as Γένος των Ρωμαίων,48 and later also named

44 Hering, Die Auseinandersetzungen, 190.

45 Kitromilides, Orthodox Culture and Collective Identity, 88–89. About Iosipos Moisiodax, see id.,

The Enlightenment as Social Criticism: Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth

Century. Princeton 1992; id., Enlightenment and Revolution.

46 For instance, as imperial go-betweens, Balkan merchants established in the Habsburg lands,

adopted a specialized commercial vocabulary borrowed from the languages of the host societies.

Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Southeastern European Migrant Groups between the Ottoman and the

Habsburg Empires. Multilateral Social and Cultural Transfers from the Eighteenth to the Early

Nineteenth Centuries, in: Harald Heppner / Eva Posch (eds), Encounters in Europe’s Southeast.

The Habsburg Empire and the Orthodox World in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Bochum 2012, 135–162, 144–145.

47 Johannes Feichtinger / Gary B. Cohen, Introduction: Understanding multiculturalism and the

Habsburg Central European Experience, in: Johannes Feichtinger / Gary B. Cohen (eds.),

Understanding Multiculturalism. The Habsburg Central European Experience. New York 2014,

1–14.

48 The term “Γένος των Γραικών ή Ρωμαίων” is mentioned in the Greek version of the privileges

granted by the Habsburg authorities to the Balkan Orthodox merchants who settled in important

urban centers of the Empire, such as Vienna and Trieste. Such privileges and memoranda of

statutes were written in both Greek and the official language of the particular region of reception

(Italian, German), as was the case with Slavo-Serbian (Slavjano-serbisch). Katsiardi-Hering, Das

Habsburgerreich, 178–179; Anna Ransmayr, Untertanen des Sultans oder des Kaisers: Struktur

und Organisationsformen der beiden Wiener griechischen Gemeinden von den Anfängen im

18. Jahrhundert bis 1918. Göttingen 2018, 73. As Olga Katsiardi-Hering points out, “the choice

of Greek can be explained by its dominant role in the spheres of trade and education throughout

south-eastern Europe at this time.” Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Greek Merchant Colonies in Central

and South-Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, in: Viktor N.

Ikaros MANTOUVALOS

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“Griechen”, “Greci”, “Greci scismatici”, or “nicht unirte Griechen” by the

Habsburg authorities,49 these immigrants settled in the urban and commercial

centres of the Monarchy, such as Trieste and Vienna, and in towns and

settlements in Hungary (Pest, Kecskemét, Miskolc, Tokaj, Semlin/Zemun, etc.)50

and Transylvania (Sibiu/Hermannstadt and Brașov/Kronstadt).51 It is important

to mention that the tolerant policy of the Habsburg authorities towards the

Orthodox people from South Eastern Europe gave the Orthodox immigrants the

opportunity to establish their communities and companies52 and to organise

their educational and cultural-religious lives, which aided the creation of

networks of intellectuals and scholars and the creation of a proto-public sphere

for the emerging Balkan nations.53

For the Greek-speaking Orthodox merchants, who began moving either

permanently or temporarily to the lands of the Habsburg Empire in the early

18th century, the multilingualism of their new home was familiar.

Multilingualism had already characterised the merchants’ places of origin. In

their new surroundings, however, the Orthodox merchants needed to negotiate

different solutions regarding the hierarchy of languages and linguistic idioms54

and adapt to their new social realities. Even in a multilingual environment

where no language could claim majority status (as was the case in the Habsburg

Empire), Greek was obviously underrepresented. In the Habsburg host societies,

the dominant language of bureaucratic written communication was German,55

followed by Latin, which was the official language of politics and education in

Zakharov / Gelina Harlaftis / Olga Katsiardi-Hering (eds.), Merchant Colonies in the Early

Modern Period. London 2012, 127–139, 134.

49 Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Das Habsburgerreich: Anlaufpunkt für Griechen und andere

Balkanvölker im 17. − 19. Jahrhundert”. In: Österreichische Osthefte 38/2 (1996), 171–188, 177–

178.

50 See Olga Katsiardi-Hering / Maria A. Stassinopoulou (eds.), Across the Danube. Southeastern

Europeans and their travelling identities (17th − 19th c.). Leiden, Boston 2017, in which there is

a bibliography of the Greek immigration to Central Europe (17th – early 19th century).

51 Greek Orthodox companies, which functioned as a kind of merchant guilds, were already

established in Sibiu and Brașov in 1636 and 1678, respectively. See Katsiardi-Hering, Greek

Merchant Colonies, 131, n. 22, with a rich literature on these companies.

52 On these terms and their content, see Katsiardi-Hering, Greek Merchant Colonies, 132−135.

53 Olga Katsiardi-Hering / Ikaros Mantouvalos, The Tolerant Policy of the Habsburg Authorities

towards the Orthodox People from South-Eastern Europe and the Formation of National

Identities (18th − early19th Century). In: Balkan Studies 49 (2014), 5–34.

54 Maria A. Stassinopoulou, Βαλκανική πολυγλωσσία στην αυτοκρατορία των Αψβούργων τον 18ο

και τον 19ο αιώνα. Ένα γοητευτικό φαινόμενο και οι δυσκολίες των εθνικών ιστοριογραφιών, in:

Maria A. Stassinopoulou / Maria-Christina Chatziioannou (eds.), Διασπορά – Δίκτυα –

Διαφωτισμός (τετράδια εργασίας 28 – ΕΙΕ/ΚΝΕ). Athens 2005, 17–32, 21.

