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Recent years have seen the publication of two demotic Greek craft-manuals from the Middle Ages; or perhaps we might say from the Renaissance, for in both books the connections with Western European ideas and practices are clear. The first is a Portolano, a mariner's guide in the tradition stretching back at least to Hellenistic times, and brought up to date by successive generations of sea-captains until its form was crystallized in sixteenth-century Venetian editions. The other is a Shipwright's Manual dealing with the rigging of a sailing-ship, with the names and measures of all its sails and cordage.
To these is now added a third, a Gunner's Manual, shorter than the other texts, but in some ways more interesting. For although, as in the others, the material forces it to be repetitive and tabular, it is not so forbiddingly technical; and the beginning and the end have a greater freedom of matter which brings the language very close to the style and cadences of ordinary speech—a rarity in Renaissance Greek.
The manuscript in which it is found is catalogued as number 23 of the collection once formed by Archbishop Laud, and now in the Bodleian Library. The paper is uniform throughout, and the contents are as follows:
(i) foll. 1r–26r, A Shipwright's Manual. I hope to deal on another occasion with its relationship to the texts used by Delatte. The work is very corrupt and presents great difficulties. At the beginning are the words: ‘κύριε κατευόδωνε τὸν δοῦλόν σου Νικόλαον Σκούρα’.
1 Delatte, A., Les portulans Grecs (Liége, 1947).Google Scholar
2 Delatte, A., L'armement d'une caravelle grecque du XVIe siècle (Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati III 490–508 (Rome, 1946)).Google Scholar
3 Young, J. and Aitken, P. H., Catalogue of the MSS. in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1908), 396.Google Scholar
4 Vogel, M. and Gardthausen, V., Die griechischen Schreiber des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Leipzig, 1909), 456.Google Scholar
5 Εανθουδίδης, Σ., Κρητικὰ συμβόλαια εἰς τὴν Ἑνετοκρατίαν (Χριστιανικὴ Κρήτη I 1912), 1–288).Google Scholar
6 For the Stradiots, see Sathas, G. N., Documents inédits relatifs à l'histoire de la Grèce au Moyen Age, vol. VIII (Paris, 1888).Google Scholar For their language, see especially 460–541 (the poems of Manoli Blessi), and a recent work, Sala, G., La lingua degli Stradiotti nelle comedie e nelle poesie dialettali veneziane del sec. XVI (Atti 1st. Ven. (Classe Sc. Mor. Lett.) CIX (1950–1951), 141–188Google Scholar, CIX (1951–2), 291–343), which has a good glossary.
7 The idea seems to be that the same measure may be used for weak and strong culverins. For weak pieces one measurefull of three calibres is used: for strong pieces two part-measures are used, each of three-fifths of three calibres, altogether 3⅗ calibres. With heaped measures this is equivalent to the 3⅔ and a fingersbreadth mentioned above.
8 It is hoped that this Glossary notes all words from the Manual derived from Venetian and Italian, with some other words used in unusual forms and senses. ‘Byz.’ means that a word, whatever its ultimate derivation, is found in Byzantine authors; ‘Zac.’, applied to a word not universally used in Greece, means that it is recorded from Zacynthus. Principal works consulted have been:
Ἀνδριώτης, Ν. Π., Ἐτυμολογικὸ λεξικὸ τῆς κοινῆς Νεοελληνικῆς (Athens, 1951).Google Scholar
Boerio, G., Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (Venice, 1829).Google Scholar
Cange, C. Du, Glossarium mediae et infimae graecitatis (Breslau, 1891).Google Scholar
Χατʒιδάκης, Γ. Ν.Μεσαιωνικὰ καὶ νέα ἐλληνικά (Athens, 1905–1907)Google Scholar, abbrev. MNE.
Ζώης, Λ. Χ., Λεξικὸν φιλολογικὸν καὶ ἱστορικὸν Ζακύνθου (Zacynthus, 1898)Google Scholar (A–M only. A new and completed edition is promised.)
and various Italian dictionaries.
