In the ninth century the Old Russian state, or Kievan Rus, is formed. By the X-XI centuries. cities grow in Kievan Rus, feudal relations are further developed, and their own legislation is being approved.
In the conditions of an early feudal state, the development of culture in general and writing in particular reaches a high level. Rus' creates its own original works (chronicles, legends). Writing becomes the lot of not only the ruling class. It also penetrates into the environment of artisans, merchants, enters the life of ordinary people. Evidence of this is the birch bark letters, the earliest of which date back to the 11th century, as well as the inscriptions of artisans on the objects of their labor: metal products, clay, stone, inscriptions on frescoes and icons, on church walls.
There were also professional scribes in Ancient Rus'. They copied books and worked mainly at large monasteries and princely offices. Their work required special skills, the text had to be rewritten without errors and correctly. This was very important, because it was not just about some books to read, but about the words that were spoken in the church and were addressed to God. Wrongness in such texts could mean wrongness in faith, because in the minds of the people of that time, a wrong word corresponded to a "wrong" thing. For example, if the abbreviated word aggl, pronounced as "angel", denoted the messenger of God, then Aggelt", pronounced as "aggel", denoted the messenger of Satan.
Unfortunately, time has brought to us only a minimal part of the dateable handwritten sources of Old Russian writing, on the basis of which researchers can draw conclusions about the features of their paleographic data. The earliest manuscript sources date back to the second half of the 11th-12th centuries. Among them, first of all, the books “Ostromir Gospel” (1056-1057), two “Izborniks” by Svyatoslav (1073, 1076), “Mstislav Gospel” (1115), as well as act material - a letter from the great Kiev prince Mstislav Vladimirovich to the Novgorod Yuryev Monastery (near the ISO city). *
The named Gospels and Izborniks (collections of articles of a moralizing and liturgical nature) are magnificent examples of Russian book art. They kept the names of scribes and customers. Written in statutory text on parchment. The pages of the books are richly ornamented and have illustrations (miniatures). The diploma of Mstislav Vladimirovich is a sample of the act writing of Kievan Rus. Since it was “complained”, drawing up a rich gift from the princes Mstislav and his son Vsevolod on the occasion of the consecration of the church of St. George, the “appearance” of the document was solemnly decorated: the letters of the charter were written in gold diluted with gum, the document was certified by the hanging silver seal of the Grand Duke.
An exceptionally important source was birch-bark letters, the first finds of which took place in Novgorod in 1951.
Writing material. The main material for writing until the XIV century. was parchment. Parchment got its name from the city of Pergamum (now Bergama), located in Asia Minor, where in the 2nd century. BC. technology has been improved. It was a specially processed skin of animals (mainly small cattle), and it was believed that the best varieties of parchment were obtained from the skin of newborn calves, since their skin was thin and not spoiled by the bites of gadflies and horseflies. The removed skin of the animal was processed: the wool and meat were cleaned with a sharp knife, then pulled onto a frame, planed, gilded and cut to obtain sheets. The dressed parchment was white or yellowish in color. Parchment came to Rus' through Byzantium. Initially, it was called "skins", "veal". The word "parchment" came into use in the 17th century, having penetrated into Russia through the Polish language.
Along with high-quality sheets of parchment for writing, less successful copies were also used. They had cuts made with a knife during the initial preparation and scraping of the skin ("holey parchment"), or areas from which the fat was poorly removed, and therefore they did not absorb ink ("flushing").
Parchment was an expensive material, and it is precisely its high cost that explains the fact that the same sheets of parchment could be used two, three or more times after preliminary scraping and washing off the text previously written on them. Manuscripts written several times on the same material are called palimpsests(from the Greek "I erase again"). Various methods have been developed for reading palimpsests. The earliest and most effective was to treat them with chemical reagents. This method was not harmless to the sources and could lead to their untimely loss. Currently, when reading palimpsests, fluoroscopy, infrared and ultraviolet transillumination, and photography are widely used. Many palimpsests have been preserved in the libraries of Western Europe. Palimpsests are rare among Russian manuscripts.
Ancient Rus' also used as material for writing birch bark. Birch bark letters were discovered during archaeological excavations in Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Staraya Russa, and Moscow. Birch bark - birch bark, less durable, but cheaper than parchment, material. It is better preserved in the ground than parchment. Before use, the birch bark was processed and cut off from above, below and from the sides. The birch bark letters found in the ground were washed in hot water with soda, then straightened out and flour was placed where they dried.
Birch bark was a cheap writing material. Therefore, business documents (in particular, acts) were rarely written on it. More often it was used for everyday correspondence, literacy, writing texts on economic reporting and calculations, etc.
Letter graphics. Three types of Cyrillic writing are known: charter, half charter and cursive , sequentially replacing each other and differing in graphic character of the letter. Parchment documents and books of the XI-XIV centuries. written by charter, and individual monuments written by charter are found, and at a later time.
The general canon of the statutory letter was the geometric graphics of the letters, the absence of their inclination and the distances between individual words in a line. The vertical parts of the letters were perpendicular, the horizontal ones were parallel to the line. The letters almost did not go beyond the line of the line. The sheet, written by the charter, had margins on the right and left and was lined. The charter knew a punctuation mark - a period, the use of which in a line was arbitrary. Letters-numbers could also stand out with dots on both sides. Between words, a word separation sign was sometimes used - “paerok”, replacing the signs “er” and “er” in words. Statutory texts know the abbreviation of words, which was achieved by excluding vowels from words. As a rule, words of spiritual content, often found in the text, were abbreviated: bg (god), stand (holy), flock (holy), two (virgin). Above the abbreviated words, the sign "titlo" was placed.
Throughout its development, the schedule of the charter has not been uniform. The ancient and late charter differed. Sources XI-XII centuries. were written by the most ancient charter, which, to a greater extent than the later charter, corresponded to the rules adopted for charter letters.
Researchers name the most striking graphic features of a number of letters, which help to distinguish the oldest charter from the later charter and, therefore, more accurately date the manuscript. The letter "I" was written in the ancient charter with a horizontal crossbar and resembled the modern printed letter H. Both parts of the letter "B" were almost the same. In the letters ...., ...... the connecting line ran in the middle and horizontally. The upper and lower halves of the letter ….. were the same size. The letter ...... was written in the form of a rounded or pointed bowl, standing ...... on a leg: ...... An indicator of the antiquity of the source was the use of iotated yuses with a connecting bar running in the middle ...... The letter in the 11th century. almost always fits in a line, in the XII century. - the cross line and the top of the mast often go beyond the line. The letter ... ... ... (omega) had in the XI century. high middle. In the XII century. the middle became lower due to the loops divorced to the side…….…. In the XI century. letter ……. (psi) was often similar to the image of the cross, and in the XII century. resembled the image of a lily - T.
The charter was used to write handwritten books and business papers. Preserving in their basis the main statutory principles, the graphics of handwritten books and documents still differed due to the functional purpose of these sources and the conditions for their writing. Books intended for reading and church service, created in the monastic book-writing workshops, were written more accurately than business papers, in which even in the 12th century. there is unevenness and slanting of the elements of the letters, a certain negligence. This conclusion is confirmed by a comparison of the graphics of the earliest surviving act of the "Charter of the Kyiv Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich to the Novgorod Yuryev Monastery" (XII century) and books of the same time. It was in a business letter, earlier than in a book letter, that the writing of letters accelerated and the ancient charter evolved to a late charter, and in the subsequent time to semi-charter and cursive writing.
Graphic arts birch bark letters of this period differed from the graphics of letters written on parchment. Since the letters were not written on the birch bark, but squeezed out, their graphics were characterized by a great sharpness, angularity, inclination to the line, exit from above and below beyond its limits. The presence of these features made it possible to assert that the graphics of the letters of the birch bark letters of the XI-XII centuries. resembled a prototype of a semi-ustav and even early cursive writing.
Ink, with which ancient Russian manuscripts were written were dense, thick, usually brown or brown in color. They penetrated deep into the parchment and were hardly blurred, even if the letter was moistened. Their preparation was based on the reaction between salts, ferrous and tannins. In practice, black ink was also encountered. In this case, soot was added to their composition. To prevent the ink from dripping from the pen and to be viscous, gum, a sticky substance of plant origin, was added to them.
yellow, black paint, lead white, azure. In richly decorated manuscripts, gold paint was used, prepared from powdered gold mixed with gum. It was the so-called "created gold".
Writing tools. As writing implements ancient scribes used bird, mostly goose feathers. The method of preparing goose feathers was stable and survived until the 19th century. To soften the feather and clean it of fat, it was stuck into hot and wet sand or ash. Then, with the help of a knife, they repaired it: they made an incision from two sides, leaving a small semicircular groove along which ink flowed. For ease of pressing, the groove was split.
Brushes were used to paint capital letters and headings.
On birch bark letters, the entries were squeezed out with a sharp bone or iron object.
Manuscript decorations. Sources that are the subject of paleographic study may have artistic decorations. Among them, the first place is occupied by books. The artistic appearance of a handwritten book was composed of many components, ranging from the graphics of letters to the salary. All the components that made up the Old Russian book, as a rule, were subordinated to the internal logic of the integrity of its design and perception. Hence the obligatory consistency and interconnection of the format of the sheets, the arrangement of the text, the length of the lines and line spacings, the height, width and graphics of the letters, both with individual elements of artistic decorations, and with the general artistic style in which they were made.
Since the evolution of the artistic styles of manuscript design was closely related to the development of other paleographic signs, observations of artistic features can provide additional material that contributes to solving the problems of dating, the place of writing of the source, and its authenticity.
The main means of decorating Russian manuscripts were ornament, in the style of which they performed splash screens, endings, initials, and ligature, miniatures And field flowers.
A splash screen is a picture that was above the text, at the beginning of a separate chapter or page. An ending is a subtext drawing at the end of a chapter or manuscript. Sometimes the role of the ending was played by the colophon, which is the reduction of the final text into a funnel by reducing the number of letters on the right and left of the line.
The initial was the initial letter that opened the paragraph, was larger in size than the other lowercase letters and differed from them in a beautiful design.
A wild flower is a decoration on the field of a manuscript in the form of a flower or a pattern.
The design of headpieces and initials, as a rule, was based on an artistic principle. For the first time, a consistent classification of artistic styles and periods of their existence was given by V.N. Shchepkin. This classification is accepted by almost all scientists, including South Slavic ones.
The most ancient ornament of Russian manuscripts is old Byzantine, or Old Russian(sometimes called geometric). It remained in manuscripts throughout the 11th-12th centuries. and coincided in time with parchment and the most ancient charter. This ornament came to Russia with Bulgarian books at the end of the 10th century, but was modified by Russian scribes in accordance with national taste and traditions. Typical examples of the Old Russian (Old Nzantian) ornament, which make it possible to outline its common features and features, are found in the Ostromir Gospel, Svyatoslav's Izbornik, the Mstislav Gospel and other books.
At the heart of the ancient Russian ornament are two motifs: floral and geometric. The headpiece of the ornament is outlined by a frame of a characteristic geometric shape: in the form of a square, a rectangle, the letter “P”, in the form of a diagram of a temple in a section. The inner part of the frame is filled with the simplest geometric shapes: rectangles, quadrangles, rhombuses, circles, semicircles, into which plant motifs emerge: flowers and leaves. An indispensable motif of this ornament is the image of the Byzantine flower "krin".
The combination of geometric and natural motifs was also characteristic of the design of the initials, which are clear in shape and easily recognizable. Often, in the fields outside the screen saver, various animals and birds were drawn with realistic images (partridges, hares, lions). In simple manuscripts, the ornament was drawn with only cinnabar, in luxurious it was multi-colored, using gold: a gold background, stroke or writing letters and colors - in gold.
In addition to the ornament, the oldest manuscripts were decorated miniatures, those. illustrations. The simplest forms of miniatures are the so-called holidays, on the frontispiece. According to an ancient tradition, the image of the author, and sometimes the customer, was given on the output miniature. So, in the "Ostromir Gospel" before the beginning of the narration of the evangelists John, Luke, Mark, their images were given. One of the miniatures of Svyatoslav's Izbornik (1073) depicts Prince Svyatoslav himself with his wife and sons. The Grand Duke is depicted in the foreground wearing a princely hat. He is wearing a dark blue dress trimmed with a red border. The prince's blue cloak with a gold border is fastened on the right shoulder with a yakhont clasp. On the prince's feet are green morocco boots. Svyatoslav's wife is dressed in a top short dress with wide sleeves and a long bottom dress with narrow sleeves. The head of the princess is covered with a scarf. The neck is adorned with a necklace of precious stones. The prince's sons are dressed in fur hats and crimson robes trimmed with red borders and gold collars.
A distinctive feature of the oldest miniatures is their static character, simplicity of depiction and composition, and a small number of figures. Manuscripts of the 11th-12th centuries, written on parchment, have come down to us in the form of separate sheets and books.
Format, or size, sheets depended on the volume of the text and the purpose of the monument of writing. Books usually consisted of individual notebooks bound together. Binding books were made of wooden boards, which were covered with leather or fabric. The binding of expensive books could be bound with a silver or gold salary, decorated with precious stones.
Since the leather sheets of ancient parchment books tended to roll up into a tube, so much so that the side where the skin used to be wool turned out to be outside, parchment sheets in books were written and sewn together in such a way that the “woolen” side of the sheets did not adjoin the “meat” side. But this only partially protected the book from deformation. A more radical remedy for it was fasteners, which tightly tightened the block of the book and pressed it with binding boards. At the end of using the book, it had to be fastened. Therefore, such warnings could be written on ancient books: “Ashe who is a priest or a deacon reads this book, and if he does not fasten it, he will be damned!” The clasps were made of leather in the form of straps with copper loops at the ends. They were nailed to the bottom board. Copper rods were driven into the top board. To "fasten" the book, the readers threw loops of straps on the rods. Rich manuscripts may have carved metal clasps.
To protect the binding from damage, nails with wide round heads were driven in at its corners. Sometimes these heads were made in the form of patterned plaques - beetles. In rich books, beetles were replaced by squares and centers made of copper, gilded bronze, silver, gold, decorated with elegant chasing, carving, and enamel.
