Bartolomeus Kopitar

and Josef Dobrovský

R ADU M ÂRZA on Romanians

Our paper intends to exam-

I N THE first decades of the nineteenth
century, the cultivated European milieus
ine in detail the process of were in a full process of “discovering”
Eastern Europe (Inventing Eastern Eu-
“discovering” (in a way, of rope, according to the American histo-
inventing) the Romanians, rian Larry Wolff):1 Herder wrote an
encomium to the Slavs, Goethe was
as revealed by the corres- concerned with the folklore of Balkan
pondence on this matter peoples, while linguistics, through the
efforts of Friedrich Diez and of oth-
between two scholars ers, had placed the Romanian language
of that period, Slavicists among the Romance languages, despite
the Cyrillic disguise it was wearing. Not
Bartolomeus Kopitar just people and languages, but also re-
and Josef Dobrovský. gions were “discovered.” This is the case
of the Balkans, which had an entire
discipline dedicated to them, Balkan
Studies, whose father is rightly consi-
dered to be Johann Thunmann, the au-
thor of the famous Untersuchungen über
die Geschichte der östlichen europäischen
Völker (Leipzig, 1774).2
Our paper intends to examine in de-
Radu Mârza
tail the process of “discovering” (in a
Lecturer at the Faculty of History
and Philosophy of Babeº-Bolyai
way, of inventing) the Romanians, as
University of Cluj-Napoca. Author revealed by the correspondence on this
of the volume The History of Romanian matter between two scholars of that pe-
Slavic Studies: From the Beginnings riod, Slavicists Bartolomeus (Jernej)
until the First World War (2008). Kopitar and Josef Dobrovský. Thus, we
108 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XIX, NO. 1 (SPRING 2010)

are interested in their perception of the Romanians, in their classification of

this people, from a historical and linguistic point of view, and on their opin-
ions on Romanian culture.
The instruments we have at our disposal and which we will use the most often
are the letters written by the two scholars, published in St. Petersburg and Berlin
by the Slavicist Vatroslav Jagić in 1885 and 1897,3 which have unfortunately
remained unknown to Romanian historians. The only one to mention them, more
than a century ago, was Ioan Bogdan.4 It must also be said that in the 1897
edition Vatroslav Jagić included other letters than those which Kopitar and
Dobrovský had written to one another, that is, letters sent or received by them
from other Slavic scholars of the time, like Jacob Supan, Georg (Juraj) Ribay,
and Vuk Štefanović Karadžić . Some of them also contain references to Romanians,
which we will use in the following analysis.5
First of all, who are Bartolomeus Kopitar and Josef Dobrovský? Their names
are well known in Austrian and in Czech historiography. Not so in the Romanian
one.
Bartolomeus Kopitar is not really completely unknown to Romanian histo-
rians, because of his polemic with Petru Maior concerning the origin of the
Romanian language and people, the Viennese Slavicist having corrected sever-
al of the opinions expressed by the Romanian scholar. We believe that, because
of this polemic exchange, approached in the older historiography from a militant
national angle, Kopitar was regarded here with suspicion, as “the person who
was engaged in a polemic with Petru Maior.” The latter was automatically con-
sidered to have been right, “as he is one of us.”6 It is certain that a critical look
at this polemic, especially at the polemical texts written by Maior and Kopitar,7
is enough to place the statements and the positions of the two protagonists in
the proper perspective: generally, the Transylvanian was far from being right in
this polemic: not only had he gone well beyond the admissible ethical level of
an academic debate, but a good measure of the observations and critical com-
ments of Kopitar would prove well founded. We will return to some of the
ideas which surfaced in this polemic.
In these circumstances, Bartolomeus Kopitar did not enjoy a very extensive
reception in Romanian historiography. Around 1900, Lazãr ªãineanu underlined
his merits in Istoria filologiei române8 (The history of Romanian philology),
while Ioan Bogdan praised him in a meeting at the Romanian Academy as a “sym-
pathetic foreign scholar.” The Rumunica books and manuscripts in Kopitar’s
library were mentioned in 1894 by Ovid Densusianu.9 In the period between the
two World Wars, Bartolomeus Kopitar was, in the best of cases, mentioned among
other scholars who contributed to the history of the Romanian language. His
polemic with Petru Maior was also mentioned in the period after the Second
World War. Unfortunately, a synthesis such as Istoria lingvisticii româneºti (The
 TANGENCIES • 109

