The 1563 Ruthenian Translation of the Czech Lucidář in a Manuscript Copy of the First Half of the 17th Century: Publication

The younger manuscript copy of the 1563 Ruthenian translation of the Czech Lucidář is published in full (Moscow, State Public Historical Library of Russia, Department of Rare Books, Ms. 11, fol. 67v–89), which has preserved the afterword with the translation date and fills in a significant gap (twenty questions and answers) of the earlier manuscript copy.

The Declaration of Arbroath in print, 1680–1705

This article examines the circumstances in which the Declaration of Arbroath was first printed in 1680 by Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh and the original manuscript on which Mackenzie’s text was based (NRS SP13/7). It then traces its subsequent print history between the Revolution of 1689–90 and the Union of Parliaments in 1707 both in Latin and in an English translation that first appeared in 1689. It locates the Declaration within the broader context of whig propaganda that encompassed a defence not just of the Revolution Settlement but of Scottish sovereignty at the time of the Union, culminating in James Anderson’s new edition and translation of the text of 1705. An appendix further examines the earliest reference to the Declaration in print – in Archbishop John Spottiswoode’s History of the Church in Scotland (1655) – and Spottiswoode’s use of a manuscript copy of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon.

The Concept of “Contemporary Place Names” in the Tibetan Translation of the Da Tang Xiyu Ji

The Da Tang Xiyu ji (Тhe Great Tang Records on the Western Regions) was translated into Tibetan by the Mongolian scholar Gombojab (Mgon-po-skyabs) of the Qing dynasty (16441912), using the original Chinese text of the Qianlong Tripitaka, also called the Dragon Tripitaka. In the manuscript copy kept at Otani University (Kyoto), interlinear explanatory notes of the contemporary place names are found. The notes on the Central Asian place names might reflect the new geographical knowledge that Chinese society obtained after Qianlongs campaigns against the Dzungars. In the present paper, the author discusses some of these notes. As the notes are not accurate and contain much misunderstanding, it is hard to use them as research sources. Nevertheless, they reveal the scope of knowledge of the time and deserve attention.

Archiving Dossier Narrative: Transcribing "Le Pelerinage de Damoiselle Sapience"

The archived documents were created for Transcribing “Le Pelerinage de Damoiselle Sapience”: Scholarly Editing Covid19-Style, a digital transcription, edition creation and writing project in November 2020 as part of the 13th Annual (Virtual) Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. International teams of medieval scholars and paleographers divided into three teams the first of which transcribed a unique manuscript copy of Le Pelerinage de Damoiselle Sapience, a previously unedited French-language text that survives in f. 86r-95v of UPenn MS Codex 660. The second team reviewed the work and the third team provided final editorial sign off and created a micro-edition with commentary that was submitted to the journal Digital Medievalist.

Who is the Native of the Sarvasiddhāntatattvacūḍāmaṇi?

The British Library, London, holds a unique manuscript copy of a Sanskrit text entitled Sarvasiddhāntatattvacūḍāmaṇi (MS London BL Or. 5259). This manuscript, consisting of 304 large-size folios, is lavishly illustrated and richly illuminated. The author, Durgāśaṅkara Pāṭhaka of Benares, attempted in this work to discuss all the systems of astronomy – Hindu, Islamic and European – around the nucleus of the horoscope of an individual personage. Strangely, without reading the manuscript, the authors Sudhākara Dvivedī in 1892, C. Bendall in 1902 and J. P. Losty in 1982, declared that the horoscope presented in this work was that of Nau Nihal Singh, the grandson of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore, and this has been the prevailing notion since then. The present paper refutes this notion and shows – on the basis of the relevant passages from the manuscript – that the real native of the horoscope is Lehna Singh Majithia, a leading general of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

“Blok’s Symphony” by Vladimir Shcherbachyov: a “partitura incognita”

Весной 2021 года семья ленинградского композитора В. В. Щербачёва опубликовала за свой счет партитуру самого значительного сочинения в его симфоническом наследии — Симфонии № 2 для солистов, хора и оркестра на тексты Александра Блока. Созданное в первой половине 1920-х годов, произведение к настоящему моменту исполнялось лишь дважды: при жизни автора в 1927 году (дирижер В. А. Дранишников) и после его смерти в 1987 году (дирижер В. В. Катаев), в связи с чем предпринимается попытка объяснить этот исторический факт. Отдельное внимание посвящено обстановке премьерного показа и впечатлению, произведенному им на первых слушателей и отразившемуся в периодике тех лет. На основе личных бесед автора рецензии с внучкой композитора Е. О. Кучумовой воссоздаются обстоятельства исполнения симфонии, приуроченного к 100-ле тию со дня рождения композитора. Отмечается кропотливая работа редакторов— сотрудников Санкт-Петербургской консерватории Н. А. Мартынова и А. А. Красавина — по восстановлению нотного текста на основе сохранившейся рукописной копии переписчика и стеклографического издания в библиотеке «Дома музыки на Старо-Петергофском» (в прошлом библиотека Музфонда Ленинградского отделения Союза композиторов). Обосновывается необходимость включения данного монументального симфонического произведения в современную концертную жизнь. In spring 2021 the descendants of the Leningrad composer Vladimir Scherbachyov published for their own money the score of his most significant symphonic opus — Second Symphony for soloists, choir and orchestra with lyrics from Alexander Blok. Composed at the beginning of XX century, it has been performed just twice — during the life of the author at 1927 (conductor Vladimir Dranishnikov) and after his death at 1987 (conductor Vitaliy Kataev), which makes it necessary to explain this historical fact. Special attention is paid to premiere and impression on public, reflected in critical articles. Based on the personal conversation with Vladimir Scherbachyov’s granddaughter Elena Kuchumova circumstances about 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth performance are recreated. Nicolay Martynov and Alexey Krasavin performed rigorous work of on recreation of the score on the basis of a manuscript copy of autograph and steklograph edition held at library of “Musical House on Staro-Peterhofsky” (previously the library of Musical Fond of the Union of Composers of Leningrad). The necessity of including this monumental symphonic piece in the modern concert life is justifed.