Brief conclusions. At the heart of paleographic conclusions about the time, place of compilation, authorship and authenticity of the sources of the XI-XII centuries. there are observations of a set of paleographic features characteristic of a given period, and their correspondence to each other. The oldest charter as a type of writing coincides with parchment as a material for writing. In books, they are accompanied by an old Russian (Old Byzantine) ornament. It is important to observe ink, paints, writing implements, binding, format of manuscripts.
EXTERNAL SIGNS OF WRITTEN SOURCES OF THE SECOND THIRD OF THE XII - THE END OF THE XV CENTURIES
The next stage, during which further development and qualitative changes take place in the field of Russian writing, coincides with the period of feudal fragmentation in Russia, which began in the second third of the 12th century and continued until the last quarter of the 15th century.
Rus' broke up into a number of independent lands-principalities with their own economic and political centers, princes and administrative apparatus.
Mongol-Tatar invasion of Rus' in the second quarter of the 13th century. caused irreparable damage to writing. During the invasion and subsequent raids, a large number of written monuments and the people whose hands they were created perished.
Beginning in the second half of the 14th century a new upsurge of Russian culture was caused by the development of internal processes that prepared the unification of the country and the formation of a single Russian state. Moscow, which led the fight against the Mongol-Tatar yoke, became the center for the unification of Russian lands and the future capital of a single state. At the same time, the folding of the Russian (Great Russian) nationality began.
In the context of the struggle for political independence and the unification of the country, the development of feudal landownership and the dependence of the peasants, the role of acts increased. Among them are the spiritual and contractual letters of the great and specific princes, the agreements of Novgorod with the great princes, the agreements of Novgorod, Pskov with German cities, the princely letters of grant to the spiritual and secular feudal lords. Private acts are represented by bills of sale, contributions, mortgages, in-line, bonded and other records.
The oldest of the acts of this period is the contribution charter of Varlaam Khutynsky in 1192. The charter was compiled by the Novgorod boyar Oleksa Mikhalevich. It included a list of lands, vegetable gardens, fish and bird catchers, as well as serfs granted by Oleksa (in monasticism - Varlaam) to the Khutyn monastery founded by him. The text of the insert is written in the charter, in ink on a small piece of parchment. Of the princely letters of great interest in paleographic terms is the charter of the Ryazan prince Oleg Ivanovich to the monastery (second half of the 14th century). The letter confirmed the right to own the monastery in the village of Arestovsky, to collect taxes and duties from it. The charter is written in the charter on a large sheet of parchment and decorated with miniatures. In the upper part of the letter above the text, Jesus Christ with the Mother of God is depicted on one side, and John the Baptist on the other. Below, to the left of Christ, the apostle Jacob, the patron of Prince Oleg, is drawn, and to the right of Christ, Abbot Arseny of the Olgov Monastery, kneeling, with his hands outstretched to Christ. Thus, the act of the prince's grant to the monastery was embodied in artistic form.
Along with business documents from the XII-XV centuries. books have been preserved. Among them, the most ancient dated list of legal norms of the Russian state of the 9th-11th centuries should be singled out. - Russian Pravda, which has come down to us as part of the Pilot's Book - a collection of church and civil law (1282). The manuscript was written in a late charter on parchment sheets, some of which have sewn cuts (“stitches”) and holes. Among the literary monuments of the XII-XV centuries. known service books and lives, chronicles, legends, journalistic works. Of great paleographic interest are the Synodal List of the Novgorod Chronicle (XIII - the second half of the XIV century), Lavrentievsky (1377) and Ipatiev (first quarter of the XV century) lists of the annals, compiled on the basis of the all-Russian annalistic codes that have not come down to us. The dating of the Synodal copy of the Novgorod chronicle and the Ipatiev copy of the chronicle was made according to paleographic signs: type of writing, writing material, binding. Observations of the type of writing and handwriting made it possible to assert that the correspondence of the text of the annals was made by several scribes.
Progressive socio-economic development, the complication of the functions of writing in connection with this, led to the acceleration of writing and a change in the material for writing.
Writing material. Up to the XIV century. The main material for writing documents and books was parchment. A cheaper material coexisted next to it - birch bark. In the XIV century. paper appeared in the production business, which began to slowly replace parchment, first in the center of the country, and then on its outskirts.
The earliest of the Russian acts known so far, written on paper, are the charter of the Nizhny Novgorod prince Vasily Davydovich to the Yaroslavl Spassky monastery (written earlier than 1345) and the agreement of the Moscow Grand Duke Semyon Ivanovich with his brothers (about 1340-1351). The oldest book, "Teachings of Isaac the Syrian", written on paper, dates back to 1381.
Until the 18th century paper was mostly imported. Attempts to establish its domestic production, made in the 16th and 17th centuries, were not very successful. The earliest (XIV century) imported paper was Italian. By the end of the 14th century, French paper began to arrive, the wide distribution of which on the Russian market dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries. From the end of the XV century. German paper appeared. Imported paper was brought to the Russian state through Kafa (Feodosia), Surozh (Sudak), Riga, Novgorod and Smolensk.
The paper has a number of features that can serve as an indicator of its dating. One of these features is the so-called water marks. Before the invention of the machine method, paper was made by hand. The material was hemp or linen rags. The main operations in the manufacture of paper were boiling, washing, grinding the rag mass. Crushed in a crush and bleached in lime, the rag mass was poured into molds that outwardly resembled baking sheets. Closer to the bottom of the mold was a grid of thin wires. In the middle of the right side of the form, a wire pattern was welded to the grid. The wire mesh and wire pattern held back the liquid paper pulp, preventing it from settling to the bottom of the mold.
After excess water had drained through the mesh, the sheets, still wrinkled and damp, were lined with pieces of coarse cloth or felt and passed through a press to remove residual moisture. Then the paper sheets were glued, smoothed, polished. Since the paper lay on the wire mesh and the wire pattern in a thinner layer, the finished sheet produced a visible image of both the wire mesh and the pattern - watermarks on paper.
Watermark - any transparent line, figure, letter (letter) obtained on a sheet of paper due to the thinning of the paper mass at the points of its contact with the protruding wires of the bottom of the paper form. Paleography has its own terms for watermarks. A watermark left on paper by wire mesh in the form of a vertical line is called pantuso, and as a horizontal line vergere. A paper watermark containing a full or partial plot or letter (letter) image formed by a wire pattern is called filigree. Watermarks appeared on European-made paper in the 13th century. and have survived to this day on state papers and money.
For what purpose was the wire mesh and wire pattern stretched? If the wire mesh was a necessary element of the technology of manual paper production, then the wire pattern and its imprint on paper - filigree - had a different meaning.
Filigree was equally needed by manufacturers and consumers of paper. Manufacturers used filigree to distinguish the production of their own factory from that of competing factories. Individual subtle features of the same filigree helped each manufacturer to know the master who made the paper and was responsible for its quality.
Another purpose of filigrees is to give consumers an indication of the size and quality of the paper. Paper of large, medium and small format was sometimes issued only with filigree, characteristic of these particular formats. In this case, the size of a paper sheet was associated by consumers with a particular filigree. Premium paper could have a more complicated design of the original filigree compared to the filigree of lower grade paper from the same factory.
In everyday life, the use of paper with different watermarks has acquired a certain meaning. For example, it was doubly insulting to receive a letter of malevolent content on paper with the filigree "jester" or "under the fool", as this filigree was called by the people. They tried to send a love letter on paper with rosebush filigree. The sailors were pleased to receive a letter with filigree "anchor", "ship", etc.
There are several tens of thousands of filigrees. They differ in types. This diversity is explained by the technology of paper production: the rapid wear of the wire mesh and pattern and their replacement. The researcher of Western European filigree S. Briquet noted that, according to the testimony of old manufacturers of the manual era of paper production, even in the hands of experienced craftsmen, a wire drawing could serve no more than two years. By this time, the wires were worn out, displaced, torn, and it became necessary to renew the pattern. Since the drawing was not given by hand, even when the old version was renewed, it was not repeated with absolute accuracy. This led to the fact that the same type of filigree obtained on paper from such a wire drawing had tens and hundreds of variant features. Intentional modification of filigree in most cases tended to complicate them and rarely to simplify them. It should be noted that some filigree, once appeared, could continue to exist for a long time and even transfer to the paper of other countries. For example, the filigree "jug", which appeared in Italy in the first quarter of the 14th century, from the second half of the 15th century. was firmly mastered by French manufacturers and was used by them at the end of the XVII V., thus surviving for about four centuries.
The most common filigrees on imported paper of the XIV-XV centuries. were the following: on Italian paper (XIV century) - two circles crossed by a line with a cross at the top, a jug, a boat, an ax; in the XIV-XV centuries. - goose, three mountains with a cross on the middle of them. French paper XV-XVI centuries. filigree was characteristic: a dolphin, a dog, the coats of arms of the owners of manufactories, a jug (from the second half of the 15th century). On German paper XV-XVI centuries. watermarks were: a bull's head with decorations, a boar, an eagle.
How to practically use filigrees for dating documents? Several tens of thousands of filigrees have been copied, systematized by type, dated and arranged in a certain chronological sequence in a number of works. For the XIV and XV centuries. the descriptions of paper watermarks made in K.Ya. Tromonin, P.N. Likhachev, Sh. Brike. If a researcher comes across an undated but filigree document in the archive, he can date the paper of this document by comparing its filigree with the closest dated filigree given in one of the reference books. As a rule, it is difficult to find a complete match. Therefore, it is necessary to compare the filigree of an archival document not with one, but with a group of filigrees that are closest in shape and belong to the same type. This method helps to date the paper within 5 to 10 years. With a large number of filigrees of the same type, one should pay attention not so much to the emblematic part of the watermark as to its lettering, including the year of paper production, the name or initials of the manufacturer and the initial letters of the factory name.
The distances between verges and pantusots can serve as dating signs of paper. The very wide distances between the verges are an indicator of the paper of the second half of the 14th century. On the contrary, the greatest rapprochement between the pantusos testified to progress, an improvement in the technique of paper production. Therefore, if there is the same watermark on two different sheets of paper, the older one should be considered the older one. which has sparser vertical lines.
When dating, it must be borne in mind that the time of release of paper with one or another filigree and the time of writing a document on this paper, as a rule, do not coincide. The difference depends on the length of time the paper is delivered to the consumer and the period of storage of the paper at the place of its use. Finding out the fallowness of paper is one of the tasks of paleography. S.A. Klepikov believes that the staleness of paper for the period from the 13th to the 14th centuries. can be determined at 4.5 years, for the XV century. - at 6-7 years old.
There is a concept of "black" and "white" dates. "Black" date - written, reproduced on the material for writing (paper). "White" date - obtained as a result of processing a paper watermark (filigree, vergere, pantuso) with the help of watermark directories.
Graphic arts. The most ancient charter was a slow letter. The acceleration of writing led to some change in its graphics, which in the XIII-XIV centuries. can be characterized as a late charter. The letters of the later charter lose the strict geometric outline, characteristic of the oldest charter. They become more elongated. In the letters "like", "e-iotized", "u" the bevel of the horizontal bars increases: . The lower half of the letters "v", "g", "k" gradually increases. At the letter "b" - yat calm goes above the line: b. The calyx of the letter “h” has acquired the shape of a funnel: V. The later charter gives the impression of being more accelerated than the oldest charter. Departing from the middle of the XIV century. from a business letter, it was preserved in the 16th century. as a book letter.
In a business letter, the late charter moves into a new type of letter - semi-stat. The semi-charter has been common in business papers since the second half of the 14th-15th centuries. The main features of the semi-charter are as follows: smaller writing of letters compared to the charter, the appearance of an inclination of letters, a violation of the geometricity of their graphics, the appearance of ligatures, the partial division of phrases into words, new methods of abbreviating words, an increase in the number of portable letters.
Researchers call the early semi-ustav the “Russian semi-ustav”, since it retains a certain closeness to the traditions of the Russian statute of the 14th century, which has undergone certain changes in graphics. The hallmarks of the Russian semi-charter were the outlines of a number of letters, which help to understand both the types of writing and the dating of the semi-charter: the so-called “Ch split” V, which lost its leg, “E anchor”, “Z semicircle” with a small cap on the left, the letter “ ilk" with an oblique crossbar, like the modern "I". It becomes difficult and incomprehensible to read the letter "Ж",Х, which often began to be depicted without some details.
At the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. in connection with the expansion of ties with the South Slavic scribes, many of whom were forced to emigrate to Russia in connection with the capture of the Balkan Peninsula by the Turks, the monuments of Russian writing are undergoing changes. These changes were reflected in the penetration into the written language of some graphic, orthographic, artistic and partially linguistic features characteristic of the Bulgarian and Serbian sources of that time.
The influence of the South Slavic semi-charter on the Russian semi-column was expressed primarily in the lengthening of the vertical details of a number of letters. A “T” appeared with wings lowered to the bottom line: (tripedal), “D” with elongated lower ends: D, letters “L, b, Y” with elongated ends on the left: "b.b.s. The trend in the lengthening of the lower tails of the letters also manifested itself in the style of the letter “Ch”, which began to be written with a long stem on the right: Ch. Having absorbed the most graphically convenient semi-statutory styles, the Moscow semi-statutory developed a number of graphic features that distinguish it, among which the letters stand out in the first place: “In a ball” in, “Z”. similar to the number "three", which stands out sharply for its size in line E -
In addition to graphic features, a distinctive feature of a semi-charter from a charter is the presence of a greater variety of abbreviation techniques. The reduction was achieved by skipping vowels and consonants not only in words of spiritual, but also civil content. A title was placed over the abbreviated word: drvnya (village), chlk (person), msts (month), etc. The way to reduce the word is the removal of letters, and the extended letters were also written under the title. The abbreviation method was to truncate the word to several letters and even one (initial) letter. Usually common, well-known words, often repeated in the text (village), (wasteland), etc., were truncated. Truncated parts of words were circled.
In the semi-charter, the first attempts are made to coherently write two letters standing next to each other. Semi-Ustav knows more than ten variants of ligatures like:
and others. In the half-charter of the XV century. a comma appears, which was brought by the Bulgarian scribes.
At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. on the basis of the semi-charter, a new type of writing is developing - cursive, which has become dominant in the business letter of the united Russian state. As for the semi-ustav, it has become predominantly book writing.
