Unknown Manuscript Research Articles

Unknown Manuscript of “Bandura Playing Handbook” From DP Period

The purpose of the research is to introduce the manuscript of the “Bandura Playing Handbook” by an unknown author (Augsburg, Germany, 1951) into scientific circulation in the context of providing educational and methodological publications on the Ukrainian art of bandura playing abroad. The research methodology is based on the principles of historical, cultural, textual, and axiological approaches. Methods such as historical and typological, analysis and synthesis, music textual method, and musicological analysis were used, which made it possible to identify not only trends in the evolution of teaching and methodological approaches to teaching bandura playing but also the personological aspects of their formation. Particular attention is paid to the need to systematise not only the methods in printed editions of handbooks and self-tutorials on bandura but also manuscript rarities that remain in public and private archives and require proper scientific and methodological understanding. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the introduction of the analysis of the manuscript “Bandura Playing Handbook” by an unknown author (Augsburg, Germany, 1951), created during the so-called camp period in Germany, where displaced persons (DP – Displaced Persons) were kept. The music manuscript is part of the documentary materials of the Archives of the Ukrainian Free University (Munich, Germany). Conclusions. The study analyses the handbook materials from the methodological and fingering points of view, the sequence of mastering the instrument, the formation of the bandura repertoire, and its comparison with similar examples in Ukrainian musical art. It determines the value of the handbook from the point of view of popularising the Ukrainian national musical instrument in the conditions of emigration and spreading the performing traditions of bandura art.

«Печально зимой в Булуне»: А. В. Боголепов о повседневности заполярной Якутии в 1913–1916 гг.

Goals. The article introduces an unknown manuscript by A. Bogolepov titled ‘Bulun Village of Verkhoyansk District (Yakutsk Oblast)’ and compiled during an exile to the isolated Arctic locality of Yakutia. The narrative was written before the revolutionary events of 1917 and is of certain interest since it lacks any political bias, being characterized by restrained neutrality and sufficient depth of observations over everyday realias of the small northern settlement. A. Bogolepov’s text is attractive for the breadth of issues covered, its consonance with the social and cultural problems faced by the era and discussed by the advanced public. So, it seems reasonable enough to publish the identified document for further discussion in an interdisciplinary perspective. Materials and methods. The manuscript was discovered at the State Archive of Irkutsk Oblast (Coll. 293 ‘East Siberian Department of the Russian Geographical Society’). Furthermore, in search of additional data on the former’s author we investigated the State Archive of Altai Krai (Barnaul), State Archive of Krasnoyarsk Krai (Krasnoyarsk), National Archive of Sakha-Yakutia (Yakutsk), Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and its St. Petersburg Branch, and the efforts have yielded a variety of precious finds. The methodological basis rests on the principles characteristic of the field the researchers are actually engaged in — cryoanthropology. Results. The discovered materials open a previously unknown page in the Yakut pre-Soviet Northern studies. A. Bogolepov’s manuscript is rich in data on natural conditions, economic and cultural activities in the small remote settlement somewhat representing the polar world in miniature. The author highlights the interpenetration of Russian and Yakut cultures, mentions some specific local sociocultural phenomena resulting from the geographical location and climatic features. The long cold period — as is stressed by A. Bogolepov — shapes the entire life cycle of the settlement: it completely determines the functioning of the transport network, household and trade agendas, everyday life and leisure pursuits of locals. The isolation and scarcity of social activity, temporal and event-based ‘frozen’ everyday life of the northern society are emphasized. The manuscript is an important source for the research of cryoanthropology, and also contains valuable information on Yakutia’s socioeconomic and cultural history throughout the early decades of the twentieth century.

