scholarly journals Aspects of the Epigraphic Culture of Cannon Inscriptions during the Reign of Sigismund Augustus

Knygotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 20-71
Author(s):  
Kšištof Tolkačevski

Any object marked with epigraphic writing becomes unique in the totality of the same objects and acquires the status of a monument. In the 16th century, cannons were also marked with inscriptions (texts and images): some were created for warfare, others – to commemorate a certain event. During the reign of Sigismund Augustus, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania created the necessary infrastructure for cannon casting, which allowed it to produce large numbers of cannons to prepare for its war with the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The article attempts to reconstruct inscriptions on cannons using original and published archival sources stored in memory institutions in foreign countries (Poland, Sweden). An appendix covering 67 cannon records made it possible to perceive the structure of such inscriptions. Meanwhile, with the help of the ego-documentary legacy of the last Jagiellonian ruler, it was possible to study the functionality of cannon recordings in the context of epigraphic culture, paying special attention to the stages of the record’s emergence. This has so far been little studied at all. The collected data allowed to reach the conclusion that it was the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who directly influenced the form, names, and content of the inscriptions on cannons.

Author(s):  
M. P. Belyaev

This article describes the development of judicial representation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th century. For the first time, the organizational design and legislative consolidation of judicial representation took place in cities with Magdeburg law. The emergence of professional judicial representatives was associated, first of all, with the adoption of the Statute of 1529, which contains legal norms that allow substituting parties in court. The status of professional representatives – lawyers who were called procurators – was consolidated. The statute of 1566, which actually summarized the 30-year practice of law, quite clearly regulated the conduct of the case in court, both personally and through a procurator. The grounds were established when a lawyer was provided free of charge by appointment of a court. The 1588 Statute regulated in detail the procedure for empowering a judicial representative. The author concludes that the institution of representation is firmly rooted in the judicial process, received its written confirmation in the Statutes and, as a result, led to the formation of the institution of the Advocacy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Czesław Łapicz

The paper contains a synthetic discussion of original and little known philological manuscripts which had been created since the 16th century by Tatars – Muslims of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – as characteristic Slavic aljamiado. The preserved manuscripts in which Slavic languages – Polish and Belarusian – were recorded in the Arabic alphabet are enormously important for the history of both languages and the Slavic-Oriental language relations. Various types of these historical texts (kitabs, chamails, tajweeds, etc.) contain the first, that is the oldest (16th century), translation of the Quran into a Slavic language (Polish) recorded in the Arabic alphabet (so-called tafsir). These sources are studied within the framework of an original philological sub-discipline of Kitab Studies whose origin and development should be credited to Professor Anton Antonovich from Vilnius University. The author of the paper discusses the research methodology pertaining to these sources, particularly the transliteration of Slavic texts recorded in the Arabic alphabet into the Latin alphabet, and introduces prospective major research tasks for Kitab Studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 207-220
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Grabowska ◽  

This article focuses on 16th-century written monuments of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, representing the first and second Belarusian-Lithuanian redactions. Their common part – the Chronicle of Grand Dukes of Lithuania – was created in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The article analyses the changes occurring in the system of Old Belarusian active participles and compares them with all-Ruthenian state. The analysis has shown that in the participle system, on the one hand, some forms, such as inflectional forms of complex declension of active participles, tended to decline. On the other hand, a new morphological category was emerging, namely, undeclinable adverbial present and past participle.


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
Lilia Citko

Dictionaries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – a Contribution to the History of (Western)Ruthenian Lexicography and Word-Inventory In the article an attempt to describe the oldest Western Ruthenian dictionary has been made. The analysis is based on the following texts: 1) Leksis s tolkovanīem slovenskikh mov prosto  of the first part of the 16th century, 2) Leksis siriech rechenïia v"krat"tsie s"bran(")ny. I īz slove(n)skago iazyka naprosty(ĭ) ruskīĭ diale(k)t istol(")kovany L,Z  by L. Zizaniy (Vilno 1596), 3) Leksīkon slavenorosskīĭ ī imen tl"kovanīe  by P. Berynda (Kiev 1627), 4) Sinonima slavenorosskaia (the end of the 17th century). The focus of attention is directed to lexicographic specificity of the antique texts, the elements of their macro- and microstructures, sources and techniques of material documentation, which made it possible to observe the evolution of lexicographers` methodological procedure in the range of the structure of an entry, e.g.: efforts to introduce grammatical information, qualifiers (mostly etymological and stylistic), and material exemplification.Dictionaries, which were essentially used to learn the language of liturgical celebration, contained religious vocabulary. It should be noted, however, that their authors introduced Ruthenian words of various thematic groups and stylistic registers to the translated parts of lexicons. In Berynda`s dictionary Polish loan words appeared as entries. Słowniki w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim – przyczynek do historii (zachodnio)ruskiej leksykografii i leksykiW artykule podjęto próbę charakterystyki najstarszych słowników zachodnioru­skich na podstawie kilku źródeł: 1) Leksis s tolkovanīem slovenskikh mov prosto z pierwszej połowy XVI w.; 2) Leksis siriech rechenïia v"krat"tsie s"bran(")ny. I īz slove(n)skago iazyka naprosty(ĭ) ruskīĭ diale(k)t istol(")kovany L,Z  W. Zizaniego (Wilno 1596); 3) Leksīkon slavenorosskīĭ ī imen tl"kovanīe  P. Beryndy (Kijów 1627); 4) Sinonima slavenorosskaia  (koniec XVII w.). Głównie uwagę skupiono na specyfice leksykograficznej zabytków, elementach ich makro-i mikrostruktury, źródłach oraz sposobach dokumentacji materiału. Pozwoliło to zaobserwować pewną ewolucję warsztatu metodologicznego leksykografów w zakresie budowy artykułu hasłowego, jak np. próby wprowadzania informacji gramatycznej, kwalifikatorów (głównie etymologicznych, stylistycznych) oraz egzemplifikacji materiałowej.Słowniki, przeznaczone zasadniczo do nauki języka liturgicznego i lektury ksiąg cerkiewnych, gromadziły przede wszystkim leksykę religijną. Należy jednak zauważyć, że do przekładowej części leksykonów ich autorzy wprowadzali słownictwo ruskie należące do różnych grup tematycznych i rejestrów stylistycznych. W charakterze wyrazów hasłowych słownika Beryndy mogły występować również pożyczki polskie.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Sergei Temchin

