Medieval Manuscripts Research Articles

The Latin Office of the Dead in mediaeval manuscripts from the territory of Slovakia

The contents and the surviving part of medieval manuscripts in Europe were influenced by the Christianization process. Monophonic liturgical chant, the cantus planus, or plainchant, which accompanied the liturgical celebrations, was a dominant representative of musical culture. Migrations of cultural, religious, and artistic stimuli, which influenced the religious centres, institutions, towns, and individuals, were a frequent phenomenon in medieval society. The transfer of stimuli, inspirations, and artistic models led to liturgical music and its components (musical content, liturgy, notation) becoming firmly established. As part of the stratification of local elements and transregional connections, in the research process on the components of chant, we identified a specific repertoire of the medieval Office of the Dead in manuscripts from the territory of Slovakia. Based on the analysis of the chants of the responsories of the Matins, we traced the provenance and musical characteristics of selected manuscripts from the territory of Slovakia.

Janet Schrunk-Ericksen, Reading Old English Biblical Poetry: The Book and the Poem in Junius 11. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, pp. 222.

Abstract Janet Schrunk-Ericksen (Ph.D., University of Illinois), Professor of English and Acting Chancellor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, has written a worthwhile study of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11 and key aspects of the five narrative poems within it. As her title suggests, the five poems might have been considered “the poem”: one poem with multiple parts, by an early reader reading through the book, if proceeding sequentially. Indeed, Schrunk-Eriksen’s book, Reading Old English Biblical Poetry, explores how early readers may have approached and understood Junius 11, its sequential contents, and its representation of God’s divine power. She pays careful attention to the physical codex as well as to close readings of the poems. Her work emerges alongside an on-going revival of academic interest in how to read medieval manuscripts, which is similarly demonstrated by Elaine Traherne’s study, Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book (Oxford, 2022) and Carl Kears, MS Junius 11 and its Poetry (Boydell & Brewer, 2022).

The z text of Laxdæla saga – a philological experiment

The manuscripts of Laxdæla saga were divided by Kristian Kålund into an x class and a y class. The y class manuscripts include Möðruvallabók, the only medieval manuscript to preserve the complete saga and the basis of all editions so far. The z text has never been edited as a whole and the present article is an investigation into how such an edition might be brought into being. Only some 43% of the saga text is preserved in vellum fragments of the z class but there are paper manuscripts which preserve the z text as a whole. The early editors of the saga regarded the text of these paper manuscripts as too poor in quality to serve as the basis of an edition. This contention is empirically tested here by studying the part of the saga preserved in the oldest vellum fragment, the 13th century D2. The text of that fragment is compared with the corresponding text in five manuscripts which preserve the saga as a whole. Word-level Levenshtein distance is used as the comparison metric and the results are published in table 1 while a stemma of the five manuscripts appears in figure 1. The main result is that the 17th century paper manuscript AM 158 fol. is, by a large margin, the manuscript which has the most similar text to the oldest fragment. It would be a suitable basis for an edition of the z text.

В. И. Даль и словесность Древней Руси

The topic of folklore in Vladimir Dal’s work is well studied. In contrast, the original and persistent connection of his work with the style, plots and genres of medieval and early modern Russian literature still remains unexplored. Plots of Dal’s first tales often followed popular lubok prints and books. They were published in large number of copies for that time and, for that matter, populated not only chivalric romances, but also the lives of saints and folk satire, like Dal’s “Tale of Shemyaka’s Judgement”. Dal’s tales made a strong impression with their virtuoso language and cascades of prefaces, where he usually used the stylistic device of amplification filled with everyday features. Dal was well acquainted with medieval manuscript books. As a result, his writings contain numerous echoes of medieval Russian texts, including The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. Among Dal’s writings there are also texts that especially correspond to genres of medieval Russian literature. Dal was the first to compose a systematically ordered monthly folk calendar and to use the Herbal and the Physiologus books in his lexicological research. Dal acknowledged that the study of twelfth-century texts written in Old East Slavic (Old Russian) strengthened his intention to compile the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. This work is no less important in the history of Russian culture than the legacy of Russian classics.

