The Sinaitic Glagolitic Sacramentary-Fragments

01.01.2007 - 31.08.2010
Research funding project
Until the 1990s the study of writing was mainly a domain of the humanities. In recent years interdisciplinary work has gained ground. In the proposed project philologists and computer scientists will collaborate to enable a multifold progress in their fields both in time and substance. It is first of all devoted to the recording, investigation and editing of two medieval Slavonic manuscripts of extraordinary importance. Its second goal lies in the development of techniques and tools for the recording, restoration and analysis of such sources in order to support the philological studies. The objects to be edited are two Glagolitic manuscripts with Cyrillic and Greek additions of the classical Old Church Slavonic corpus, belonging to the new findings made in 1975 at St. Catherine¿s monastery on Mt. Sinai: Euchologii Sinaitici pars nova and ¿Missale¿ (Sacramentarium) Sinaiticum. As our preliminary investigations have shown, they are fragments of two separate parts of a liturgical collection written (predominantly) by the same scribe in the 11th century. The extraordinary importance of the texts comprised in this collection lies in the fact that their translations were mainly derived from Italo-Greek and Latin originals, thus being connected with the earliest Slavonic (Cyrillo-Methodian) tradition. Major parts of the manuscripts are in a deplorable state and cannot be deciphered without special imaging technologies. The most challenging part of the project from the standpoint of image analysis lies in the description and restoration of the relevant scripts. Yet it has to be stressed that the algorithms to be developed shall enable the philologists to perform their tasks better and faster; we do not aim to develop software that ¿reads¿ old handwriting automatically. The project goals include the following tasks: First, the acquisition of multi-spectral images of the manuscripts shall give the basis to improve the readability of the texts. Image registration, image enhancement, and a computer aided script description and restoration will then foster the philological work. A non-destructive material analysis will enable the definition of parchment, inks and pigments. The philological tasks include the decipherment, palaeography and graphemics of the written material on the one hand, and the text constitution and text comparison, commentaries, a glossary and an introduction on the other. The critical edition of the manuscripts will be presented both on paper and on internet.

People

Project leader

Project personnel

Institute

Grant funds

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

Research focus

  • Media Informatics and Visual Computing: 85%
  • Mathematical and Algorithmic Foundations: 10%
  • Computer Science Foundations: 5%

Keywords

GermanEnglish
Glagolitische SchriftGlagolitic Script
TextwissenschaftTextology
GrafemikGraphem(at)ics
Bildhafte DokumentanalyseDocument Image Analysis
Mildhafte ManuskriptrestaurationManuscript Image Restoration

External partner

  • Universität Wien

Publications