55 Joseph II made German the official language in an effort to centralize the administration of the

Monarchy. However, the authorities were aware of the importance of local vernaculars for their

own educational efforts and communication with their subjects, and therefore supported their

standardization and development all over the Monarchy. Rok Stergar / Tamara Scheer, Ethnic

boxes. The unintended consequences of Habsburg bureaucratic classification. In: Nationalities

Papers 46/4 (2018) 575–591, 578. See also Robert John Weston Evans, Language and State

Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy. In: Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004), 1–24.

Ikaros MANTOUVALOS

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the Kingdom of Hungary. In Transylvania, Latin, Hungarian, and German had

equal official status.56

Consequently, the social environment did not encourage learning and using

Greek, and parents’ level of linguistic instruction did not allow them to take an

active role in their children’s linguistic education.57 In addition, the language

retention and cultural identity of the first generation of immigrants depended

on other factors, such as whether moving to Habsburg lands was considered

temporary. If so, migrants tended not to change their habits and retained their

social and cultural capital in view of a future return to their homeland. From the

mid-18th century to 1774, when the decree of the oath of fidelity (Treueschwur)58

was issued by Maria Theresa, the incorporation of the Greeks (most of whom

were male migrants) was still in its early stages and certainly did not affect all

of the people who were moving to Central European lands. While some tried to

enter the financial and social life of receiving countries (e.g. Hungary and

Transylvania), others found themselves geographically mobile through their

active participation in the import-export trade of the two bordering states, the

Ottoman and Habsburg Empires.59

Among the factors that influenced parents regarding the linguistic education of

their children, immigrant family’s social status should also be considered. From

the late 18th century onwards, mixed marriages between different ethnic-

linguistic groups (as studied in the case of Trieste60) and the employment of

nannies from other ethnic groups and social environments (e.g. Italian, Austrian,

Slovenian, Hungarian, etc.) probably did not encourage children to learn Greek.

For the first and second generation of immigrants, learning the local vernacular

or the language of the elites was one of the essential conditions for professional

and social inclusion and a prerequisite of success. However, the retention of the

Greek language as a component of cultural identity was an issue that members

of the Greek diaspora repeatedly dealt with. When faced with the risk of their

younger generation failing to learn Greek, first generation immigrants

established proper language education via the “therapy of multilingualism”.61 As

we will see from examples below, this “therapy” refers to the pursuit of strategies

56 Gábor Almási, Latin and the language question in Hungary (1700–1844). A Survey of Hungarian

Secondary Literature. (Part 1). In: Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert und Österreich 26 (2013), 211–

319, 212.

57 Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Εκπαίδευση στη Διασπορά. Προς μια παιδεία ελληνική ή προς ‘θεραπεία’

της πολυγλωσσίας, in: Νεοελληνική Παιδεία και Κοινωνία (Πρακτικά Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου

αφιερωμένου στη μνήμη του Κ.Θ. Δημαρά). Αθήνα 1995, 153–177, 157.

58 In Hungary (since 1774) and in Transylvania (since 1777), the exercise of trade with the Ottoman

Empire required the acquisition of citizenship and the residence of the family in the country.

Vaso Seirinidou, Greek Migration in Vienna (18th – First Half of the 19th Century). A Success

Story?, in: Katsiardi-Hering / Stassinopoulou (eds.), Across the Danube, 113–134, 121.

59 Ikaros Mantouvalos, Greek Immigrants in Central Europe. A Concise Study of Migration Routes

from the Balkans to the Territories of the Hungarian Kingdom (From Late 17th to the Early 19th

Centuries), in: Katsiardi-Hering / Stassinopoulou (eds.), Across the Danube, 25–53, 37.

60 Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Η ελληνική παροικία της Τεργέστης (1751–1830). Vol. 1. Athens 1986,

129–130.

61 Katsiardi-Hering, Εκπαίδευση στη Διασπορά.

Ikaros MANTOUVALOS

209

and practices that enabled immigrants to address the learning needs of their

children in the multilingual environments of the Habsburg Monarchy.

First and foremost, first generation immigrants organised educational

programmes in schools in the Greek diaspora (such as in Trieste, Vienna, Pest,

and Miskolc). These programmes were generally aimed at promoting the Greek

language education of young people and familiarising them with the language of

their social environment. In its enlightened effort to reduce illiteracy, the

Habsburgs adopted a policy to initiate the establishment of community schools

in the last quarter of the 18th century to reorganise the basic education of their

subjects.62 Upon the establishment of these schools, the Monarchy attempted to

control the educational process, and through that, the linguistic and cultural

orientations of immigrants.

As noted above, learning the language of their host society or the official

language of the state and bureaucracy was recognised by Orthodox “foreigners”

as the gateway for their children’s socialisation into the Monarchy’s foreign

language environment. For this reason, many schools in the diaspora

incorporated into their teaching programmes the systematic study of foreign

languages. For example, Italian and German were taught in the community

school of Trieste,63 and German was taught to students in the Greek schools of

Vienna and Pest. In addition, the school in Brașov taught German, Romanian,

Hungarian, and French,64 and the Greek-Vlach school in the Miskolc community

taught German, Hungarian, and Latin.65

In the event that a teaching programme did not meet parents’ expectations

regarding the language education of their children, parents sought the most

appropriate solutions outside the community. In Semlin, for example, some of

the town’s Orthodox families chose to send their children to a Catholic school

because the Greek Orthodox school (of the Greeks, Serbs, and others) did not

teach the German language.66 The wealthiest members of the Greek diaspora

usually either sent their children to non-Greek (e.g. Italian, German, Hungarian,

Serbian, etc.) schools or hired home teachers for their children’s linguistic

education, which was deemed necessary for their future careers and social

mobility.67

62 Peter Stachel, Das Österreichische Bildungssystem zwischen 1749 und 1918, in: Karl Acham

(ed.), Geschichte der österreichischen Humanwissenschafen. Vol. 1: Historischer Kontext

wissenschafts-soziologische Befunde und methodologische Voraussetzungen. Vienna 1999, 115.

