Sir Ellis Hovell Minns (1874-1953)Author(s): Elizabeth HillSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 32, No. 78 (Dec., 1953), pp. 236-238Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204522 .

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Obituaries

SIR ELLIS HOVELL MINNS

(1874-1953)

In an age when narrow specialisation necessarily tends to segregate scholars rather than to unite them, Sir Ellis Minns was a rare exception. He spent a lifetime at Cambridge University, devoted to the wide and

never superficial study of archaeology, palaeography, iconography, biblio?

graphy, the classics, the Slavs, and uncommon languages; in each of these

subjects he gained an international reputation as an erudite expert. The

complexity and strenuousness of modern academic life reduce the leisure of

most of us to a minimum, but this remarkable man, whose correspondence, it is hoped, will one day be published, always found time to establish and maintain links with specialist scholars who wrote to him from all parts of the world or came to visit him at his home in Wordsworth Grove or in his

College rooms. These rooms, lined with rare books and icons, he had

occupied for sixty years, first as an undergraduate, then as research

graduate, Fellow, College Librarian, as President of Pembroke (1928-47) and finally as Senior Fellow of the College. Thus he became a rare link in the world of scholars and a figure beloved for wisdom, generosity and

simple humanity. Learning sat lightly on him, for his wayward sense of humour made fun of the pompous; his scrupulous honesty acknowledged any help or kindness received; his shrewdness was quick to assess the

scholarship of others and to expose the bogus; he scared off the superficial abruptly and encouraged the serious generously, treating the young and the experienced with equal respect. Behind the shyness and wit and erudite jokes and whimseys was a merciless, accurate, objective scholar, alert in all his fields of interest and moving with the times.

In the 1890's, when Slavonic Studies were not yet in existence at

Cambridge, Ellis Minns, a First Class graduate in Classics (1897), had the vision to learn Russian in Paris under Professor Boyer, while studying at the Ecole des Chartes. The Craven Fund had made it possible for him to become the first serious British research-scholar to study in Russian. He was to investigate the vast archaeological, ethnological and historical material in the region between the Carpathians and the Caucasus, hitherto untouched by West European scholars, and, as he believed, to equip himself for a Slavonic post at the University of Cambridge. He mastered Old Church Slavonic and Russian as few Englishmen have done and he

delighted to speak Russian elegantly and with astonishing correctness to his dying day. His monumental researches secured him a Fellowship at Pembroke College, but, despite his rare qualifications in Slavonic, the

University preferred to appoint a lesser scholar, who held the post for

thirty-six years. He never forgot this crushing disappointment, but sub? limated it admirably with Christian humility. For thirteen years he worked on the material he had collected in Russia. It resulted in his magnum opus? Scythians and Greeks (1913), the great classic on the subject, which is still

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OBITUARIES 237

quoted, among others, by Soviet scholars in their learned periodicals and

Academy publications. As Lecturer in Palaeography (1906) and Disney Professor of Archaeology

(from 1927), Sir Ellis Minns contributed to the growth of the Cambridge School of Archaeology and Anthropology. But although deflected in his career from exclusively Slavonic specialisation, he nevertheless continued to work in that field. Realising the need for European scholarship to

incorporate the scholarship of the Slavonic world, he always believed in the development of Slavonic Studies in our University. The Cambridge Slavonic Department will be particularly grateful for his patronage and

generosity in presenting his famous collection of Slavonic books to the Cam?

bridge libraries, and for his encouragement of younger Slavists. Among Slavists abroad it was widely assumed that he was the first Professor of Slavonic Studies at Cambridge. This indeed he was by merit, if not in title.

