Moravcsik, Gyula

Moravcsik, Gyula 

Born Jan. 29, 1892, in Budapest; died there Dec. 10, 1972. Hungarian philologist and Byzantine specialist. Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1945).

Moravcsik was responsible for the scholarly publication of a number of Byzantine texts, including Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De administrando imperio (1949). Moravcsik’s works deal primarily with Byzantine-Hungarian relations. He created a method for studying in Byzantine texts those names and terms (linguistic remnants) that refer to the Hungarians, Avars, Proto-Bulgars, Pechenegs, Polovtsi, and other peoples (which for convenience he designated as Turkic). This was the subject of his principal work, Byzantinoturcica (parts 1–2, 2nd ed., 1958), which provides a catalog of all Byzantine sources that mention the above-named peoples.

Moravcsik won the Kossuth Prize in 1949. He was a corresponding member of a number of foreign academies.

REFERENCE

Acta antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 1962, vol. 10, fascs. 1–3, pp. 295–313. (Contains bibliography.)