history of Romanian linguistics, 1978) only mentions his name in a footnote.10

The first re-evaluation of Kopitar appears in the already quoted edition of Maior’s
writings.11
In what concerns Kopitar’s biography (1780–1844), this Slovene studied at
the University of Vienna, where he made a name for himself as an employee
of the Library of the Imperial Court (Hofbibliothek) (1810–1844) while acting
as both a censor and an editor of Slavic, Greek and Romanian books (1811–1844).
These responsibilities gave him an opportunity to know a great part of the Slavic
publications and those of the other people from the empire and beyond, espe-
cially those from the East. They allowed him to have an adequate perspective
on their cultural life, on the issues their national identity was confronted with,
on their endeavors to build national literatures and corpora of historical docu-
ments, on the definition of literary languages, on the establishment of orthog-
raphy. His main purpose was to enhance the culture of the Slavs from the empire
and to obtain the recognition of their identity as a distinct group and of their
rights. He himself wished “to be for the history of the Slavs what Muratori
had been for the Italians.”12 For his political opinions, quite relevant is the arti-
cle “The Patriotic Fantasies of a Slav” (1810), which became famous at the
time and which deals with Austro-Slavism, a concept which he had promoted
and which opposed the pan-Slavism promoted by Russia and its supporters.13
One of his best known theories is “the Pannonian theory” according to which
the old Slavic language (Old Church Slavonic) had originated in the historical
region of Pannonia and Carantania (Carinthia). Kopitar was contradicted by other
Slavicists—even by Dobrovský—who demonstrated the definite Macedonian
origin of Old Church Slavonic.14
Like all the great Slavic scholars of the time, he felt the need to endow the cul-
ture of the Slavic people with basic instruments, such as dictionaries and gram-
mar books. From this point of view, his work is inferior to that of his contem-
poraries Dobrovský and Vuk Karadžić. Kopitar only published the Grammatik
der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärten und Steyermark (Laibach/Ljubljana, 1808).
However, he was an important editor of Old Church Slavonic documents. These
are best known for their critical commentaries: Glagolita Clozianus (Vienna,
1836), Psalters von St. Florian (Vienna, 1834) and the historical prolegomena
to the famous Slavic Gospel Book from Reims (1834).15 In parallel he achieved a
lot as a bibliographer, a work facilitated by his position at the court. He pub-
lished numerous reviews and book presentations in the almanacs and periodi-
cals of the time. He thus contributed to the popularization of these books, dis-
seminating information, ideas and views on the major topics in the field of
Slavonic studies.16
He was familiar with the European academic trends, not just through books
but also through the journeys he had undertaken (Germany, France, England,
110 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XIX, NO. 1 (SPRING 2010)

Italy) and through the connections he maintained; the resulting correspondence,

of monumental dimensions (it comprises around 650 people) includes the
great names of contemporary culture and science, starting with Jakob Grimm,
Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Friedrich Adelung, Leopold von Ranke, Pavol’ Jozef
Šafárik, Ján Kollár, Vuk Štefanović Karadžić, etc.17
This is the context in which Kopitar came into contact with Romanian issues.
The precise moment in which he “discovered” the Romanians is not known,
but we do have some clues at our disposal. As a milestone we would suggest
the year 1810, when in his correspondence with Josef Dobrovský we find fre-
quent references to Romanians (1810–1814). On the other hand, in 1812
Petru Maior had just published Istoria pentru începuturile românilor în Dachia (The
history of the beginnings of the Romanians in Dacia), reviewed by Kopitar in
1813, which led to the polemic which would last until 1816.
The connection between Kopitar, the Romanians, and the Romanian language
was not a purely literary one, because in 1812 he was studying Piuariu-Molnar’s
grammar with a Romanian.18 In the same year he wrote to his correspondent and
compatriot Jacob Supan about “meinem augenkranken Eleven Gika” (“aus
dem Hause der wlachischen Gospodare Gika”), to whom he was giving mythol-
ogy lessons and to whom he was reading from the History of Engel,19 from whom
(or from whose entourage) he had certainly obtained at least basic information
concerning the Romanians. On the other hand, it is more than probable that
in his position as censor, Kopitar would have come into contact with some
Romanian scholars, students and merchants who were in Vienna at the time; fur-
ther research could shed some light on this issue. Walter Lukan has recently shown
that “although he had intensely collected Valachica and had manifested great inter-
est for the Romanian language and history, he [Kopitar] had lacked contact
with Romanian personalities,” the only certain link being Petru Maior.20
An instructive aspect from this point of view is the reconstruction of Kopitar’s
library. Here, the presence of Romanian books was noted already at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century.21 Alongside names that one would expect22 we
find around 15 titles of old Romanian books (Psalters, menaia, lives of saints and
other religious books from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), next to gram-
mars and treatises on logic.23 In this sense, Walter Lukan added a few things in
the catalogue to an exhibition dedicated to Kopitar’s library, where he men-
tions a volume of poetry signed by Gheorghe Asaki (which had come to be in
the possession of the scholar through the mediation of Vasilie Popp)24 and
“all that was important” at that time on the Romanian language (the gram-
mars of ªincai, Vãcãrescu, Molnar, Tempea, Körösi, Alexi, Marcell, the diction-
ary of Bob and the Lexicon of Buda of 1825).25 This is a direction of research which
merits further attention in order to determine exactly the Romanian books
 TANGENCIES • 111