In the Slavonic world he was the best-known British Slavist, admired

primarily as a Classical archaeologist, but also as a Slavonic palaeo? grapher, as the original discoverer that St Cyril really knew Hebrew, as the promoter of the study of Russian literary history by editing Alexander Bruckner's work as long ago as 1908, and as the leading British expert in

iconography and the creator of the English terminology of that subject by his translation of Kondakov's classic work on the Russian icon. The Slavonic world revered Sir Ellis Minns as honorary doctor of Greek letters in the University of St Vladimir, Kiev, as member of the Imperial Russian

Archaeological Society, as member of the Society of History and Anti?

quities in Odessa, as corresponding member of the Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture and of the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute, and as honorary member of the Kondakov Institute in Prague.

Nor did his Slavonic interests shrink with the political schism; staunchly British and opposed to the Communist creed, he nevertheless remained fair-minded in following and assessing the scholarship of his colleagues in the U.S.S.R. and the satellite countries.

During the First World War, his zest for languages and sense of humour were well-expressed in a limerick written while he was working with Professor N. B. Jopson in the Uncommon Languages Department of the British Censorship:

Every man in our room is a freak, Ten tongues are the least he can speak,

And can read in a score; But we two and no more

Do Bulgarian written in Greek.

In the Second World War his knowledge was placed at the service of the

Admiralty. It was Sir Ellis Minns, too, who proposed the wording of the Russian inscription on the Sword of Stalingrad, presented by King George VI and now in the Stalingrad Museum of Defence.

The Minns Volume, Eurasia Septentrionalis Antigua (Helsinki, 1934), greatly delighted him. It was a scholarly tribute to him on his sixtieth

birthday from the world's leading archaeologists.

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238 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Honours in his own country also came to him. Sir Ellis Minns was a

Fellow of the British Academy, twice President of the British Antiquarians and Sanders Reader in Bibliography, and he was knighted for his scholastic eminence in 1947.

His precious Slavonic books are now in the Cambridge University Library and the Slavonic Faculty Library, and his icons and books on art in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The material props of a great scholar on this earth are dispersed; we shall no longer see him showing off his treasures, or walking with decorum in his doctor's robes on Congregation days, or

hurrying along the corridors of the University Library in an alpaca jacket, or riding somewhat precariously on his old-fashioned high bicycle. Next Christmas we shall not receive his self-made illuminated card in Old Church Slavonic, in either Glagolitic or Cyrillic script; we shall not be able to turn to him for his views or advice; but his legend will grow, and his

memory will abide. Beraan IlaMflTb!

Cambridge Elizabeth Hill

WLADYSLAW STUDNICKI

1867-1953

During the post-war years of crowded corridors and class-rooms in the

School, one- of the problems which our genial librarian never quite suc? ceeded in coping with was the 'deafness' of a diminutive elderly gentleman in an almost equally aged coat with black lambskin collar, who persisted in using the reading-room on days when every place had to be kept for our

regular students. As the person responsible for Polish studies, I had to take the matter in hand and explain to our persistent guest what it was all about. This happened more than once. He would sit down, look at me with mild eyes, listen to what I had to say, or seem to, and then begin: 'The thing is ...' In time I gave up.

For sixty years he had been doing the same thing?in a dozen capitals of

Europe. Studnicki's passing makes one realise afresh that here was an almost exact contemporary of Paderewski, of Dmowski and of Pilsudski; a man who knew well people who remembered the great year of Napoleon's march to Moscow; who must have heard much, from people who knew

them, about Mazzini, and Marx and Cavour. Apart from Solski and Lutoslawski he must be 'the last of the Mohicans', so far as Poland is con? cerned. Yet, save for one short venture, he never held public office; he never appeared as the representative of his country officially; he was known for his books, pamphlets and articles, yes?and for his visits, which

might prove to be very embarrassing. Unselfish in all he did, independent in his thinking, untiring in his

efforts to understand issues and to present them wherever needed, he was

throughout a patriot for Poland and for all down-trodden peoples. His

only weapon was the pen, for he did not shine on the platform; and what he wrote was so full of facts, figures and ideas as to be innocent of rhetoric

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