Manuscript decorations. The time of the late charter and its evolution into a semi-character script coincides with the spread of a new artistic style, called teratological, monstrous or bestial ornament. This ornament was widespread in the 13th and especially in the 14th century. Books from this period are usually written on parchment. The largest number of books decorated with teratological style ornaments has been preserved in Novgorod and Pskov.
Current page: 3 (total book has 29 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 20 pages]
From the history of the development of paleography
The initial techniques used by paleography when analyzing the external features of manuscripts originated in Rus', perhaps already in the early feudal period in connection with purely practical goals: the need to write and draw up a document, to distinguish an original from a fake. As noted by L.V. Cherepnin, at that time, Russian scribes in their infancy used methods that much later began to be considered in the corresponding scientific discipline.
In the XVI-XVII centuries. in the field of practical paleography, a step forward is being made: special manuals for scribes and draftsmen who are engaged in the artistic design of manuscripts appear, as well as alphabets, in which the most typical variants of cursive letters are given.
The transition from practical paleography to paleography as a scientific discipline is associated with the development of Russian historiography, the identification and publication of historical sources. Works by V.N. Tatishcheva, M.V. Lomonosov, N.I. Novikov put on the order of the day the question of the need for the development of Russian paleography and outlined in general terms the ways of its development. In the first half of the XIX century. a group of scientists (E. Bolkhovitinov, K.F. Kalaidovich, A.Kh. Vostokov, P.M. Stroev and others) carried out a lot of work on collecting and studying written monuments. Created in the 19th century The Archaeographic Commission, the Society for Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, and the Russian Archaeological Society made a valuable contribution to the publication of documents.
The publication of sources was accompanied by observations on the style of letters, writing material, watermarks, decorations, and other paleographic features. In this regard, the first paleographic descriptions of manuscripts appear (E. Bolkhovitinov, A.V. Gorsky, A.Kh. Vostokov), collections of paleographic photographs (P.I. Ivanov, I.P. Sakharov), tables of watermarks (I. P. Laptev, K. Ya. Tromonin), the first generalized graphic tables. In the 2nd half - the last quarter of the XIX century. there is a transition from collecting and describing individual paleographic features to generalizing works on paleography. In published in the 2nd half of the XIX - early XX century. in the works of I.I. Sreznevsky, A.I. Sobolevsky, E.F. Karsky, I.A. Shlyapkina, V.N. Shchepkina and others contained interesting factual material and developed general techniques for the paleographic study of manuscripts.
In the post-revolutionary period, the main point in the methodological order of paleographic studies was the ever-increasing penetration of historicism into them. Palaeographic conclusions help not only in resolving issues of external criticism of sources, but also in obtaining conclusions related to the socio-economic, political and cultural history of the country.
Old methods and techniques have been improved and new ones have appeared (for example, optical-photographic methods are used to read extinct texts, a beta-radiographic method is used to read watermarks). Works have been published that contribute to a more in-depth study of individual sections of paleography: miniatures, ornaments, paper watermarks, stamps, hallmarks, graphics of certain types of writing, birch bark letters.
A deep historical approach was the basis for the work of L.V. Tcherepnin's "Russian Paleography", published in 1956. The evolution of writing and other external signs of written sources were shown in it against the background of historical periodization in close connection with the economic, political and cultural development of the country.
Of great importance for mastering the skills of reading paleographic texts and analyzing the features of their writing was the publication of manuals containing samples of handwritten graphics.
The chronological scope of paleography has expanded. Attempts have been made to give theoretical guidelines regarding the paleographic analysis of manuscripts of the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The special significance for this period of paleographic observations of individual handwriting is emphasized. The signs of documents of the 20th century, which can be the object of paleography study, are highlighted: handwriting, writing material, typewritten texts.
The emergence of writing among the Eastern Slavs
Slavic alphabets
The creation of East Slavic writing is associated with the process of formation of the Russian state, which ended by the 9th century. Favorable conditions for the development of writing were also determined by the formation of the ancient Russian people, which united all the East Slavic tribes and was characterized by the presence of a single ethnic territory, a common language and culture.
Initially, to express simple images and concepts, the Slavs used picture writing - pictography. With the help of a combination of drawings, objects and actions were depicted. For example, the sun was depicted as a circle, water as a wavy line, fire as a cross. The possibility of transmitting information using picture writing is very limited, and its meaning was deciphered, regardless of transmission, by sound language. Over time, the picture writing was replaced by syllabic, and then sound - phonetic.
There is evidence that the Slavs had a written language before the adoption of Christianity. Such evidence includes records by Byzantine and Eastern authors. Chernorizet Brave, who left behind the "Legend of the Letters" (IX - beginning of the X century), gave a description of the pre-Cyrillic writing among the Slavs. He pointed to two types of writing - “features” and “cuts”, with which the Slavs “chtehu” and “gadakh” (most likely, it was a picture letter). In addition, according to Brave, even before Cyril, the Slavs used Greek and Latin letters (“without dispensation”), probably because Greek and Latin letters could not convey many of the sounds of Slavic speech. The Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan said that he was an eyewitness to the funeral of a "noble Rus", over whose burial a hill was poured. On a poplar board, the Rus wrote the name of the deceased person. The famous Arab scholar Al-Masudi in 956 saw temples (temples) with Slavic inscriptions of a ritual nature. In the Russian chronicles there are references to the compilation of copies of the treaties of Rus' with the Greeks especially for the "Rus" and the Russian texts of the treaties themselves in the annals. Noteworthy is the testimony from the Life of Constantine (Cyril), the compiler of the Slavic alphabet, about the presence of book writing with “Russian writing”, samples of which Cyril saw in Korsun (Chersonese) around 860.
Despite the debatability of the question of the origin of this writing and its letters, scientists express a general opinion about the existence in different areas inhabited by Eastern Slavs, one or even several alphabets. None of these - possibly existing - alphabets have survived. And the first of the monuments of the Old Slavonic language that have come down to us (late 9th and 10th centuries) were written in “later” Slavic alphabets - Cyrillic and Glagolitic. Both alphabets almost completely coincide in composition, order, name and meaning of the letters, but differ sharply in their graphics. The Glagolitic is characterized by hookiness, intricacy. Cyrillic letter images are clearer and simpler and are characterized by proximity to the Greek statutory letter of the 9th century.
The issue of compiling Slavic alphabets is connected with the names of the Bulgarian missionaries Cyril and Methodius. Cyril (c. 827–869), who bore the name Constantine before becoming a monk, and his brother Methodius (c. 815–885) were born in Thessalonica, a city with a predominantly Slavic population. In 863 the brothers were sent by the Byzantine emperor to preach Orthodoxy in Moravia. Before leaving, Cyril created the Slavic alphabet and, with the help of Methodius, translated some liturgical books into Slavonic. There is no consensus in science about the time the alphabets were compiled and about which of them belongs to Cyril. Some researchers consider the Glagolitic alphabet to be an earlier alphabet, and Cyril as its author. Others believe that the Cyrillic alphabet was created by Cyril, and the Glagolitic alphabet appeared long before Cyril. There is an opinion that the Glagolitic appeared several decades after the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet by Cyril as a secret script in those areas where the Cyrillic books were subjected to especially severe persecution by the Catholic Church. The famous linguist V.A. Istrin expressed the opinion that before the introduction of the alphabet created by Cyril, the Slavs had three types of writing: in the form of "features and cuts", "proto-verbal" and "proto-Cyrillic" writing. "Proto-Cyrillic" writing in various Slavic territories used some Greek, Latin or both letters. The “Proto-Cyrillic” writing gradually adapted to Slavic speech, and taking into account its features, Cyril compiled the Cyrillic alphabet.
The fate of the Slavic alphabets was different. At first, both alphabets existed in parallel. Later, the Glagolitic alphabet, as more difficult to write, was replaced by Cyrillic among the Eastern and Southern Slavs.
The Cyrillic alphabet, having withstood the test of time, formed the basis of modern Slavic writing systems: Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc. Some other peoples currently also use an alphabet based on Cyrillic.
Cyrillic alphabet
In the Cyrillic alphabet, there were originally 43 letters with their own names:
Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic was once the spoken language. In ancient times, it was understandable in many Slavic countries, although certain differences between the languages of different Slavic peoples existed for a long time. These local Slavic linguistic features associated with deviations from Old Church Slavonic orthography are commonly referred to as exhaustions. Among the versions, it is necessary to note Bulgarian (Middle Bulgarian), Serbian and Russian (Old Russian).
If Old Church Slavonic was a spoken language, then Church Slavonic is the language of liturgical books, divine services among Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians. This language developed in the ninth century. and was common to all Slavic Orthodox Christianity. Since medieval culture had a religious character, Church Slavonic became the language of culture as a whole. The Slavs read the Bible on it, Greek, Latin theologians and teachers of monastic life, Byzantine historical and scientific works.
The emergence of the Church Slavonic language is associated with the names of Cyril and Methodius. They approved Slavic writing, along with Greek and Latin. They did not invent the Church Slavonic language, but only adapted Slavonic speech (the Old Church Slavonic language of the Thessalonica dialect) to express those concepts and ideas that Christian teaching dictated.
Speaking in Old Church Slavonic and writing in this language are two different things. In order to make the language written and translate the Bible, the Gospel and all worship into it, it was not enough to compose an alphabet, it was necessary to find words that would be suitable in the language of the pagan Slavs for expressing Christian concepts, to give the same narrative as in the Greek originals. Church concepts of the Christian faith did not have any correspondence in the language of the pagans. For example, in the “Symbol of Faith” prayer there are the words: “I believe ... in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only Begotten, Who is born from the Father before all ages, Light from Light, God is true from God is true, begotten, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father, They are all bysha. We must understand how difficult it was for the first time to say these words in Slavonic. The Slavs have a word Lord to God (i.e., to pagan gods) was not attached. It meant ruler or owner. adjective only-begotten in colloquial Old Church Slavonic did not exist at all. It was invented by Cyril and Methodius in the sense of its translation from the Greek sample. In the process of creating Christian terminology, the word was also created consubstantial. Word century the Slavs had the meaning of a time period commensurate with the life of one person (“enough for my lifetime”). Therefore the words before all ages for the pagan Slavs had no meaning. All this had to be thought out, invented and explained to the pagans. And the first step was taken by Cyril and Methodius.
Thus, the Church Slavonic language created by Cyril and Methodius was bookish, in contrast to the Old Church Slavonic language, which was everyday.
The modern Church Slavonic language, as the basis of today's worship, is usually called the New Church. This term was introduced by the famous paleoslavist Vyacheslav Frantsevich Maresh.
External signs of handwritten sources of ancient Rus'
In the ninth century the Old Russian state, or Kievan Rus, is formed. By the X - XI centuries. cities grow in Kievan Rus, feudal relations are further developed, and their own legislation is being approved.
In the conditions of an early feudal state, the development of culture in general and writing in particular reaches a high level. Rus' creates original works - chronicles, legends. Writing ceases to be the privilege of only the ruling class. It penetrates the environment of artisans, merchants, enters the life of ordinary people. Evidence of this is birch-bark letters, the earliest of which date back to the 11th century, as well as the inscriptions of artisans on the objects of their labor - metal, clay, stone products, inscriptions on frescoes and icons, on church walls.
There were also professional scribes in Ancient Rus' who copied books. They worked mainly at large monasteries and princely offices. Their work required special skills - the text had to be rewritten without errors and correctly. This was very important, because they dealt not just with books for reading, but with texts, the words of which were pronounced in the church and were addressed to God. Wrongness in such texts could mean wrongness in faith, because in the minds of the people of that time, a wrong word corresponded to a "wrong" thing. For example, if the abbreviated word aggl, pronounced as an angel, meant a messenger of God, then aggel, pronounced as aggel, meant a messenger of Satan.
Unfortunately, time has brought to us only a minimal part of the dateable handwritten sources of Old Russian writing, on the basis of which researchers can draw conclusions about the features of their paleographic data. The earliest manuscript sources date back to the 2nd half of the 11th-12th centuries. First of all, these are the books “Ostromir Gospel” (1056–1057), two “Izborniks” by Svyatoslav (1073, 1076), “Mstislav Gospel” (1115), as well as act material - a letter from the great Kiev prince Mstislav Vladimirovich to the Novgorod Yuriev Monastery (about 1130 G.).
The named Gospels and Izborniks (collections of articles of a moralizing and liturgical nature) are magnificent examples of Russian book art. They kept the names of scribes and customers. Written in statutory text on parchment. The pages of the books are richly ornamented and have illustrations (miniatures). The letter of Mstislav Vladimirovich is an example of the act writing of Kievan Rus. Since the charter was “complaining”, which formalized the rich gift of the princes Mstislav and his son Vsevolod on the occasion of the consecration of the church of St. George, it was solemnly decorated: the letters of the charter were written in gold diluted on gum, the document was certified by the hanging silver seal of the Grand Duke.
An exceptionally important source was the birch-bark letters, first found in Novgorod in 1951.
Writing material. Until the XIV century. the main material for the letter was parchment. It got its name from the city of Pergamon (now Bergama), located in Asia Minor, where in the II century. BC e. technology has been improved. It was a specially processed skin of animals (mainly small cattle), and it was believed that the best varieties of parchment were obtained from the skin of newborn calves, since their skin was thin and not spoiled by the bites of gadflies and horseflies. The removed skin of the animal was processed: the wool and meat were cleaned with a sharp knife, then pulled onto a frame, planed, gilded and cut to obtain sheets. The dressed parchment was white or yellowish in color. Parchment came to Rus' through Byzantium. Initially, it was called skins, veal. The word parchment came into use in the 17th century, having penetrated into Russia through the Polish language.
Along with high-quality sheets of parchment for writing, less successful copies were also used. They had cuts made with a knife during the initial processing and scraping of the skin (holey parchment), or areas from which fat was poorly removed and therefore they did not absorb ink - fairings.
Parchment was an expensive material, and it is precisely its high cost that explains the fact that the same sheets of parchment could be used two, three or more times after preliminary scraping and washing off the text previously written on them. Manuscripts written several times on the same material are called palimpsests(from Greek erase again). Various methods have been developed for reading palimpsests. The earliest and most effective was to treat them with chemical reagents. This method was not harmless to the sources and could lead to their irretrievable loss. Currently, when reading palimpsests, fluoroscopy, infrared and ultraviolet transillumination, and photography are widely used. Many palimpsests have been preserved in the libraries of Western Europe. Palimpsests are rare among Russian manuscripts.