from the library of the great scholar, as well as their place in the ensemble of
the collection and of his scholarly concerns.
Considered to be a “patriarch of Slavonic studies,” Josef Dobrovský (1753–
1829) is a typical product of the Enlightenment and the Josephine era. He
studied philosophy and theology at the University of Prague, joined the Jesuit
order until its dissolution by Joseph II, taught in the theological seminary of
Olomouc (Olmütz) and as a private tutor for the family of Count Nostitz.26 Like
other scholars at the time, he started his career with Oriental studies and Biblical
exegeses. He was one of the scholars concerned with the endowment of Czech
culture with dictionaries (Ausführliches und vollständiges deutsch-böhmisches Wör-
terbuch, Prague, 1802–1821), grammars (Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmi-
schen Sprache, Prague, 1809), and histories of the language (Geschichte der
böhmischen Sprache und Literatur, Prague, 1792). The grammar which he pub-
lished would become a model for similar works in other Slavic languages.27
His research included diverse fields (paleography, philology, literature, his-
tory, archaeology, and natural sciences); they are characterized by the critical spir-
it specific to rationalism, giving special attention to documents (the chronicle
of Nestor, The Lay of Igor’s Campaign), which he studied rather as a philologist
than as a historian. He also became involved in the debates concerning the “Czech
manuscripts” from Králové Dvůr and Zelená Hora.28 The Biblical studies and the
recourse to primary sources led him towards the elements of the future discipline
of Slavonic studies: Slavonic language (Old Church Slavonic) and the old liter-
ary monuments of the Slavs. His comparative analysis of Slavic languages
(Dobrovský was one of the first to do such a thing) from an etymological and
grammatical point of view, in direct relation to the Indo-European languages,
situates him among the pioneers of comparative philology.29
In this sense, we have to mention the monumental opus Institutiones
linguae slavicae dialecti veteris (Vienna, 1822), published at the insistence of
Bartolomeus Kopitar. This is, as Miloš Weingart remarked, more than a gram-
mar of the Old Church Slavonic language: in agreement with the notions that he
professed, Dobrovský saw language not just as an instrument of communication,
but also as a civilizing factor, Slavonic being the language that had united East
and Southeast European peoples for several centuries.30 The Slavonic language
and the Cyrillic script were automatically associated with the figures of the two
“apostles of the Slavs,” the Byzantine missionaries Constantine and Methodius,
who had played an important role in the definition of the national identities
of the Slavs, especially with the Czechs and Slovaks, becoming true “histo-
riographical myths.” The Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris appears all
the more important, printed as it was at a time when Slavic peoples were endeav-
oring to establish their linguistic and cultural identity, as they had to respond
112 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XIX, NO. 1 (SPRING 2010)

to a number of challenges: the construction of the literary language on the

basis of the ecclesiastical language or on the basis of popular dialects, the affili-
ation to an area of eastern (Byzantine and Slavic) or western (Latin and Catholic)
civilization, the relationship between a Slavic people and the rest of the Slavic
family of peoples, the relation with the state (the Habsburg Empire, Russia).
In contrast to Bartolomeus Kopitar, in Dobrovský’s case the relations with the
Romanians are restricted, at least as far as we know at this point, to the realm
of books and ideas. As we will see later, Dobrovský was very well informed as
regards the most diverse aspects of the history and languages of European peo-
ples, his information concerning the Romanians being in agreement with the
general perception of that time, although he had not benefited from the stimu-
lating environment in which Kopitar had been active as a librarian and as a
censor and editor in Vienna.

I
N WHAT follows, we will try to direct our attention to the Romanian ref-
erences in the correspondence between Bartolomeus Kopitar and Josef
Dobrovský. We are dealing here with an exchange of letters which lasted for
12 years (1810–1822). The letters, which sometimes seem true dissertations,
cover various subjects: mundane information, references to other characters from
the cultural or political circles that the two frequented, and long pages with com-
ments concerning the history of the Slavs and Slavic languages in general, con-
cerning the contemporary cultural movement of the Slavs, elements of com-
parative linguistics and etymology. There is an almost obsessive interest in
categorizing and defining Slavic nationalities and languages, in finding some
common points in the languages, echoing the debates of that time regarding
the transition from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet among some of the Slavs,
comments about various theories propounded by contemporaries (for instance,
the theory concerning the Thracian origin of the Slavs), critical opinions on some
historical sources (the chronicle of Nestor and Byzantine chronicles).
As regards the Romanians, from the analysis of the correspondence one
may conclude that the Czech Slavicist Dobrovský was much better informed than
Kopitar and had much better articulated opinions. When discussing the names
of people and their integration within a particular family of peoples, Dobrovský
focuses on the term Wlach, Wlachen, controversial at the time because of the
ethnic and economic sense given to it. He knew that the term was used in the
sense of “Gaul” and “Italian,” designating people of Latin origin, the Romanians
among them, a Dacian/Thracian island (“Daher auch die Dacisch-thracischen
Uberbleinsel, die heutigen Wallachen”).31 Both agree on the multitude of mean-
ings given to the term, including that of a Slavic ethnographic (and profes-
sional) group (formerly Romanian, but assimilated) from Moravia (Mährischen
 TANGENCIES • 113