The Ruthenian version of the Early Rus᾿ Exegesis on John of Damascus᾿ Easter Canon is published here according to the sole known mid-16th century manuscript from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Saint Petersburg, The Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, P. Dobrokhotov collection (f. 37), No. 18, f. 302‒308). The text belongs to the little known in Early Slavic studies genre of exegesis (commentaries) on hymnography and is a part of a larger (and still unpublished) set of Old Church Slavonic hymnopgraphic commentaries compiled in Pre-Mongol Kievan Rus in the late 12th‒early 13th c. From the entire set, merely the exegesis on the Easter Canon is known to be translated from Old Church Slavonic into Ruthenian.The translation confirms the earlier conclusion that Ruthenian was never used in liturgical singing in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, since it was functioning as a lingua ad homines and clearly differed from Old Church Slavonic, which was used as a lingua ad Deum, e.g. the only Slavic Eastern Orthodox liturgical language directly addressed to God. The publication is accompanied by a description of themost important general characteristics of the Ruthenian version, which is a later and already corruptedcopy of the original translation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-34
Author(s):  
Сергей Юрьевич Темчин

В статье обосновывается характеристика недавно обнаруженного рукописного кириллического учебника древнееврейского языка, созданного совместными усилиями православных и иудейских книжников, как учебного пособия, с методической точки зрения значительно превосходящего иные восточнославянские двуязычные справочные материалы того же времени. С этой целью подробно описаны применяемые в нем приемы, направленные на такую подачу языкового и сопутствующего текстового (религиозно-культурного) материала, которая облегчила бы его усвоение потенциальным читателем. Методическую сторону рассматриваемого памятника письменности следует признать одним из результатов еврейского вклада в его создание.Ключевые слова: Великое княжество Литовское, кириллическая письменность, иудейско-христианские отношения, древнееврейский язык, руськамова, библейские переводы, жидовствующие....Sergei TemchinCyrillic 16th-century manuscript “Manual of Hebrew” and its teaching methods A concise Manual of Hebrew, recently discovered in a Cyrillic manuscript miscellany of the 3rd quarter of the 16th century (Moscow, the Russian State Archive of Early Acts, F. Mazurin collection (f. 196), inventory 1, No 616, f. 124–130) is very important for the history of the Ruthenian written culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Manual of Hebrew comprises material of three different kinds: a) some excerpts from the original Hebrew Old Testament text (Ge 2.8, 32.27–28; Ps 150; So 3.4 (or 8.2), 8.5; Is 11.12) written in Cyrillic characters; b) a bilingual Hebrew–Ruthenian vocabulary with explanatory notes; c) small quotations from the Ruthenian text of three Old Testament books (Genesis, Isaiah, Song of Songs).The meta-language used in the Manual of Hebrew is Ruthenian. The translations present in the Manual had been made directly from Hebrew. A comparison of the quotations from the Song of Songs found in the Manual and all the known Cyrillic and Glagolitic versions of this book (referring to both the manuscript and the printed sources of different periods) reveals their principal coincidence with the Ruthenian translation found in the Vilnius Old Testament Florilegium (Vilnius, Wróblewskie Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, F 19–262). The originals of the two manuscripts probably originated in the 2nd half of the 15th century in the circle of the learned Kievan Jew Zachariah ben Aaron ha-Kohen who is also known as Skhariya, the initiator of the Novgorod movementof the Judaizers (1471–1504).The Cyrillic Manual of Hebrew is a clear evidence of this language being taught/learned in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the late 15th–early 16th century. The learning material and its presentation methods reveal a quite elaborate (although inconsistently implemented) pedagogical approach which puts the Manual aside from the rest of early East Slavic glossaries of the same or earlier date. Thus, the Manual presents, among other features: a) a number of original Hebrew texts written in Cyrillic, divided into small portions (each with a Ruthenian translation) which are then put together to form a continuoustext; b) certain trilingual glossary entries where Hebrew, “Greek” (in reality Slavic borrowings from Greek) and Slavic words are juxtaposed, while in other cases double translations in two different Slavic languages (Ruthenian and Old Church Slavonic) are given; c) some long elaborated definitions, sometimes containing synonymous variants or alternative translations; d) information about the sources of variant Hebrew forms or their meanings; e) information on certain grammatical (gender, plural, possessive) forms and word formation (compounds), etc.It is beyond doubt that the Cyrillic manuscript “Manual of Hebrew” is a result of joint efforts of Jewish and East Slavic bookmen, but the relatively high level of pedagogical and linguistic sophistication of the joint result is to be ascribed to the Jewish compilers of the Manual rather than to their East Slavic co-authors.


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