Diploma of Mstislav Vladimirovich and his son Vsevolod to the Novgorod Yuryev Monastery. Around 1130
Ancient Rus' also used as material for writing birch bark. Birch bark letters were found during archaeological excavations in Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Staraya Russa, and Moscow. Birch bark - birch bark, less durable, but cheaper than parchment, material. It is better preserved in the ground than parchment.
Inscriptions and drawings on the birch bark of the Novgorod boy Onfim
The first birch bark was discovered on July 26, 1951 by archaeologist Nina Fyodorovna Akulova in the Nerevsky excavation site of Veliky Novgorod, in a gap between two wooden blocks of street flooring in the cultural layer of the 14th century. The find turned out to be a dense and dirty birch bark scroll, on the surface of which clear letters shone through the dirt.
Samples of birch bark documents preserved in fragments and in their entirety
Of course, birch bark was known from written sources even before that. The Monk Joseph Volotsky, a disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh, who lived in the second half of the 14th century, spoke about the modest monastic life of his teacher: birch bark".
In Siberia, in 1715, yasak was recorded in a birch bark book, which has survived to this day, - a tribute in favor of Moscow, collected from non-Russian peoples. Ethnographer S.V. Maksimov saw in the middle of the XIX century. birch bark book on the Mezen River among the Old Believers.
Birch bark intended for writing was specially prepared: it was boiled in water to make the bark more elastic, stratified, removing the coarsest layers, and cut off from all sides. On birch bark, inscriptions were scrawled on the inside of the bark, i.e., on that surface of the birch bark, which always turned out to be outside when the birch bark sheet was rolled up into a scroll.
In order to restore the elasticity of such a letter, archaeologists immerse it in boiling water, then wash it with a brush, washing away the centuries-old dirt, then dry it with a towel and clamp it between the glasses. After that, the letter can be read. Before publication of letters, so that their texts are easy to read, they are usually additionally drawn along the contours of visible letters.
Birch bark documents provide extensive material on the economy, culture, and statehood. As V.L. Yanin, the text of the Novgorod birch-bark letters helps to restore the nominal composition and genealogical continuity of the boyar families, the owners of many estates that territorially occupied many Konchansky districts (Novgorod was administratively divided into ends) with a population dependent on them, which supported one or another clan in the political struggle, which was a feature of the Novgorod boyar republic.
Letter graphics. Three types of Cyrillic writing are known: statute, half statute And cursive, sequentially replacing each other and differing in graphic character of the letter. Parchment documents and books of the XI-XIV centuries. written by statute. Separate monuments written in the charter are also found at a later time.
General the canon of the charter letter was the geometry of the graphics of the letters, the absence of their inclination and the distances between individual words in the line. The vertical parts of the letters were perpendicular, the horizontal parts were parallel to the line. The letters almost did not go beyond the line of the line. The sheet, written by the charter, had margins on the right and left and was lined. The charter used a punctuation mark - a period, the use of which in a line was arbitrary. Letters-numbers could also stand out with dots on both sides. Sometimes a word separation sign was used between words - paerok, replacing the signs er and er in words. Statutory texts know the abbreviation of words, which was achieved by excluding vowels from words. As a rule, the words of spiritual content, which are often found in the text, were abbreviated. A sign was placed above the abbreviated words title.
List of words that usually occur under the titlo sign:
Throughout its development, the schedule of the charter has not been uniform. The charter differed ancient And late. Sources of the XI-XII centuries. were written by the most ancient charter, which, to a greater extent than the later charter, corresponded to the rules adopted for charter letters.
Researchers name the most striking graphic features of some letters, which help to distinguish the oldest charter from the later charter and, therefore, more accurately date the manuscript. Letter AND was written in the ancient charter with a horizontal crossbar and resembled a modern printed letter N. Both loop letters IN were almost the same. in letters
The connecting line ran in the middle and horizontally. Upper and lower halves of the letter AND were of the same size. Letter H had the form of a rounded or pointed bowl, standing on a leg: Y. An indicator of the antiquity of the source was the use of iotized yuses with a connecting bar running in the middle:
Letter
In the XI century. almost always fits in a line, in the XII century. – the transverse line and the top of the mast often extend beyond the line. Letter
(omega) had in the XI century. high middle. In the XII century. the middle has become lower due to the loops divorced to the side -
The letter (psi) was often similar to the image of the cross, and in the XII century. reminiscent of the image of a lily -.
The charter was used to write handwritten books and business papers. While retaining the main statutory principles, the graphics of handwritten books and documents still differed due to the functional purpose of these sources and the conditions for their writing. Books intended for reading and church service, created in the monastic book-writing workshops, were written more accurately than business papers, in which even in the 12th century. there is unevenness and slanting of the elements of the letters, a certain negligence. This conclusion is confirmed by a comparison of the graphics of the earliest of the acts that have come down to us of the "Charter of the Kyiv Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich to the Novgorod Yuryev Monastery" (XII century) and books of the same time. It was in a business letter, earlier than in a book letter, that the writing of letters accelerated and the ancient charter evolved to a late charter, and in the subsequent time to semi-charter and cursive writing.
Graphics of birch bark letters of this period differed from the graphics of letters written on parchment. Since the letters were not written on the birch bark, but squeezed out, their graphics were characterized by a great sharpness, angularity, inclination to the line, exit from above and below beyond its limits. These features of the graphics of the letters of birch bark letters of the XI-XII centuries. resembled a prototype of a semi-ustav and even early cursive writing.
Charter of the XI-XIII centuries
The ink used to write ancient Russian manuscripts was dense, thick, usually brown or brown in color. They penetrated deep into the parchment and were hardly washed away, even when the letter was wetted. Their preparation was based on the reaction between salts, ferrous and tannins. There was also black ink. In this case, they included soot. To prevent the ink from dripping from the pen and to be viscous, gum, a sticky substance of plant origin, was added to them.
For the dating of manuscripts, it is important not only to analyze the color of the ink, but also their chemical composition, which is characteristic of different times and, probably, for different writing centers.
In addition to ink, they used paints, with which headings, capital letters and various decorations were written. Ancient scribes knew cinnabar - orange-red paint, ocher - yellow paint, black paint, lead white, azure. In richly decorated manuscripts, gold paint was used, prepared from powdered gold mixed with gum. It was the so-called created gold.
writing implements. Ancient scribes used bird feathers, mostly goose feathers, as writing tools. The method of preparing goose feathers was stable and survived until the 19th century. To soften and clean the feather from fat, it was stuck in hot and wet sand or ash. Then, with the help of a knife, they repaired it: they made an incision from two sides, leaving a small semicircular groove along which ink flowed. For ease of pressing, the groove was split.
Judging by the surviving handwritten books, since parchment was a polished writing material, the pen glided over it. Therefore, for parchment, the pen was thicker than for books of the same content and significance, written on later material - paper.
For writing capital letters and headings with paints, they used tassels.
Bone, metal and even wooden rods with a point at one end, with a spatula at the other and with a hole for hanging such a “wrote” were a tool for writing birch bark letters. Sometimes "wrote" was placed in a leather case.
If the sharp end of the “wrote” scratched texts on birch bark, then the spatula had a different purpose. During the initial teaching of writing, children were given boards with a low side on four sides. The bottom of the board had dashed lines. The bottom was covered with wax, and the children learned to write on such a wax layer, just as they later learned to write on slate boards. The spatula smoothed out what was written on the board.
It was like wiping text off a chalkboard with a rag. The tool from which the student wrote off the letters was also the board on which these letters were written. Obviously, after studying on a wax tablet, the students moved on to writing on birch bark, which was more difficult to write on and for which money had to be paid, albeit a small one.
Manuscript decorations. Some sources that are the subject of paleographic study have artistic decorations. Among these sources, books occupy the first place. The artistic appearance of a handwritten book was composed of many components, ranging from the graphics of letters to the salary. All components of the Old Russian book, as a rule, were subordinated to the internal logic of the integrity of its design and perception. Hence the obligatory consistency and interconnection of the format of the sheets, the arrangement of the text, the length of the lines and line spacings, the height, width and graphics of the letters, both with individual elements of artistic decorations, and with the general artistic style in which they were made.
Since the evolution of the artistic styles of manuscript design was closely related to the development of other paleographic signs, observations of artistic features can provide additional material that contributes to solving the problems of dating, the place of writing of the source, and its authenticity.
The main means of decorating Russian manuscripts were ornament, in the style of which headpieces, endings, initials, as well as ligature, miniatures and wild flowers were made.
Screensaver- this is a picture that was above the text, at the beginning of a separate chapter or page. ending- a figure under the text, at the end of a chapter or manuscript. Sometimes the role of the ending was played by the colophon, which is the reduction of the final text into a funnel by reducing the number of letters on the right and left of the line.
initial the initial letter was called, which opened the paragraph, was larger in size than the rest of the lowercase letters and differed from them in a beautiful design.
Wild flower- decoration on the field of the manuscript in the form of a flower or a pattern.
The design of headpieces and initials, as a rule, was based on a single artistic principle. For the first time, a consistent classification of artistic styles and periods of their existence was given by V.N. Shchepkin. This classification is accepted by almost all scientists, including South Slavic ones.
ancient ornament Russian manuscripts - Old Byzantine, or Old Russian(sometimes called geometric).
It remained in manuscripts throughout the 11th-12th centuries. and coincided in time with parchment and the most ancient charter. This ornament came to Rus' with Bulgarian books at the end of the 10th century, but was modified by Russian scribes in accordance with national taste and traditions. Typical examples of the Old Russian (Old Byzantine) ornament, which make it possible to outline its common features and features, are found in the Ostromir Gospel, Svyatoslav's Izbornik, the Mstislav Gospel and other books.
At the heart of the ancient Russian ornament are two motifs: floral and geometric. The headpiece of the ornament is outlined by a frame of a characteristic geometric shape - in the form of a square, a rectangle, the letter "P", in the form of a diagram of a temple in a section. The inner part of the frame is filled with the simplest geometric shapes: rectangles, quadrangles, rhombuses, circles, semicircles, into which plant motifs fit: flowers and leaves. An indispensable motif of this ornament is the image of a Byzantine flower. krin.
The combination of geometric and natural motifs was also characteristic of the design of the initials, which are clear in shape and easily recognizable. Often, in the fields outside the screen saver, various animals and birds were drawn with realistic images (partridges, hares, lions). In simple manuscripts, the ornament was drawn with only cinnabar, in luxurious manuscripts it was multi-colored, using gold: a golden background, stroke or lettering and colors in gold.
Topic 3. External signs of the manuscript sources of Ancient Rus'.
1. General characteristics of the manuscripts of Ancient Rus'.
2.Material for writing.
3. The most ancient and late charter (writing graphics).
4. Writing tools.
5. Decoration of manuscripts.
Glukhov A.G. In the summer of 1037 ...- M .: Sov. Rossiya, 1974.
His own. Russian scribes. - M.: Book, 1987.
Davydov N.V. Gospel and ancient Russian literature. M.: MIROS, 1992.
Likhachev D.S. Culture of the Russian people of the X-XVII centuries. - M.-L., 1961
Milov L.V. About "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": Palaeography and archeography of the manuscript; reading "Rusis" // History of the USSR. 1983. No. 5. pp.82-106.
Inexhaustible source. To the 70th anniversary of V.A. Kuchkin. – M.: Monuments of historical thought, 2005.
Ornamentation of Russian manuscripts of the 11th-17th centuries // Ancient Russian art: Manuscript book. Sat. 2. M., 1974.
Parchment Manuscripts of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Description of Russian and Slavic manuscripts of the 11th-16th centuries. - L., 1976
Rozov N.N. Russian handwritten book. Sketches and characteristics. M., 1971.
Sapunov B.V. A book in Russia in the 11th-13th centuries.- L .: Nauka, 1978.
Simonov R.A. Kirik Novgorodets - a scientist of the 12th century. - M.: Nauka, 1980.
Khaburgaev G.A. The first centuries of Slavic written culture: the origins of ancient Russian literature. M., 1994.
Cherepnin L.V. Novgorod birch bark documents as a historical source. M., 1969.
Yanin V.L. I sent you a birch bark. - M., 1975.
Topic 4. External signs of written sources of the 14th-15th centuries.
1. General characteristics of written sources of the 14th-15th centuries.
Writing material.
Semistat.
Manuscript decoration
Cryptography.
Additional literature on the topic:
Artsikhovsky A.V. Old Russian miniature as a historical source. - M., 1944.
Kruglova T.A. To the question of the formation of Russian book writing of the 15th century // Russia in the Middle Ages and modern times. M., 1999.
Skvernyukov P.F. A word about paper. M., 1980.
Shulgina E.V. Russian cursive writing of the 15th century // History and paleography. M., 1995.
Filigranological research: theory, methodology, practice. L., 1990.
Topic 5. External signs of written monuments of the Russian state of the 16th-17th centuries.
1. General characteristics of written sources of the 16th-17th centuries.
2.Material for writing.
3. Graphics of the letter (cursive).
4. Book writing (semi-charter with an old printed basis).
5. Decoration of manuscripts.
6. Format of manuscripts and binding.
Additional literature on the topic:
Belyaev I.S. A practical course in the study of ancient Russian cursive writing for reading manuscripts of the 15th-17th centuries. 2nd ed. - M., 1911.
Geraklitov A.A. Filigree of the 17th century on paper of handwritten and printed documents of Russian origin.- M., 1963
Klepikov S.A. Filigree and stamps on paper of Russian and foreign production of the 17th-20th centuries. - M., 1959.
Kostyukhina L.M. Book writing in Russia in the 17th century. - M., 1974.
Rozov N.N. Shorthand or cursive? (on clarification of the term) // Auxiliary historical disciplines. Issue 2. L., 1969.
Shulgina E.V. A cursive letter of the 17th century according to the Milyutinsky Menaion-four // Issues of Slavic-Russian paleography, codicology, epigraphy. M., 1987.
Topic 6. Palaeography and textology of modern times
1. Writing reforms.
2. External signs of written sources of modern and recent times
3. Shorthand and typescript.
4. Use of the latest technologies in paleography.
Additional literature on the topic:
Belokon E.A. The development of Russian writing in the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. // Autor. dis. Ph.D. M., 1988.
