Cyrillic Manuscripts Research Articles

От электронной публикации средневековой рукописи до больших данных, или Что знает искусственный интеллект о начале славянской книжности

The article describes the preparation of machine-readable linguistic resources based on medieval Slavic written monuments, as well as their use in systems for automated and automatic processing of large text data. The history of this area of applied Paleoslavistics is briefly shown on the example of several projects for the creation of electronic publications, collections and corpora of Slavic manuscripts. Particular attention is paid to the stages of development and the material of the Manuscript historical corpus (mansucripts.ru), which contains marked-up transliterations of Glagolitic and transcriptions of Cyrillic manuscripts of the 10th–15th centuries, as well as specialized tools for processing, demonstrating and analyzing non-standard graphic and spelling features and structure of texts. The labor-intensive and complex process of preparing copies of manuscripts and marking them up, unfortunately, is still the only way to convert a graphic image into a machine-readable form. It is noted that the tagged collections created on the basis of Slavic manuscripts make it possible to use the latter both for creating models for recognizing manuscripts in existing HTR systems and for developing new specialized tools for recognizing and analyzing Slavic manuscript heritage.

The reference apparatus in the bible of Matthew the tenth (1502–1507)

In the second half of the 15th century, a reference apparatus began to be actively developed in Cyrillic manuscripts. This apparatus included prefaces and tables of contents to parts of books, as well as headers, footers, and marginal instructions containing the numbers and titles of chapters, footnotes, and glosses. It served as an aid for navigating a large volume. At the beginning of the 16th century, Matthew the Tenth compiled a Bible while living in Vilnius and Suprasl Monastery. A scribe not only made extensive use of those elements of the reference apparatus that were included in the manuscripts before him, but also significantly developed the reference system for numbering verses, chapters, and pericopes of the biblical text. Numbering became one of the main tools in Matthew the Tenth’s reference apparatus, and up to three or four different numberings could be used on one folio. In an effort to differentiate them, Matthew the Tenth made use of different colors of ink and unusual numbering systems, including both numerals from non-Cyrillic alphabets (Greek and Glagolitic) and numeral systems of his own invention. An additional tool in the reference apparatus of Matthew the Tenth was the system of footnotes which are placed in the margins and use special signs. For this, the scribe used his own system of footnotes which was designed on the basis of musical notation signs.The Bible of Matthew the Tenth, the predecessor to the biblical editions of Francysk Skaryna, shows how quickly and in what an unusual manner the reference apparatus was developed in the late 15th – first half of the 16th century.

Collection of Russian manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Library and Museum

A significant part of Russian handwritten monuments, due to various circumstances, ended up outside of Russia. The lack of detailed descriptions, and often even information about such rarities, especially those that ended up in private collections, creates certain difficulties in conducting special studies of the Russian manuscript heritage, results of such works may turn out to be incomplete without taking into account information about “emigrant” monuments. The processes of accumulation of such monuments in private Western collections also deserve special attention: they allow us to identify the general patterns of the emergence of interest in Russian medieval and Old Believer art, to trace the ways in which monuments came to Europe and America from Russia in connection with the tragic events of the 20th century. The object of our study is a little-known collection of Russian-by-origin manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Library and Museum in Dublin (Ireland). The collection’s founder, British-American mining magnate Alfred Chester Beatty, collected Russian manuscripts during the interwar period. Apparently, the interest in Russia was due to the influence on Beatty of the largest bibliophiles in Western Europe of that time, the concession business in the Soviet Union and connections with the firm A la Vieille Russie, which was engaged in the trade of Russian antiques. The second part of the article contains detailed descriptions of the monuments of the collection. The need is caused by the fact that the only published catalog of Cyrillic manuscripts in the British and Irish collections (1988), although being the first to introduce them into academic use, does not define the material of the codices, their origin, it provides extremely extensive dating.