63 Katsiardi-Hering, Η ελληνική παροικία, 295.

64 Cornelia Papacostea-Danielopolu, Η οργάνωση και η πνευματική ζωή της «ελληνικής» κομπανίας

του Μπρασόβ (τέλη του 18ου και πρώτο μισό του 19ου αι.), in: Παράρτηµα της Βαλκανικής

Βιβλιογραφίας. Vol. 7 (1978). Thessaloniki 1982, 225–319, 241–285.

65 As the language of administration ever since Middle Ages, Latin enjoyed particular support in

Hungary. The Ratio educationis, the educational reform of 1777, encouraged the teaching and

learning of the vernaculars, “but reinforced the place of Latin as prince of them”. Evans,

Language and State Building, 8−9.

66 Ioannis Papadrianos, Οι Έλληνες πάροικοι του Σεμλίνου (18ος – 19ος αι.). Διαμόρφωση της

παροικίας, δημογραφικά στοιχεία, διοικητικό σύστημα, πνευματική και πολιτιστική

δραστηριότητα. Thessaloniki 1988, 128.

67 Katsiardi-Hering, Εκπαίδευση στη Διασπορά, 157.

Ikaros MANTOUVALOS

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In 1805, Ioannis Iakoumis, a powerful member of the Greek-Vlach community

in Miskolc, expressed in a letter to the community administration his hope that

a Greek-Vlach school would be established soon. The creation of such a school

would mean that parents could stop sending their children to schools which used

other primary languages than Greek and worshipped other religions than

Orthodoxy to protect their young people from ethical corruption. This corruption

was associated with religious proselytising and the adoption of customs that

were foreign to Orthodox people’s traditional values. These schools would also

equip pupils with the necessary knowledge of the languages of their social

environment.68

Diaspora intellectuals also played a key role in meeting the language education

needs of young people by compiling and publishing dictionaries, Greek-German

and Hungarian-Greek dialogues, grammar books, textbooks, glossaries, and

children’s literature in the Greek language. However, their goals and motives

were not always the same. Textbooks for adults (to make business people’s

dealings easier) and for young people (to assist with their learning through an

organised educational programme or at home) were published during a period in

which the general educational spirit of the Enlightenment prevailed. In 1768,

scholar Michael Papageorgiou (1727–1796) from Siatista (a small country town

in Western Macedonia) published the Αλφαβητάριον Γερμανικόν (German

Primer) and Λεξικόν ρωμαιικογερμανικόν (Greek-German Dictionary) to serve

the linguistic needs of his fellow Greeks.69 For learning the Hungarian language,

another Siatistan scholar, Georgios Zaviras (1744–1804 or 1805), wrote the

Διάλογοι Ρωμαϊκοί και Ουγγαρικοί (Greek-Hungarian Dialogues), which was

never published.70

It is also worth noting that the dominant (or majority) language of a host society

often served as a means of learning Greek for immigrant children. In 1806, a

scholar, author, and educator from Kleisoura (a traditionally Aromanian

settlement in Western Macedonia) Dimitrios Darvaris (1757–1823) published

the Απλοελληνική Γραμματική (Modern Greek Grammar), which cited examples

from the German, Slavonic, and Vlach languages to make it easier for students

to understand grammar rules of common Greek.71 Three years later, his work

Διάλογοι γραικογερμανικοί (Greek-German Dialogues) (Fig. 3) was published to

help Aromanian children learn Modern Greek “δια της εγχωρίου φωνής” (through

their native voice).72

68 Ikaros Mantouvalos, “Το ελληνικόν σχολείον είναι το μόνον μέσον της προκοπής και μαθήσεως

των νέων εις τα ελληνικά γράμματα“. Πτυχές της εκπαιδευτικής ζωής της ελληνοβλαχικής

κοινότητας του Μίσκολτς (τέλη 18ου – αρχές 19ου αι.). In: Μεσαιωνικά και Νέα Ελληνικά 10

(2012), 103–128, 119.

69 Katsiardi-Hering, Εκπαίδευση στη Διασπορά, 165.

70 Endre Horvàth, Η ζωή και τα έργα του Γεωργίου Ζαβίρα. Budapest 1937, 30.

71 Vaso Seirinidou, The Enlightenments within the Enlightenment. Balkan Scholarly Production

and Communication in the Habsburg Empire as Seen Through an Early Nineteenth-Century

Private Library Catalogue, in: Heppner / Posch (eds.), Encounters in Europe’s Southeast, 175–

189; id., Το εργαστήριον του λογίου. Αναγνώσεις, λόγια παραγωγή και επικοινωνία στην εποχή του

Διαφωτισμού μέσα από την ιστορία της βιβλιοθήκης του Δημητρίου Ν. Δάρβαρη (1757–1823).

Athens 2013, 105.