Historical informatics / Belova E.B. etc. Ch.9. P.3. M., 1996.
Racer S.A. Palaeography and textology of modern times.-M., 1970.
Shitsgal A.G. Russian civil font. - M., 1959.
WORK PLAN OF SEMINAR LESSONS
Lesson number 1. Palaeography as a special historical discipline. Related disciplines. The emergence and development of writing among the Slavs
Subject and tasks of paleography. paleographic method
Palaeographic description of the manuscript
Historiography of Russian paleography
Palaeography and related disciplines
Berestology
Pre-Christian writing in Rus'
The role of Cyril and Methodius in the creation of the Slavic alphabet
Slavic alphabets - Glagolitic and Cyrillic
Tasks and exercises:
Testing knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet
Exploring superscripts
Designation of numbers in Russian writing
Determination of a variant, highlighting its linguistic features
Lesson number 2. External signs of handwritten sources of Ancient Rus'
Charter. General characteristics, time of its existence and evolution
Writing tools. Paints. Ink.
Decoration of manuscripts in the 11th-13th centuries.
Birch bark, the specifics of applying text on birch bark
Tasks and exercises:
Reading the statutory letter
Determining the type of letter
Dating by lettering
Determining the style of artistic decorations
Compilation of paleographic commentary
Lesson number 3. External signs of written sources of the 14th-17th centuries
Paper: the history of invention and production technology. Water marks.
Decoration of manuscripts in the 14th-15th centuries.
Book writing 16-17 centuries
Decoration of manuscripts of the 16th-17th centuries.
Tasks and exercises:
Reading handwritten monuments made in semi-ustav
cursive reading
Determining the type of letter
Dating by lettering
Determining the type of manuscript by the nature of the text
Compilation of a paleographic description of the manuscript
FUND OF CONTROL TASKS FOR PALEOGRAPHY
Subject and tasks of paleography. paleographic method. Paleographic description of the manuscript.
Palaeography and related disciplines (epigraphy, codicology, textology, filigranology, birch bark studies)
The main stages in the development of Russian paleography. Latest technologies in paleography.
The emergence of Slavic writing.
Cyrillic alphabet.
Designation of numbers in Russian writing.
Superscripts and punctuation marks. The concept of outputs.
Charter. General characteristics, time of its existence and evolution.
Parchment: the history of appearance, manufacturing technology. Palimpsests.
Decoration of manuscripts in the 11th-13th centuries. Basic elements of manuscript decoration. Old Byzantine style.
Writing tools. Paints. Ink. The evolution of writing tools.
Birch bark, its features as a writing material. The specifics of applying text on birch bark. Berestology.
Paper: the history of invention and production technology. Water marks. Filigranology.
Semi-Ustav: general characteristics, dating features, local varieties.
Decoration of manuscripts in the 14th-15th centuries. (Teratological, Balkan, neo-Byzantine style. Miniature. Elm.
Secret writing, the scope of its use. The principles of secret writing. decryption methods.
Cursive writing: general characteristics. Dating chart indicators.
Book writing 16-17 centuries
Decoration of manuscripts of the 16th-17th centuries. Early printed ornament, baroque. Bookplate.
Appearance of handwritten materials: scrolls, sheets, notebooks, books. Formats. Bindings.
Writing reforms.
Palaeography and textology of modern times.
CHAPTERII. HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY
PROGRAM
CHRONOLOGY AS A SPECIAL SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE
The place of chronology among special historical disciplines. Mathematical and historical (applied) chronology. The subject of historical chronology. Tasks of historical chronology. Methods of historical chronology.
The concept of time. Causes and features of the emergence and development of techniques, instruments and concepts of time measurement. Time units. The origin of the words "day", "month", "year". Astronomical day. Equinox days. Variants of the year: tropical, starry. Winter (summer) solstice. Spring (autumn) equinox. civil year. Months (sidereal, synodic) and weeks. Origin of the seven-day week Other options of the week. Hour, minute, second: the origin of words and the meaning of concepts.
Era concept. Types of eras. Olympic era. Era since the founding of Rome. The account of time on consuls. The era of Nabonassar. The era of Diocletian. The era from the creation of the world (SM). Era from the Nativity of Christ (RH). "Anno Domini" and "ante Deum". Easter. Dionysius the Small. Chinese cyclical era. Muslim era (hijra). Minor and provincial eras. The problem of creating a universal chronological scale.
Absolute and relative chronological scale. Methods for establishing dating with the help of exact and natural sciences. Direct and indirect dating. Astronomical dates. Lunar and solar eclipses. their periodicity. Saros. Eclipses in sources. Other cyclic astronomical phenomena.
Calendar in the culture of the peoples of the world. Chronographs and annals. Easter. The main differences between historical and calendar time.
EVOLUTION OF CHRONOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE.
THE APPEARANCE OF SCIENTIFIC CHRONOLOGY
Principles of dating events in sources. Ancient Eastern writings of a chronological nature. Annals and Chronicles. The emergence of a special interest in the study of time in antiquity. The first systematization of chronological evidence. Hellanicus, Hecataeus. Attempts to streamline the count of years and create a single era. Synchronization of historical events. Chronological tables. Timaeus and Eratosthenes, Apollodorus of Athens and others. Political unification of the Mediterranean and attempts to establish synchronisms within the framework of universal history. Castor of Rhodes. Claudius Ptolemy and his Canon of Kings. Creation of the era of Nabonassar, its significance for the general chronology. Chronological research and Christianity. Synthesis of dating on a single scale with the inclusion of biblical history. Eusebius and his "Chronicle" ("Canon").
Translation of dates into modern chronology. Roman consular fasts and their features. The possibility of establishing the synchronism of Roman dates with Greek and Eastern. Checking these synchronisms.
The birth of scientific chronology. J. Scaliger. Julian era (the first scientific chronological scale). Julian days count. A way to calculate the Julian day number. D. Petavius. The experience of establishing synchronisms and methods for checking the chronological indications of sources. Counting the years before the birth of Christ. Single "time line".
LUNAR AND LUNIO-SOLAR CALENDARS
Astronomical observations of the ancients. The need for measuring time. The economic and seasonal cycle, establishing their connection with the movement of the luminaries.
The advent of lunar calendars. Neomenia. Moon phases. Lunar month and lunar year. Differences in the duration of the lunar calendar year and the astronomical year. Attempts to overcome this discrepancy: lunisolar calendars. Introduction of cycles. Types of cycles. cycle accuracy. Parapegma calendars. Differences in the beginnings of the months of the lunar calendars.
Calendars of the Ancient Mesopotamia. Sources on the chronology of Mesopotamia. Dating methods in Mesopotamia calendars. Time count: day, week, month. Insert month, cycles. Ordering by the state of insertions of additional months (decree of Hammurabi). Unified calendar system in the Old Babylonian period.
Hebrew calendar. Calendar structure. Calendar options. New Year and Easter as dating elements, ways to calculate them.
Muslim lunar Hijri calendar. calendar era. Beginning of the year. Counting days and months. Principles and methods of converting Hijri dates into our chronology.
Ancient Greek calendar. Agricultural calendar of Hesiod. Athenian calendar. Counting days in a month. Insertion months. Metonic cycle. Beginning of the year and beginning of the month. A method of approximate conversion of the dates of the Greek calendar to our chronology. The era of the Olympiads, the translation of dates for the Olympiads into our account of time.
Ancient Roman calendar. Evolution of the ancient Roman calendar. Romulus year. Reform of the calendar of Numa Pompilius. The introduction of cycles in the calendar and an attempt to order the inserts. The activity of the decemvirs. The state of the calendar at the time of the Julian reform. Beginning of the Roman year. Civil and sacral year. Counting days in months. Kalends, ides, nones. Nundines. Day designations. Intercalation of marcedonia. Vysokos. Times of Day. Account of day and night hours. Magistrates in charge of the calendar. Era of the Roman calendar. Calculation of indicators.
SOLAR CALENDAR SYSTEMS. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CALENDAR
Ancient Egyptian calendar. Sources for the history of the Egyptian calendar. written tradition. Manetho and his periodization of Egyptian history.
"Wandering" Egyptian year. Year structure. Epagomena. Lack of connection with the lunar phases. The summer solstice, the helioctic rising of Sirius (Sothis) and the flood of the Nile: the sequence and periodicity of these natural phenomena. Astronomical observations and knowledge. The great period of Sothis. Religious and civil aspects of the calendar. Months. The offset of the Egyptian calendar year relative to the tropical year. Basics for starting the countdown of the era of Sirius. Variants of Egyptian chronology: "long", "short" and "medium". Principles and methods of translating the dates of the "wandering" calendar into our chronology.
Alexandrian (Coptic) calendar. Canopic Decree of Ptolemy III Euergetes: the introduction of the system of leap years. Reform of the Augustan calendar (26 BC). Saving a "wandering" calendar. The introduction of the era of Diocletian, its connection with the era of Nabonassar. Principles and methods of converting the dates of the Coptic calendar into modern chronology.
FORMATION OF THE MODERN chronology
Ancient Roman lunisolar calendar. Intercalation of marcedonia. Reasons for the calendar reform. Julian reform. Sosigen. The main elements of the Julian calendar: the system of leap years, months and their duration. Julian calendar and Christian church. The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and fixing the day of the spring equinox.
Easter calculation. Creation of Easter tables. Pope John I. Computatio paschalis of Dionysius the Lesser. Creation of a new era - from the birth of Christ. Calculation by Dionysius of the date of the birth of Christ and its coordination with the indications of other sources. The spread of the Christian era in Western European countries. Byzantine era. Byzantine calendar and its influence on Rus'.
The gap between the Julian and the tropical year. Change of dates of Christian Easter. Pope Gregory XIII. Luigi Lilio. Gregorian reform, its content. The response to the papal initiative in Christian Europe. J. Scaliger. Transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in Europe. Old and new style. Translation of dates from Julian to Gregorian style. Disadvantages of the Gregorian calendar Project of the world calendar. Gregorian calendar in Russia.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CALENDAR SYSTEM IN RUSSIA
Calculation of time among the Eastern Slavs. Months, days and days of the week (weeks). Introduction of the Byzantine system of chronology. Calendar styles: March, September and Ultra March. Rules for converting dates for these styles to the January style. The advent of the secular calendar. Instruments for measuring time. Folk Orthodox calendar. Fixed (non-transitory) and mobile (transitory) Orthodox holidays. Decree of the Soviet government "On the introduction of the Western European calendar in the Russian Republic." The concept of "old new year". Calendar reform projects in the USSR. Standard time. Decree time. Summer and winter time. Date line.
EDUCATIONAL AND METHODOLOGICAL MATERIALS
THEMATIC PLAN OF LECTURES AND SEMINARS
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Number of lecture hours |
Number of seminar hours |
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Chronology as a special historical discipline |
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The evolution of chronological knowledge. The emergence of scientific chronology |
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Lunar and lunisolar calendars |
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Solar calendar systems |
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Formation of modern chronology |
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Development of the calendar system in Russia |
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Total 18 hours |
TEXTBOOKS AND TUTORIALS ON CHRONOLOGY
Boyko V.P. Fundamentals of auxiliary historical disciplines: Proc. allowance. Tomsk, 2005.
Kamentseva E.I. Chronology: Textbook. 2nd ed. M., 2003.
Leontieva G.A., Shorin P.A., Kobrin V.B. Auxiliary historical disciplines: Proc. for stud. higher textbook establishments. M., 2000.
Special historical disciplines: Proc. Allowance / S.V. Beletsky, I.V. Vorontsova, Z.V. Dmitrieva and others; Comp. MM. Krom. 2nd ed. SPb., 2003.
ADDITIONAL LITERATURE ON THE DISCIPLE:
Aveni E. Empires of time: Calendars, clocks, cultures / Per. from English. Kyiv, 1998.
Andreev I. Natural calendar. M., 1900.
Bikerman E. Chronology of the ancient world. M., 1975.
Vinnichuk L. People, manners and customs of Ancient Greece and Rome. M., 1988.
Volodomonov N.V. Calendar: past, present, future. M., 1987.
Gusarova T. P. et al. Introduction to special historical disciplines. M., 1990.
Ermolaev I.P. Historical chronology. Kazan, 1980.
Kamentseva E. I. Chronology. M., 1967.
Kamentseva E.I., Ustyugov N.V. Russian metrology. M., 1975.
Klimishin I. A. Calendar and Chronology. M., 1981.
Kobrin V. B., Leontyeva G. A., Shorin P. A. Auxiliary historical disciplines. M., 1984.
Neugebauer O. Exact sciences in antiquity. M., 1968.
Pannekoek A. History of astronomy. M., 1966.
Pronstein A.P. Chronology. Rostov-on-Don, 1973.
Pronshtein A.P., Kiyashko V.Ya. Chronology. M., 1981.
Seleshnikov S. I. History of the calendar and chronology. M., 1972.
Syuzyumov M. Ya. Chronological tables. Sverdlovsk, 1968.
Syuzyumov M. Ya. Universal Chronology. Sverdlovsk, 1971.
Tsybulsky V. V. Calendar and chronology of the countries of the world. M., 1982.
Shostin N.A. Essays on the history of Russian metrology in the 11th-early 20th century. M., 1990.
A book is a universal repository of everything that makes up our culture and life itself. As academician D.S. Likhachev said, even if everything on Earth perishes, but libraries and books remain, there will also be hope for eternity, because books will save life. The history of book making is complex and tortuous. About how books were created, handwriting styles, fonts, types of parchment and paper on the pages of the site "" tells the doctor of historical sciences L. V. Stolyarova.
Various writing materials were used at different times
The era of antiquity and the Middle Ages knows a lot of materials for writing. People at different times used the so-called "hard" and "soft" materials for this purpose: stone, metal, wooden, clay and wax tablets, bark and leaves of trees, fabrics, papyrus, parchment and, finally, paper. Until now, European languages have preserved words dating back to the most ancient periods in the history of writing: liberal- a book, originally denoting a tree bark or bast, and folium- “leaf”, originally denoting a tree leaf, and then a leaf of a book. concept in-folio, familiar to everyone who studies ancient manuscripts (manuscripts), serves to define a large book - a book in a sheet format. The word "manuscript" comes from the Latin manus- hand and scriptum- participles from the verb "scribere" - to write.