Walachen).32 This idea was used by Kopitar in the first of the reviews to the
writings of Petru Maior, that is, to Istoria pentru începutul românilor în Dachia,
a review published in 1813 under the title “Vallachische Literatur” in the jour-
nal Wiener allgemeine Literaturzeitung.33
The term Römer, Romanen also generated authentic dissertations in the let-
ters of Kopitar and Dobrovský. Unlike Dobrovský, the former avoided using it
in the case of the Romanians: “Bey Rumuni denke man ja nicht an Römer
(von Rom), sondern an Romanen (rwmaioj bey den Byzantinern) Leute . . .”34
The latter drew attention to the fact that the Romanians are the ones who appro-
priate this name, that of rumuni, through which they wish to underline their
nature as old subjects of the Romans, as indigenous populations. These are argu-
ments which suggest, in Dobrovský’s case, a familiarity with certain Romanian
texts, which have not yet been identified.35
The exchange of ideas regarding the origin of peoples, of the names they bear,
and the origin of languages, their integration within a family of people and of
languages, respectively, is frequent in the period, being specific to the historical
discourse of the Enlightenment and of its aftermath. It is not surprising that
this is the time when Europe discovers the Sanskrit language and the Indo-
European family of languages (Friedrich Schlegel, Franz Bopp, Rasmus Kristian
Rask, Jakob Grimm, etc.), discoveries which marked the linguistic destiny of that
time; even a reconstruction of the “common language” was attempted.36 Regarding
Kopitar, the editor of his correspondence (Vatroslav Jagić ) indicated that the
Slovene scholar “was uninspired by his muse” in the study of the Sanskrit and
Lithuanian languages, although he had successfully (we might add) concentrated
on the study of the Gothic, neo-Bulgarian, Albanian and Romanian languages.37
In Romanian historiography, the most interesting work from this point of
view is the dissertation of Ion Budai-Deleanu, De originibus populorum Tran-
sylvaniae,38 which includes, as a curiosity, a chapter entitled “De Slavorum origi-
nibus,” initially prepared for publication as an independent work: De Slavorum
originibus: In qua varios populos Slavorum a diversis Thracum familiis ortorum habuisse
deducitur.
Under these circumstances, the obsessive reiteration of the various cate-
gories in the correspondence of the two Slavic scholars is understandable. As
regards the Slavs, Dobrovský insists on their distinct character, rejecting older
views which considered them Dacians, Getae, Thracians, Illyrians, or Pannonians,
underlining that “Slawen sind Slawen und haben der Sprache nach die nächste
Verwandschaft mit den Lithauern . . .”39 In the same context, the Latin poet Ovid
is mentioned, about whom rumors circulated at the time concerning the fact that,
as he had been exiled among the Getae, he may have been able to easily under-
stand the language of the Slavs, as Latin was related to Lithuanian, and also to
114 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XIX, NO. 1 (SPRING 2010)

the language of the Dacians and the Slavs (“Das Lithauische ist halb lateinisch,
der Form und Wurzeln nach, so wie das Dacische, Getische es war . . .”).40
Other “patriotic” Slavic opinions suggested that Ovid himself had written
Slavic verses. Clearly distinguishing between Slavic, Thracian, Sarmatian, and
Lithuanian, Dobrovský rejects these explanations and eventually accepts that
the Latin poet may have written in the Getae or Sarmatian language: “Sarmatae
non sunt Slaui, wäre eine meiner ersten Positionen ex ethnographia Slauici. Ergo
Ouidius non scripsit carmina Slauica: jam didici getice Sarmaticeque loqui, kann
nur eine Pohle aus Patriotismus dahin erklären, dass Sarmatisch hier Slawisch sey.
Getice ist Dacisch, Thracisch, Mösisch, d.i. etwa Wallachisch, vel quod prope
accedit.”41
In other words, the Czech Slavicist rejects the older theory concerning
the Thracian origin of the Slavs (or concerning the identity between Thracians
and Slavs), popularised by the famous writings of Johann Christoph Gatterer,
Dissertatio ad Russorum, Polonorum caeterorumque populorum Slavicorum orig-
inem, a Gethis sive Dacis liceat repetere (1793), a work which had triggered lengthy
debates in European scholarly circles and which has been known by Ion Budai-
Deleanu, the contemporary of Kopitar and Dobrovský.42
In addition, one must mention that the two slavicists support the idea of a
Dacian branch of the Slavic family (the so-called Daco-Slavs),43 an idea that both
Slavic historians and linguists have accepted and developed, and which was
later appropriated by the ideologists of pan-Slavism, but which has been a pri-
ori rejected by Romanian historiography.
Given the more or less declared interest of Slavic scholars, Kopitar and Dob-
rovský included, in highlighting the Slavs and their role in European history,
the attention which they showed to the history of the Romanians is understandable.
Just like all reputed Europe scholars of that time they did not contest that Romance
character of the Romanian language. In his polemic with Petru Maior, Kopitar
would draw attention to the error committed by Romanian linguists, who derived
the grammatical structure of Romanian directly from that of the Latin vernac-
ular. Although well informed from a bibliographical point of view, Kopitar acute-
ly felt the lack of grammars and dictionaries, fundamental tools for the study
of the Romanian language.44 He contended that a correct analysis of the char-
acter of the Romanian language would be come possible only if the Romanian
abandon the prejudice of being pure Romans (“wenn sie dem Vorurtheil, reine
Römer zu sein, zurückgekommen seyn werden”).45
But, beyond the undeniably Romance features, Kopitar highlighted numer-
ous Slavic, Greek, Turkish, and Hungarian elements: “Was im Wlachischen nicht
romanisch ist, ist wohl griechisch, slawisch, auch ungrisch, türkisch, und was
nicht eines von diesen ist, mag wohl bulharisch seyn.”46 This is more of an ob-
 TANGENCIES • 115

