The Enigma of the Sinaitic Glagolitic Tradition

01.02.2011 - 31.12.2014
Forschungsförderungsprojekt
The Enigma of the Sinaitic Glagolitic Tradition A Comparative Analysis Accompanied by Editions of the Old Church Slavonic Sources in St. Catherine’s Monastery with the Aid of New Technologies The sensational find on Mt. Sinai in May 1975 has not only yielded a large amount of important manuscripts, but also raised many questions about their development and St. Catherine’s monastery as an international centre of Christianity and culture. Complex, comparative investigations are needed to answer them and to draw a conclusive picture of the various traditions which co-existed and influenced each other there. Continuing ASF-project P19608, this joint-venture aims at the edition of the hitherto inedited manuscripts of the Glagolitic finds (Sin. slav. 3N & 5N) and the comparative analysis of the whole Sinaitic Old Church Slavonic collection (10th-11th/12th c.), on the one hand, and the further development and application of technical means for the preservation, investigation and virtual restoration of written cultural heritage and its access for the research community, on the other. Recent comparisons of the Glagolitic Sinaitica have shown that they were at least partly written there. While it is clear from their liturgical character that these books must have been in practical use, we can only guess why they were not composed in the younger, Cyrillic script – like most contemporary sources deriving from other areas. It seems that their authors formed a special group that adhered to the oecumenical tradition of Cyril and Methodius and defended it against the (Constantinopolitan or Roman) official church politics of their respective home lands. These results open up a new chapter in the early cultural history of the Slavs. In order to illuminate it three major tasks have to be fulfilled: to complete the edition of the Glagolitic findings, to collect and analyze the Glagolitic sources originally belonging to the Sinaitic collection in comparison to other (OCS and Greek) samples of Sinaitic and non-Sinaitic origin, and to investigate the scenario in which the OCS tradition on Mt. Sinai came into being. In order to exert these tasks, experts of the humanities, computer scientists and chemists will work together: Special imaging, image-enhancement, and image-analyzing techniques are needed for fragments preserved in a bad condition or containing palimpsests; the philological analyses have to be improved and accelerated by special computer programs; and the materials of the mss.-make-up (parchment, inks, pigments/dyes) must be analyzed by non-destructive (XRF, FTIR, UV-vis) means. Some of these means have already been developed and/or successfully applied in the running project and will only be adopted for the work with non-Glagolitic objects, others are yet to be developed. Three complex results are to be expected: 1. highly important editions and comparative data (codicology, palaeography, graphemics, material) of the relevant documents; 2. improved imaging devices and new computer-programs for the preservation, analysis and restoration of damaged written sources; and 3. new insights in the literary, language and cultural history of the Slavs and their connections with the Christian Orient.

Personen

Projektleiter_in

Projektmitarbeiter_innen

Institut

Grant funds

  • FWF - Österr. Wissenschaftsfonds (National) Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Forschungsschwerpunkte

  • Media Informatics and Visual Computing: 90%
  • Computational Intelligence: 10%

Schlagwörter

DeutschEnglisch
Glagolitische SchriftGlagolitic Script
GrafemikGraphem(at)ics
Bildhafte ManuskriptrestaurationManuscript Image Restoration
Bildhafte DokumentenanalyseDocument Image Analysis
TextwissenschaftTextology

Externe Partner_innen

  • Universität Wien

Publikationen