In his hymn to the word I. A. Bunin exclaimed:
"Tombs, mummies and bones are silent,
Only the word is given life:
From the ancient darkness, on the world churchyard,
Only letters are heard.
And we have no other property!
Know how to save
Though to the best of my ability, in the days of anger and suffering,
Our immortal gift is speech.
Book—amazing repository of knowledge of human thought
The book is the greatest invention of mankind. A convenient and simple form has kept the book almost unchanged through the centuries. The materials from which people made books changed, but the form in which the WORD was enclosed remained. Unfortunately, the manuscripts burned, perished from wars, neglect, human stupidity and barbarism, but there were always people who sacredly protected the BOOK - this is an amazing repository of knowledge, human thought, faith and disbelief, doubts and victories, searches and achievements, love and despair, amazing moral heights and the abomination of obscurantism and hatred. Since the invention of the book, people have trusted her with their past and dreams of the future. A book is a universal repository of everything that makes up our culture and life itself. As the academician said D. S. Likhachev, even if everything on Earth perishes, but libraries and books remain, there will also be hope for eternity, because books will save life.
The value of the book in ancient Rus' is enormous. Old Russian handwritten book has a thousand-year history. Appearing during the period of Christianization, the Book carried faith and the word to people. The book has become an integral part of ancient Russian medieval culture. It was the greatest value and an invariable attribute of Orthodox worship. The creation of a manuscript book was an act of enormous labor and exertion of intellectual and moral forces. The book was and remains the most important part of the historical past of Rus', an outstanding monument of history and culture.
How were medieval books created?
In the Middle Ages, books were copied in special workshops - scriptoriums. The first scriptorium was created Cassiodorus(487-575) near the city of Scilace on the coast of the Gulf of Tarentum.
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Some of the manuscripts copied in this workshop have come down to our time. The Irish played a very significant role in the organization of the scriptoria. Fleeing from the destructive raids of the Norwegians and Danes, as well as spreading Christianity in Europe, they moved from the island of Iera to the neighboring islands and the continent. With them were their precious manuscripts. In 590 a monk of the Bangor monastery Columban(550 - 615) founded the Luxe monastery in Burgundy, where a scriptorium was organized. At the beginning of the 7th century Queen Bathilda established a monastery at Corby near Amiens and invited Columban and the Lucian monks there, among whom were scribes of books.
Thus, a large scriptorium arose in Corby, where hundreds of manuscripts were created. In 613, Columban went to Italy and, together with the Irish monks, founded the monastery of Bobbio. Subsequently, the Bobbio library, created in the scriptorium of the same monastery, was considered one of the most remarkable in medieval Europe. In the VIII-IX centuries. Irish monks rushed deep into Europe and created their monasteries along the banks of the rivers Meuse and Rhine. By the end of the XI century. they founded monasteries in Regensburg, Bamberg, Nuremberg. There also arose their own scriptoria. In 910, a monastery was founded in Cluny (Burgundy), the scriptorium of which successfully competed with the Irish book-writing workshops.
The history of the emergence of book-writing workshops in Rus' is still little studied. This is due, firstly, to the lack of direct sources that would directly tell about book writing in Rus', and, secondly, to the fact that there are complexes of handwritten books, external signs that would allow us to say that they were created in one workshop, not much has been preserved. Nevertheless, such complexes of books exist. The oldest scriptorium in Northwestern Rus' was a book-writing workshop that operated at the turn of the 11th-12th centuries. in the Novgorod Lazarev Monastery. Another scriptorium at the beginning of the 13th century. functioned at the chair of the Rostov Bishop Cyril I. Some data suggest that there were several book-writing workshops in Pskov in the 14th century.
Manuscripts of antiquity and the Middle Ages, as well as complexes of handwritten books that have common signs of origin (i.e., copied in one scriptorium), are the subject of research by paleographers and codicologists. Paleography, whose name comes from two Greek words - "παλαιος" (ancient) and "γραφω" (I write), is engaged in the study of external signs of written monuments fixed on soft material (primarily parchment and paper). Palaeography does not deal with content, but studies the handwriting, format, binding, decoration features of manuscripts, with the task of correctly reading the text, dating undated written monuments, establishing the boundaries of different handwritings, determining the probable place of writing the manuscript, if it is not indicated directly, and identifying falsifications. The name of another special historical discipline that studies manuscripts is codicology. The word "codicology" comes from the Latin "codex" (archaic - "caudex") - log, block, plank.
A specialist in the field of codicology (codicologist) is engaged in the study of the origin of a single handwritten book and their historically developed complexes (production of books, their internal and external form (structure), writing technique, characteristic features of the products of a particular book-writing workshop, migration of books, their existence, archival and library fate). Why does the name of the discipline that studies manuscripts come from the word for tablet? In the era of antiquity, current records were made on special tablets, which were made of wood or bone. Wooden tablets were covered with wax, and therefore they were called waxed or waxed (cerae, ceraculi, tabule, tabellae).
Wax was poured into special recesses of 0.5-1 cm, made in a rectangular board measuring 12x14 or 9x11 cm. Two tablets were placed one on top of the other with the waxed side inward, holes were made on the side and the plates were fastened with a special cord. So it turned out diptych (diptycha). Three tablets connected together were called a triptych (triptycha). Sometimes there were four or more tablets - a polyptycha (poliptycha) or a codex (codex). Tablets - ceres and codes - were used to record cash accounts, IOUs, drafts, personal correspondence and as student copybooks. Wooden codices were destined to become the oldest prototype of the modern book. And ancient and medieval manuscripts, written on papyrus and specially treated leather - parchment, in a sense reproduced the shape of waxed boards connected together and are also called "codes".
Writing materials have evolved
One of the most ancient soft materials for writing was papyrus, which was made in the era of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (3rd century BC) from a special kind of reed that grew in the Nile Delta. A papyrus filled with text was called a volume (from the Greek word τομος - part) and special rollers made of wood, horn or bone were attached to it on both sides. On one of the rollers, the papyrus was rolled, receiving a scroll (volumen). The scrolls were kept in special baskets or boxes (scrinium). In libraries, they were placed on shelves (armarium).
Papyrus was replaced by parchment: papyrus was used to make scrolls in which the text was written on only one side. A book in the form of a codex required writing on both sides of a sheet of parchment, for which papyrus was of little use. No more than ten books made in Europe from papyrus have survived. Parchment had a remarkable property: it could be reused many times. To do this, it was enough to wash off the original text with a damp sponge and polish the parchment sheet with a pumice stone. After that, the text could be written again. Manuscripts written according to the washed away original text are called palimpsests (from the Greek πάλιν - again and ψάω - I scrape, erase).
Modern science makes it possible, with the help of special methods, to read the washed-out original text of the palimpsest, that is, to find out which text was eliminated in order to record a new one. They began to write on parchment already in the II century. BC. In II - III centuries. parchment competed with papyrus, in the IV century. already dominated. In the 8th century papyrus as a writing material was largely supplanted by parchment. In general, the European Middle Ages has preserved to our time about 300 documents written on papyrus. Among them are 30 Merovingian charters and registers. Books on papyrus are very rare. After the 7th century papyrus was almost never used in book writing. However, in southern Italy and Spain, where they made their own papyrus, it was used until the 12th century. The papal office, distinguished by a certain conservatism, wrote bulls on papyrus as early as the beginning of the 11th century: Benedict VIII (1012-1024) is considered the last pope, whose office issued the last papyrus bull.
The invention of parchment is associated with a legend told by Pliny the Elder with reference to Varro. According to legend, the king of Egypt, Ptolemy, banned the export of papyrus to Pergamon, with which Egypt traditionally competed. In Pergamum, the creation of a huge library was conceived, which was supposed to surpass one of the wonders of the world, the famous Library of Alexandria, with its collection. In response to the prohibitive measures of Ptolemy, the patron of the Pergamon book depository, King Eumenes III, encouraged the practice of improving the technique of processing the skins of the well-known oriental diphthera culture. As a result, parchments were the first to receive light yellowish-white sheets, suitable for writing on both sides. The new writing material was called "parchment" (περγαμηνά - Greek, pergamena, charta - Latin).
The Romans called it “membrane” (membrana), because the new writing material was very strong and at the same time elastic, and this allowed it to be easily bent. The parchment manufacturing technology came to Rus' from Byzantium. To designate parchment, the word "haratya" (from the Greek χάρτης), as well as "skin" and "veal" were used. In the XI-XIII centuries. books and letters in Rus' were written only on parchment. From the end of the XIV century. along with parchment, imported paper was also used, which was delivered from Italy and then France. In Russia, they learned to make their own paper only in the 18th century. China is considered the birthplace of paper, from where it was exported to the East, Japan and the West. In Europe, paper became widespread already in the 12th century. The oldest writing on paper is considered to be a manuscript written in Sicily in 1109. In 1209, the oldest paper mill started working in Fabriano. In Germany, paper has been used as a writing material since the 13th century.
Slavic enlighteners
The question of the origin of writing in Rus' is very complex and controversial. This is due to the fact that scientists have a rather narrow range of sources, many of which do not have a sufficient degree of reliability and are not representative enough. However, it is obvious that writing in Rus' became widespread only after its Christianization. Byzantium was a hotbed of writing, and Byzantine book and written culture penetrated into Rus' through Bulgaria, Macedonia, and, possibly, Serbia.
The origin of Slavic writing is associated with the activities of Byzantine missionaries Constantine the Philosopher (Cyril) and Methodius. In the middle of the ninth century they developed an alphabet for the Western Slavs and translated a number of liturgical books into Slavonic. Thanks to the disciples and followers of Cyril and Methodius, this alphabet spread among the southern Slavs (in Bulgaria and Serbia), and later penetrated the territory of Rus'. However, the circumstances associated with the creation of the Slavic alphabet are still not fully clarified.
The oldest Slavic manuscripts were written not in one, but in two different alphabets - Cyrillic and Glagolitic. The question of which of these two alphabets is the most ancient and how Cyrillic and Glagolitic are related to each other has not yet been finally resolved. This is due to the fact that the Slavic manuscripts of the middle of the 9th century, when Cyril and Methodius were active, have not been preserved. At the disposal of scientists there are written monuments of the late 9th - 10th centuries, and at that time both Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets (that is, both alphabets) were already used.
The written language of the Slavs (in fact, the language of the translations created by Cyril and Methodius) is Old Church Slavonic. The basis of the Old Slavonic language was one of the Bulgarian-Macedonian dialects of the South Slavic group. Gradually, the Moravians, Pannonians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Serbs, Croats and Russians adopted the Old Slavonic language as a literary language. A distinctive feature of the Old Church Slavonic language is the presence in it of only a written form common to all Slavic peoples. At the end of the 10th century, when Slavic writing and culture on the territory of the South Slavic states experienced a period of decline, the Old Church Slavonic language ceased to exist.
Under the influence of living local speech, the Church Slavonic language developed, which absorbed the phonetic features of the Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian and Old Russian languages. Already the earliest writings, written in Slavonic, reflect the features inherent in the oral speech of their scribes. Local variants of the Church Slavonic language are usually called izvods. There are Middle Bulgarian, Serbian and Old Russian versions of the Church Slavonic language. In addition, monuments of the Czech and Moravian izvods are known. Old Slavonic written monuments are Savvin's book of the 10th century, the Boyan Gospel of the end of the 11th century, the Eninsky Apostle of the 11th century, created on the territory of Bulgaria; The Zograf Gospel of the 11th century, the Assemanian Gospel of the 11th century, the Ohrid Glagolitic Sheets of the 11th century, created in the territory of Macedonia; the Mariinsky Four Gospels of the 11th century, created on the territory of Serbia; as well as the Ostromir Gospel of 1056-1057, created on the territory of Ancient Rus'.
The most ancient monuments of the Church Slavonic language of the Bulgarian edition include Dobromir Gospel, Ohrid and Slepchansky Apostles of the 12th century, Bologna Psalter early 13th century and Dobreishevo Gospel of the 13th century. The earliest monuments of the Serbian edition are considered to be Miroslav's Gospel of the 12th century, Vukanov's Gospel of the 13th century, Shishatovatsky apostle 1324 The oldest manuscripts of the Czech edition are Prague Glagolitic passages in the 11th century. Scholars consider the earliest codices of the Russian edition to be Archangel Gospel of 1092, Galician Gospel of 1144, and Chudovskaya and Evgenievskaya explanatory Psalters XI in. The Church Slavonic language was most widespread in Rus', where it served as a literary language until the 18th century.
The earliest surviving codices written in the Glagolitic alphabet are considered to be the Kiev Glagolitic Leaflets (Kiev Missal) of the turn of the 10th-11th centuries), which are a Slavonic translation of the Latin Missal (from “Mass” - mass). The oldest Cyrillic manuscript is the so-called Book of Savvins (Aprakos short gospel) from the turn of the 10th (?)-11th centuries. V. The codex got its name from the records mentioning the priest Savva, probably one of the scribes.
In Macedonia and Bulgaria, the Glagolitic alphabet took root very easily. However, in Bulgaria, the more elegant and simple Cyrillic alphabet gradually replaced the Glagolitic alphabet. From the 12th century the round “Bulgarian” Glagolitic alphabet practically ceases to exist. The angular “Croatian” Glagolitic alphabet was used as early as the beginning of the 20th century. In Rus', the Glagolitic alphabet was not widely used, although in eight ancient Russian Cyrillic manuscripts of the 11th-13th centuries. Glagolitic styles were used in separate words and even phrases, replacing, as a rule, Cyrillic ones. Six Glagolitic inscriptions on Old Russian Cyrillic codices and no more than a dozen graffiti inscriptions have survived. They allow us to talk about the Glagolitic XI-XIII centuries. as a manifestation of the influence of the southern and West Slavic written culture, which did not develop on Russian soil.
The most ancient parchment manuscript that has come down to us, written in Rus' and having the exact date of creation, is Ostromir Gospel 1056 - 1057 This codex, transcribed by deacon Gregory for the Novgorod posadnik Ostromir-Joseph, was for a long time considered not only the oldest accurately dated Russian manuscript, but also the oldest surviving, exactly dated Slavic manuscript. With the discovery of the wooden Novgorod psalter, Slavic-Russian codicology received at its disposal a manuscript older than the parchment Ostromir Gospel. Manuscript created in the first decade after the baptism of Rus'.
