Manuscript Sources Research Articles

Genesis and Provenance of the Oldest Soul-and-Body Debate in Old Norse Tradition

This article traces the manuscript filiation and the routes of textual transmission of Viðrǿða líkams ok sálar, the first soul-and-body debate that is preserved in Old Norse translation, a fairly faithful yet succinct translation of the Anglo-Norman poem known alternatively as Desputisun de l’âme et du corps and Un Samedi par nuit. The Norse text survives today in four manuscripts: AM 619 4to (Old Norwegian Homily Book), AM 696 XXXII 4to, AM 764 4to, and JS 405 8vo. Through a qualitative analysis of concurrent readings, the present study confirms and expands the stemma hypothesized by Ole Widding and Hans Bekker-Nielsen in 1959. The presence in the Norse text of readings typical of a newly identified “Continental tradition” within the Anglo-Norman family of manuscripts indicates that the nowlost manuscript source may have been a French codex, produced in all probability in a Flemish Benedictine monastery (Picardy, northeastern Artois or Hainaut) during the second half of the twelfth century. Subsequently, the codex may have been transferred from Flanders to a sister Benedictine house in Norway—such as Munkeliv in Bergen—via well-attested profitable monastic and trade networks that connected Flemish and Norwegian scriptoria between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries.

THE WRITTEN HERITAGE OF SULAYMON BAQIRGANI

The poets of the Yassavi school have a special place in the history of Uzbek literature, manuscript sources testify to this. Sulayman Baqirgani is the most powerful of the poets in this school. Alisher Navoi mentions Ahmed Yassavi in "Nasaimul-Muhabbat" and mentions him as "Shaykh ul-Mashayikh", "Qiblai prayer of the people of Turkestan". While giving information about his follower Sulayman Baqirgani, he cites an excerpt from his poetry, stressing that "Hakim was the language of wisdom" and that his wisdom was popular among Turks.

From the Union of Lublin to the Mutual Guarantee of the Two Nations

The purpose of this study is to show changes in the legal and political nature of the alliance between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania over the centuries, from the Union concluded in Lublin in 1569, through the so-called ‘coequatio iuris’ of 1697, until the regulations adopted in the Constitution of May 3, and the “Reciprocal Guarantee of Both Nations” crowning the process and passed at the Four-Year Sejm on October 20, 1791. The study uses a wide range of archival manuscript sources, old prints, parliamentary legislation, and also numerous studies using both old and current literature. The main research goal of the study was to show to what extent the changes in the legal nature of the union of the two countries led to their full unification, which was in the past (and sometimes still is) the interpretation of this process in many studies, and to what extent the federalist character of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was preserved, which is nowadays the dominant view and which the author of this study is a strong supporter of.

“AUDIOMANUSCRIPT” – A PROJECT ON THE STUDY OF “AUDIOMANUSCRIPT” – A PROJECT ON THE STUDY OF ORIENTAL MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

This article provides information about one of the grant projects "Audiomanuscript" conducted at the Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies. The importance of the project in illuminating our history and delivering it to our people has been highlighted.

«Херувимская песнь» Винченцо Манфредини

The paper considers Vincenzo Manfredini's «Cherubic Hymn» discovered by E. Yu. Antonenko in 2018. Until recently, it was only known that Manfredini composed music for the Orthodox Church, but not a single composition was found. Based on analysis of manuscript sources, the work is dated to the period of 1762–1765, which allows us to claim that Manfredini was one of the first authors who composed Orthodox Church music in the new classical style that replaced the older partes style after 1762. "Cherubimskaya" is contained in singing books written in round notation, stored in the fund collection "Cult Music" of the Russian National Museum of Music (Moscow): RNMM. F. 283. N 937, sheet 87 (treble), N 256, sheet 7 (viola), N 878, sheet 30v. (tenor), N 996, sheet 65v. (tenor), N 879, sheet. 19 vol. (bass), N 944, l. 17 (bass). With a high probability, these chanting vowels are of Petersburg origin, and, thus, the indication of Manfredini's authorship is credible. The Italian composer Vincenzo Manfredini visited Russia twice: 1758-1769 and 1798-1799. By order of the St. Petersburg Court, he composed chants for the Orthodox Church