servation than a statement. Moreover, the argument is not taken to its logical
conclusion. However, at least a part of these foreign elements (the Bulgarian ones,
to be precise) are explained through the migration of the Romanians (Wlachen)
from the Haemus region in Bulgaria and then over the Danube: “Vom Hämus
zogen die Wlachen in die Bulgarey, wo sie sich vermehrten, von da erst über
die Donau u.s.w.”47
Quite interesting are the observations concerning the foreign elements pres-
ent in the Romanian language: in particular, Kopitar highlighted the Thracian
substratum, which would explain the similarities between Romanian and Alba-
nian. The example that he had also given on other occasions (and which European
scholarship had embraced) is the positioning of the article at the end rather
than the beginning of a word in the Romanian language, which leads to the
idea of a common ancestry for Romanian, Albanian and Bulgarian: “solche eige-
ne Sprache,” a Thracian, Getae or Illyrian language, to which all the Romanian
words which do not come from the Latin vocabulary or which have not been
borrowed from other known languages must belong.48
He has the merit of popularizing within European scholarship the above-
mentioned ideas, which came to be adopted by linguistics in the second half of
the nineteenth century. A coherent form of this theory of the substratum is owed
to Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, the author of a famous work: “Stratu ºi substratu:
Genealogia popoareloru balcanice” (Stratum and substratum: The genealogy
of Balkan peoples).49 Returning to the foreign elements in the Romanian lan-
guage, European scholarship insisted on them on several occasions. Among
the best known researchers involved in this one may mention Franz Miklosich,
Kopitar’s disciple.
Another aspect which transpires from the correspondence of Kopitar and
Dobrovský is their familiarity with contemporary Romanian publications or with
those concerning the Romanians, and with the principal tendencies expressed by
them. In this sense, Bartolomeus Kopitar proves superior to his Czech corre-
spondent, most probably due to the opportunities which were available to him
in his capacity as censor and librarian at the Court Library in Vienna. In his
letters, he frequently quotes the works of Ioan Piuariu-Molnar, Gheorghe ªincai,
Petru Maior, ªtefan Criºan (Körösi) or of Aromanians George Constantin Roja
(Rosa) and M. G. Boiagi,50 but he also mentions foreign authors who made
references to Romanians: Johann Thunmann and Friedrich Schlegel, August
Ludwig Schlözer, Franz Josef Sulzer and Johann Christian Engel.51 From these
authors he borrowed many ideas, such as the claim that Albanian is very close
or even identical to the Vlach language (Schlegel), the character of the Romanians
and the Romanized or Slavicized Thracians (Sulzer). Engel’s hypothesis regard-
ing the origin of the Vlachs as descendants of the Bulgarians (“Walachen-
116 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XIX, NO. 1 (SPRING 2010)