All handwritten books in Rus' had a certain type of handwriting
All handwritten books and letters in Rus' are written in one of three types of handwriting - charter, semi-charter or cursive. The charter is the most ancient type of handwriting, which was used to write manuscripts in the era of the dominance of parchment, that is, in the 11th-14th centuries. The charter is understood as a solemn letter in which all elements of the letters are written exclusively correctly and clearly. Letters written in statutory handwriting, as a rule, fit entirely between the upper and lower borders of the lines. Each letter fits freely into the square, since its height is equal to its width. Scribes who wrote in the charter avoided the inclination of letters, so all vertical elements were written strictly perpendicular to the line. In the XIV century, the charter began to be replaced by another type of handwriting - semi-charter. In ancient Russian manuscripts, he appeared along with paper. The semi-ustav was quite widespread back in the 17th century, however, it was then used mainly for writing books.
Letters from the 15th century. began to be written in cursive. Like the statute, the semi-statute remained a two-line letter, but there was much more carelessness in it than in the statute. In writing the same letter in the same handwriting, variants began to be noted. It turned out to be acceptable and tilt. Semi-statutory letters no longer fit into the square. Rather, they could fit in a rectangle: their height always prevails over their width. In the semi-charter of the 15th - the first half of the 16th century, there are South Slavic (Bulgarian and Serbian) graphic elements (some letters have an elaborate shape, some letters are written in a ligature - a connected style of two or more letters). Russian manuscripts of this time also have some features of South Slavic orthography.
Semi-ustav of the end of the 16th - 17th centuries. V. was influenced by the fonts of early printed books. Therefore, one of his graphic signs is the episodic division of lines into words (manuscripts of an earlier time do not know word division!). Cursive is a type of handwriting that is designed to significantly speed up the writing process. Cursive ceases to be a two-line letter. It contains a lot of abbreviated words. A number of letters are written not in the line, but above the line. Within the same handwriting, the same letter can be written in several versions at once, depending on the convenience of the pen. Ligatures acquired great importance in cursive writing.
Liturgical book set—forerunner of libraries
The question of the existence of library collections in Russia before the 16th-17th centuries. debatable. Old Russian libraries appeared only in the 15th century, starting to form at the end of the 14th century. For the previous period in the history of the Russian book, liturgical book sets are more characteristic - small collections of liturgical books necessary for each spiritual corporation for the performance of a church cult. Both liturgical book sets and the first library collections in Rus' are connected with the church. Private libraries began to form in Russia, apparently not earlier than the 16th century. and especially spread only from the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries.
According to the reconstruction of the oldest book fund of Rus', proposed by the historian B. V. Sapunov, in the XI - XIII centuries. the parish and house churches used at least eight books for worship: The Gospel and the Apostle Aprakos, the Lenten and Color Triodion, the Common Menaion, the Psalter with worship, the Missal and the Trebnik. However, even N. V. Volkov (1897) admitted that in the Old Russian church in the XI - XIV centuries. there could be only one gospel aprakos. Thus, according to Volkov, only one copy of the Gospel could be the acceptable book minimum for a parish church. Recall that E.E. Golubinsky (1901) considered it likely for the 11th-13th centuries. V. and the complete absence of any kind of book collection in the parish church. He believed that during the period of the formation and establishment of Christianity in Rus', one cannot exclude the possibility of a priest serving by heart from memory, without the use of books.
No matter how you define the book collection of the Old Russian church, you can think that it was rather minimal. Being an accessory of a church cult and possessing certain ritual functions, such "sets" basically had a purely applied cult significance. Along with liturgical literature, the "sets" could include the works of the Church Fathers, works of hagiography, collections of monuments of canon law, etc. However, such extended "sets", the composition of which was often random, and their constituent copies were special premises, can be considered no more than an early prototype of the library collections of Rus'.
The distances between verges and pantusots can serve as dating signs of paper. The very wide distances between the verges are an indicator of the paper of the second half of the 14th century. On the contrary, the greatest rapprochement between the pantusos testified to progress, an improvement in the technique of paper production. Therefore, if there is the same watermark on two different sheets of paper, the older one should be considered the older one. which has sparser vertical lines.
When dating, it must be borne in mind that the time of release of paper with one or another filigree and the time of writing a document on this paper, as a rule, do not coincide. The difference depends on the length of time the paper is delivered to the consumer and the period of storage of the paper at the place of its use. Finding out the fallowness of paper is one of the tasks of paleography. S.A. Klepikov believes that the staleness of paper for the period from the 13th to the 14th centuries. can be determined at 4.5 years, for the XV century. - at 6-7 years old.
There is a concept of "black" and "white" dates. "Black" date - written, reproduced on the material for writing (paper). "White" date - obtained as a result of processing a paper watermark (filigree, vergere, pantuso) with the help of watermark directories.
Graphic arts. The most ancient charter was a slow letter. The acceleration of writing led to some change in its graphics, which in the XIII-XIV centuries. can be characterized as a late charter. The letters of the later charter lose the strict geometric outline, characteristic of the oldest charter. They become more elongated. In the letters "like", "e-iotized", "u" the bevel of the horizontal bars increases: . The lower half of the letters "v", "g", "k" gradually increases. At the letter "b" - yat calm goes above the line: b. The calyx of the letter “h” has acquired the shape of a funnel: V. The later charter gives the impression of being more accelerated than the oldest charter. Departing from the middle of the XIV century. from a business letter, it was preserved in the 16th century. as a book letter.
In a business letter, the late charter moves into a new type of letter - semi-stat. The semi-charter has been common in business papers since the second half of the 14th-15th centuries. The main features of the semi-charter are as follows: smaller writing of letters compared to the charter, the appearance of an inclination of letters, a violation of the geometricity of their graphics, the appearance of ligatures, the partial division of phrases into words, new methods of abbreviating words, an increase in the number of portable letters.
Researchers call the early semi-ustav the “Russian semi-ustav”, since it retains a certain closeness to the traditions of the Russian statute of the 14th century, which has undergone certain changes in graphics. The hallmarks of the Russian semi-charter were the outlines of a number of letters, which help to understand both the types of writing and the dating of the semi-charter: the so-called “Ch split” V, which lost its leg, “E anchor”, “Z semicircle” with a small cap on the left, the letter “ ilk" with an oblique crossbar, like the modern "I". It becomes difficult and incomprehensible to read the letter "Ж",Х, which often began to be depicted without some details.
At the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. in connection with the expansion of ties with the South Slavic scribes, many of whom were forced to emigrate to Russia in connection with the capture of the Balkan Peninsula by the Turks, the monuments of Russian writing are undergoing changes. These changes were reflected in the penetration into the written language of some graphic, orthographic, artistic and partially linguistic features characteristic of the Bulgarian and Serbian sources of that time.
The influence of the South Slavic semi-charter on the Russian semi-column was expressed primarily in the lengthening of the vertical details of a number of letters. A “T” appeared with wings lowered to the bottom line: (tripedal), “D” with elongated lower ends: D, letters “L, b, Y” with elongated ends on the left: "b.b.s. The trend in the lengthening of the lower tails of the letters also manifested itself in the style of the letter “Ch”, which began to be written with a long stem on the right: Ch. Having absorbed the most graphically convenient semi-statutory styles, the Moscow semi-statutory developed a number of graphic features that distinguish it, among which the letters stand out in the first place: “In a ball” in, “Z”. similar to the number "three", which stands out sharply for its size in line E -
In addition to graphic features, a distinctive feature of a semi-charter from a charter is the presence of a greater variety of abbreviation techniques. The reduction was achieved by skipping vowels and consonants not only in words of spiritual, but also civil content. A title was placed over the abbreviated word: drvnya (village), chlk (person), msts (month), etc. The way to reduce the word is the removal of letters, and the extended letters were also written under the title. The abbreviation method was to truncate the word to several letters and even one (initial) letter. Usually common, well-known words, often repeated in the text (village), (wasteland), etc., were truncated. Truncated parts of words were circled.
In the semi-charter, the first attempts are made to coherently write two letters standing next to each other. Semi-Ustav knows more than ten variants of ligatures like:
and others. In the half-charter of the XV century. a comma appears, which was brought by the Bulgarian scribes.
At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. on the basis of the semi-charter, a new type of writing is developing - cursive, which has become dominant in the business letter of the united Russian state. As for the semi-ustav, it has become predominantly book writing.
Manuscript decorations. The time of the late charter and its evolution into a semi-character script coincides with the spread of a new artistic style, called teratological, monstrous or bestial ornament. This ornament was widespread in the 13th and especially in the 14th century. Books from this period are usually written on parchment. The largest number of books decorated with teratological style ornaments has been preserved in Novgorod and Pskov.
There are different opinions on the origin of the teratological ornament. A number of authors (F.I. Buslaev", V.N. Shchepkin 2) spoke about the borrowing of teratology from the southern Slavs. Some foreign researchers (Viennese art critics Josef Strzhigovsky, V. Bori), solving the issue in the spirit of the idea of pan-Germanism, argued that Russia adopted the teratological ornament from Scandinavia and Northern Germany, that the teratological ornament of Russia was a local branch of the ornament of the German-Scandinavian cultural center.A number of historians looked for the roots of teratology in the East.
Most researchers (A.V. Artsikhovsky, B.A. Rybakov, M.K. Karger and others), recognizing the mutual influence of Russian and South Slavic cultures, talk about the originality of the development of Russian teratological ornamentation, about its connections with ancient Russian applied art, wooden carving , objects of artistic craft (made of metal, silver), with local artistic traditions and folklore motifs.
Teratological ornamentation was known in all manuscript centers of Rus', but it reached its true heyday in the 14th century. in Novgorod.
The transition to teratology was gradual. Already in the XII century. the severity of the old Byzantine style is violated. Next to the naturalistic images of animals, fantastic beasts appear, about which it is impossible to say who it is - a bird, a dog or a lion. Vegetative and geometric motifs are replaced by teratological combinations of animal forms and weaves from belts and snake tails.
The screensaver of the teratological ornament does not have a regular geometric shape. It resembles an image of a fabric along which a planar ornament “spreads”. The top of the headband is often crowned with a floral pattern - the pommel, the corners of the headband are decorated with a Byzantine branch. The headpiece pattern could consist of two living creatures symmetrically located to each other - monsters entangled in belts. The belts came from the beaks, mouths, wings, tails, legs of the monsters, braided their torso and passed into the "middle" - a vertical weave descending into the headband from the pommel and dividing it, as it were, into left and right parts. From the same belts, weaves, often ending with the heads of monsters, initials were formed. To make it easier to read the initials, which lost their relief, the painters began to give a colored silhouette of the letter. In the XIII century. in teratology, the motif of the human figure appeared. These are the so-called teratological little men.
In the XIV century. they are wearing a conical hat. In the XIV century. more interesting than the screensavers were the initials, in which entire genre scenes appeared using images of people. So, the letter "M" is depicted as two people pulling a net with fish. The letter is accompanied by a text written over the figures of people and representing their squabble: “Pull, Korovin's son! “You yourself are like that!” The letter "D" was depicted in the form of a man playing the harp. Above the letter there was an inscription: "King David plays the harp."
The basis of the color of the teratological ornament is cinnabar - a paint of a mercury composition, a fiery shade. Blue, green, yellow, gray paint and ink colors were also used. The natural color of parchment was used to convey the white color. Gold and silver paints were not used in teratology.
The teratological ornament had its own local features. For Novgorod teratology, a gray-blue or blue background was characteristic. Pskov teratology was characterized by larger initials than Novgorod, predominantly green background color, the use of yellow color in the contours of the picture. In Ryazan manuscripts, green was used as the background of the initials.
The teratological style was characteristic not only of manuscripts. It existed in artistic craft (for example, kolts, bracers - women's jewelry), in architectural plasticity (reliefs of Dmitrovsky in Vladimir, St. George in Yuryev-Polsky, Borisoglebsky and Annunciation Cathedrals in Chernigov).
In the XV century. teratology is dying out. Images of animals disappear in screensavers, only weaving remains. Just like the charter, teratology is slowly disappearing from parchment books. In appeared in the XIV-XV centuries. In samples of paper books, the combination of teratology and charter is less common. than parchment books. The teratological ornament lasted the longest in Ryazan manuscripts (until the 16th century).
At the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. new types of ornament are spreading: Balkan And neo-Byzantine. Such a change was one of the results of the “second South Slavic influence” that affected Russian culture as a result of the influx of South Slavic writings into the Russian lands.
In the XV century. It was mainly the Balkan (wicker, or cord) ornament that was distributed. In the XVI century. it is preserved in the territory of South-Western Russia.
The early Balkan ornament was simple, without filling details and, like teratological, was drawn by hand. From the second half of the XV century. it gets more difficult. The characteristic features of the Balkan ornament were the following: clear geometric circles woven into each other, in several tiers, an endless eight, rectangular lattices intertwined with each other, weaving, forming a complex pattern without a gap, reminiscent of a fabric - matting or carpet. The details of the filling of the ornament were pearls, rhombuses, dots, crosses, squares. The headpiece of the ornament had no frame. But it could be crowned with a pommel in the form of an image of a bouquet of flowers. The corners of the headpiece were decorated with stylized flowers, cones, and buds. In the weaving style, the initials were also made, which became clear and easy to read. Vivid examples of headpieces of the Balkan ornament are in the "Apostle", written in the 90s. 15th century There are 48 Balkan-style screensavers in this book, and none of them is repeated.
Rich book bindings of the 13th-15th centuries. had silver salaries, decorated with an embossed pattern, niello, story centerpieces and squares.
Miniature. During the period of feudal fragmentation, the content of miniatures became more diverse. Along with plots depicting saints, plots from the field of everyday life and political life appeared. At the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. figures of people in individual miniatures began to acquire mobility, liveliness, and realism. There is an opinion that the new features that appeared in the book drawing were formed under the influence of the painting of Andrei Rublev and his school. An example of this influence is a miniature from the Gospel of the boyar Khitrovo (XIV - early XV century), symbolically depicting the Evangelist Matthew in the form of a flying angel. The image of an angel strikes with plasticity, lightness, mobility.