Digitizing Cyrillic Manuscripts for the Historical Dictionary of the Serbian Language Using Handwritten Text Recognition Technology

The paper explores the possibilities of using information technologies based on the principles of machine learning and artificial intelligence in the process of digitizing Cyrillic manuscripts for the purposes of creating a historical dictionary of the Serbian language. Empirical research is based on the use of the Transkribus software platform in the creation of a model for automatic text recognition of the manuscripts by Gavril Stefanović Venclović, the most significant and prolific Serbian cultural enthusiast of the 18th century, whose extensive manuscript legacy in Serbian vernacular represents the most significant primary source for the historical dictionary of the Serbian language of this period. Following the results of conducted research, it can be concluded that the process of digitizing Cyrillic manuscripts for the purposes of creating a historical dictionary of the Serbian language can be significantly accelerated using Transkribus by creating specific and generic models for automatic text recognition. The advantage of automatic text recognition compared to the traditional methods is particularly reflected in the possibility of continuous improvement of the performance of specific and generic models in accordance with the progress of the transcription process and the increase in the amount of digitized text that can be used to train a new version of the model.

The 1636 Ruthenian Translation of the Czech Lucidarius (*Olomouc, 1622): Interpolations in an Ukrainian Manuscript Copy of the Early 19th Century

The article focuses on the textual history of the Ruthenian translation of the Czech book entitled Lucidář (Lucidarius), a medieval encyclopedic treatise consisting of the student’s questions and the teacher’s answers, which was most widespread in the Cyrillic manuscript tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland). This translation was made in 1636 from a non-extant edition (*Olomouc, 1622) and is represented by at least nine manuscript copies: five of them have been published and other four still remain practically unknown (kept at St. Petersburg and Yaroslavl). The latest manuscript copy of the early 19th century, which is of Ukrainian origin and is now kept in the collection of T. V. Kibalchich (St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Main Collection of the Manuscript Books (f. 550), Q.I.910, 21 f.), contains interpolations from three printed sources: Ioannikiy Galyatovsky’s Ključ razuměnija (Kyiv, 1659 or Lviv, 1663 or 1665), Cyril Tranquillion-Stavrovetsky’s Zercalo bogoslovija (Pochaiv, 1618 or Univ, 1692), andthe Chronicle by Dimitry of Rostov (Moscow, 1799–1800). These interpolations testify to the textual development of the Ruthenian translation of the Czech Lucidarius at the very end of its manuscript tradition. In the manuscript, the sources of these interpolations are explicitaly named without indicating the year and place of publication. The present article aims to establish the methods applied by an anonymous scribe to his printed sources and to identify the editions used by the compiler.

New Texts in Manuscripts of the 1636 Ruthenian Translation of the Czech Lucidarius (*Olomouc, 1622)

The article focuses on the textual criticism of the Ruthenian translation of the Czech book entitled Lucidář (Lucidarius), a medieval encyclopedic treatise consisting of the student’s questions and the teacher’s answers, which was most widespread in the Cyrillic manuscript tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland). This translation was made in 1636 from a non-extant edition (*Olomouc, 1622) and is represented by at least nine manuscript copies: five of them have been published and other four still remain practically unknown (kept St. Petersburg and Yaroslavl). All of them are involved in this study aiming to identify cases of a complete substitution of original (translated) texts of the teacher’s answers to some of the student’s questions with new texts. They reflect a critical approach of Ruthenian copyists to the ideas about the world set forth in Lucidarius translated from Czech. The process of replacing some of the texts went on, increasing in extend, during the 18th–early 19th centuries and affected more than half of all the manuscripts under consideration. Consequently, this Ruthenian translation of the Czech Lucidarius is to be characterized as an open textual tradition, since its content was partially (but regularly) adapted by scribes to meet their own cultural needs.

A Fragment of a Menologium in a Lectionary Gospel from the National Library of Poland

This article analyses a fragment of a menologium in the lectionary Gospel BOZ 154, a fourteenth-century Cyrillic work preserved in ten parchment sheets in the collection of the Zamojski Family Estate Library of the National Library in Warsaw. Until now, the monument has been cited only in catalogues of Cyrillic manuscripts kept in Polish archives and libraries. The authors of the article aim to introduce the document into scholarly circulation and disseminate knowledge about it. The discovery and examination of Cyrillic manuscripts found both in Russia and other countries has long been the task of researchers representing various scholarly disciplines. The article aims to provide a palaeographic description of a calendar fragment and characterise its contents. The research aims to reveal the Typicon that influenced the appearance of the menologium. The observations made reveal traces of the traditions of the Great Orthodox Church Typicon and the Studite Typicon. The article seek to place this fragment among calendars of this type, define a group of Gospels that, as regards holidays included there, are closest to it, and thus prepare a starting point for further research aimed at revealing a possible “relationship” with other works. This aim is achieved by comparing the contents of the fragment with the content of calendars discussed by O. V. Loseva in her extensive work Russian Menologia of the 11th–14th Centuries, which includes information about almost two hundred copies of Gospels, lectionaries, and liturgical collections. Comparative analysis makes it possible to select a group of calendars with a set of holidays which are similar to that included in the menologium under analysis. The article is accompanied by a list of holidays included in BOZ 154, together with data on evangelical pericopes for particular days.