72 Seirinidou, Το εργαστήριον του λογίου, 105.

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211

Fig. 3: Dimitrios Darvaris, Διάλογοι γραικογερμανικοί (1809), p. 6–773

The growing importance of the majority languages of the Habsburg monarchy

over Greek and the alienation of second- and third-generation immigrants from

the cultural codes of their parents proved to be the most serious problems of the

Greek paroikies (merchant colonies) in the Habsburg Empire. The publication of

Greek-language textbooks can be interpreted as a reaction to these

developments, which was reinforced by the publicly expressed concerns of

leading intellectuals. Thus, two scholars of the Greek Enlightenment,

Konstantinos Koumas (1777–1836) in Vienna, who criticised parents who did not

know that the Greek language was the “queen of languages in the world” and

who spoke to his children in German,74 and Christophoros Filitas (1787–1867) in

Trieste, who castigated parents’ indifference to linguistic distancing,75 echoed

the negative climate that was created in the world of the diaspora regarding the

level of young people’s Greek language instruction.

73 Source: <http://data.onb.ac.at/rep/103DD5DF>, 21.03.2021.

74 Κonstantinos Μ. Koumas, Ιστορίαι των Ανθρωπίνων Πράξεων από των αρχαιοτάτων χρόνων έως

των ημερών μας, / εκ παλαιών απανθισθείσαι, και τα νεώτερα εξ αρίστων Γερμανών ιστοριογράφων

ελευθέρως μεταφρασθείσαι υπό Κ. Μ. Κούμα. Vol. 12. Vienna 1832, 551–552; Maria A.

Stassinopoulou, Weltgeschichte im Denken eines griechischen Aufklärers. Konstantinos Koumas

als Historiograph. Frankfurt 1992, 219, n. 246.

75 Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Χριστόφορος Φιλητάς. Σκέψεις για τη διδασκαλία της γλώσσας. In:

Μνήμων 12 (1989), 9–42, 17.

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In the centres of the Greek diaspora, such as Vienna,76 the books (e.g. textbooks,

dictionaries, moral and pedagogical writings, literary readings, etc.)77 and

periodicals (e.g. journals and newspapers)78 that were published in Greek

flourished, and the ideological tendencies of an “early nationalism” emerged in

the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. In these

places, the issue of national self-knowledge and collective self-identification79

was also closely linked to the language question, the “cord of a nation’s ethical

organization”.80 In this environment, the scope and prospect of studying Greek

and its relevance as a means of enlightenment and cultural self-awareness were

at the centre of intellectual debate.

Following the linguistic debates of the paroikoi in the Habsburg Monarchy

throughout the 18th century, one can determine a decisive step towards national

appropriation when language (apart from practical aspects of communication

and learning) was transformed into a tool for ethnic self-identity. This process

caused a breach in the relations between Orthodox ethnic groups who belonged

to ethnically mixed communities. The issue of the linguistic and ethnic

differentiation between Greeks and Serbs and between Greeks and Vlachs in the

Habsburg Empire’s communities reflects profound cultural, ideological, and

socioeconomic changes that affected the ranks of Orthodox Balkan merchants

from the second half of the 18th century onwards.

Greek vs. the Serbian and Vlach languages. The fragmentation of the

Orthodox merchant community

Linguistic difference was, and still is, one of the most easily recognisable

distinguishing features of social groups, particularly regarding pre-modern

communities and institutions in multilingual imperial systems, such as the

Habsburg Monarchy, the members of which originated from various groups

(Greeks, Vlachs, Albanians, Bulgarians, etc.) that spoke their native languages.

Given this fact, when and for what reason did language and linguistic

particularities begin to operate as disruptive elements inside diaspora

communities, leading their members to rival and splitting inclinations to

promote cultural autonomy? In the Greek Orthodox communities of the

Habsburg Monarchy, the liturgical language and the language of education

functioned frequently in the 18th and 19th centuries as points of tension and

76 About the Greek presence in the Habsburg capital, see Vaso Seirinidou, Έλληνες στη Βιέννη

(18ος –μέσα 19ου αιώνα). Athens 2011; Ransmayr, Untertanen des Sultans oder des Kaisers.

77 Aikaterini Koumarianou / Loukia Droulia / Evro Layton, Το ελληνικό βιβλίο, 1476–1830. Athens

1986; Konstantinos Staikos, Die in Wien gedruckten griechischen Bücher (1749–1800). Athens

1995.

78 Georgios Laios, Ο Ελληνικός Τύπος της Βιέννης από του 1784 μέχρι του 1821. Athens 1961, 26–

71; Aikaterini Koumarianou, Ο ελληνικός προεπαναστατικός τύπος, Βιέννη−Παρίσι (1784–1821)

/ Die griechische vorrevolutionäre Presse, Wien–Paris (1784–1821). Athens 1995.

79 Regarding issues related to identity in the Greek Orthodox trade diaspora in the Habsburg

Empire, see Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Diaspora and Self-Representation: The Case Study of Greek

People’s Identity, Fifteenth-Nineteenth Centuries, in: Cinzia Ferrini (ed.), Human Diversity in

Context. Trieste 2020, 239–265.

80 Popi Polemi (ed.) Δια του Γένους τον Φωτισμόν. Αγγελίες προεπαναστατικών εντύπων (1734–

1821). Από τα κατάλοιπα του Φίλιππου Ηλιού. Athens 2008, 248.