The nature of the new material for writing (paper) was also reflected in the appearance of the miniatures. With the disappearance of smoothness and strength from parchment, the smoothness, density, brilliance of colors, the contrast of dark and light tones in miniatures disappear. Soaking into the paper, the colors looked more liquid, faded, reminiscent of watercolor. With a watercolor style, the drawing loses its monumentality, looks more detailed.
Cryptography. In manuscripts of the XII-XV centuries. there is a so-called "secret writing" - cryptography. Cryptography was understood only by the initiated. At first, for various reasons, it was used to encrypt the author's name. Over time, cryptography began to be used for political, diplomatic and other reasons.
Russian cryptography of the XII-XV centuries. she knew several systems: 1) the system of "alien letters", the essence of which was to replace the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet with letters of other alphabets, for example, Glagolitic, Latin, Greek; 2) a system of altered signs of the Cyrillic alphabet, in which some details of the letters were not added or, on the contrary, by adding new details, the letters changed beyond recognition; 3) a system of replacing some letters of the Cyrillic alphabet with other letters of the same alphabet, or the so-called litorea, which was divided into “simple” and “wise”. In the "simple" littoria, all vowels, hard and soft signs were used without change, and from consonants - zelo 5 and fita. The remaining 20 consonants were written in two rows, ten in each, in alphabetical order. The top row of consonants was written from left to right, the bottom row from right to left:
In the XV century. ligature is becoming widespread, especially in Novgorod, Pskov, Tver and Moscow. The oldest dated sample of the old Russian ligature is in the "Stikhirar", written in 1380 in the book-writing workshop of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery.
Basic knitting techniques:
1) matching of similar parts of letters:
a) mast + - mast: GT- ETC;
b) mast + half mast: H1- NI;
c) half-mast + half-mast: ,- CD;
d) loop + loop: "P - PE;
2) subordination of one letter to another, in which one of the letters decreases and fits in - “hides” between the details of a larger letter: -, - KO, - OK;
3) reduction of parts of the letter in order to bring them closer: -, -;
4) subordination of two letters, in which two adjacent letters decrease and become one on top of the other:.
Observations on the ligature, as well as other paleographic signs, serve for dating, establishing the authenticity of the source. For these purposes, the tie indicator is used, i.e. the ratio of the height of a letter to its width. An indicator equal to two indicates a ratio of height to width as two to one. These indicators corresponded to the early period of the use of tie. An elm with an indicator of three and four was common in the 15th century.
Brief conclusions. In the XIII-XIV centuries. it is necessary to take into account the coincidence of the late charter, parchment, teratology. In the XV century. the late charter remains the type of book writing, and the semi-charter is also used. They correspond, especially to the semi-charter, paper. The books are decorated with teratological, Balkan, partly neo-Byzantine ornaments. In a business letter, parchment is gradually being replaced by paper. In a business letter, the replacement of the late charter with a semi-charter is faster, and then with cursive. As a qualitatively new paleographic feature, the ligature should be called, the presence of which indicates that the document was written no earlier than the end of the 14th century.
EXTERNAL SIGNS OF WRITTEN MONUMENTS OF THE RUSSIAN STATE OF THE XV-XVII cc.
Period XV-XVII centuries. was marked by the most important events of socio-economic, political and cultural life. At the end of the XV - beginning of the XVI century. a unified Russian state was formed. In this state, the autocratic political system was formalized, and its own management organization - orders - was formed. The landownership and the nobility were strengthened, which became the mainstay of the emerging from the second half of the 17th century. absolutism. Received the development of legislative norms of serfdom.
Noticeable changes in all areas of the economic, political and cultural life of the Russian state contributed to the expansion of the scope of writing and the functions of writing in general. Since the threads of control of the entire state were concentrated in orders, it was there that in the XV-XVII centuries. the largest number of business documents was postponed. The command system and the first office work in the center gave rise to a similar organization of government and office work in the field - in voivodship huts (offices), in monastic and church institutions, in boyar estates and noble estates. The authors of the clerical record keeping in the center and in the localities were clerks and clerks. The clerks headed the clerk's offices and were responsible for office work. The clerks were the most numerous ordinary staff of clerks - executors of the correspondence of papers.
In the 17th century not only in Moscow, but also on the periphery, the practice of hereditary replacement of clerk positions became increasingly visible. Therefore, teaching writing to beginner clerks could be done at home, and they mastered office work skills directly in orders.
Of great importance for the development of a business letter was the work of the so-called areal clerks, who drew up papers | on city squares by order. A huge mass of acts of a private nature came out from the pen of the areal clerks: deeds, data, bills of sale, orders, mortgages, etc.
Despite the fact that in Russia in the middle of the XVI century. book printing appeared, it did not satisfy the demand of the book market: print runs were small, and publications were limited almost exclusively to church books. This explained the continuation and expansion of the practice of copying works of both secular and spiritual literature. The scribes of the books were monastic and church scribes, representatives of the townspeople, service people and even peasants. Kirill-Belozersky, Trinity-Sergius, Moscow Chudov monasteries and the Posolsky order continued to be major centers for the correspondence of books. Many scribes copied books alone. The teachers of book scribes were clerks, representatives of the lower clergy, and book masters. Handwritten alphabets, printed books, primers served as teaching aids. The traditional form of acquiring books was to order them from scribes. But in the XVI and especially in the XVII century. the book could be bought in the malls, either from the scribes themselves, or from buyers.
In the XV-XVII centuries. the object of paleographic study are business sources that came out of central and local institutions: acts, judicial investigation cases, documents of financial and economic reporting, etc. Among the general legislative monuments, the leading place belongs to the Cathedral Code of 1649, which has come down to us in the original . The length of the scroll on which the Code was written was 347.5 m. The scroll consisted of 959 “staves”. On the front side of the sheets was written the text of the articles of the Code, on the back 315 signatures of the participants of the Zemsky Sobor. The main text is written in five handwriting. According to the gluing - "links" of the front side there is a "clamp" of the Duma clerk Ivan Gavrenev. On the reverse side of the scroll, according to gluing, there is a “clip” of Duma clerks Fyodor Elizarov and Mikhail Volosheninov and clerks Gavrila Leontiev and Fyodor Griboyedov. Of the monuments of ecclesiastical and secular literature, of particular interest are the "Great Menaion" (50s of the 16th century). those. monthly readings compiled on the initiative of Metropolitan Macarius, including works of hagiographical literature, sermons and teachings; “Facing Chronicle Code” (60-70s of the 16th century), which got its name due to the presence of a large number of miniatures in it; "Temporary clerk Ivan Timofeev", preserved in a single manuscript of the 30s. XVII century .. written in several cursive handwriting, decorated with early printed ornaments. "Vremennik" contains a description of the Time of Troubles; “Titulyarnik” of 1672, compiled in the Posolsky Prikaz, containing portrait miniatures of the Grand Dukes and Tsars and samples of the magnificent semi-statutory letter of the clerks of this order. The Apostle, printed in 1564 at the Moscow Printing Yard, is a magnificent example of medieval printing, illustrating an early printed ornament borrowed from handwritten books.
Writing material. The main material for writing in the XVI-XVII centuries. becomes paper. Since the first attempts to start domestic paper production in the 16th century. ended in failure, and founded in the XVII century. manufactories (paper mills) could not meet the country's needs for writing material, Russia until the first decade of the 18th century. used mainly imported paper.
Until the middle of the XVI century. it was mainly Italian paper with watermarks in the form of a glove, a jug, etc. From the end of the 16th - in the 17th centuries. the paper of French factories spread, an indicator of which was the filigree “grape brush”, “jug”, the coats of arms of French cities. Among the latter, there was often a filigree with the coat of arms of the city of Basel, more than 500 variants of which were given in the works of S. Briquet, P. Heitz, A. A. Geraklitov and others. Dutch paper began to be used, which displaced in the second half of the 17th century. French. The most common for this paper since 1650 was the filigree "coat of arms of Amsterdam", the maximum use of which dates back to 1701-1725. The same widespread filigree of the Dutch paper was the sign "jester". Appearing for the first time on paper of German origin in the 16th century, the jester filigree began to be used in the 17th century. in a somewhat complicated version and by Dutch masters. It should be noted that, since domestic manufactories in the 17th century. were in the hands of Dutch masters, the filigree of Russian paper at first imitated Dutch signs. Therefore, the Dutch filigree "arms of Amsterdam" and<шут» появились и на бумаге отечественного производства.
For dating with the help of filigree paper of the XVI-XVII centuries. it is recommended to use the tables of watermarks by K.Ya. image of watermarks of the XVII-XVIII centuries. Especially for filigrees of the 17th century. A. A. Geraklitov’s work “Filigree of the 17th century on paper of handwritten and printed documents of Russian origin” (M 1963) is devoted to this work, in which more than 1500 characters are depicted. Fallen paper XV-XVI centuries. determined in 6-7 years, in the XVII century. - an average of 5 years.
In the XVI-XVII centuries. birch bark continued to be used as writing material. True, during this period, birch bark was already written on the outskirts, and moreover, in those cases when there was no import of paper for a long time.
Letter graphics. The large amount of work in government offices associated with writing business papers forced scribes to look for options for more rapid writing of letters and move away from semi-statutory sketches. The external expression of this process was the transition in XV V. semi-character in cursive. In the 16th and especially in the 17th century cursive becomes the main type of writing in office work, everywhere displacing semi-charter from it. The semi-ustav became the writing of handwritten books.
cursive - this is a fluent, accelerated letter, characterized by looseness of writing letters. The way to speed up writing lay primarily through the continuous writing of letters in a word. To learn this, it took a long time, during which the hand of the scribe was looking for the best, most acceptable for continuous writing options for the graphics of individual letters. That is why cursive is distinguished by the variety of variants of the same letter, sometimes not only in one text, but even in one word. The looseness of writing, the search for the best options for graphics became possible only with the availability of a cheaper and more common material than parchment, more durable than birch bark material, which paper has become. Therefore, cursive writing and paper are two accompanying paleographic features.
The graphics of each of the cursive letters have come a long way of development. It had its own characteristics in certain periods of time, which can serve as dating indicators.
In the XVI century. the letter "B" could be written with one loop placed on the line. In such a style it is difficult to distinguish it from a letter. Sometimes it looks like a quadrilateral. Letter
had a triangular or letter-shaped upper part lying on a long straight or arcuate crossbar: ; the letter could be written in the form of a lying loop and a small dash in the middle or on the side of the loop: ; the letter received an outline in the form of two sticks: ; at the letter, the right side began to be written with greater pressure and above the left side: . It was difficult to read the letter, which became similar to with a circle attributed to the bottom: . Cursive handwriting became even more complex and varied in the 17th century. The lettering of the letters and -
The letter became similar to a modern capital letter, but its upper part could be larger than the lower one: . A new version of the letter, along with its image in the form of two sticks, was an outline reminiscent of a Latin image or an image close to it: . More widespread than in the 16th century .. received with a canopy: L. In the 17th century. a spelling appeared that resembled a figure eight with a small lower loop: ; the letter took the form of a squiggle; letters in the 17th century. became more like a capital letter with a squiggle at the bottom or was written almost like a modern one: . The practice of abbreviating words, diversifying insignia, and writing various extension letters was individual for each of the professional scribes and, as it were, reflected their desire to decorate business papers with the help of graphic techniques and forms. The cursive elements of decorating a business letter were especially bright in the personal signatures of clerks.
Due to the variety of graphics of individual letters, writing techniques and looseness of cursive writing, a clearer manifestation of the handwriting of individual scribes is already characteristic. Handwriting - this is a unique feature of the letter. In addition, it should be borne in mind that in cursive writing, the graphics of the same texts become more dependent on the purpose of the documents. The clean drafts were written with great diligence and care, and therefore were clearer and more understandable than the drafts of the same documents. The documents of the central institutions (orders) basically differed in more modern lettering and gamut. When copying books from printed editions, the masters involuntarily took as a model the graphics of block letters and early printed ornament. This is how a semi-charter appeared in handwritten books, imitating the old-printed font, or "half-charter" with an old-printed basis. "It formed the basis of the so-called" Pomeranian "half-charter, which was held for a long time among the scribes of the Old Believers.
After the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, cultural Russian-Ukrainian ties intensified. The handwriting of some book scribes was influenced by Ukrainian graphics. It was distinguished by the angularity of the letter styles, their inclination and the replacement of some Slavic letters with Greek or Latin ones.
The demand for a handwritten book led to the acceleration of writing and to the appearance in the last quarter of the 17th century. fluent or, "round, half-tired." It was characterized by beautiful, rounded lettering, mannered bends of loops and tails, and the use of individual cursive techniques.
Scribes of the XVI-XVII centuries. knew perfectly well the functional delimitation between semi-ustav and cursive. Cursive - a letter of business papers, semi-ustav - a letter in which books were written. However, scribes made exceptions to this rule. In the 17th century, books of a non-church circle could be written in clear cursive. In the XVI-XVII centuries. there were cases when, when copying liturgical books, one and the same scribe could use semi-ustav and cursive writing. At that time, the main text read during the divine service was written in half-ustav, and reference material, small in volume and of secondary importance in importance, was written in cursive.
Manuscript decorations. The neo-Byzantine, or floral, ornament that appeared in books simultaneously with the Balkan one replaced the Balkan one in the 16th century. In the neo-Byzantine ornament, the Byzantine headpiece was restored in the form of a geometric frame. It was again filled with floral motifs with the obligatory krin flower. But unlike the old Byzantine, the new Byzantine ornament was stylized, had a different color scheme and a more complex articulation of the headband.
The color scheme of the neo-Byzantine ornament included blue (predominant), cherry, green colors, which were often given on a gold background. Just like the Balkan, the neo-Byzantine ornament coincided in time with the spread of paper. Most of the books decorated with neo-Byzantine ornamentation are written in semi-charter.
From the 16th century in the decorations of handwritten books, the early printed ornament began to be used. The main elements of this style were images of herbs, branches, leaves, flowers, fruits, berries, cones. For coloring, mainly black and white colors were used.
Initially, it was believed that the early printed ornament appeared for the first time in printed books, and then passed into the ornamentation of manuscripts. This explains its name. It has now been proven that the early printed ornament was used to decorate handwritten books as early as the first half of the 16th century. and it was from them that he moved into books published in a typographical way.
