The Sinaitic Glagolitic Sacramentary-Fragments

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.

This interdisciplinary project of philologists (ISS), computer scientists (CVL) and chemists (ISTA - on the basis of working contracts) pursued three principal goals: 1. the investigation and edition of two Old Slavonic liturgical manuscripts in Glagolitic script (Euchologium and Missale Sinaiticum - Sin. slav. 1N and 5N) from the 11th cent., which belong to the new finds made in 1975 at St. Catherine`s Monastery on Mt. Sinai; 2. the use of the latest image acquisition and processing technologies as well as the development of new computer programs for the decipherment and automatic analysis of the badly preserved fragments; and 3. the x-ray analysis of the materials from which the manuscripts were manufactured (parchment, inks, pigments). Lucky circumstances permitted us to increase the number of manuscripts to be investigated, especially by the most voluminous hitherto unedited new find, the Demetrius` Psalter (Sin. slav. 3N). The comparison of these witnesses with further mss. led to astonishing results. Among the project results the following are to be emphasized: - Digital and partly multispectral imaging as well as material-analysis of the (three) edition-manuscripts and further manuscripts for comparison on Mt. Sinai (CVL/ISTA/ISS), - Image enhancement (CVL) and deciphering of more than 50% of the formerly latent text-material (ISS), - Preliminary editions of the prayer-mss. (ISS & partners), - Word index of the Euchology Sin. slav. 1N (ISS & partners), - Full transcription and advanced linguistic and text analyses as well as online edition of Demetrius` Psalter (ISS & partner), - Component analysis and statistical evaluation of the chemical data of 6 manuscripts (ISTA), - Programs for dating and localizing Old Slavonic manuscripts and comparison of the data of the three edition-mss. with four other witnesses of the Sinaitic tradition (25 portions from 20 copyists - ISS), - Elaboration of Old-Cyrillic and Glagolitic computer fonts and supplements to the Unicode inventory (ISS & partners), - Computer programs for image enhancement and the automatic description of layout and line structure, for the excerption, classification and decipherment of characters as well as the supplementation of incompletely preserved graphic units (CVL). The analysis of the Missal confirmed the presence of St. Peter`s liturgy and led i.a. to the discovery of St. Basil`s and St. James` liturgies. The investigation of Demetrius` entries in the Psalter and other mss. showed that he was a Benedictine priest from Dalmatia who under the pressure of the reforms of Gregory VII emigrated to the Holy Land, where he composed an allegorical polemic against the pope around 1083. The main copyists of the Psalter could be geographically assigned to Istria - resulting in the first evidence of an Old Slavonic manuscript linked with the Western Balkans.