Alexander Helladius (, 1686-?) was an 18th-century
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
scholar and humanist from
Larissa
Larissa (; , , ) is the capital and largest city of the Thessaly region in Greece. It is the fifth-most populous city in Greece with a population of 148,562 in the city proper, according to the 2021 census. It is also the capital of the Larissa ...
, who studied at the
Greek College of
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
and published several works on the Greek language and tradition.
Life and work
He was a student of the
Corfiote
Corfu ( , ) or Kerkyra (, ) is a Greece, Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands; including its Greek islands, small satellite islands, it forms the margin of Greece's northwestern frontier. The island is part of the Corfu (regio ...
hierodeacon A hierodeacon (Greek: Ἱεροδιάκονος, ''Ierodiákonos''; Slavonic: ''Ierodiakón''), sometimes translated "deacon-monk", in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and all other Churches that follow Byzantine Rite is a monk who has been ordained a ...
Frangiskos Prosalentis. He arrived in England in 1703 as the escort of
Lord William Paget
Captain Lord William Paget (1 March 1803 – 17 May 1873) was a British naval commander and Whig politician.
Biography
Paget was the second son of Field Marshal Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, by his first wife Lady Caroline Elizabeth, ...
, ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
. He saw himself as a genuine heir of an unbroken classical tradition and tried to combat Western misconceptions of Hellenism, while his excellent knowledge of the Greek language secured him valuable contacts, especially at the
University of Altdorf
The University of Altdorf () was a university in Altdorf bei Nürnberg, a small town outside the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. It was founded in 1578 and received university privileges in 1622 and was closed in 1809 by Maximilian I Joseph of Ba ...
. In 1712 he published in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...
an older Greek grammar by
Bessarion Makris to which he appended a fictitious dialogue countering the arguments in favour of the
Erasmian pronunciation
Ancient Greek has been pronounced in various ways by those studying Ancient Greek literature in various times and places. This article covers those pronunciations; the modern scholarly reconstruction of its ancient pronunciation is covered in An ...
of
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
. Later, in ''Status Praesens'', he counters the arguments of some Western scholars that the contemporary Greeks spoke a barbarian language (''barbarograeca'') and could not understand ancient Greek. Helladius sought to show the unbroken continuity of the culture of the Greek people and was adamant in his opposition to the translation of the
New Testament
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...
into the vernacular.
Known works
*Status Praesens Ecclesiae Graecae: In Quo Etiam Causae Exponuntur Cur Graeci Moderni Novi Testamenti (1714)
See also
*
Greek scholars in the Renaissance
The migration waves of Byzantine Greeks, Byzantine Greek scholars and émigrés in the period following the fall of Constantinople, end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 are considered by many scholars key to the revival of Classics, Greek stu ...
References
External links
1686 births
Greek Renaissance humanists
Writers from Larissa
18th-century Greek writers
18th-century Greek educators
Year of death missing
Expatriates in the Kingdom of Great Britain
18th-century scholars from the Holy Roman Empire
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