Robert Watson’s Lectures at St. Andrews: Logic, Rhetoric and Metaphysics

Examines the contributions to rhetoric of Robert Watson (1730?-1781), Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics at the University of St. Andrews from1756-1778, and Principal from 1778-1781, based on surviving manuscript sources at St Andrews, and demonstrates the philosophic diversity in rhetorical theory at this time, showing differences among the Scottish literati on the epistemology of language and the origin of grammar, identifying some contrasts and connections between Watson and his near contemporaries Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, and George Campbell, and suggesting his distinctive place in the development of 18th century rhetoric and the history of English studies.

Anglo-Latin macaronic verse in early modern England: A new survey of manuscript evidence

Latin-vernacular macaronic verse is a distinctive feature of early modern literary culture across Europe. Scholarship has, however, focused upon Italian examples; the production of such verse in England has been particularly little studied, with existing analyses of Anglo-Latin macaronic based on a very small corpus of printed poems from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries only. This survey of previously unconsidered manuscript evidence demonstrates the production of Anglo-Latin macaronic verse of many kinds in early modern England, at least from the 1550s onwards, including new examples of both ‘morphological’ macaronic verse (in which a Latin poem contains some English words inflected as if they were Latin) and ‘simple’ macaronic (comprising various other kinds of language mixture). The article includes new evidence for the knowledge of Italian macaronic poetry in sixteenth-century England; for evolving trends in the typical uses of Anglo-Latin macaronic—from ad hominem satire in the earliest periods to more generally humourous or topical verse in the seventeenth century; on the use of rhyme and borrowings from other languages (including Greek, French and Italian) in Anglo-Latin macaronic; and for the importance of manuscript sources especially for assessing the prevalence of relatively ‘popular’ and informal types of bilingual literature, such as macaronic verse.

Two Sixteenth-Century Coimbra Commentaries on 'De anima': Pedro da Fonseca (attr.) and Cristóvão Gil. 'On the Soul' and 'On the Immortality of the Soul'

This paper analyses the questions on the science of the soul and on the immortality of the soul in two commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima that subsist in the manuscripts of the teaching of philosophy in Coimbra in the sixteenth-century. The paper shows that the positions of the two commentators – Petrus Fonsecae (attr.) and Christophorus Gilli – are in total opposition, concerning either the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s De anima or the theories on the soul they assume. Focused on unpublished and less studied sources this research brings to light some innovative aspects of the teaching of philosophy in Coimbra. We thus suggest that the manuscript sources of the period be reassessed and studied in comparison to the published works.

Tracing the Intimate Histories of Poor Black Women in the Late-Nineteenth-Century US South

This article explores the dynamics of separation among Black veterans and their spouses in the post-emancipation South through an analysis of pension records. Few archival sources provide descriptions of Black working-class women and their relationships with their estranged husbands. Pension files offer a glimpse into the intimate lives of the Black poor and the legal communities they participated in as they navigated the US Pension bureaucracy. This essay tells the story of a North Carolina freedwoman, Jamsey Green, and my effort to trace the intimate histories of poor Black women using a combination of digital research tools, military records, and manuscript sources.

What has not yet been said about Prussian proper names in Polish lands

The research of historical proper names reveals the necessity to emphasize and link the cultural, social and political aspects that play a role in the development of onyms. It should be noted that the language and the names of inhabited settlements reflecting it developed within a certain single system of life, which can be divided only hypothetically. The oikonymy of the extinct language, when viewed as the development of linguistic phenomena, should be addressed from a systematic perspective. It is impossible to draw the line that would divide the starting point and the end point of the development of historical proper names. The rich empirical data, mostly coming from historical manuscript sources, show an ongoing process. We cannot tell the exact date when the Old Prussian language became extinct. However, it is clear that the Old Prussian names of inhabited settlements outlived the language and were more resistant to the processes of Germanization and Polonization than it has been thought to this day. Linguistic, social and cultural phenomena occur in the same domain and are mutually dependent. Politics has the power to change the name. The replacement of some of East Prussia’s native toponyms with Russian ones is a sad proof of that power put into practice. Nevertheless, some indigenous toponyms had enough strength to survive. The dimension of historical time has been introduced to the research and the significance of change for the survival of Old Prussian proper names in the processes of Germanization and Polonization has been highlighted. Polish onomasticians also study the extralinguistic meaning of onyms through the heritage of the Teutonic Order, as onyms are the witnesses of history in the environment of language contacts. The monumental work of Polish researchers Nazwy miejscowe Polski (Eng. Polish Place Names) is also noteworthy, however, the material that is included or excluded occasionally poses quite a few questions for the researchers of Old Prussian proper names. The article discusses more interesting cases of Old Prussian oikonymy on the territory of present-day Poland.

