Chapter Three
An Illyrian Theory of the Baltic Languages
The Illyrian Theory of the Baltic languages is especially associated with the name of Conrad Gessner and Hieronymus Megiser. In the following, I shall illustrate the characteristics of this theory and its place in the general context of Renaissance linguistic theories on the Baltic Languages. It is hard to determine who first used the term Illyrian to refer to Baltic languages. A special investigation should be devoted to this task. Up to now I can mention two significant cases: that of Raffael Maffeius Volaterranus and that of Paulus Jovius. Chronologically, one sees how a convergence between the concepts of Illyrian and Slav was performed already at the beginning of the 16th century. Among the followers of Æneas Sylvius de’ Piccolomini, the most enigmatic remained Rafael Maffeius Volaterranus [1451–1522]. In the 7th book of the Commentariorum rerum Urbanorum libri XXXVIII [The thirty- eight books of commentaries on city matters] he wrote about the language of Lithuania: Sermone vtuntur emidalmatico, vt ferè Sarmatia omnis Europea. It is pretty obscure why Volaterranus used exactly the term semi- dalmaticus to define this language. Nevertheless there is a possible explanation: in his 8th book of the same work the Dalmatians are presented as an Illyrian people and the Illyrians are identified with the Slavs: In equentibus vero temporibus Sclaui dicti unt… Sclaueni gens Scythica Iu tiniani tempore in illyricum irruere. Paulus Jovius [1483–1552] was a bishop from Como in Italy and the author of many books on different topics. In some of them he also dealt with Baltic matters and expressed his opinion on the languages. Jovius knew the Quadripartite Theory of Miechovita and referred to it, but in the Historiarum sui temporis libri XLV [The forty-five books of the history of his time] (Florence, 1550–1552) he expounded another point of view. Jovius noticed that Poles, Muscovites, Lithuanians and Ruthenians (Roxolani) do not especially differ among themselves in language (Jovius 1560:520-521):
Lingua Illyrica vtuntur omnes, corrupta tamen, vtpote quàm diuer i inter e populi, diuer is vocum inflexionibus inuerterint. [They all use the Illyrian language, although corrupted, insofar as people (who were) different among themselves have altered (it) through different modifications of the words].
It is known that Jovius did not travel anywhere, although he wrote on countries and peoples very far from Italy. Thus he surely got his Lingua 32 Prelude to Baltic Linguistics
Illyrica from the many sources he consulted or perhaps from informers he had the opportunity to ask. These are two good examples, and probably among the first, of the usage of the term Illyrian referred at least to one Baltic language. The cases of Volaterranus and Jovius are interesting because both preceded the activity of Conrad Gessner. They show that the Lingua Illy- rica was a concept already known among the humanists.
3.1. The Philoglots’s linguistic ideas
During the second half of the 16th century a group of scholars, with Conrad Gessner as the best known, had as center of irradiation the German countries and flourished in particular in German Switzerland. They were called Philoglots: Who where they and what did they do? Besides Gessner, Siegmund Gelens and Theodor Biblianders are also included among the Philoglots (cf. Riedl-Dorn 1989:21–26; in general Tavoni 1990). To these names can be added those of Angelo Rocca, follower of Gessner in Italy, and those of the German Hieronymus Megiser and Johann Heinrich Alsted (see 3.3.). The activity of the Philoglots had as its principal aim precisely the diffusion of the multilingual Verbum in and for itself. Not by chance, this was characterized by the production and publication of relatively many different catalogs of languages, specimina, collections of Lord’s Prayers (Orationes Dominicae). This activity and production was perceived and understood within the frame of the typical “radical culture of poliglotism”. Such a view of the linguistic phenomenon was based notoriously on practical assumptions, but also on religious and ecumenic ones, that placed in the center the esprit de la Pentecôte, with a clear reference to the day of Pentecost when God appeared to the Apostles in the form of the Holy Ghost and conferred upon them the gift of tongues. Today there is agreement on the fact that this culture of poliglotism set the most important premise for the rise of Comparative Linguistics at the beginning of the 19th century. Many of the Philoglots dealt also with the Baltic languages and it is worth giving special attention to their ideas. Bibliander [1504–1564] (his real name was Theodor Buchmann) is considered the first to have pointed out and investigated the reciprocal relations among the languages of Europe in his famous book De ratione commune omnium linguarum commentarius [Commentary on the common principle of all languages] (Zürich, 1548). It has already been stressed how he got close to the concept of the Indoeuropean community. Concerning the Baltic languages Bibliander followed the ideas of Miechovita (i.e. he accepted the so–called Quadripartite Theory; see Chapter Five). Conrad Gessner was the pupil of Bibliander, but in general the following can be observed: just as much as the master Bibliander had limi-