hypothese”) seemed to him unacceptable. References to Petru Maior are not

absent from the correspondence (in the letters of Bartolomeus Kopitar), but they
are few in number.52
In a letter from 27 November 1812, Bartolomeus Kopitar identified, given
his new duties as a censor of Romanian, Slavic and Greek books, the manifes-
tation of a true “orthographic crisis” with these peoples, mentioning the Romanians,
the Serbs and—strangely enough, probably by mistake—the Hungarians. The
representative book from this point of view, which he quoted from, is the 1804
Gramatica daco-românã (Dacian-Romanian grammar) by Gheorghe ªincai.
The conclusion is the necessity to improve the Latin alphabet, to which these
languages could be adapted: “Die Serben, die Walachen, die Madjaren, alle
diese cultursehnenden Völker torkeln im Finster umher . . .”53
Although a Slav and therefore sympathetic to the Cyrillic alphabet (he praised
its elasticity in one of his reviews to Petru Maior, where he suggested that the
people who use Latin letters deserve compassion rather than envy or imitation),54
Kopitar admitted that the Latin alphabet would be more suitable for the Roma-
nians. However, he criticized the idea expressed by Gheorghe ªincai that the Ro-
manians would not be able to engage in cultural pursuits while using the Cyrillic
script: “ zwar hat Unrecht, wenn er sagt, dass bei dem cyrillischwlachi-
schen Alfabet keine Cultur moglich sei, weil niemand es recht lernen konne: aber
wahr ist es, dass das lateinische, vermehrt, in vieler Hinsicht besser ware . . .”55
Kopitar noted the efforts of the Romanian scholars from Transylvania to re-
pudiate the Cyrillic script and to impose Latin letters, negatively commenting on
their wish to eliminate the Slavic elements from the Romanian language: “Sinkai
dicit Cyrilliano charactere non posse recte scribi Vlahicam: ergo latinum itali-
santem proponit! Falluntur boni viri et in hoc, quod slavicas voces repudiare stu-
dent, sperantes puriore reddere linguam, cum tamen non sit amplius origina-
lis, sed ad mistas pertineat in forma et in materia . . .”56
As far as the Cyrillic alphabet is concerned, Kopitar and Dobrovský were
also interested in the period when Romanians adopted the alphabet which they
were presently eager to abandon. Quoting Buschning, Dobrovský stated that
“Die Wlachen nahmen die cyrill. Lettern im 15 Jahrh. an,”57 while Kopitar adopt-
ed, from Petru Maior, Dimitrie Cantemir’s theory concerning the imposition
of Cyrillic letters by the “Romanian Bishop Theokritos,”58 that is, the theory of
the burning of the Latin books and the interdiction of using the Latin alpha-
bet in the context of the Florentine Council.59

A
T THE end of these considerations, we see that the principal ideas which
are espoused by Bartolomeus Kopitar and Josef Dobrovský concern-
ing the Romanians come from a wider exchange of ideas, regarding
the origin and the relations of peoples and languages, an exchange which entire-
 TANGENCIES • 117

ly corresponds to a topic frequently debated in the scholarly circles of Europe.

The nuance which transpires—and which will later impose itself as a core com-
ponent of the history of the Romanian language—is that of its Romance char-
acter, combined with other elements (Slavic, Thracian, Greek), which practi-
cally individuate the Romanian language, not only among the Romance languages,
but also among the Southeast European (Balkan) languages. The interest of
the two Slavic scholars, especially Kopitar’s, in the Romanians comes from a
broader concern with the origin of the Slavic people and languages, a context
in which they came across the Romanian issue, especially at a time when a Latinist
and Latinizing cultural offensive had been initiated by the Romanian scholars
in Transylvania.
Another reason why the correspondence of Kopitar and Dobrovský deserves
the attention of Romanian historiography is that it can serve as a “control instru-
ment” for the polemic between Kopitar and Petru Maior: the Viennese Slavicist
reiterated in his polemic writings many of the ideas espoused in his letters to
his Czech correspondent, in the same way that some of the arguments offered
by the latter would also be found in Kopitar’s polemic works.
̌
Translated from the Romanian by MARIA CRÃCIUN

Notes

1. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the
Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994).
2. Norbert Reiter, “Johann Thunmann in der Geschichte der Balkanologie,” in Wegenetz
europäischen Geistes: Wissenschaftszentren und geistige Wechselbeziehungen zwischen
Mittel- und Südeuropa vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, eds.
Richard Georg Plaschka and Karlheinz Mack (Vienna, 1983), 413–419; Maria
Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997). In Romanian historiography,
the merits of J. Thunmann were mentioned for the first time by Lazãr ªãineanu,
Istoria filologiei române. Cu o privire retrospectivã asupra ultimelor decenii (1870–1895):
Studii critice, 2nd edition (Bucharest, 1895), 31–33.
3. Briefwechsel zwischen Dobrovsky und Kopitar (1808–1828), ed. V. Jagić (Berlin, 1885);
Neue Briefe von Dobrovsky, Kopitar und anderen Süd- und Westslaven, ed. V. Jagić (Berlin,
1897). Two of the letters published by Jagić are completed by L. Pintar, “Zwei Briefe
Dobrovský’s an Kopitar,” Archiv für slavische Philologie 22 (1900): 623–630. References
to this correspondence are made in Miloš Weingart, “Joseph Dobrovský, the Patriarch
of Slavonic Studies,” Slavonic Review 7 (1928–1929): 665–666.
4. Ioan Bogdan, “Bartolomei Kopitar: O paginã din istoria filologiei române,” in Scrieri
alese, edited with an introductory study and notes by G. Mihãilã (Bucharest, 1968),
579–583, first published in Convorbiri literare (Iaºi) 27, 12 (1894): 1062–1072.
118 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XIX, NO. 1 (SPRING 2010)