Early Modern Uncertainty: Reason, Conscience, and Belief in Post-Reformation Catholicism

This essay investigates the role of uncertainty in post-Reformation Catholicism. It argues that one of the reasons why uncertainty was so central to early modern Catholic discourse lies in the complex and multifaced relationship between believing—that is, the act of holding as true something that we are unable to verify as such by means of reason—and knowing—that is, the act of holding something as true on the basis of a reasonable and reasoned assessment. By providing a brief analysis of printed and manuscript sources, this essays shows how some of the theological, religious, and intellectual tensions in articulating the relationship between things that need to be believed by faith and things that need to be known by reason, both in the works of influential theologians such as Augustine and Francisco Suárez, and in the elaboration of a wider sector of the Catholic population.

Eine Marien-Elegie vom Hof Kaiser Maximilians I.: der Text von Heinrich Isaacs Motette "O decus ecclesiae"

This paper aims to revise and reconstruct the highly corrupt text of Heinrich Isaac’s Marianic motet O decus ecclesiae by examining the only manuscript source anew. It can be demonstrated that the text is written in elegiac distichs and artfully blends Christian ideas and classicising language. It is therefore highly probable that its author was one of the leading humanist poets at the court of Emperor Maximilian I and that the elegy was commissioned for a representative event.

Zebras in the Revolution?: Inspiring Discovery with Digital Moravians in the Classroom

ABSTRACT The proliferation of digitized manuscript sources has opened up a wide range of applications for using primary sources in undergraduate learning environments. This article describes a learning activity that simulates the process of making archival sources accessible to the general public. In the simulation, students work with digital copies of manuscripts from the Moravian Archives. After a brief description of the activity, the article offers reflection on the author’s goals for the exercise and responses from students who found this simulation to be a positive learning experience.

A VISION OF THE NEW JERUSALEM: THE TEXT OF STRIGGIO’S ECCE BEATAM LUCEM

Striggio’s forty-part motet Ecce beatam lucem survives in a unique manuscript source, dated 1587, in the Ratsschulbibliothek in Zwickau. Its text, first published in 1595, formed part of a Pindaric ode written by the neo-Latin poet and Calvinist Paul Schede Melissus (1539–1602). A closer consideration of Melissus’ biography indicates that he probably wrote it after 1575, long after the wedding festivities with which the motet has habitually been associated (Florence, 1565; Munich, 1568). Its subject matter – a Calvinist vision of the New Jerusalem – also makes it an unlikely wedding text and inappropriate for Catholic festivities. Rather, it was probably used as the text of a contrafactum, for an as yet unidentified occasion, with which Striggio himself had little or no connection.

Spatial dispositions in English instrumental consort music, c.1575–1650: a further examination

Abstract Musical sources in table format show the various dispositions of performers around the table prescribed by composers, scribes and printers. Examination of the instrumental printed sources and the textless manuscript sources shows that a majority conform to three principles that foster aural clarity and good ensemble. Previous work indicated that the music itself, whether transmitted in table format or in partbooks, was sometimes composed with such dispositions in mind. Seating arrangements that embody the three principles are therefore advantageous in private performance and rehearsal; and for performance before an audience, with performers ranged in an arc rather than in a circle, suitable modification can achieve similar results.