Discovering the City and its Environs Ramji Das and his Tareekh-o Aasar-e Dehli

In 1854, Ramji Das, a retired officer from the Collectorate of Delhi penned a small, wonderful work, at the behest of Colonel Hamilton, called Tareekh-o Aasar-e Dehli, introducing to us several typologies of structures focussed partially on the city and the rest in its environs, including villages. He used the structures to highlight three to four important issues. The names of the builders, the purpose of the structures, their present state and the colloquialisms, anecdotes and popular cultures associated with them. The underlying theme of all structures was that they were for the benefit of large numbers of people. The author of this book apprised the readers of the newly created administrative divisions in the geographical region of Delhi. Ramji Das’s work was contemporaneous with Saiyid Ahmad Khan’s second edited version of Asar-us Sanadid, yet it has a relevance, importance and uniqueness of its own. Only one manuscript copy has been located recently, that too after nearly 165 years and it is now a published text in Urdu.

Women’s Work and Men’s Devotions: The Fabrics of the Passion in “O Vernicle”

This article explores how male Cistercians producing an early fifteenth-century miscellaneous manuscript made devotional use of images representing women’s textile labor. An early manuscript copy of “O Vernicle,” a Middle English arma Christi poem, appears in Royal 17 A. xxvii, likely produced at Bordesley Abbey. The Royal version of “O Vernicle” features a unique marginal illumination of two women of Bethlehem and Jerusalem wearing green and red dresses. The woman in green holds a baby swaddled in a green and blue cloth with red stripes, similar to a Scottish tartan. Three other examples demonstrate the illuminator’s careful attention to fabric’s texture and encourage the user to imagine touching Christ’s clothing. These include the Veronica; the translucent white blindfold before Christ’s eyes; and his two tunics, one of which “hade sem none.” The Royal manuscript’s illuminations incorporate multiple textiles and human figures both to customize the poem to the local Cistercian, Worcestershire context and the abbey’s and region’s role in cloth production and also to create scripts for readers’ affective devotions. These female figures and their fabrics fashion a tactile-affective devotional approach to the Passion story. In the Royal manuscript’s text and images, women’s textile work functions as a hermeneutic lens and sensorial-affective prompt within both male monastic and lay devotional culture.

Old Church Slavonic Elements in the Code of Emperor Dušan (1349, 1353/1354)

The paper traces Old Church Slavonic elements in the Code of Emperor Dušan, a legal monument written in the vernacular, Old Serbian language. Before the end of the 14th century and especially in the 15th century, the text of the Code was subjected to subsequent archaization, with the aim of increasing the share of Old Church Slavonic elements in the linguistic structure, which reflected the spirit of the time, different from the period in which the codex had been compiled. In this context, the paper seeks to determine the real presence of this linguistically marked phenomenon and its function in the text, before the upper chronological limit, set by the oldest surviving manuscript copy in physical terms, the Struga manuscript (ca. 1395). The study compares the situation in the manuscript copies of the older recension, especially in those that were not exposed to major linguistic changes. It is established that during the earliest development of the manuscript tradition of Emperor Dušan’s Code (i.e. the first fifty years after its had been compiled), the Old Church Slavonic phonetics, accompanied by morphology to a limited extent, was the basic means of increasing expressiveness (however, Old Church Slavonic morphological means were hardly at all used in the protograph). The Old Church Slavonic vocabulary present in the Code of Emperor Dušan was generally not phonetically marked; it was in every respect adjusted to the vernacular language system. The use of elements adopted from Old Church Slavonic was, above all, determined by the topic, i.e. it was limited to a particular subject. These elements are not scattered throughout the text, but are mostly concentrated in the legal provisions concerning church law, usually with reliance on the so-called Code of the Holy Fathers. As it turns out, elements of Old Church Slavonic from various linguistic levels are not widely present in the original text of the Code of Emperor Dušan. This presumably reflects the situation in the Old Serbian language of the time, although the language of this legal monument is administrative and not colloquial.