5. See also Korrespondence Josefa Dobrovského, díl I–IV. K vydání upravil Adolf Patera,
V. A. Francev. V Praze, 1895–1913, which contains the correspondence of the
latter with other Slavic scholars of that time.
6. Petru Maior, Scripta minora: Ars literaria. Animadversiones. Epistolarium. Ultimae, ed.
Ioan Chindriº (Bucharest, 1997), 9.
7. I. Chindriº, the editor of one of the works of Petru Maior, published them in Ma-
ior, Scripta minora, 70–109, 114–152 (Maior’s writings) and 372–393 (Kopitar’s
reviews). The editor’s notes pp. 393–394. See also the remarks of the editor of
Kopitar’s correspondence, Jagić, Neue Briefe, p. 337. Maria Protase, “Petru Maior
polemist,” Studii ºi cercetãri ºtiinþifice, Filologie (Iaºi) 12, 2 (1961): 161–164; Maria
Protase, Petru Maior: un ctitor de conºtiinþe (Bucharest, 1973), 253–257.
8. ªãineanu, 40–41, 185.
9. Ovid Densusianu, “Cãrþi ºi manuscrise vechi romãnesci (în biblioteca lui B. Kopitar),”
Revista criticã-literarã (Iaºi) 2 (1894): 258–259.
10. Iorgu Iordan, ed., Istoria lingvisticii româneºti (Bucharest, 1978), 20, n. 8.
11. Maior, 393–394.
12. Rudolf Jagoditsch, “Die Lehrkanzel für slavische Philologie an der Universität Wien
1849–1949,” Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch 1 (1950): 9.
13. Jože Pogačnik, “Jernej Kopitar and the Issue of Austro-Slavism,” in Differenzen
und Interferenzen: Studien zur literarhistorischen Komparativistik bei den Südslaven
(Munich, 1989), 93–105; Jagoditsch, 10–11.
14. Stanislaus Hafner, “Geschichte der österreichischen Slawistik,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte
der Slawistik in nichtslawischen Ländern, eds. Joseph Hamm and Günther Wytrzens
(Vienna, 1985), 30; Jan Skutil, “Dobrovského ‘Institutiones’ a Kopitarova ‘panon-
ská teorie,’” in Pocta Josefu Dobrovskému: K demokratickým a intenacionalistickým tra-
dicím slavistiky (Prague, 1982), 33–40.
15. Hafner, 30–31.
16. Jagoditsch, 9–10.
17. Ibid., 7–8 (n. 10); Hafner, 31.
18. “. . . nunc cum Vlacho nato Molnarii Gramm. peragro [italics ours], lingua me
valde interessat,” Jagić, Briefwechsel, 307 (Vienna, 17 December 1812). The editor
of the “minor writings” of Petru Maior, Ioan Chindriº provides a somewhat tortu-
ous interpretation of the passage—probably adopted from the article of Ioan Bogdan
(which is not even quoted) and claims that Kopitar “was learning Romanian” with a
native Romanian “from the grammar of Ioan Molnar Piuariu.” Maior, 394 (n. 1).
19. Jagić, Neue Briefe, 237–239. This might refer to the same character who, a few months
later, was helping Kopitar read Molnar’s grammar. Still, he was mentioned as a “Vla-
cho nato,” while Gika was a “Grieche”; this does not mean that the student Gika was
not familiar with the Romanian language.
20. Walter Lukan, Bartholomäus Kopitar (1780–1844) und die europäische Wissenschaft
im Spiegel seiner Privatbibliothek (Ljubljana, 2000), 26.
21. Densusianu, 258–259.
22. Ibid. The works of G. ªincai, Samuil Micu, Petru Maior, Ienãchiþã Vãcãrescu, Radu
Tempea, Ioan Piuariu-Molnar, Ioan Bob, Ioan Alexi, Eftimie Murgu are mentioned.
 TANGENCIES • 119