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conflict, initially between “Illyrians” (Illyrici / Illyrier / Illyrische Nation)81 and

“Greeks”, and later between Greeks (in the narrow sense of Hellenes) and Vlachs

(Aromanians). Behind claims for the right to practice one’s religion in the

Serbian, Greek, or Vlach languages, early national tendencies were frequently

hidden, which sparked a series of disputes between ethnic groups who practiced

the same religion in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The first period of dispute can be traced back to Illyrian communities in the

significant regional centres of the Monarchy, such as Trieste, Vienna, Pest, and

Semlin. It should be noted that the ecclesiastical communities of the “Illyrici”

initially included Greeks, Vlachs, Albanians, Serbs, and Bulgarians. The

Habsburg authorities’ recognition of the Serbian Metropolis of Sremski Karlovci

as the sole representative of all Orthodox institutions in the Habsburg lands did

not leave much leeway for the organisation of separate communities.82 In the

second half of the 18th century, several conflicts concerning ecclesiastical

organisation, the administration of brotherhoods, and education undermined the

unity of the multinational community, which caused tensions between its

member groups. Disputes regarding the language of the liturgy, the

ecclesiastical organisation, and above all, ownership of the churches were major

points of conflict between Greeks and Serbs; both groups had a distinct

awareness of their cultural particularities with traditions of written culture and

ecclesiastical language.83

The performance of the Divine Liturgy in Serbian (more precisely, Serbian

Church Slavonic)84 or Greek and the appointment of a Serb or Greek priest

became two of the thorny issues in the world of the paroikoi that would culminate

in either creating separate communities and excluding one group from the

ecclesiastical administration or finding a compromise.85 Examples of these

developments can be observed in the cases of Trieste, Pest, Vienna, and Semlin.

81 According to Emanuel Turczynski, the term “illyrisch”, which is found in the sources, refers

mainly to Serbs and Croats settled in the Habsburg Monarchy during the 18th century and rarely

to Russians and Ukrainians. Emanuel Turczynski, Konfession und Nation. Zur Frühgeschichte

der serbischen und rumänischen Nationsbildung. Düsseldorf 1976, 273 f.

82 In several phases, starting from the 16th century, Serbs moved in large groups from the Ottoman

Empire and settled in the borderlands of the Habsburg empire (Militärgrenze), endowed with

privileges by the Austrian emperors. Olga Katsiardi-Hering, Migrationen von

Bevölkerungsgruppen in Südosteuropa vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zum Beginn des

19. Jahrhunderts. In: Südostforschungen 59–60 (2001) 121–148, 138; Alexander Buczynski,

Freiheitsvorstellungen an der kroatischen Militärgrenze, in: George Schmidt (ed.), Kollektive

Freiheitsvorstellungen im frühzeitlichen Europa. Jena 2006, 249–263. The Metropolis of

Karlowitz, which was founded as a result of the great migration led by Arsenije III Crnojević

(1633−1706) in the late 17th century, see Katsiardi-Hering/ Mantouvalos, The Tolerant Policy, 17

83 Katsiardi-Hering, Das Habsburgerreich, 181.

84 The contemporary term “Illyrian” referred to both the Serbian vernacular and the sacral Church

Slavonic, a fact indicating the fluctuating language situation (Vasilis Gounaris, Τα Βαλκάνια των

Ελλήνων. Από το Διαφωτισμό έως τον Α΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο.Thessaloniki 2007, 38).

85 Vaso Seirinidou, Βαλκάνιοι έμποροι στην Αψβουργική Μοναρχία (18ος–μέσα 19ου αιώνα).

Εθνοτικές ταυτότητες και ερευνητικές αμηχανίες, in: Stassinopoulou / Chatziioannou (eds.),

Διασπορά – Δίκτυα – Διαφωτισμός, 53–82, 62.

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In 1782, the Greeks of Trieste86 (a free port by the imperial decree of 1719)

formed a church community of their own after having left the community of

St. Spyridon, which they previously shared with the Serbs. Some thirty years

earlier in 1751, Maria Teresa, recognising the contribution of the Greci (i.e. the

Greeks and Illyrians) to the city’s economy and to the Monarchy’s import and

export trade, granted the Greeks privileges that allowed for the Greeks and

Serbs to co-exist around the Church of St. Spyridon. However, the process of

dividing the Greeks and Serbs began soon after these privileges were granted,

when the Illyrians expressed their desire to appoint a Serb priest to the church

in order to conduct the liturgy in their native language. While the real reasons

for the rupture between the two sides were financial (as Greeks and Serbs had

both accumulated considerable wealth through their business activities and

competed with each other in the Trieste trade87), the Serbian demands for equal

participation in the administration of the Orthodox “brotherhood” (i.e.

community) and in the appointment of an Illyrian priest were constantly met

with the Greeks’ firm resistance. The Greeks advocated that their language

should take priority in church matters.88 When the Austrian authorities satisfied

the Serbians’ demands, the Greeks eventually decided to permanently separate

from their brothers in faith in 1782 by acquiring the Church of St. Nicholas.

