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Ivan SprogisLatvian ethnographer and archivist, completed a course at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy.
Country:
 Latvia |
Content:
- Biography of Ivan Sprogis
- Contributions
- Transcription and Political Views
- Additional Research
- Publications
Biography of Ivan Sprogis
Ivan Yakovlevich Sprogis (born in 1835) was a Latvian ethnographer and archivist who graduated from the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy. He worked as an archivist at the Vilnius Central Archive. In 1868, he published "Monuments of Latvian Folk Creativity," which introduced Russian readers to Latvian songs translated into Russian. The songs were grouped into four sections: a) water, air, land; b) plant objects; c) objects from the animal kingdom; d) humans.
Contributions
One of Sprogis' major works is the "Geographical Dictionary of the Ancient Zemaitija Land Based on the Act Books of the 16th and 17th Centuries of the Russian Land Court," which was published starting from 1888. Another significant reference work is the "Index to Acts and Documents Preserved in the Vilnius Central Archive," which is essential for studying the history of Western Russian and Lithuanian.
Transcription and Political Views
Passionate about the idea of transcribing Lithuanian and Latvian texts using Russian letters, Sprogis opposed the development of local popular writing for Lithuanians. However, his political views did not prevent him from discovering three documents of Western Russian legal writing, which showed that oaths were made in Lithuanian in court in 1651, 1701, and 1750. The texts were recorded in Latin letters ("Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences," IV, 1896).
Additional Research
In the prefaces to various volumes of the "Acts of the Vilnius Archive Committee," Sprogis included his research on the local community court. In the indexes, he attempted to explain the names of places and persons of Lithuanian origin from the Latvian language.
Publications
Around 100 small articles by Sprogis on local archaeology, bibliography, and church history are included in the "Vitebsk Provincial Gazette."
