<oo>→<med> Medieval Rus′

Author: Tom Elvins (tae17@pitt.edu) Maintained by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) Last modified: 2015-04-02T00:43:20+0000

Hilandar Research Library visit

On Saturday, 2015-03-28, the Hilandar Reseach Library (HRL) and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies (RCMSS) of the Ohio State University conducted a hands-on codicology workshop for the members of our seminar. Instruction was provided by Dr. Predrag Matejić (HRL Curator), Dr. M. A. (Pasha) Johnson (HRL Associate Curator), and Dr. Eric Johnson (OSU Special Collections Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts), assisted by Ms. Nina Haviernikova (RCMSS Graduate Associate) and Ms. Sarah (Jessi) Jones (RCMSS Program Coordinator). Below this report are some pictures, taken by Jessi and Tom Elvins (one of the participants), of the workshop.

Dr. Eric Johnson, Special Collections Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts, led the first workshop and focused his discussion primarily on the process of making parchment, a medium made from treated animal skins that commonly served as the substrate for manuscript production. Drawing from contemporary productions as well as medieval exemplars, Dr. Johnson demonstrated the difficult and time-consuming procedure needed to turn animal hides into a useable writing surface. Students also learned about medieval practices of pricking and ruling, which allowed early book makers to produce ruled pages similar to the loose-leaf notebooks on every student’s desk today. Several artifacts representing medieval parchment making tools, such as a bone scraper and lead stylus that had been recovered from the mud of the Thames, offered a rare insight into the people and industry that labored at the challenge of book-making centuries ago.

Following the discussion of parchment production, Dr. Predrag Matejić led the group in a seminar on medieval Slavic paleography, focusing on the challenge of deciphering manuscripts whose writing is often so ornate that individual words and letters can be difficult to discern. Dr. Matejić assisted the group in working through the title lines of the Life of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in order to demonstrate an exemplar of the ornate Slavic alphabets prevalent in the medieval period. The Slavic manuscripts we examined from the Hilandar Research Library collection were all written on paper, which had gained increasing popularity after arriving in Europe in the wake of the Islamic conquests.

Dr. M. A. (Pasha) Johnson devoted her portion of the workshop to exploring techniques of medieval paper making. The group learned how medieval paper was formed from wood pulp that was extracted from a vat of boiling wood fiber with the use of a screen.The sheet of pulp was then removed from the screen, and left to dry in order to form a substrate fit for writing. Not only did the paper industry allow for the faster production of manuscript-making materials than parchment, but paper also held ink better than its parchment predecessor. And paper allowed the paper-maker to incorporate a watermark, which aids scholars today in identifying its origin in time and space. Using watermark albums, our group set out to identify the makers of the paper in the books they were investigating, so as to shed light on the temporal and geographic origins of the particular sheets of paper.

After working with the OSU team, the group gained an appreciation for the complex and strenuous processs that early book-makers endured in order to produce their products. The Hilandar collection and staff offered an rare and welcome opportunity for our seminar to explore the physical methods of manuscript construction that underlie the texts we read in class, and to gain an appreciation of the early traditions of book-making that produced the corpus of medieval Slavic manuscripts surviving today.

Eric Johnson talks about the preparation of parchment from animal skins. Olga Kim (foreground) holds a bone parchment scraper.

Eric Johnson talks about parchment manuscripts. The long scroll in the foreground is a year’s worth of land records.

Eric Johnson discusses the structure of a codex with some of the workshop participants.

University of Pittsburgh workshop particpants. Front row, left to right: Olga Kim, Theodora Kelly Trimble, Ellina Sattarova, and Tetyana Shlikhar. Back row, left to right: Tom Elvins, David J. Birnbaum, Olga Mukhortova.

University of Pittsburgh workshop particpants. Front row, left to right: Olga Kim, Theodora Kelly Trimble, Ellina Sattarova, and Tetyana Shlikhar. Back row, left to right: Tom Elvins, David J. Birnbaum, Olga Mukhortova.

University of Pittsburgh workshop particpants. Front row, left to right: Olga Kim, Theodora Kelly Trimble, Ellina Sattarova, and Tetyana Shlikhar. Back row, left to right: Tom Elvins, David J. Birnbaum, Olga Mukhortova.

Olga Kim (foreground) and Olga Mukhortova (background) examine a codex.

Ellina Sattarova examines a binding, while Tom Elvins looks on.

Theodora Kelly Trimble (left) and Tetyana Shlikhar (right) examine a watermark album.