Ο Ιάκωβος Αργείος (ca 1660-1736) στην Πατριαρχική Σχολή

Iakovos Argeios (ca 1660-1736) at the Patriarchal Academy of Constantinople. New evidence and answers for an old riddle
 Research into the history of the Patriarchal Academy at the beginning of the 18th century has been primarily based on the works of Manuel Gedeon and Tasos Gritsopoulos. These two historians have recorded and reconstructed all the testimonies and information they had gathered about the operation of the Academy. However, the sources at their disposal were extremely scarce for this period in terms of teachers, such as Iakovos Argeios (1660-1736), on whom the present study focuses, and their teaching activities at the School. The aim of this article is to present the new data which emerged from the identification and study of unknown manuscripts as well as from the study of the scholar’s personal correspondence. These facts militate against Tasos Gritsopoulos’ dominant view that Iakovos was exclusively a home teacher of the Mavrokordatos’family and that his teaching career at the Patriarchal Academy was limited in time (i.e. confined in the years 1707-1715).In this study I examine and reconstruct all the existing testimonies and evidence that I found on the life and work of Iakovos Argeios, “the supreme of the Great Church philosophers”. Through these new data it becomes possible to study and trace the career of Iakovos Argeios at the Patriarchal Academy from the mid-1680s until his death (1736). Iakovos was initially a student in the philosophy course of the Academy (1684), when Antonios Spantones was a professor of philosophy. He completed his studies around 1686/87 and he attracted the interest of his teachers and of the Grand Dragoman Alexandros Mavrokordatos. He subsequently served as tutor to the Mavrokordatos’ family (since the beginning of the 1690s) for at least 20-25 years, while almost at the same time he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the Academy. As a prominent professor he delivered two encomiastic addresses to the Ecumenical Patriarchs Kallinikos II (1698) and Gabriel II (1703).Then, probably in 1702, he was appointed Academy’s headmaster and professor of philosophy. He taught rhetoric theory and practise and Aristotelian philosophy from the textbooks of Theophilos Korydalleus, as evidenced by the manuscripts of his students presented in this article, mainly Antonios Byzantios, Nikolaos Kritias and Azarias Tzigalas: Physics, Logic, On the Soul, On generation and corruption. He also received from the Patriarchate the highly-esteemed office of the “supreme of thephilosophers” (around 1707-1709), through Mavrokordatos’ intervention, as a recognition of his philosophical expertise. He retained this title and remained head of the Academy until the end of his life. From his letters we know that Iakovos was present in Methodios Anthrakites’ conviction (1723). He supported in deeds and words the efforts of Silvestros, the Patriarch of Antioch, to establish a Greek and Christian seminary in Aleppo (1724-1726). Unfortunately, the last years of his life were painful due to health problems and the ingratitude of his old friends. Iakovos found solace only in teaching at the Academy and in correspondence with his dear friends and old students, such as Makarios Kalogeras, who had founded a school on the island of Patmos. For the teachers and students of the School of Patmos, Iakovos was their mentor and spiritual guide. In conclusion, Iakovos Argeios had an important influence on the course of the Patriarchal Academy with his long lasting and constant teaching activity. In his time the Patriarchal Academy became a true “Faculty of Philosophy”.

New Light on John Milton as Landowner and Landlord: A Previously Unknown Manuscript Lease from 1663 in the Portland Papers1

New Light on John Milton as Landowner and Landlord: A Previously Unknown Manuscript Lease from 1663 in the Portland Papers¹

Reinvention of Padishah-i Islam in the Visual Representations of Ghazan Khan

This article discusses how the visualization of Mahmud Ghazan, the sixth Ilkhanid ruler, was employed to construct and propagate his image as the Padishah-i Islam (King of Islam), thus justifying him both as king of Iranshahr (land of Iran) and the legitimate successor of the Prophet Muhammad. In a quest for visual translations of the Ilkhanid concept of Padishah-i Islam—an inseparable combination of the Persian notion of ideal kingship and prophethood—several illustrations from the Diez albums representing Ghazan or events of his reign have been identified, two of which have become subject to detailed iconographic analyses. Two approaches to the visualization of Ghazan as Padishah-i Islam can be considered here. The first is Ghazan’s birth scene where the visual narrative is covered in various formal and semantic layers; transformed into a symbolic narrative of a holy birth associated with those of the prophets. The second appears in the scene of Ghazan’s enthronement, probably once illustrated as an unknown manuscript’s frontispiece, the images’ composition and components appear as a visual panegyric poem which applies an elaborate visual language that elevates Ghazan to the level of a divine king.