Book Notes

Book Notes David Bratman J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript, by William M. Fliss and Sarah C. Schaefer (Milwaukee, WI: Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, 2022; 196 pp.; $60 (hardcover); ISBN 978-0-945366-35-5), is the fifth catalog in my personal collection from exhibits since 1983 displaying Tolkien's manuscripts and art held at the Marquette University Archives. All its predecessors are modest-sized softcover saddle-stapled publications with only a few illustrations. The present catalog, of a 2022 Haggerty Museum exhibition, is something else entirely. Though not as extensive as the 2018 Bodleian exhibit catalog, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, it is a sturdy and endlessly browsable hardcover that reproduces in high-quality color photography the entirety of the Haggerty exhibition: 147 items, 119 of them [End Page 224] by Tolkien—the rest are mostly books of facsimile reproductions of medieval manuscripts, the kind Tolkien would have worked with in his scholarly studies. The exhibit includes some of Tolkien's artwork, many items from the Bodleian and some from The Hobbit, but the bulk are Marquette-owned manuscripts from or ancillary to The Lord of the Rings. Readers can see the complete manuscripts of five versions of the lay of Eärendil and the full manuscript of the chronology published in transcription in the 2022 special issue of Tolkien Studies. About half of the Tolkien material in this book has never previously been published in facsimile. An essay by Fliss, archivist and curator of Marquette's Tolkien collection, describes the recent re-collation and digitalization of the collection, and one by Schaefer, an art history professor, connects Tolkien's work with the history of facsimile reproduction. The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien, edited by Richard Ovenden and Catherine McIlwaine (Oxford, UK: Bodleian Library, 2022; 229 pp.; $65 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1-85124-565-9), is also a solid volume of museum-quality paper and binding. It includes an introduction and bibliography of Christopher Tolkien by McIlwaine, the eulogy from his funeral by Maxime H. Pascal, and a brief personal memorial by his sister Priscilla. The rest of the book consists of eight learned essays by noted scholars primarily focused on aspects of J.R.R. Tolkien's work that Christopher Tolkien studied. Vincent Ferré ventures into Christopher Tolkien's literary contributions to his editions of his father's work; Verlyn Flieger explores the tone and temper of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium; John Garth delves into correcting the chronology of the writing of The Book of Lost Tales; Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, with illustrations, describe Tolkien's cartographic work; Carl F. Hostetter, also with illustrations, demonstrates how to transcribe Tolkien's difficult handwriting, including where multiple layers exist on one page; Stuart D. Lee presents what is recoverable about the lost 1955–56 BBC radio dramatization of The Lord of the Rings; Tom Shippey links Tolkien's poem of "King Sheave" and its associated legend with The Lost Road; and Brian Sibley, again with illustrations, finds the symbolism in doors and portals in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. [End Page 225] Copyright © 2022 West Virginia University Press

Średniowieczne polonica i silesiaca ze zbiorów Archiwum Uniwersytetu Karola w Pradze

The article presents a brief history of the medieval manuscript collections of the Charles University Archives in Prague which includes a catalogue of 13 medieval (1345– –1508) Polish and Silesian charters stored there

Carine van Rhijn, Leading the Way to Heaven: Pastoral Care and Salvation in the Carolingian Period. London and New York: Routledge, 2022, xii, 274 pp.

Abstract Early medieval manuscripts give up their secrets in this excellent monograph by Carine van Rhijn, who studies the books that enabled parish priests to perform their duties in the Carolingian countryside. Recognizing that the lineaments of the pastoral project outlined in royal normative texts issued by Charlemagne and his advisors were expressive of “ideals and intentions” (5), she argues convincingly that the practical challenges of implementing this project of expanding and deepening the knowledge that Christians required to assure their salvation fell increasingly to local priests in the Carolingian period. By the eighth century, a fundamental reorganization of the secular clergy resulted in priests being assigned to specific churches, where they lived, preached, and administered the sacraments in small communities for the rest of their lives.

Ótrodu ne vidano, sródu ne slykhano, a na rodú napisano. Features of the Development of Mobile Accent Type Nouns in Slavic Idioms

The article considers various types of accent curves among underived substantives belonging to the accentual paradigm c in South Slavic medieval manuscripts. Three main non-trivial evolutional types of historically end-stressed forms are observed: 1) the «anti-enclinomenal» type α with substitution of end stress with stem stress in phonetically disyllabic groups and preservation of end stress in other positions (GSg гла́вы — ѹ главы̀ — свободы̀); 2) the “new-enclinomenal” type β with conversion of historically end-stressed disyllabic word forms to enclinomena and preservation of the end-stressed forms of polysyllabic stems (NAPl срь́дца — на́ срьдца — тѣлеса̀) and 3) the type γ/δ with new penultimate stress in polysyllabic stems (слове́си) or even in any position (LSg плъ́ти — въ плъ́ти — слове́си — въ слове́си). Hereby the evolution of type β preserves the set of various accent contours of common-slavic a.p. c, although the accent curve itself may be modified. The evolutions of other types change not only the accent curve but also the set of accent contours represented in a.p. c paradigms.

