# Moscopole: the city that traded, taught and translated

> The Markdown equivalent of https://mariuscomper.uk/moscopole/en/ — the same
> thesis, evidence and limits. Ediția română:
> https://mariuscomper.uk/moscopole/

## In short, in one minute

Moscopole — Moschopolis in Greek, Voskopoja in Albanian today — was an
18th-century commercial and educational centre in the Ottoman Balkans,
inhabited overwhelmingly by Aromanians, speakers of a Romance language
related to Romanian. Wealth came from livestock, wool and long-distance
trade; the profits built churches, kept schools and paid for a printing
press — the second in the empire after Constantinople. Greek was the
language of schooling and print. Here too appeared the first lexicons
setting Aromanian beside Greek, Albanian and Bulgarian. After the assaults
of 1769 and 1788 and the shifting of trade routes, people, money and books
scattered towards Vienna, Buda, Venice and the Romanian principalities. The
later bond with Romania runs through merchants, teachers, books and
schools.

## A face from the town press

Gregory of Durrës, who supervised the Moscopole press in its early years,
appears in an engraving published in a book printed in the town in 1742
(period engraving, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons).

## One city, three circuits

- **Trade** tied the town to Venice (via Durrës, from the 17th century), to
  Central Europe (after the treaties of 1718 and 1739) and to
  Constantinople and the surrounding fairs.
- **Schooling** meant the New Academy (from 1744), the press (from 1731,
  about 20 known titles) and a celebrated library.
- **Languages** met in the Greek of school and print, in the Aromanian,
  Albanian and Bulgarian of the streets, and in the lexicons of 1770, 1794
  and 1797.
- **Dispersal** moved the network to Vienna and other cities; the Bucharest
  link — committee, schools, books — is documented after 1860.

## The spine of the years

- **Around 1630** — the monastery of Saint John the Baptist shows the
  settlement growing.
- **Before 1700** — an organised Greek school at work.
- **1713** — statute of 22 articles, 12 elected representatives; 13–17
  guilds.
- **1715–1760** — nine new churches.
- **1731** — the press begins (reported variants: 1720, 1735); about 20
  titles before 1760.
- **1744 / 1750** — the New Academy, then the Hellenic Phrontistery.
- **1769** — the first great assault; sustained emigration begins.
- **1770** — Kavalliotis's Protopiria, a trilingual lexicon of about 1,170
  words (Vienna or Venice, authors differ).
- **1788** — the second great assault.
- **1794–1813** — the books of the diaspora: Daniil (1794, 1802), Ucuta
  (Vienna, 1797), Roja (Pest, 1808), Boiagi (Vienna, 1813).
- **1862–1864** — the Macedo-Romanian committee in Bucharest (1863); the
  first Romanian school in Macedonia, at Târnova (2 July 1864).
- **Today** — Voskopoja, a village in south-eastern Albania with painted
  18th-century churches.

## Four names for the same people?

**Aromanians** are the Romance-language speakers south of the Danube;
**Vlach** is the old outward name; **Moscopolitan** means a person from
Moscopole; the bond with the **Romanians** north of the Danube tightened in
the 19th century through schools, books and cultural societies.

## Schools, press and languages

Wealth came from livestock, wool and long-distance trade through itinerant
merchants (*pragmatefti*). The New Academy (1744) offered one of the most
advanced courses open to a Christian in the Balkans. The press — the second
in the empire after Constantinople (1627) — issued about 20 known titles.
Aromanian, Greek, Albanian and Bulgarian were spoken in the streets; Greek
ruled in school and print. The Protopiria (1770) and Daniil's Introductory
Teaching (1794, 1802) recorded the tongues precisely to serve Greek
schooling: the verse preface calls on other-tongued speakers to prepare “to
become Romans”, that is, Greeks by culture.

## The road to Romania

**Merchants**: the Sina family of Moscopole built a bank in Vienna second
only to the Rothschilds; Simeon Sina (1753–1822) and his sons were
ennobled. The Mocioni, Nako and Gojdu families became landowners and
politicians in the Banat and Crișana. **Books**: Petru Maior knew
Kavalliotis's lexicon through Thunmann (Leipzig, 1774); Roja printed at
Pest in 1808 (in Romanian at Craiova, 1867); Boiagi's Grammar (Vienna,
1813) was reprinted for readers in the Romanian lands. **Schools**: the
Macedo-Romanian committee (Bucharest, 1863), the first school at Târnova
(1864), a growing network after 1878 — with the suspicion of
contemporaries kept in the story.

## Dispersal and what stayed behind

The assaults of 1769 and 1788, the moving of trade roads and the departure
of wealthy families for the Habsburg empire. Accounts differ widely on the
peak population (about 20,000–70,000 souls); this page chooses no figure.
The frescoed 18th-century churches survive today.

## Why it still matters

For Greek culture, Moscopole is a peak of the Enlightenment in the
empire's European provinces. For Aromanians and Romanians, the town proves
that a Romance-speaking community kept pace with its century through school
and print; the books of the Moscopolitans rank among the oldest written
records of Aromanian.

## Established / debated

Established: a Christian, majority-Aromanian town; the New Academy (1744);
a press from the 1730s; Greek as the school language; assaults in 1769 and
1788; documented links with the Romanian lands (1863–1864). Debated: the
peak population; the press year (1731 / 1720 / 1735); the Protopiria's
place of printing (Vienna / Venice); the 1764 four-language version; who
struck the town.

## Sources

1. Barka 2022, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies 13(3) —
   https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/mcs/article/download/7899/7923?inline=1
2. Lascu 2016, Annals of the Academy of Romanian Scientists 8(2) —
   https://www.aos.ro/wp-content/anale/IVol8Nr2Art.7.pdf
3. Ciorogariu 2023, Society and Politics 17(2) —
   https://socpol.uvvg.ro/docs/2023-2/1.%20Ciorogariu.pdf
4. Lascu 2017, Revue Roumaine d'Histoire LVI —
   http://rrh.ro/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/04rrh_2017_Lascu.pdf
5. Council of Europe, Doc. 7728 (1997) —
   https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/X2H-Xref-ViewHTML.asp?FileID=7661&lang=en
6. Koukoudis, Vlachs.gr (checked secondary lead) —
   https://www.vlachs.gr/en/table-of-contents/moschopolis-the-glory-days-1700-1769