РУСЬКОМОВНЫЙ ПЕРЕВОД 1636 ГОДА ЧЕШСКОГО ЛУЦИДАРИЯ (*ОЛОМОУЦ, 1622)

The article focuses on problems of chronology and textual development in the Ruthenian translation of the Czech Lucidarius. This translation is known from five published and one unpublished Cyrillic manuscript copies written between the second quarter of the 16th and the early 19th century. A new explanation of the information contained in these manuscripts regarding the time of the translation and the dating of the Czech original is proposed. Particular attention is paid to establishing the initial structure and sequence of the texts in the Ruthenian translation, which reflect its non-extant Czech printed source.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE CYRILLIC MANUSCRIPT “ORTUS ANIME” (1567), A TRANSCRIPT OF “RAJ DUŠE” BY NIKOLA DEŠIĆ: WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT IT AND HOW TO PROCEED

U radu se iznose najvažnije informacije o ćiriličnome rukopisu „Ortus anime“ iz 1567. godine. Milan Ratković priopćio je 1967. da je riječ o doslovnome prijepisu „Raja duše“ Nikole Dešića iz 1560. godine. Na korpusu koji je sastavljen od biblijskih čitanja relativizira se i precizira Ratkovićeva tvrdnja te se određuju i obrazlažu potencijalni smjerovi budućih istraživanja: odnos s „Rajem duše“ i „Bernardinovim lekcionarom“ (1495), (ne)stabilnost nekih grafijskih elemenata te dubrovački elementi u okviru evidentnoga štokaviziranja.

ФОНД «БІБЛІОТЕКА БОГОСЛОВСЬКОЇ АКАДЕМІЇ» ВІДДІЛУ РУКОПИСІВ ЛЬВІВСЬКОЇ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ НАУКОВОЇ БІБЛІОТЕКИ УКРАЇНИ імені В. СТЕФАНИКА: ІСТОРІЯ СТВОРЕННЯ ТА ТЕМАТИЧНИЙ СКЛАД

The article presents the history of formation and thematic composition of the manuscript collection of the fond “Library of the Theological Academy”, which is stored in the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. It was created in the late 40s of the twentieth century mostly from manuscript books of libraries of Greek-Catholic Institutions of higher education and Societies in Lviv — the Theological Academy, the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary, the Studion Society, the Theological Scientific Society, as well as from individual manuscripts of the Andrey Sheptytskyi National Museum, the Prosvita Society, the Society “Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia”, the Society of Saint Paul, and private collections. More than a half of the fond consists of Cyrillic manuscript books of the XV–XIX centuries, there are also materials on the history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, theological scientific and educational, linguistic, agricultural and other literature. Keywords: manuscript book, manuscript collection, theological literature, library, Theological Academy in Lviv, Greek Catholic Seminary in Lviv, Studion Society, Theological Scientific Society.

PADEŽI I PREDLOŠKO-PADEŽNE KONSTRUKCIJE SA SPACIJALNIM ZNAČENjEM U „ROMANU O TROJI“

The subject of this paper is the analysis of syntactic-semantic characteristics of case structures for expressing spatial meaning in The novel about Troy, with the aim of determining the inventory and frequency of certain structures. In this study the text of the novel from a Cyrillic manuscript of the Sofia National Library (No. 381, Proceedings 771) published by Allan Ringheim (1951) was used. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the spatiality in The novel about Troy is expressed by means of virtually identical constructions as in other texts written in the lower style of the Serbian recension of Old Slavonic language. Our corpus shows that two changes in the case system occurred in the history of the Serbian language: substitution of structures without preposition with prepositional case structures and reduction in the number of case structures.