Reinvention of Padishah-i Islam in the Visual Representations of Ghazan Khan

This article discusses how the visualization of Mahmud Ghazan, the sixth Ilkhanid ruler, was employed to construct and propagate his image as the Padishah-i Islam (King of Islam), thus justifying him both as king of Iranshahr (land of Iran) and the legitimate successor of the Prophet Muhammad. In a quest for visual translations of the Ilkhanid concept of Padishah-i Islam—an inseparable combination of the Persian notion of ideal kingship and prophethood—several illustrations from the Diez albums representing Ghazan or events of his reign have been identified, two of which have become subject to detailed iconographic analyses. Two approaches to the visualization of Ghazan as Padishah-i Islam can be considered here. The first is Ghazan’s birth scene where the visual narrative is covered in various formal and semantic layers; transformed into a symbolic narrative of a holy birth associated with those of the prophets. The second appears in the scene of Ghazan’s enthronement, probably once illustrated as an unknown manuscript’s frontispiece, the images’ composition and components appear as a visual panegyric poem which applies an elaborate visual language that elevates Ghazan to the level of a divine king.

A Deep Learning Approach for Arabic Manuscripts Classification.

For centuries, libraries worldwide have preserved ancient manuscripts due to their immense historical and cultural value. However, over time, both natural and human-made factors have led to the degradation of many ancient Arabic manuscripts, causing the loss of significant information, such as authorship, titles, or subjects, rendering them as unknown manuscripts. Although catalog cards attached to these manuscripts might contain some of the missing details, these cards have degraded significantly in quality over the decades within libraries. This paper presents a framework for identifying these unknown ancient Arabic manuscripts by processing the catalog cards associated with them. Given the challenges posed by the degradation of these cards, simple optical character recognition (OCR) is often insufficient. The proposed framework uses deep learning architecture to identify unknown manuscripts within a collection of ancient Arabic documents. This involves locating, extracting, and classifying the text from these catalog cards, along with implementing processes for region-of-interest identification, rotation correction, feature extraction, and classification. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, achieving an accuracy rate of 92.5%, compared to 83.5% with classical image classification and 81.5% with OCR alone.

Thunderstorms underground: Giuseppe Saverio Poli and the electric earthquake.

This paper presents a case study of the "electric hypothesis" of the causes of earthquakes, which emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century as part of the first studies of seismology. This hypothesis was related to Franklin's views on atmospheric electricity and developed in a period when electric phenomena were widely studied, and was essentially based on solid empirical evidence and confirmed by model experiments. Even though it resulted from scientific reasoning, the theory remained strongly empirical, and was supported by Italian scholars who were familiar with seismic events. Among these, Giuseppe Saverio Poli, a follower of Franklin, was able to provide a careful and comprehensive explanation of the disastrous earthquake of 1783, which occurred in Calabria, a region of southern Italy, and the St. Anne earthquake of 1805, by drawing not just upon the electric evidence, but all the relevant phenomenology available. We outline here the emergence, the development, and the later evolution (up to the beginning of the nineteenth century) of the "electric earthquake" paradigm by focusing on different works by Poli, including a previously unknown manuscript containing a thorough account of the Calabria earthquake prepared by the Neapolitan scholar for the Royal Society. The present case study therefore offers the opportunity to illustrate how electrical science shaped earthquake science to a degree not usually appreciated in the literature, and is also supported to some extent by the transition from Enlightenment scientific ideals to the Romantic conception of unity in the natural world, in search of common causes among phenomena belonging to different fields.