23. Ibid.
24. Lukan, 26.
25. Ibid., 37–38. The author mentions in a separate chapter (“Griechen und Aromunen”)
the books of Aromanian scholars, such as Darbaris and Boiagi (Bojadschi, Bojadzi).
In the summer of 1888, Ioan Bogdan had an opportunity to investigate in Ljubljana
the Kopitar archive, where he found, among other notes, Romanian manuscripts and
books, a reference to Note româneºti ºi încercare de lexicon românesc and the plan of
a history of Moldavia by A. Hasdeu. See Bogdan, 583.
26. Weingart, 664–665. Briefly in Hafner, 28; Jagoditsch, 6.
27. Weingart, 669–672.
28. Ibid., 667–669; Věnceslava Bechyňová, “Josef Dobrovský a slovanské literatúry,”
in Pocta Josefu Dobrovskému, 42–44; Radu Mârza, “Istoria unui fals patriotic: ‘ma-
nuscrisele cehe’ ale lui Václav Hanka,” in Identitate ºi alteritate, 3, Studii de istorie
politicã ºi culturalã: Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, eds. Nicolae Bocºan, Sorin Mitu,
and Toader Nicoarã (Cluj-Napoca, 2002), 334–338.
29. Jagoditsch, 6.
30. Weingart, 673.
31. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 114–115, 122, 128, 367–368, 378–379. See also Maior, 388–389.
32. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 122–123, 137, 378–379, 656. The term Mährischen Walachen
(Wallachen in Mähren) created considerable confusion at the time, because some
scholars used it to designate the Moravian Slavs from the ethnographic region of
Valašsko, on the border with present-day Slovakia; see Miloslav Krbec and Věra
Michálková, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Josef Dobrovský und Karl Gottlob von Anton (Berlin,
1959), 13, 28.
33. Maior, 388–389.
34. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 150.
35. Pintar, 629.
36. Alexandru Graur and Lucia Wald, Scurtã istorie a lingvisticii, 2nd edition (Bucharest,
1965), 19–21, 26–27, 36–38.
37. Jagić, Neue Briefe, 337.
38. Ion Budai-Deleanu, De originibus populorum Transylvaniae. Despre originile popoarelor
din Transilvania, edited by Ladislau Gyémánt with an introduction by ªtefan Pascu
and Ladislau Gyémánt, notes and translation by Ladislau Gyémánt, 2 vols. (Bucharest,
1991).
39. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 119.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 111, 119, 260.
42. See the “Introduction” to Budai-Deleanu, 1: XLVIII–XLIX.
43. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 111, 377.
44. Maior, 387.
45. Ibid., 378, 388.
46. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 371–372.
47. Ibid.
48. Maior, 378, 388, 392–393.
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49. B. P. Hasdeu, “Stratu ºi substratu: Genealogia popoareloru balcanice,” Revista

Nouã (Bucharest) 5, 1–2 (1892): 5–27, also in Analele Academiei Române: Memoriile
Secþiunei Literare (Bucharest), 2nd ser., 14 (1892).
50. For the latter see Max Demeter Peyfuss, Chestiunea aromâneascã: Evoluþia ei de la ori-
gini pânã la pacea de la Bucureºti (1913) ºi poziþia Austro-Ungariei, trans. Nicolae-
ªerban Tanaºoca (Bucharest, 1994), 23–29. Kopitar’s reviews to Roja’s and Boiagi’s
books are commented on by Bogdan, 581. Molnar’s grammar was mentioned to
Dobrovský by his correspondent J. Ribay, in Korrespondence Josefa Dobrovského 4
(1913), 116, 120.
51. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 137, 197, 215, 298–299, 307, 309, 344, 365, 367–370. Dobrovský
also did not agree with Engel’s opinion, see Pintar, 626. Here Dobrovský also broad-
ly outlines the “Bulgarisation” of the Romanians. Pintar, 627–628.
52. “Dixit se nachholare literaturam, et inter alia non sine scandalo videre, Valachum
Majorem libatis vix literis superbire, et recensentem quem ante scivit ex me ipso
me esse . . .” Jagić, Briefwechsel, 367.
53. Ibid., 298.
54. Maior, 389–390.
55. Jagić, Briefwechsel, 299.
56. Ibid., 307.
57. Ibid., 313.
58. Maior, 386.
59. Radu Mârza, “Rusia, slavii ºi slavonismul în viaþa ºi opera lui Dimitrie Cantemir,”
Apulum (Alba Iulia) 41 (2004): 419–438.

Abstract
Bartolomeus Kopitar and Josef Dobrovský on Romanians

The paper discusses the references to Romanians found in the sizable correspondence between two
Slavic scholars, Bartolomeus (Jernej) Kopitar (1780–1844) and Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829),
otherwise little known in Romanian historiography. The former was an employee of the Library
of the Imperial Court (Hofbibliothek) (1810–1844), acting as both censor and editor of Slavic,
Greek and Romanian books (1811–1844). Dobrovský, considered to be a “patriarch of Slavonic
studies,” studied philosophy and theology at the University of Prague, joined the Jesuit order until
its dissolution by Joseph II, and taught in the theological seminary of Olomouc (Olmütz) and
as a private tutor for the family of Count Nostitz. Their exchanges concerning the Romanians
tacked issues ranging from the complex meaning of their ethnic name—in the general context of
the increasing interest in the origin of peoples and languages—to the matter of the (purely)
Latin character of the Romanian language.

Keywords
Slavic studies, Slavic scholars, correspondence, Romanian language, Slavic languages