According to Olga Katsiardi-Hering, these controversies of the 1770s and early

1780s “show an early (1770s) proclamation of national identity, years before the

French revolution and the propagation of nationalism”.89

For similar reasons, the “Görögök”90 (comprising Greeks and Aromanians) of

Pest managed to split from the Illyrians91 in 1790. They proceeded to establish

their own community around the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God

despite the fact that, one year earlier, the Metropolitan of Karlowitz, Mojsije II

Putnik (1728–1790), tried in vain to prevent this development by proposing a

compromise to the authorities, namely an alternating Greek and Serbian

language liturgy every Sunday.92 In Vienna, conflict also emerged between the

Greeks and Serbs that concerned in which language the liturgy would be

delivered, even if the true causes of this conflict can be found in the “Griechen’s”

strong opposition to the Metropolitan of Karlowitz’s systematic effort to retain

administrative and financial control over the Church of St. George and to appoint

86 Katsiardi-Hering, Η ελληνική παροικία της Τεργέστης, 103–122.

87 Ibid., 116.

88 Ibid., 110.

89 Katsiardi-Hering, Diaspora and Self-Representation, 249.

90 The word görögök (Greeks in Hungarian) did not refer solely to those who belonged to the group

of ethnic Greeks, but generally designated members of the Eastern Orthodox Church who used

Greek as their main language of communication. Eventually, it also designated merchants.

Füves, Die Griechen in Pest, 17–18.

91 Regarding the conflict between Greeks and Illyrians, see Ödön Füves, Die Griechen in Pest

(1686–1931). Budapest 1972 [unpublished habilitation thesis, translated into German by Andrea

Seidler], 60–67, 77–118; Gunnar Hering, Der Konflikt zwischen Griechen und Walachen in der

Pester orthodoxen Gemeinde, in: Gunnar Hering (ed.), Dimensionen griechischer Literatur und

Geschichte. Festschrift für Pavlos Tzermias zum Geburtstag. Frankfurt et al. 1993, 145–160.

92 Ikaros Mantouvalos, Μεταναστευτικές διαδρομές από τον χώρο της Μακεδονίας στην ουγγρική

ενδοχώρα (17ος αιώνας–αρχές 19ου αιώνα), in: Ioannis Koliopoulos / Iakovos Michailidis (eds.), Οι

Μακεδόνες στη Διασπορά 17ος, 18ος και 19ος αιώνας. Thessaloniki 2011, 178–235, 206.

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a Serbian priest. The outcome of this rivalry was the removal of the Serbs from

the administration of the church in 1776, and their language ceased to be used

in the Holy Liturgy.93

In the case of Semlin’s community, the rivalry that broke out between the Serbs

and the “Greeks” (the majority of whom were Aromanians) in the late 18th

century was settled in the 1790s with the introduction of the Greek language in

the liturgy and the foundation of a separate Greek school.94 Here, the conflict

was linked with the demands of the Greeks to introduce the Greek language to

the church’s liturgy, to appoint of a Greek-speaking teacher, and to found a

separate Greek school. This case of inter-communal rivalry, again, points to an

understanding of language that was determined by a changing cultural self-

awareness.

The issue of the Orthodox peoples’ breach of religious unity in the lands of the

Monarchy based on liturgical language was of concern to Greek printers in

Vienna, the Markides Pouliou brothers. Thus, in 1791, the Εφημερίς

(Newspaper)95 reported on the Greek-Serb dispute in the city of Neusatz/Novi

Sad and the obstacles the “Romaioi” were facing from the Serbs who aimed to

impose Old Church Slavonic on church services, thereby degrading Greek as a

liturgical language.96

All of these cases of conflict between Greeks and “Illyrians” reflect the

undermining of the binding role of religious identity and the growing importance

of national patterns of identification for community-related actions. In addition,

after Joseph II published the decree on religious tolerance (Toleranzpatent,

1781), which provided non-Catholics with an opportunity to hold their divine

worship in private religious institutions, the Greek demand for ecclesiastical

autonomy and the acquisition of their own place of worship became increasingly

strong.97

However, the struggle between the different groups that constituted the

ethnically mixed church communities in the Habsburg Empire did not cease even

after the resolution of Greco-Serbian differences. Thus, the Aromanians and

Greeks who were once collectively designated as “Griechen” or “Görögök” and

who shared a common culture to which linguistically based differences were

irrelevant engaged in disputes that fuelled their sense of ethnic distinction.

Under which prerequisites and conditions can language be converted into a basic

component in the process of forming an ethnic identity that serves the needs of

93 Seirinidou, Έλληνες στη Βιέννη, 282–292; Ransmayr, Untertanen des Sultans oder des Kaisers,

41–57.

94 Ioannis Papadrianos / Vasilija Kolakovic, Συμβολή στην ιστορία της ελληνικής κοινότητας του

Σεμλίνου. Πέντε ανέκδοτα έγγραφα του έτους 1793. In: Μακεδονικά 11 (1971) 29–36;

Papadrianos, Οι Έλληνες πάροικοι, 116–119.

95 In the late 18th century, Markides Pouliou brothers in Vienna inaugurated Greek journalism by

printing the first successful Greek Newspaper Εφημερίς (1791–1797).

96 Leandros Vranousis (ed.), Εφημερίς, Athens 1995 [photocopied re-publication / from 1791, year

of first publication, Νο 10: 31.1.1791].

97 Katsiardi-Hering / Mantouvalos, The tolerant policy, 28.

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a “post-traditional” society? This question takes on special meaning when our

attention is focused on a group such as the Vlachs, many of whom also spoke

Greek. In the absence of a written Aromanian language, the Vlachs turned to

Greek for their written communication needs. Towards the end of the 18th and

the beginning of the 19th century, Vlach merchants who were established in the

commercial urban centres of Central Europe and organised in confraternities

with Greek merchants faced a dilemma: either to continue using the Greek

language together with the “Greeks” on the basis of a shared religious tradition

or to opt for Romantic pan-Romanianism, which (again based on language) would

establish the ethnic relationship of the Aromanians with the Romanians of

Wallachia and Transylvania. At the end of the 18th century, members of the

educated Aromanian elite in Central Europe were attracted to Romanian

concepts of linguistic and ethnic kinship.98 These manifestations of the

Macedonian-Vlach national identity provide proof of the Romanian

Enlightenment’s99 influence on the Central European merchant colonies with a

strong Macedonian-Vlach presence.

