Цитаты и ссылки на источники в гуманистической греческо-латинской лексикографии (Анри Этьенн и его предшественники)

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This article considers an important aspect of the history of the 16th century lexicography, namely the development of the practice of citing primary sources in the dictionary entry and, as a result, the significant increase in the accuracy of references. These innovations reflected the general trend in humanist philology to rely on primary sources when studying vocabulary: only words and meanings attested in the works of classical authors were eligible to be included into Greek or Latin dictionaries. For Greek lexicography, this task was fully accomplished by Henri Estienne in his “Thesaurus Graecae linguae” (1572). The article summarises the history of this dictionary and discusses some of Estienne’s critical statements concerning his predecessors’ lexicographical work, which followed the Greek-Latin vocabulary (1478) by Johannes Crastonus, and explaining the qualitative difference between his “Thesaurus” and traditional Greek-Latin lexica. Estienne paid special attention to these issues in the preface to his “Thesaurus” as well as in “Epistola … de suae typographiae statu” (1569). The practice of attribution and the search for primary sources were extremely important for Estienne’s project; in this regard, he followed the views on lexicography developed by his father R. Estienne during his work on the “Latinae linguae thesaurus” (1531, 1543). H. Estienne contrasted his dictionary, which was based on scrupulous reading of Greek literature and provided with regular references to primary sources and scientific works, to numerous Lexica full of mistakes and mutilated quotations, lacking reliable bibliography and, therefore, largely anonymous. His assessment, however, requires critical evaluation, as despite the undoubted advantages and novelty of Estienne’s opus magnum, his lexicographical views and the project of “Thesaurus” itself seem to reflect the trends present in humanist Greek lexicography since at least the second quarter of the 16th century. The lexicographic principles advocated by the author of “Thesaurus” had already been proclaimed and implemented (although by no means as consistently and thoroughly as by Estienne) by J. Toussain, C. Gessner, H. Junius as well as other authors who were however never called by name in Estienne’s critical assessment.