Piece Of Parchment Research Articles

Istorijski arhiv Kotor – pamćenje grada

Kotor was the first town in the present-day Montenegro to have autonomous archival institution. The State Archives in Kotor was established on 30th November 1949. This piece of information points out to the awareness of the importance of archival cultural heritage that was being created in Kotor and in the wider region of Boka Kotorska Bay through centuries, as well as on the need for its preservation and presentation to expert and general public. It is, however, important to mention that as early as in 1417 a provision in the Book of Statutes of the Town of Kotor, printed in Venice in 1616 the oldest provision of which dates back to 1301, lays down a duty for all important acts created in the work of public institutions to be stored in three storages: St. Tryphon Cathedral reliquary, municipal office and in the office of the notary public. The year 1764 saw Marin Vrakjen being officially appointed as archivist in Kotor. Today, Kotor Historical Archives houses archival material created in the work of local authorities, legal entities and natural persons in Kotor but also in the wider region of Boka Kotorska and other parts of the present-day Montenegrin littoral up to Spič, in the vicinity of Bar. Archival departments in Herceg Novi, Budva and Bar also house part of the archival material created in their respective areas, just as church archives and museums do. The oldest document kept in Kotor Historical Archives dates back to 1309. It is a fragment of a contract for the sale of a property written on a piece of parchment. The task of every archival institution, thus also of Kotor Historical Archives, is to explore archival records of historical-scientific importance related to the events from political, social, economic and cultural life of Boka Kotorska spanning from the ancient past to the modern era; to study the documents by applying scientific methods, prepare them for the scholars of various fields, to publish collections of archival documents by different topics and to open wide its door to all those interested in the history of our town and the surrounding area.

Early Genizah Fragments Of Saadya Gaon's Bible Translation Copied By Samuel B. Shechaniah B. Amram

Abstract The article presents a full transcription and discussion of eighteen early Genizah fragments of Saadya's Bible translation made of parchment (sixteen from the Pentateuch and two from the book of Daniel) and copied by the scribe Samuel b. Shechaniah b. Amram. Seventeen of them are long narrow pieces of parchment of uneven size, and some are two or more pieces sewn together. These fragments were bound in the form of a rotulus, that is, the pages are attached across their upper and lower margins to form a roll that is read vertically. The fragments are undated; nevertheless, codicological considerations, including their form and method of binding, the material onto which they were copied, and the type of handwriting allow us to assume that they were copied already in the tenth century, or at least no later than the beginning of the eleventh.

SOPHOCLES IN AFGHANISTAN

In 1977, French excavations at Aï Khanoum in north-east Afghanistan—a foundation of Antiochus I Sotēr and subsequently one of the major cities of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom—of a building dating to shortly before the destruction of the place in 145 b.c.e. uncovered inter alia the remains of a papyrus and a parchment document. The papyrus text, dated by Cavallo on the basis of its letterforms to the mid third century b.c.e., preserved a fragment of a philosophical dialogue seemingly to be associated with the Peripatetic school. The second document consisted of two separate portions of a piece of parchment roughly assigned on the basis of its letterforms to the second half of the third or the first half of the second century b.c.e.; as also in the case of the papyrus, the letters survived not on the parchment itself but impressed upon the hardened dirt that surrounded it. Only column II of the original editors’ ‘Texte 2a’ (the more substantial of the two parchment fragments) contains a significant amount of text, which appears in neither TrGF nor PCG. I present it here without regard to standard editorial niceties, which are rendered impossible by the desperate state of the original document, now almost certainly lost, and the nature of the original publication.

Writing the Sublime: Visual Hagiography and the Promotion of Interreligious Understanding

