Taisiya Leber (Gutenberg University of Mainz)
This paper deals with the history of Greek printing in the Early Modern Period in the Ottoman Empire and South-Eastern and Eastern Europe at the end of the 16th and at the beginning of the 18th century. As the Ottoman Constantinople never became the real centre of Greek printing, most of Greek books were printed outside of the Ottoman Empire, primarily in Italian cities. Less is known about the attempts of printing in Greek in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which took place at the end of the 16th century under the influence of Greek hierarchs from the Ottoman Empire. In 1627, Patriarch Kyrillos Loukaris finally succeeded in establishing a Greek printing press in Constantinople; however, it had to be closed after several months because of the intervention by the Ottoman authorities. This failure motivated Greek hierarchs to look for other printing possibilities , at first in Muscovy, and later in Wallachia and Moldavia, Ottoman tributary states. In the second half of the 17th century, Iaşi and Bucharest became the important centres of Greek printing. What were the contents of Greek printed books? Where do we draw the line between centres and peripheries in this transregional Transottoman context? I address these questions in this presentation.