The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to Justice, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh (2019)

Review of: The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to Justice, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh (2019) Stanford: Stanford University Press, 436 pp., 15 colour and 14 b&w illus., ISBN: 9780804790444 (hardback), $30

Lexical and semantic features of the written monuments in the Mamluk-Kipchak language (13-15th centuries)

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Arabic-Kipchak dictionaries written during the Mamluks and linguistic materials preserved in the monument «Irshadulmuluk uas-salatin», one of the largest works in the Mamluk-Kipchak language. In addition, the level of study of monuments is determined, and a structural and substantive description of the manuscripts are given. For determining the lexical and semantic features of medieval manuscripts written in the Mamluk-Kipchak language, semantic units in written monuments of the 13-15th centuries, such as «Tarzhuman», «Ad-Durra», «Al-Kawanin», «Irshadul-muluk uas-salatin» were divided into thematic groups. A comparative analysis of the linguistic signs preserved in the exhibits is carried out, and lexical-semantic features of works are revealed. If somebody wants to know and understand his or her nation, it is necessary for everybody to know what kind of people it interacted with in the past, what culture it contacted and what contribution it made to the world civilization. Therefore, today it is necessary to revive the peoples’ spiritual values and study the nation history. Written monuments and documents of historical significance in the Turkic peoples’ cultural heritage, stored in foreign libraries and archives, have not been comprehensively studied yet. A comprehensive study of the linguistic materials in these inscriptions makes it possible to reveal the features of the Turkic-Arab historical, political, military, economic, cultural, linguistic and religious ties.

Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book by Elaine Treharne

Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book by Elaine Treharne

Notátor ako nositeľ identity. Česká notácia v neskorostredovekých rukopisoch strednej Európy

This study explores the status of the Bohemian system of notation in Central Europe and the identity of the scribes and notators of specific mediaeval manuscripts from Slovakia, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Hungary and Romania. Especially in the latter half of the fourteenth century and in the course of the fifteenth century, Bohemian notation became an important export product (article) which also appeared outside the territory of the mediaeval Kingdom of Bohemia. Active scriptoria, or migrating scribes, illuminators and notators, created a large number of liturgical manuscripts which reveal valuable information about their activities and migrations. Several sources point to various combinations with respect to the identity of the manuscripts, with the liturgy or the musical contents representing the customer and the notation representing the creator of the particular source, such as in Antiphonary CCl. 65 – 68 (Augustinian Library in Klosterneuburg), Bratislava Missal “D” Clmae 216 from the Library of the Bratislava Chapter (National Széchényi Library in Budapest) or the Antiphonary Varadinense (Diocesan Seminary Library Győr + Fragments from Austria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia).

Naming and Renaming Texts: Rubrics in Middle High German Miscellany Manuscripts

This article analyses rubrics in Middle High German miscellany manuscripts of short texts in rhyming couplets (Reimpaargedichte). A corpus consisting of 1433 rubrics from 68 manuscripts was created to be able to perform this study. As rubrics in medieval manuscripts were not authorial, but composed by scribes, they offer insights into the reception of the texts. This paper analyses their features and functions as a proxy to interrogate the standing and status of Reimpaargedichte between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The main methodology is distant reading, i.e. the application and interpretation of statistical methods on a textual corpus. The features analyzed include the length of the rubrics, their level of variation, the presence of author names, and vocabulary. Although no general patterns regarding length nor level of variation were detected, some important conclusions can be drawn: 1. there were no clear markers of literary genre in rubrics; 2. authorship was mostly absent, except for some specific cases of famous authors; 3. relatively stable keywords were used to identify particular texts, but they were more common in manuscripts with narrative texts (Erzählungen) and less common in later manuscripts dominated by the genre known as Minnereden. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that rubrics used a series of linguistic procedures to show that they participated in a different speech act than the main text – they embodied an interaction between scribes and readers, in which the former framed the reception of the work.

ENCODING AND TRANSCODING OF TRANSCRIPTIONS OF THE HISTORICAL CORPUS “MANUSCRIPT”

The article considers capabilities of using Cyrillic blocks of the Unicode Standard for the purpose of creating transcriptions, which would represent graphics of medieval Slavonic manuscripts. In addition, much attention is given to the fact that the Unicode Standard provides variants of Cyrillic letters, which means that one can accurately enough record graphic features of manuscripts. However, some variants of certain letters are still missing, and that is why there exists a need to use additional agreements of character encoding, which code points are placed in special blocks and Private Use Areas and not in standard ranges of Unicode. The Manuscript - a historical corpus - is the example of a big machine-readable collection of medieval Slavonic manuscripts. It was created on the base of Oracle DBMS with the use of a specialized system of codes and fonts. Transference of the corpus to other technological platforms or usage of external software (including separate texts, parts of corpora, selections) for analysis of linguistic data would be possible only after downloaded files are recoded to the Unicode Standard. A comparative analysis of the character blocks used in the corpus and in the current version 14.0 of the Unicode Standard leads to the conclusion that recoding either results in losses of graphic features or requires usage of a supplementary set of varying characters with code points of Private Use Areas. Instances when there are two or more characters of the Unicode Standard that correspond to one recoded character of the Manuscript are analyzed. It is also stated that numerous ligatures and certain singular graphemes are missing in the standard blocks and in the blocks of Private Use Areas.