The Manuscripts from the Radoslav M. Grujić Collection in the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade

[Rev. of: Mošin V.A., Vasiljev Lj., Bogdanović D., Grozdanović-Pajić M., Manuscripts of the Museum of the Serbian Оrthodox Church: Collection of Radoslav M. Grujić, Book 1: Archeographic description, Vol. 1, Belgrade: Retro print, 2017, 270 pp., illustr. — (Description of South Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts, Vol. 7) — (in Serbian)] The article discusses the first issue of the catalogue titled “Manuscripts of the Museum of the Serbian Orthodox Church: Collection of Radoslav M. Grujić”. This manuscript collection, which serves as the basis of the manuscript corpus in the Belgrade museum, was gathered by Radoslav M. Grujić, an outstanding Serbian historian, whose name it now bears. A large project aimed at detailed analytical description of Grujić′s Collection was initiated more than half a century ago by Vladimir Mošin, the founder of the Serbian school in medieval palaeography and diplomatics. Most of the two hundred manuscripts from the 14th–19th centuries described in the catalogue are now presented for the first time in the edition under review. Many of these manuscripts are not only important as valuable sources for the study of Serbian culture but will also foster new research on the history of inter-Slavic and other European connections. The book is of great interest to historians, philologists, theologians, as well as to archivists.

Johannes Hevelius’s Selenographia Manuscript in Vilnius

Johannes Hevelius’s Selenographia Manuscript in Vilnius

Модели построения канонов древнейшей службы свт. Савве Сербскому: канон «Пастыря христовых овец…»

The author argues that the canon “The Shepherd of Christ’s sheep…” which is attested in three Cyrillic manuscript copies (13th–14th c.) of the earliest hymnographic office for St Sava the Serb (†14 January 1235 or 1236), is not an original composition, but rather a compilation of Byzantine Greek hymns used in their Old Church Slavonic translation. The hymns were mostly taken from the canon (with the identical incipit) which had been originally compiled for commemoration of St Nicolas with addition of some hymns for St Ambrose (December 7), St Patapios of Thebes (December 8), Sunday of the Holy Fathers, and St Ignatios of Antioch (December 20).

Questions of the origin of the oldest Cyrillic manuscripts, found on the territory of Romania, in the modern Romanian historiography

Questions of the origin of the oldest Cyrillic manuscripts, found on the territory of Romania, in the modern Romanian historiography

A Cyrillic manuscript appendix as a part of the Czech-Latin volume Hareticorum armatura from the library of the metropolitan chapter of St. Vitus in Prague, as a possible trace of F. Skaryna

[full article, abstract in Russian; abstract in Lithuanian and English]
 This article deals with the manuscript codex from the first half of the 16th century Hareticorum armatura (archive: Archiv Pražského hradu, collection: Knihovna Metropolitní kapituly u sv. Víta, sign. D.118), which is composed mostly of texts written in Latin and Czech. There is also a passage (Fig. 136–139) written in Old Russian with the Cyrillic script. On the flyleaf of the book, a record of its owner Liber mgri Johannis Hertemberger de Cubito can be found, which indicates that the book was being kept in the library of the Saint Vitus chapter (Jan Herttemberger z Lokte was the canon of the Saint Vitus chapter between 1480-1498) from the end of the 15th century.Analysis of the book reveals a possibility that later, at the beginning of the 16th century or in the first half of the 16th century, another compilation was added to Jan Herttemberger’s volume, which contained a Cyrillic source. The fact, that the Old Russian manuscript was attached to the predominantly Latin codex, was apparently predetermined by practical thinking. The Cyrillic booklet was made of solid paper and as such could reinforce the seam line (binding) of the Latin book.The Cyrillic text contains Latin glosses; in turn, the Latin text (Poggi Florentini ad Leonardum Aretinum epistola de morte Hieronymi Pragensis, f. 169v–175v) contains a Cyrillic note , which is to be found in the margins on f. 174v. These features indicate that the compiler or the owner of the codex was a literate Catholic of the first half of the 16th century, who mastered writing in Cyrillic script and knew Old Russian. Of all famous persons of East Slavic origin, only F. Skaryna is closely associated with the Prague royal court (the Prague Castle) in 1534–1539. The content of the manuscript (the register of numerals and the recipe of ink) can be linked to a private press (the pagination of Skoryna’s publications could be made with the help of the list of ordinal numbers).