Writing the Sublime: Visual Hagiography and the Promotion of Interreligious Understanding Lucinda Allen Mosher Some years ago, the Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) commissioned a gallery exhibition entitled Writing the Sublime: The Art of Calligraphy in the Religions of Abraham. Then a staff‐member of ICNY myself, thus present for the exhibition's gala opening in November 2003, this intensely dialogical project by esteemed letter‐artists Karen Gorst, Neil Yerman, and Mohamed Zakariya triggered memory of my own faith's narratives of encounter with the holy as it provoked questions about the holy as understood in other traditions—and raised possibilities for simultaneous lessons in aesthetics, ethics, comparative theology, hagiography, and promotion of positive interreligious understanding. Here, I offer thoughts on that interplay, making connection from sacred calligraphy through iconography to visual hagiography as modes of narrative theology, methods of doing the beautiful by “writing the sublime” valuable to promotion of interreligious understanding. As a theologian who attends to interreligious concerns, I embrace a notion, prominent in Abrahamic thought, that beauty is God's very essence. I define beauty as the good that claims us by its attractiveness. The characteristics of beauty, says Aristotle in his Metaphysics, are “orderly arrangement, proportion, and definiteness.” Thus, beauty is a close cousin to “the mathematical sciences.” In that vein, a classical Islamic maxim calls calligraphy (from the Greek for “beautiful writing”) “a spiritual geometry produced by a material instrument.” For each of the contributors to the Writing the Sublime exhibition, scribing is a devotional act—a discipline of ambassadorship for the text, of being “written through.” For them, each element—the ink, the quill, the writing surface, the letters themselves—manifests the divine. Noting that they were collaborating “at a time when the world's actions are guided by mistrust,” they prayed that they might “be God's hands in the troubled world.” Of their collaboration, they said: “in our quiet way, we are taking a stand.” In addition to individual offerings, Gorst, Yerman, and Zakariya created collaborative works especially for the New York show. Several were the work of two scribes; the exhibition's most exquisite and most controversial opus was the work of all three—a scribing of the biblical and Qur'anic accounts of Moses’ direct experience of the presence of God by means of an encounter with a mysterious fire. Yerman wrote out the story of Moses and the Burning Bush in the Hebrew of the Torah; Gorst, in Vulgate Latin; Zakariya, in the Arabic of the Qur'an. Their work could have taken the form of three distinct panels—each displaying the text of the story as if a freestanding page from a book, then displayed as a triptych. Instead, the three scribes took the novel approach of working jointly on a single piece of goatskin. All materials had to be both halal and kosher. Script styles were chosen to relate historically one to the other. Then, Yerman scribed the story in Hebrew down the center third of the surface, using black ink only. Gorst added the Latin version in the left‐hand column, illuminating the initial letter with red and gold. Finally, Zakariya wrote the Qur'anic account in the right‐hand column—mostly in black ink; but in portions of the text, using red ink or kalemu’z‐zeheb (the golden pen—i.e., script written in gold leaf or with ink made from gold pigment); and, as needed, inserting gold durak (small rosettes) and other ornaments, some with touches of red. “Each calligraphic piece is a record of the spiritual journey of the scribe while writing the piece,” Gorst remarked; and creating this exhibition was a journey she and her calligrapher‐colleagues had chosen. However, the process of executing Moses and the Burning Bush had indeed challenged them. It challenged their audience, too! At the exhibition opening, it seemed to me that some viewers were as off‐put and upset by the juxtaposition of Hebrew and Arabic—by the scribing of a portion of the Bible and portion of the Qur'an side by side on the same as piece of parchment—as others were fascinated and delighted. The trio mounted a similar exhibition...