Проблемы реконструкции музыки XVIII века (на примере песнопения "Ангел вопияше")

The article deals with an unknown manuscript of the late 18th century found in the archives of the Dmitrov Kremlin. Notes previously belonged to the Apraksin family and were kept in the library of the Olgovo estate. Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin was a well-known music lover, in Olgov there was a serf theater, an orchestra, and a choir. The singers sang at divine services in the Church of the Introduction of the Virgin in the village adjacent to the estate. The manuscript contains two hymns — "Dostojno est’" and "Angel vopijashe". The manuscript contains an indication of the authorship of Bortnyansky. The question is being considered whether this authorship can be attributed to both chants, or only to “Dostojno est’”. The music of the choir "Angel vopijashe" is analyzed.The chant "Angel vopijashe" most likely belongs to early classicism, it can be dated to the 1780s. It was not written by the most skillful author, who composed it on the model of Bortnyansky's chants.

A Seventeenth-Century Manuscript of the Academic Drama Lingua

Abstract This article explores a previously unknown manuscript of the anonymous academic drama Lingua. Housed in the Bridgeman family archives in Staffordshire Record Office, the manuscript is similar but by no means identical to the 1607 printed edition. I examine the manuscript’s possible provenance, its distinctive features and key variants (including its attention to act music), before focusing on two substantial original passages. Both of these episodes demonstrate a clear satirical interest in Wales, recycling as they do various Welsh stereotypes common in professional drama of the early seventeenth century. I argue that these sections—which also bear the mark of an engagement with Spenser and Rabelais—enrich our understanding not only of Lingua but of the links between university drama and wider literary and theatrical cultures. I conclude that these sections are likely authorial, and that Thomas Tomkis (to whom the play is usually attributed) may well have contributed to or overseen the production of the manuscript.

In search of the 'real Shakespeare' : Sándor Hevesi's Taming of the Shrew in 1923, Budapest

This study introduces Sándor Hevesi (1873–1939), a Hungarian translator, theatre critic, Shakespeare scholar and opera and theatre director, who played a crucial role in the Budapest theatre scene in the 1920s. His work has received less attention than it deserves, and particularly the so-called Shakespearecycles, i.e., Hevesi's serialised Shakespeare productions, are still neglected. The cycles/series were performed between 1922 and 1933, while Hevesi was artistic and managing director of the National Theatre. These productions resuscitated the then fading Hungarian Shakespeare cult and profoundly changed the Hungarian reception and performance of Shakespeare. Hevesi's intention was to present both authentic and popular Shakespeare productions, therefore, he sought the key to 'the real Shakespeare'. The present study intends to explore what Hevesi (could have) meant by this expression, and particularly focuses on an unknown manuscript, Hevesi's own, handwritten director's copy of the Taming of the Shrew (1923). Through the case study of his staging of the Shrew, the paper reveals Hevesi's particular methods of close reading, translation, and stage direction. It concludes that Hevesi's concept of the 'real Shakespeare' was in fact a complex, experimental journey, transcending the boundaries of stage direction, dramaturgy, and scenography of the day.

An Index of Chemical Substances and Plants in the Military Book of 1607

The article presents an annotated publication of a fragment from the Military Book of 1607, the earliest Russian translation of a European military treatise. This translation was based on the second volume of the German compendium Kriegsbuch, published in 1573 by Leonhard von Fronsperger. At the end of their work, the translators Mikhail Yuriev and Ivan Fomin, employed at the Ambassadorial Chancery, placed an index of the mentioned mineral and organic substances and compounds as well as plants used to produce gunpowder and other fuels. The introduction to the publication deals with how and why the index was compiled, what entries belong to it, and what are its linguistic features. The article describes a previously unknown manuscript of the Military Book. Some suggestions are made concerning the strategies used by the translators while working with the German and Russian text and also concerning supplementary materials they used, primarily, Russian manuscript translations of European medical treatises and advice given by foreign medical staff. In the appendix, the index is edited in full with alternative readings according to the two surviving manuscripts. The commentary identifies the mentioned substances and plants with their names in the German original of the Military Book, its later version completed by Anisim Mikhailov-Radishevsky in 1620 and other Russian writings of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Unknown manuscripts from the Polish language collection of the National Library in Kiev: source presentation