Речь Посполитая (Польша, Русь и Литва) как Святая Троица: средневековая предыстория поэтического образа Платона Костецкого (1861)


 [full article, abstract in Russian; abstract in Lithuanian and English]
 This paper focuses on a medieval parallel with the poetic image of Poland, Ruthenia and Lithuania as the Holy Trinity presented in the poem Nasza mołytwa (1861) composed in Ukrainian, although written in Polish script by the Galician journalist and writer Platon Kostec’kyj who was an adherent of the Jagiellonian idea. The parallel can be found in the Old Bulgarian apocryphal treatise Razumnik Ukaz. Its two versions have been preserved in Cyrillic manuscripts of the second half of the 14th through the mid-18th centuries. The corresponding passages of the two version are cited in the article in order to demonstrante that the second version coincides in some respects with the poetic image by Platon Kostec’kyj. It is quite possible that the author, who had been born to a family of a priest of the Eastern-rite Catholic Church, may have known the second version of Razumnik Ukaz and later used its ideas while compiling his poem Nasza mołytwa. This medieval parallel is useful for explaining the poetic image created in 1861.

“Mr. Rodionoff Has Taken His Drop in Prestige Well”

ABSTRACTThis article is devoted to Nicholas Rodionoff’s legacy. An alumnus of the Polytechnic Institute in Petrograd, he arrived in the USA in 1923. In 1925, he was employed to process Russian materials (the Yudin Collection) held in the Library of Congress. In 1930–1944, he headed its Slavic Division. For more than a decade, he continued working in the various units of the library. Alongside other émigré scholars, including A. Babine, M. Vinokuroff, and S. Yakobson, he created the largest collection of Cyrillic books, serials, and manuscripts outside of Russia.

Bliski i daleki drugi: animalističke sastavnice Cvijeta kreposti

In this paper we will focus on the preserved animalistic paragraphs of the moralisticdidactic treatise known as the Flower of Virtue or Flower of Wisdom from the Croatian Glagolitic literary corpus. It is a translation of a popular Italian folk literary work, Fiore di Virtù, which was translated into several vernacular languages and after that printed during the following several centuries. The work is divided into chapters, and each consists of four key units. Our attention will be directed onto those paragraphs in which a certain animal is introduced with the purpose of visualizing abstract notions such as cruelty, mercy, anger, generosity and similar that explain human nature. In the paper we will classify the animals according to species, and then present their list in the form of a table which gives information on their symbolical meaning in the text as well as the transliterated paragraph from several Glagolitic manuscripts and from one Cyrillic manuscript that contain translations of the analysed paragraphs. In this way we will, for the first time, systematically present all the animals in the Croatian version of the Flower of Virtue and give a short overview of some of them.

УСТАВ ЦЕРКОВНИЙ ІЗ ФОНДІВ НАУКОВОЇ БІБЛІОТЕКИ КИЇВСЬКОГО УНІВЕРСИТЕТУ: АТРИБУЦІЯ РУКОПИСНОЇ ПАМ'ЯТКИ

The principles of scientific attribution of liturgical cyrillic manuscripts, which has been worked out by author, are examined. The thorough study of Jerusalem Ecclesiastic Typikon from the rare books and manuscripts department’s collection of Maksymovych Scientific Library of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv is conducted. The stages of manuscript attribution are analyzed, including the date identification and localization of its origins and use. The type and the title of the codex have been identificated by the analysis of book’s texts. The linguistic variant of Church Slavonic language, used for re-writing the copy, is revealed, which has helped to localize the place of creation. Detailed watermark analysis of paper, which the copy had been made of, has allowed to estimate date range of its production. The problematic ascertainment of the date of creation has been also supported by the analysis of the textual sources, studying of palaeographic peculiarities of cyrillic script book, the inner book’s decorative features. The problem of binding production date, its construction, materials and design, is formulated. The state of preservation of manuscript is analysed, which led the author to understanding the extent of book’s relevance for its readers. The history of manuscript restoration and its stages have been studied. The places of use and migration of the copy are revealed on the basis of provenance examination up till its arrival to Maksymovych Scientific Library’s rare books collection. Key words: Jerusalem Ecclesiastic Typikon, manuscript, Cyrillic manuscript, attribution, codicology, Maksymovych Scientific Library of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.