American Revolutions: A Continental History by Alan Taylor

Reviewed by: American Revolutions: A Continental History by Alan Taylor Christopher R. Pearl (bio) American Revolutions: A Continental History. By Alan Taylor. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. Pp. x, 681. $37.50 cloth; $19.95 paper) Alan Taylor's new book, American Revolutions, is an ambitious work of synthesis that offers a nuanced perspective on a popular moment in history. Much like he did with American Colonies, Taylor refuses to accept easy generalizations or polarities, preferring to highlight, as he puts it, "the multiple and clashing visions of revolution pursued by the diverse American peoples of the continent" (p. 8). By using a continental approach, not only is Taylor able to explore the revolutionary experiences of a heterogeneous people living in North America, he can also explore the place of competing empires, nations, and states beyond the British Atlantic and show us the sheer magnitude of the revolution and its global causes and ramifications. Taylor's book is comprised of twelve chapters moving the reader along from 1750 to about 1804, though the last chapter goes a bit beyond that. In the first three chapters, he describes the creation of empires and colonies in the Americas—how they functioned, who ruled, and how the many peoples who made up these empires [End Page 519] experienced and grappled with social, political, and cultural dynamics that were often out of their control. The West has a particularly prominent place in this book. It is in that space that the American peoples (including, but not exclusively, Native Americans, slaves, imperial officials, elite speculators, and ordinary white colonists) epitomized the growing quest for personal and sometimes collective independence that pervaded the early American landscape. They vied for land and power over their individual lives and other people. This theme also sets the tone for his interpretation of the American Revolution. By emphasizing the diversity of ideas and experiences, and that those ideas often conflicted because of individual desires, Taylor makes it easier to comprehend the destructive tendencies of the Revolution as both a political and social movement as well as a civil and global war. Sides were taken, neutrality claimed and denied, and while some people benefited, particularly white male property owners who saw in the west a fulfillment of their desires, many others did not, especially Native Americans and slaves. It was a revolution with immense possibilities as well as limitations. Each chapter demonstrates an impressive command of the scholarly literature. His bibliography is just as important as his narrative. To be sure, historians who read this book will find little that is entirely new; many of the arguments have been made before in tight monographs and articles. Yet Taylor is not just addressing academics here, rather, he has written something that gives vent to a vast literature in an easily digestible and lively narrative that has the ability to reach a popular audience. For that, he is to be commended. It is because of that audience that my favorite chapter is Taylor's second to last, which he titled, "Partisans." I enjoyed this chapter because it provided an essential narrative for an important audience during a time when an understanding of the history of the American Revolution and the founding seems utterly necessary. In that chapter, Taylor weaves together some of the most important scholarly works in the past several decades and shows that, far from erecting a nation on a piece of parchment, the United States Constitution merely [End Page 520] accentuated an enduring problem of American history—what is an "American" and what kind of country did the revolution create? The recently ratified Constitution and its first ten amendments could do little to settle those questions. In essence, Taylor makes it abundantly clear that popular assumptions of such things as "Original Intent," which presupposes ideological and experiential harmony during the founding, is the product of some sort of alternate reality. As historians, we often take knowing the fractured nature of ideas and experiences during the founding for granted, but Taylor's ability to bring it together in a widely accessible chapter makes it all the more significant. The last paragraph or so of most book reviews...

Reading the Allegory of St. Erkenwald

In this article, I argue that the alliterative poem, St. Erkenwald, is a Middle English innovation on Old English and Anglo-Latin parchment riddles. By examining St. Erkenwald in light of the parchment riddles by Anglo-Latin riddlers Tatwine and Eusebius, and riddles contained in The Exeter Book, as well as the description of an ancient book in Matthew Paris’ Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, I show that the Erkenwald-poet reimagined the motif of the talking piece of parchment as an ancient pagan judge. The Erkenwald-poet’s reimagining of the parchment riddle as an allegory of reading has perhaps been obscured by what I argue is an unnecessary emendation to the text.

A Living Man, A Clay Man: Violence, the Zombie, and the Messianic in H. Leivick’s The Golem