Reconstructing Book Collections of Medieval Elbląg

Medieval manuscript collections in Teutonic Prussia have been particularly affected by numerous events in modern history, such as the Polish-Swedish wars and the turmoil after World War II. Still, the attempts to reconstruct the local collections may shed new light on the intellectual history of this historical region. To this date this kind of research was based mostly on surviving manuscripts with Prussian origin or provenance, that is, manuscripts produced or used in the territory of Prussia, supplemented by evidence on lost volumes derived from archival inventories. The article, taking as an example the history of collections of the city of Elbląg, discusses the potential of systematic studies of parchment waste used in bindings of manuscripts and printed books for reconstructing the intellectual landscape of the territory in question. It presents the range of provenance evidence that can link manuscript waste to the territory of Teutonic Prussia, including content, script, musical notation, binding and other material evidence.

Minutes of the Annual Meeting: Friday, 29 January 2021, 4:30 pm EST, Virtual Presentation via Convene

Minutes of the Annual Meeting: Friday, 29 January 2021, 4:30 pm EST, Virtual Presentation via Convene

Hati Puthi: the medieval Assamese manuscripts on elephant training and treatment

The elephant capturing, taming and its treatment are old practices in Assam. The manuscripts written in medieval Assam describing this tradition are popularly known as Hati-Puthi. But unfortunately, most of them got lost in the womb of time for various reasons and the few that were preserved incomplete. In the present work, the investigator have collected digital copies of four such incomplete manuscripts from Jorhat, Titabor, Guwahati and Majuli districts of Assam and these have transliterated from Kaitheli script to modern Assamese script. They have been used to compile a complete Hati-Puthi in modern Assamse script and then translated into English as a complete manuscript. The similarities and differences among the manuscripts have been discussed and the final work is compared with a published work on animal care called Hastividyārnava. A comparison between the ancient units mentioned in the manuscript and the units used presently is worked out. The flora and fauna used in the treatment of various diseases of the elephant are also identified.

TO THE QUESTION OF SPACE ORGANIZATION OF BOOK ILLUMINATION OF LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY MIDDLE AGES (IV – VII CENTURY)

The article focuses on peculiarities of spatial organization of book miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts (IV – VII centuries). The author analyses the problem of conveying illusion of depth in illustration in context of gradual transmission from roll to codex, which took place in antique book culture between the II and the V centuries. By analyzing survived fragments of illuminated rolls author displays characteristic features of their spatial organization and observes influence which had tradition of roll illustration on the development of codex. Nevertheless, precisely the miniatures of the codices that have come down to our time are in focus of the author’s attention. The stages of development of the text page, the peculiarities of interaction of text and images in codices are compared with the principles of space organization in miniatures. The article makes an attempt, relying on the monuments that have survived to our time, to consider the development of spatial constructions in the period of late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a continuous process of evolution of the language of book painting. The author assumes that the development of spatial constructions in miniature painting does not imply sharp breaks or regression. Each new stage of the evolution arises from the previous one and makes it possible to expand the arsenal of artistic means which are necessary for solving artistic problems of the time. In accordance with this approach, the article concentrates not only on compositions in which a spatial illusion is created, but also miniatures that are in character more plane. As a result, the author reveals the main types of spatial constructions, considering all surviving monuments of miniature painting of that time. For each type of space organization, the author identifies the basic principles and artistic techniques that allow the artist to convey a sense of depth on the plane of page. The author pays special attention to the comparison of illusionistic tendencies in the late antique book miniature and “reverse perspective”, features of which are present in the monuments of the era. The author casts doubt on the need for a sharp contrast between these two approaches to space organization in the monuments of book miniatures of the era. He analyzes the reasons for the appearance of such features of space organization in miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts, which are so important for the formation of artistic language of medieval book illumination.

William Morris’ Medieval Manuscript Collection and the Trade in Illuminated Manuscripts

William Morris’ Medieval Manuscript Collection and the Trade in Illuminated Manuscripts

Меха, перья и цветы в европейском средневековом костюме: по материалам миниатюр рукописей

Miniatures of medieval European manuscripts are considered a valuable pictorial source on the 13th—15th centuries costume history. The particular question of the application of such natural materials as furs, feathers and flowers in a costume is investigated in this article. The author selected and analyzed fragments of miniatures giving an idea of which furs and feathers, how and in what quantities were used by representatives of different classes. A significant number of images of clothes and hats trimmed with fur were revealed, much less — on the use of feathers, and very few and extremely conventional — of flowers. This information is compared with documentary evidence and fragments from the Middle Ages literary works. The author comes to the conclusion that a great number of surviving manuscripts, many of which are currently available in digitized form, make it possible to collect a representative array of images that provide answers to the most frequent questions about the evolution of European costume in the Middle Ages.