The mixed Greek and Vlach communities of Miskolc and Pest, respectively, show

how these orientations shaped the manner in which the Greek language was

used for ecclesiastical and educational needs. In the case of Miskolc, the

language of neither liturgy nor education proved to be a central point of conflict

between Vlachs and Greeks. Although the Vlachs were numerically superior –

especially in the late 18th century when the destruction of Moschopolis (1769)

caused a considerable migration to the Habsburg lands – they did not question

the leading position of Greek. According to the constitution of the community of

Miskolc, which was drafted in 1801, priests were required to speak Greek and

Vlach equally to be able to understand what was written in the texts of the Greek

liturgy and to teach the word of God in Vlach every Sunday. These priests also

needed knowledge of both languages so that women in the communities could

understand them, as women would only know their mother tongue (i.e.

Aromanian). The community’s position regarding the language of school

education was similar because “inside the school no language other than

ρωμαίικα should be used; Vlach should be spoken only for the purpose of

explaining [Greek] words”.100

By contrast, the evolution of the relationship between Greeks and Aromanians

in Pest reveal that an ethnic Vlach identity began to take shape at the end of the

18th century, which would rapidly become a socially divisive factor that led to the

termination of the co-existence of the two ethnic groups in 1888.101 The acrimony

of the Greek and Aromanian disagreements about the language of liturgy and

education echoed the dimensions of an incipient nationalist struggle between the

two sides of the Balkan Enlightenment (or Balkan Enlightenments) and early

Romanticism. After the separation of the “Görögök” (mainly Greeks and

98 Hering, Der Konflikt zwischen Griechen und Wallachen, 154–155; Mackridge, Language and

National Identity, 60.

99 Regarding the Romanian Enlightenment, see Keith Hitchins, The Rumanian National

Movement in Transylvania, 1780–1849. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969.

100 Mantouvalos, Μεταναστευτικές διαδρομές, 207.

101 Ödön Füves, Gründungsurkunde der griechischen Gemeinde in Pest aus dem Jahre 1802. In:

Μακεδονικά 11 (1971), 335–341, 337.

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Aromanians, as mentioned above) from the Illyrian brotherhood of St. George

and the subsequent founding of Graeca Valachica Communitas Pestiensis at the

end of the 18th century, Aromanians (mainly Moschopolitans) soon demanded

that the liturgy be held not only in Greek but also in their mother tongue to be

comprehensible to all church-goers. Among other things, this demand was based

on the argument that Aromanian was related more closely to Romanian than

Modern Greek was to ancient Greek.102 A settlement was finally reached in 1809

with the ordination of the bishop of Buda, a Greek and Aromanian priest who

officiated alternatively in the Greek and Aromanian languages. The

appointment of Vlach priests of Romanian origin from Transylvania and Banat

from 1809 to 1887 was certainly not a chance selection and cannot be interpreted

without taking into account the relations that had developed between the

Aromanians and Romanian nationalists.

A similar development can also be identified in the school education of the time.

In the 1810s, Aromanian representatives turned against the Greek language as

the exclusive language of education in the community school (Schola Graeco-

Valachica), and they officially petitioned the parallel use of Romanian in the

school. The linguistic affinity between Aromanian and Romanian and Vlach

pupils’ difficulty learning ancient Greek served as the basic arguments for the

establishment of a separate Vlach school. The introduction of Romanian at the

end of 1810 marked both a new period in the education of Aromanian children

and a decisive step in the shaping of their hybrid identity.103

The path towards national self-awareness of the Aromanians in Pest can also be

traced in other cities of Hungary and Transylvania (e.g. Brașov), where

Aromanians promoted similar claims.104 However, to fully understand the

linguistic and political requests of the Central European merchant colonies and

the relationship between language and ethnicity, it is necessary to present the

efforts of Aromanian scholars to create a written idiom.

Influenced by the ideas of European Enlightenment, members of the Aromanian

elite sought to solve the problem of codifying their mother tongue. Thus, in the

late 18th century, the Viennese print shop of Markides Pouliou printed the first

primer in the Vlach language, the “New Pedagogy”. In this publication, the

Moschopolitan Konstantinos Oukoutas, a priest of the Orthodox Church of

Poznań/Posen (Prussia, today Poland), proposed a method of standardising the

Aromanian language by using the Greek alphabet. This fact recognised Vlach’s

linguistic particularity while it also expressed the conviction that the

Aromanians were part of the Hellenized world. On the opposite side of Oukoutas’

ideological orientations were Mihail Boiagi (also Boyadji or Boiatzis) and George

Constantine Roja, who were active in the 1810s and 1820s as representatives of

the Latinist discourse. Boiagi, who was born in Pest to a family of Aromanian-

speaking refugees from Moschopolis and became a teacher of Greek at the

Orthodox community school Nationalschule105 in Vienna, published Romanische

102 Füves, Die Griechen in Pest, 154.

103 Füves, Die Griechen in Pest, 368–369.

104 Konstantakopoulou, Η ελληνική γλώσσα στα Βαλκάνια, 40.

105 The Nationalschule belonged to the Greek-Vlach community of the Holy Trinity which was

founded in 1787 by those who had obtained Austrian subject status. It should be mentioned that

