Studiosus ad scribendum: For the 75th Anniversary of Vladimir I. Mazhuga

Abstract

The article deals with the biography and the academic merits of Vladimir I. Mazhuga (born 15 of April, 1949), a prominent modern Russian specialist in medieval studies and Leading Researcher of the Saint Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. A disciple of some great Russian scholars (in different times his masters were Matvey Gukovskiy (1898-1971), Alexandra Lublinskaya (1902-1980), Maria Sergeenko (1891-1987) and Elena Skrzhinskaya (1894-1981)), Vladimir Mazhuga was a tutor of some modern medievalists like Pavel Krylov, Andrey Kasatov, Alexandra Chirkova, Andrey Karnachev, Ekaterina Denisova, Piotr Shamaro, Gleb Schmidt and some others. The main spheres of Vladimir Mazhugas academic interests are Latin paleography, Diplomatics of medieval acts and Codicology of Latin manuscripts. He studied and connected with the cultural context of the Latin Medieval West some important medieval manuscript materials from the Saint Petersburg collections. Between them were the manuscript versions of the works written by Gregory of Tours, Paul Orosius, Hrabanus Maurus and some other medieval writers. His studies in these spheres were logically connected with some problems of linguistics studied by him (history of Ancient grammar and textbooks, biographies of Roman grammatists, historical phonetics etc.). In the same time, he dealt with some other spheres like history of medieval culture and history of Roman law (mainly of the medieval period). His main studies in medieval culture are about the symbology of Medieval City and the role of the Christian Church as a main custodian of Ancient Culture inheritance in the Middle Ages. As a historian of Roman law Vladimir Mazhuga worked over some important Saint Petersburg medieval Latin manuscripts of Roman law texts (like Justinian Institutions and Digesta) and he studied the theoretical works of famous medieval Italian jurists like John Bassianus (died before 1194) and Bartolus de Saxoferrato (1313-1357). In the same time V Mazhuga researched some problems of Latin legal terminology, which was made using the methodology of linguistics. Vladimir Mazhuga's studies in history of Saint Petersburg School of medieval studies must be specially emphasized because he continues some best traditions of this School like scholar and tutor in the same time. He continues to work hard and fruitfully, so the citied conclusions about Mazhuga's academic merits and inheritance have a previous character.