A Living Man, A Clay ManViolence, the Zombie, and the Messianic in H. Leivick’s The Golem Simchi Cohen (bio) Most commonly associated with Rabbi Judah Leyb ben Bezalel, or the Maharal,1 the sixteenth-century chief rabbi of Prague, the golem was a giant being formed from clay in order to simultaneously function as a domestic servant and to defend Prague’s Jewish ghetto. The root of the word “golem” first appears in Psalms 139:15, an homage to the omnipresence of god. The Hebrew word galmi, or “my unshaped form,” suggests an unformed crudeness that is later appropriated in the golem’s mythology. The myth diverges as to the precise origin of the golem: some stories involve the carving of the Hebrew word emet (truth) on the golem’s forehead, the first letter of which (aleph) is then erased to form the word met (death) for its destruction; some claim that the tetragrammaton must be combined with each letter of the alphabet and pronounced with every possible vowel sound in order to produce the appropriate permutations of the name of god, signaling creation; and others depict a command written on a piece of parchment and placed inside the golem’s mouth. Etymologically, the word is equally difficult to pin down; both Modern Hebrew and Yiddish slang use the word golem to imply a kind of foolishness, but alternatively, the word may have been corrupted from the Hebrew goaleynu (our redeemer). Although the golem is typically classified as a cyborg, android, or automaton,2 it evades the precision of definitive characterization; the golem is depicted as both domestic servant and resistance fighter,3 simultaneously protector and threat, emblematic of both the act of creation and the act of destruction,4 and it is the golem’s evasiveness, its refusal to be fully contained, that locates it squarely in the context of the zombie. [End Page 1] The figure of the zombie originated in Haitian folklore as an integral element of the island’s religious beliefs: a hybrid of African animism and Roman Catholicism known as “voodoo.” According to Haitian legend, a sorcerer would bring about a victim’s death through a magic potion, capture the victim’s soul, and then reanimate the corpse as a soulless slave. In 1887, amateur anthropologist Lafcadio Hearn traveled to the island of Martinique to study its local customs and folklore, and encountered the legend of the corps cadavers, or “walking dead.” Hearn’s resulting article for Harper’s Magazine, entitled “The Country of the Comers-Back,” introduced the zombie to the English-speaking world. However, the zombie was not widely popularized in the United States until William Buehler Seabrook, an explorer and journalist from Westminster, Maryland, arrived in Haiti to research superstitions in voodoo culture. Seabrook’s travelogue, The Magic Island (1929), details his explorations in Haiti, including his encounter with a Haitian farmer, Polynice, who allegedly secured Seabrook’s first encounter with zombie slaves. The Magic Island’s popularity both inspired the first American zombie film, White Zombie (1932), which exposed voodoo zombies to American cinemagoers, and spawned an important moment in zombie history: the shift from cultural and folkloric belief to pop-cultural representation. As it lumbers across national, cultural, artistic, and intellectual borders, the zombie’s slippery position between the high-brow and the popular and its historical fluidity across the boundary from cultural figure to filmic illustration have since catapulted it to the heights of popularity in both the critical domain and the popular cultural domain. The Oxford English Dictionary first recorded the term “zombie” in 1819, tracing its etymology to the Creole word zonbi, a person who is believed to have died and been reanimated divested of free will. The zombie thus appears to have clearly defined parameters: associated both with a lack of free will and with reanimation. However, the clearer the parameters appear, the less they account for the variety implicit in narratives about, discourses on, and illustrations of the zombie: dozens of lists and blogs and discussions, books, chronicles, and resources include analyses of such films as The Crazies (1973) and 28 Days Later (2002), neither of which includes actual reanimation; and myriad films...

“Still more things to forget, in the wiping of Henry Patenson’s bottom in the Exchequer”

The final piece of parchment of the roll kept by the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer for 16 Henry VIII, or 1524–5, contains a very strange case. Written partly in Latin and partly in English, as was the normal practice of the Court of the Exchequer, it contains a pretended report on the dispute between John Hone, a citizen and maker of candles, on the one hand, and Henry Patenson, more familiarly known as Harry Patenson, because of his physical likeness to king Henry VIII. The defendant in the Exchequer case was described as the ‘Simperyng fole of london’. This case in the Exchequer court had some exceptionally well known participants, including the Second and Third Barons of the Exchequer, who were of very high rank. This article sheds new light on Sir Thomas More.

Detective Fiction in the Archives: Court Records and the Uses of Law in Late Medieval England

archives, but the process of building a case and of making logical inferences from scattered clues is sometimes remarkably similar. Historians, however, are no longer permitted the certainty that marked the conclusions of classic detective fiction: we are rarely, if ever, sure any more about who dunnit (whatever 'it' might be) or why. This constant epistemic doubt can be disorienting. On the one hand, many archival detectives, myself included, have, like our progenitor Jules Michelet, an essentially romantic sense that we can virtually see the dead through the dust of the document. The piece of parchment or paper, in some cases actually held by the hand of the person whom we are investigating, seems to create a literally tangible connection.2 On the other hand, both theory and the practical problems of research warn us continually that this vision of the dead is a mirage, or at least a highly refracted image: each new clue can throw all previous evidence into completely new light, effectively changing the direction of the narrative running inside our heads. My goal in this article is to explore two issues. The first is a problem in legal and social history: how did late medieval Londoners use the legal and archival powers of governing authorities in order to negotiate their lives? The second is a problem in historical methodology: how can thinking about the archives as historical agents rather than as inert repositories of evidence refine the way we use historical documents? Over the last several years, while working on the legal history of late medieval London, I have become interested in considering medieval legal history from the vantage point of the 'archival turn', an approach to working with archival sources influenced especially by Arlette Farge's Gout de I 'archive and Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever.3 Briefly stated, taking the archival turn demands that historians be more self-conscious not only about the meaning of the documents they study, but also about how the documents came to be archived in the first place, in whose interest they have been officially preserved, and how the