Reflections of the Activities of the Vocal-Instrumental Chapel of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance of Bialyničiai in Several Manuscript Sources of the Second Half of the Eighteenth–the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

So far, a separate musicological work on the musical activities in the church of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance of Bialyničiai (Belarusian Бялы́ нічы, Polish Białynicze) has not been prepared. The lack of a sheet music library prompted the study into several manuscript sources from the second half of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth century, which are stored in manuscript libraries in Vilnius and Minsk. Using the book of registration of income and expenses of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance of Bialyničiai, which was the primary source of information, a list of the members of the chapel of the Carmelite Order of Bialyničiai, who were paid in the second half of the eighteenth century, was compiled, with their names, surnames, time of service, and positions. The exact information on the size and the composition of the chapel that used to play in the church of the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance in Bialyničiai in 1824–1825 and in 1832, found in the inventory, the visitation, and the audit, is also provided. With the help of sheet music lists, attempts were made to determine the musical genres predominant in the chapel’s performances and the composers whose vocal-instrumental works were performed. The names of the composers are often distorted in the manuscript lists found, but it is possible to identify some of them or to make assumptions. The seventeenth-to-nineteenth-century heritage of the vocal-instrumental chapels of the Catholic monasteries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania requires further research in order to produce a synthetic summary of this phenomenon.

Toward a History of Sexual Violence behind Bars

Toward a History of Sexual Violence behind Bars

Fifty Years with the Fondo Cappella Sistina of The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Reflections on the study of the music sources in the fondo Cappella Sistina of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana beginning with Giuseppe Baini and Franz Xaver Haberl in the nineteenth century and progressing chronologically through the twentieth-century studies of Knud Jeppesen, Joshua Rifkin, the author, and others, to the incorporation of the sixteenth-century manuscript sources into the RISM catalogue in the twenty-first century. In an Addendum, evidence is offered that suggests that the main scribe of the Medici Codex (1518) can be identified as Giovanni Maria Borsetto who was the official scribe of the Papal Chapel for a short time in 1522.

Slovenian toponymy of Ljubljana up to the first printed list of toponyms from 1787

Early Slovenian toponymy of Ljubljana, the capital of the Republic of Slovenia and formerly of the Duchy of Carniola, has so far only received sporadic research attention. With German and Ecclesiastical Latin being official written languages in the central Slovenian territory and Slovenian remaining marginalized until the nineteenth century, Slovenian toponyms and micro-toponyms did not appear in sources until a very late stage. Whereas only one Slovenian toponym dates back to the Late Middle Ages, the vast majority were first recorded no earlier than the eighteenth century, mainly in the register of banns kept in Slovenian by Ljubljana’s cathedral parish. What is more, not even the Slovenian name of Ljubljana was documented in its original form until the second half of the sixteenth century. However, contrary to expectations, it did not first appear in a manuscript source but in one of the earliest books printed in Slovenian (1566). The contribution discusses sources for the Slovenian toponymy of Ljubljana and their explanatory value, it presents a few observations regarding the development of Slovenian toponyms, and brings forth a systematic overview of their appearances up to and including the first printed list of street names in German and Slovenian (1787).

Sheik Hassan Musabih Al_Hilli (died 1317AH) An objecive and artistic study in his manuscript collection

Sheikh Hassan Musabeh (died 1317 AH) was a great Hilli poet, who has a large manuscript poetry collection, and no one had research his coetry deeply. We have tried in this research to study his poetry objectively and technically, by referring to his collection, which we stood on both versions of the manuscripts, as well as a number of published and manuscript sources. The research was based on an introduction, two studies, and a conclusion, the introduction Presented the research methodology and it’s aim, The introduction introducing the poet and poetic Collection , and we talked in the first study about the topics of his poetry on which it was based, it was traditional to follow the example of the ancients, as old poets with slight change from this tradition represented in Al Takhmis, /Al Muashah , and Al Ruwda, mostly in 'ahl albayt (ealayhm alsalam/Peace be upon them), and the last study was artistic study, and we discussed the poetry language and its eloquence of his poetry, then the internal and the external rhythm (the music) and the interior, and mistakes his poetry included mistakes of language and weights.