The article is devoted to the studying unknown Polish archives on the territory of Podol, Volhyn and Kyiv region in the 17th–20th centuries, which are kept in the collection of the Manuscripts Institute in the W.I. Vernadski National Library of Ukraine.The article describes the newly established collection of Polish documents, focusing on the manuscript heritage of Roman Catholic monasteries, the sources of Polish education in the 19th century (Liceum Krzemieniecki), and mentions unknown autographs of Polish artists in the eastern borderlands in 19th century and other interesting facts.The collection is a real treasure for the researcher of the Polish heritage of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

НЕВІДОМИЙ ДОКУМЕНТ ПРО ЧЕСЬКОГО ПИСЬМЕННИКА ПЕТРА КРШІЧКУ

The publication presents an unknown manuscript dedicated to the work of the Czech poet, translator and teacher Petr Ladislav Křička (1884-1949). Its author is the P. L. Křička’s wife Anna Křičková. The document, written at the request of the Ukrainian Czech language literature scientist, professor of Lviv University V.A. Motornyi, tells us about individual pages of the Czech writer’s life, the beginnings of his creative biography, memories of his study years at school and at the Sorbonne University of Paris, etc. A special place in this material is given to the role of P. L. Křička’s personal contacts with famous figures of Czech culture of the first half of the 20th century, their influence on his talent as a writer.

The Patterns of the Circulation of Scientific Knowledge in Hungary, 1770–1830

During the past six years (2016–2020, including a nineteen-month extension due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lasting until the end of 2022), the project team has been working on seven fields of knowledge (history; classical philology/aesthetics; philosophy; statistics; anthropology; medicine; agricultural sciences), investigating how and through which personal, institutional, and media channels different types of knowledge have been transformed into scientific disciplines. Each researcher sought to model the respective patterns of knowledge through an analysis of hitherto unknown manuscripts and printed texts of various genres characteristic of Hungary’s scientific life between 1770 and 1830 involving epistemic arenas, the technologies of ‘making sciences’, and media tools.As many as seventy-one publications appeared during the course of the project. These include a monograph and a publication that comprises historical sources in the field of agricultural sciences, and an online publication that consists of a substantial number of sources associated with the above-mentioned disciplines. The proceedings of two international conferences in Hungarian and English, a collection of papers in English, and two in Hungarian should also be noted. All these should be accessible in print and open-access format at the end of 2022.The synthesis volumes on the processes of development of the seven fields of knowledge into independent disciplines may be utilized as university textbooks or as manuals for researchers. The digital edition of sources (comprising forty-five author’s sheets) was created using open-source Wikibase™ software that can support both text publication and provide the backend database that is needed for data enrichment. It is in an open-source format, making it possible to explore personal names, toponyms, and subject headings according to main and subcategories. We intend to build a network of Hungarian and foreign researchers to extend the system both horizontally and vertically.

Hobbes, Empire, and the Politics of the Cabal: Political Thought and Policy Making in the Restoration

AbstractThis article explores a sizable and largely unknown manuscript treatise from the 1670s, “Pax et Obedientia,” which discusses the Civil Wars, trade, the origins of government, toleration, plantations (especially Jamaica), and the royal supremacy, embedding within it a distinctive engagement with Hobbes and a particular vision of imperial composite monarchy. This first analysis of what “Pax” said, who wrote it, and why he did so in the way that he did nuances the present understanding of Restoration debates over a centralizing empire; it reveals the different forms that policy makers thought that empire might take, while also capturing a moment of transition between different meanings of imperium. The anonymous author's engagement with Hobbes further suggests how questions that later fell into the realm of political economy were discussed at the time, using the language of natural jurisprudence. In demonstrating the methodological necessity of utilizing both linguistic and institutional contexts, the authors argue that the apparent incoherence of “Pax” reflects an essential although ineptly executed strategy on the part of its author. Inchoate though the manuscript is, it offers a significant opportunity to understand the intellectual world of junior members of the government and to reconsider the intersection of political thinking and political action.