A Drawing by 'Robertus Pyte' for Henry VIII

In the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a drawing on two attached pieces of parchment measuring 68 by 44 cm, clearly carried out entirely by one hand (Fig. 1). The image is drawn in pen, with some applied wash, but it is possible that some silverpoint technique had also been used. Sharply incised lines around many of the figures suggest the intention of getting back to the ground beneath the preparation, to create the effects of highlights or perhaps to float colour or gold into these indentations. It is signed ROBERTUS PYTE on two steps at the bottom left and dated 1546 on the step at the far right. At some point in its history, perhaps when it was framed for the first time, it would appear that the drawing was trimmed on both sides, the topmost architectural element (likely to have been a shaped gable with curved sides) cut through, the upper peice of the parchment cut into a triangular shape and dark brown-coloured strips added with a later owner's monogram. The drawing came to the Museum in 1864 for the price of one guinea, thanks to the good offices of C.J. Richardson, and is mentioned in the Bulletin of the Acquisitions of the Museums of Sciences and Arts at the end of the 1860s. Given the remit of collection policy at the time, it was undoubtedly acquired as an example of English mid-sixteenth-century design in the classical style. Its original function and purpose were never properly investigated.

Up the bronchial tree.

UP THE BRONCHIAL TREE FRANCINE SMITHLINE Alice arrived at the hospital early. She decided that the best thing to do would be to visit her patients. As it was very early, she soon got an empty elevator. Something about the inside of the elevator seemed odd, as if the very atmosphere inside belonged to a different place. It was probably because the hospital was empty, thought Alice. Usually the elevators were so full one did not notice them at all. Alice reached for the button for the seventh floor, but to her surprise, there was no button for the seventh floor. The buttons proceeded in the following way: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12.... Since the elevator had started to rise, Alice hastily pressed the button for the sixth floor. As the elevator arrived, Alice's face assumed an expression of acute comprehension. Oh, dear, I have done it again, she thought, referring, of course, to her belief that she had returned to the strange hospital Wonderland of her last adventures. Taped on the elevator wall to her right was a torn paper announcing: GI conference: A presentation of a case of hyperbilirubinemia with sandwiches. . . . Alice shuddered. It confirmed her fears. The elevator stopped, the door opened, and Alice saw a signpost which read: EKG Department. " 'X, Y, Z—it's all there,' " mumbled Alice to herself, remembering Cheshire Cat's directions. Perhaps this would be a good place to become oriented. Article submitted in the first Dwight J. Ingle Memorial Writing Award competition for authors under 35.© 1982 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 003 1 -5982/82/2503-0278$01 .00 436 I Francine Smithline · Up the Bronchial Tree Alice knocked on the door and entered. Standing by a lectern was a tall, black bird wearing a formal tuxedo and holding a baton. At his right sat a little secretary bird bent over a notebook, diligently taking dictation. "Do you know anything about reading EKGs?" asked the bird. "Yes, a little," said Alice, modestly. "Well, let us see how you read," said Dr. Raven, pointing with his baton at the lectern. To her left was a tall stack of EKGs. He handed her an EKG and Alice started to look it over carefully. "Enough time!" shouted Dr. Raven, skewering the EKG with his baton and flipping it over. "What was it?" "Normal!" Alice guessed. "Good," said Dr. Raven. The scribe nodded and wrote it all down on a piece of parchment. "Next EKG," said Dr. Raven, handing her the next from the pile. Alice started reading. "Stop!" proclaimed Dr. Raven. "Do you see the size of this space?" he asked sarcastically, pointing to a blank the size ofseveral postage stamps. "Your reading must fit here." Alice tried to condense, but stopped, noticing that Dr. Raven was wincing. "Please, please, please!" he said, trying to sound patient. "We speak only English in this department." Alice turned red, "What do you suggest?" she asked. Dr. Raven smiled demurely and prepared to expound on what was obviously one of his favorite topics. "Reading EKGs we are under strict limitations of space. But there is no reason why we cannot be elegant while we are at it. When you have read as many EKGs as I have, you develop your own style. I myselfuse haiku. Listen to this, for example: OPR! QT sinks in deep despair U rides crest of T Lo! K! "Short, sweet, easy on the typist," said Dr. Raven, sinking back in the chair. Alice, whose experience did not provide a library of haiku from which to casually select a good example, pondered. Finally she thought of a simple one: P at crossroads, Block to the left; Block to the right; Perspectives in Biology and Mediane, 25, 3 ¦ Spring 1982 437 Life Inscrutable. Dr. Raven looked puzzled. "Why inscrutable?" he asked. "Inscrutable from the point ofview ofP!" said Alice, a little defensively. "Well, all right," conceded Dr. Raven, "I'll let that pass. Next!" Alice continued: To south Sailboats glide o'er the waves Seas not tranquil . . . Atrial flutter. "No, no no! Too metaphoric," exclaimed Dr. Raven. "After all, these interpretations must be understood by the doctors...