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oder Macedonowlachische Sprachlehre/Γραμματική ρωμανική, ήτοι

μακεδονοβλαχική (Grammar of Romanian or Macedonian-Vlach) in 1813. This

book was written in German and Greek and used the Latin alphabet for the

codification of the Aromanian language (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Mihail Boiagi, Γραμματική ρωμανική, ήτοι μακεδονοβλαχική / Romanische oder

Macedonowlachische Sprachlehre (1813), title page106

the Greek brotherhood (community) of St. George in Vienna (for the Ottoman subjects) had

already existed since the beginning of the 18th century. Therefore, there were two separate Greek

communities in the Habsburg capital for Ottoman and for Austrian subjects, respectively. See

Seirinidou, Έλληνες στη Βιέννη, 292–293; Ransmayr, Untertanen des Sultans oder des Kaisers,

85.

106 Source: University Library, Cluj-Napoca, <http://dspace.bcucluj.ro/handle/123456789/86579>,

21.03.2021.

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G. Rojas, a doctor from Pest, proposed the same solution as Boiagi a few years

earlier when he published “Εξετάσεις περί των Ρωμαίων ή των ονομαζομένων

Βλάχων όσοι κατοικούσιν αντιπέραν του Δουνάβεως” (Studies of the Romans or the

so-called Vlachs, who live beyond the Danube) in 1808. In this publication, Rojas

urged Aromanians to speak and write in their own language. Furthermore, he

argued that Cyrillic or Latin should be preferred to the Greek alphabet, which

seemed incomprehensible to him in view of Kavalliotis’ effort.107

However, in the circles of immigrants in the Monarchy’s territory, a group of

Aromanians remained faithful to the cultivation of the Greek language and to

the spread of Greek culture among Vlach-speaking populations. One example is

Dimitrios Darvaris, who did not concern himself with the codification of his

maternal Aromanian language. As Vaso Seirinidou aptly stated in her study of

Darvaris’s “laboratory”, “Darvaris promoted, through a long-term publishing

project, the study of the common [i.e. Greek] language”.108 His works, which were

published in Vienna between 1785 and 1829, served two strong demands above

all: first, to contribute to the education of young Greeks, and second, to make the

Greek language and writing (script) accessible to his ομογενείς (compatriots, lit.

cognates), namely Aromanians.109 With his “Modern Greek Grammar”, Darvaris

attempted to standardise the various grammatical expressions of spoken Greek

while also recognising the social and cultural “superiority” of ancient Greek.110

Conclusion

As can be concluded from this analysis, multilingualism in multiethnic states,

such as the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, was a lived experience which

determined and influenced the relationship between individuals and between

different ethnic groups. While for the societies of the early modern Balkans

(which were united politically under Ottoman rule and religiously under the

Orthodox Patriarchate) language did not represent the main criterion of

differentiation, the sense of ethnic differences was based increasingly on the

factor of language since the late 18th century. The prevalence of the Greek-

speaking Balkans, which reached its peak in the mid-18th century, was

conditioned by socio-economic developments and accompanied by changes of

cultural (self-)perception that reflected the influence of the Enlightenment on

Balkan thought.

As I argued in this article, the interlocking of the Balkan (and especially Greek)

Enlightenment with language and ethnicity can be discerned particularly in the

world of immigrant communities in Central Europe, where language was

transformed (albeit not always) into a domain of ideological conflict that

expressed and shaped key aspects of collective identity formation at the turn of

modernity. The simultaneity of multilingualism and rivalling monolingual

agendas reveals a complex reality of the Greek diaspora, whose cultural centres,

by way of school education, book publishing, emerging periodicals, etc., played a

significant role in the dissemination of ethnic and national ideas among

107 Konstantakopoulou, Η ελληνική γλώσσα στα Βαλκάνια, 38.

108 Vaso Seirinidou, Το εργαστήριο του λογίου, 109.

109 Katsiardi-Hering, Εκπαίδευση στη Διασπορά, 175.

110 Seirinidou, Το εργαστήριο του λογίου, 109.

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community members. In fact, from the 1770s to the 1820s, “a Balkan scholar

community existed in the Habsburg Empire, within which the particular Balkan

Enlightenment projects were being developed”.111 Regardless of their differing

ideological orientations, Greek Enlightenment scholars who lived and worked for

some time in Vienna, such as Rhigas Velestinlis (1757–1798),112 Athanasios

Psalidas (1767–1829), and Neophytos Doukas (1760–1845), played active parts

in this intellectual movement. In this context, the modern concept of a Greek

nation, as developed by proponents of the Lumières, was ultimately defined by

language and cultural heritage. The proposal by Neophytos Doukas to the

Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril VI (1813–1818) to lead an educational and

cultural “crusade” in order to extend the boundaries of the Greek language

among the Bulgarians, Vlachs and Albanians, is indicative of the ideological

climate at the beginning of the 19th century as it shows the relevance of the

language criterion in the definition of the nation.113

111 Vaso Seirinidou, The Enlightenments within the Enlightenment, 179.

112 Rhigas Velestinlis “emerged as the most articulate representative of a radical Enlightenment”.

See Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Revolution, 200–229, for a comprehensive bibliography on

his life and thought.

113 Kitromilides, Imagined Communities, 156.