An alleged homily on the paralytic by John Chrysostom in the codex Athonensis, Lauras A 112 (Eustratiadis 112)

Through the efforts of the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT), a list of manuscripts is available that preserves homilies on the healing of the paralytic. Included in this list is the codex Athonensis, Lauras A 112 (Eustratiadis 112), which, according to those who provided its second description, preserves in the last four folios ‘a homily on the paralytic by John Chrysostom’. After a brief presentation of what is known about this codex, this article offers a detailed examination of the codex’s last four folios, revealing that the description of them by Spyridon Lauriotis and Sophronios Eustratiadis is inaccurate.Contribution: This article provides the first thorough examination of the last four folios of the codex Athonensis, Lauras A 112 (Eustratiadis 112), demonstrating that they do not contain ‘a homily on the paralytic by John Chrysostom’ but rather several fragments of homilies on Thomas, Mid-Pentecost and the Ascension. Thus, the article contributes to the description of the codex and to the identification of a previously unknown manuscript witness to several homilies.

Maillard de Tournon: The First Papal Legate to China (1702–1710) and His Unknown Manuscripts

The Istoria della spedizione del Cardinale Carlo Tommaso Maillard de’ Tournon is a collection of manuscripts produced for and circulated within the Roman Curia in the early 18th century. It contains letters and reports from Maillard de Tournon, the first papal legate to China, and records his mission and the early efforts of the Holy See to establish direct contact with the Qing court, bypassing the patronage system and locally entrenched religious orders (the Jesuits in particular). For various reasons, these manuscripts were never fully published and, in spite of their interest, remain relatively unknown to scholars. This article introduces these manuscripts, edited by Giovanni Giacomo Fatinelli, procurator of Maillard de Tournon in Rome, and demonstrates their value in allowing a greater understanding of the relationship between the Holy See and China, as well as the general relationship between the Holy See and Catholic missionaries throughout the world.

Nieznane fugi z rękopisu L 1636 Biblioteki Diecezjalnej w Sandomierzu

Unknown Fugues from the Manuscript L 1636 of The Diocesan Library in Sandomierz The aim of the article is to present the content of the unknown manuscript L 1636 of The Diocesan Library in Sandomierz, with particular emphasis on the fugues contained therein. A closer acquaintance with the manuscript, dated around 1725, allowed to enrich the image of the musical culture in Poland in the first decades of the 18th century. The text is divided into three parts: 1. Description of the source; 2. Manuscript’s contents; 3. Conclusions from the analysis of the fugues from the manuscript PL-SA L 1636. The article is also accompanied by an appendix containing a critical edition of the fugues from the described manuscript.

Reconstructing a Transatlantic Business Venture: Aladár Pataky’s Unknown Manuscript from 1927

This paper reconstructs the story of a so far unknown manuscript, a handwritten, personal account detailing a 1927 journey to the United States and Canada with the primary purpose of selling Hungarian wine as part of a more extensive international venture. The article introduces the research that led to the identification of the writer of the manuscript –written on sheets of paper from a Canadian hotel – and outlines the background of a fascinating business project, thereby positioning the text not only as a unique example to be studied with the tools of microhistory but also placing it in the broader, transatlantic historical and political environment of the time. The text is also studied and presented as a piece of travel writing that provides unique insights into Hungarian perceptions of North America in the 1920s and the Hungarian images of Canada and the United States.