Bicolor Membrana

ALL classical palaeographers are familiar with Persius' roster of writing materials:Now we take the book to hand, and the two-coloured parchment purged of hair, and papyrus, and a knotty reed.Of the items mentioned, only ‘two-coloured parchment’ presents any difficulty.I hope in this article to present at least a possible solution to this problem.An obvious supposition would be that Persius is merely referring to the natural differences in colour between the two sides of a piece of parchment.

Some Costs of Cloth Manufacturing in Thirteenth-Century England

I N a recent article on the thirteenth-century woollen cloth industry Professor Miller wrote that 'evidence about manufacturing costs is virtually non-existent'. 1In general this is true, but fragmentary sources do exist and because of their scarcity these deserve to be publicised whenever they come to light. A few such fragments are preserved among the muniments of Westminster Abbey. They consist of three small pieces of parchment, the type of document usually known in medieval Latin as eedula or schedule, which are loosely attached to the account roll of the manor of Laleham, Middlesex, for the year 1294-5.2 Only two of the schedules have headings and only one of them has a date, while there is no certainty that there were not others which have perished. All three schedules record expenses incurred in the making of cloth at Laleham, probably during the autumn of 1295 and the following winter. The documents are translated in full at the end of this paper, except for certain unimportant items in schedule 2. They are printed in the order in which they are attached to the account roll, although this is not necessarily the order in which they were written and is not necessarily the order in which the costs were incurred. It must be appreciated that these are not finished documents like the manorial accounts which emerged from an audit, but rough notes, made perhaps for the purpose of drawing up. such an account. The finished account, if it ever existed, has not survived; the notes survived because they were attached to the manorial roll, probably because they showed what happened to the wool for which the reeve of Laleham was responsible in that year.

THE LIFE OF A SURVEYOR IN JAMAICA

AbstractLegend has it that when Don Christopher Columbus was describing Jamaica to his patrons Ferdinand and Isabella, he crumpled a piece of parchment in his hand and placed it upon the table before their Spanish Majesties, saying “That is Jamaica”.

A Rare Form of Bookmarker, circa 1400

The history of this specimen is unknown. I found it among some old documents. It consists of a disc of parchment 1⅜ in. in diameter, having the Arabic numerals 1 to 4 inclusive on either side, the 4 being of early looped form. This disc is pivoted between two semicircular leaves of a folded piece of parchment which cover three figures on either side of the disc, but leave the fourth exposed. These semicircular pieces of parchment have on one side the symbols of the sun, moon, and stars (fig. 1), and on the other side the sun only with the words ‘Rota versatil(is)’ in a cursive hand of the fifteenth century (fig. 2); the last two letters (is) are represented by a general sign of contraction. There is also a loop at the back through which a strip of parchment about ½ in. wide and 11½ in. long is threaded. The whole forms such a bookmarker as a skilful penman might make out of a few scraps of parchment in his leisure hours as an aid to his work.