This is the Graduale Arosiense (or Graduale Svecicum), printed (by Stephanus Arndes?) in Lübeck in 1493.
This is the earliest surviving music printing for Sweden. This leaf is enclosed in a passe-partout, with a bookplate revealing a curious and rather sinister provenance...1/7
The bookplate has no text at all, but underneath is written in pen "Rockelstad".
Rockelstad Castle, situated on Lake Båven in Sörmland, Sweden, was the home of the bibliophile Count Eric von Rosen and suddenly the reason for the lack of text on the bookplate becomes clear.. 2/7
A previous owner or more likely, a previous bookseller, has removed the original bookplate, cut away all the outer text, and then re-affixed the central part only to the pass-partout. Why? Because this is Eric von Rosen's actual, complete bookplate... 3/7
Research Von Rosen's bookplate though & you'll find that he used a swastika as a personal owner's mark - having originally seen the symbol on runestones in Gotland while still at school - from as early as 1901! This swastika traditionally signified good luck for the Vikings. 4/7
So the cut-down bookplate is an understandable but harmless misunderstanding on the part of a panicky bookseller, the swastika used here as a good luck symbol decades before it was adopted by the Nazis, and Von Rosen is in the clear.
Well, not quite.... 5/7
In an astonishing case of life imitating art, Eric von Rosen DID in fact become a fervent admirer of Hitler and the Nazis, and ultimately became brother-in-law to Hermann Göring when his wife's sister, Carin von Kantzow, married Göring, who'd been a guest at Rockelstad! 6/7
If you can cope with the Swedish, there's a wonderful article on Von Rosen as a bibliophile by that brilliant manuscript polymath, Tim Bolton, here: biblis.se/digitalt-arkiv…
7/7
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This is the Rongorongo script of Easter Island. Rongorongo lacks an accepted decipherment but is generally presumed to encode an earlier stage of Rapa Nui, the contemporary Polynesian language of the island. It is possible that it represents an independent invention of writing. 1/
Hundreds of tablets written in Rongorongo existed as late as 1864 but most were lost or destroyed in that period and only 26 of undoubted authenticity remain today; almost all inscribed on wood. Each text has between two and over two thousand glyphs (some have what appear to be compound glyphs). 2/
The longest surviving text is that on the ‘Santiago Staff’: around 2,500 glyphs, depending upon how the characters are divided. The glyph-types are a mixture of geometric figures and standardized representations of living organisms; each glyph is around one centimetre in height. 3/
Oy. Forget about being a "rabbi", if you had even a kindergarten level knowledge of Hebrew (or Judaism for that matter) you'd know that this is not old, not Jewish, not an amulet, and nothing to do with kabbalah (which you grotesquely mischaracterize). It's a crude mishmash of… https://t.co/3IJjWrqnIp https://t.co/U7OBn124MNtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
When looking at any purportedly ancient Jewish manuscript, bear in mind: 1. Jewish manuscripts are generally austerely plain and written in black ink only. Red ink is seen occasionally as a highlight color in for example Yemenite manuscripts, but gold ink is essentially never… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Oi u luzi chervona kalyna - Oh, the Red Guelder Rose in the Meadow - is the anthem of 🇺🇦 Ukrainian resistance to Russian oppression.
Written in 1875, it was adapted by Stepan Charnetsky in 1914 to honor the Sich Riflemen of the First World War. 1/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The red guelder rose or viburnum of the song ('kalyna' in Ukrainian) - a shrub that grows four to five metres tall - is referenced throughout Ukrainian folklore. It is depicted in silhouette along the edges of the flag of the President of Ukraine. 2/
Due to the song's association with the Ukrainian people's aspiration for independence, singing of the song was banned during the period in which Ukraine was a Soviet Republic(1919-1991). Anyone caught singing it was jailed, beaten, and even exiled. 3/
Bought this this morning at our regular Sunday market in Bon-Encontre.
This bread is called a 'tortillon', and has been made since the late 17th century ONLY in this one tiny village just outside Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne, ONLY on Sundays and holidays in the month of May.
The tortillon celebrates the feast days of Notre-Dame de Bon-Encontre in May.
The flour is blanched and then boiled in hot water, before being baked in a wood oven. It's traditionally eaten with sausages and white wine. 2/
The idea that there's an entirely unique type of bread that exists exclusively in one tiny French village for 5 or 6 days of the year only - and that this has been the unchanged situation for over 300 years - is exactly the kind of thing that makes me love living in France. 3/
This is the 2001 first edition of the Ruhnama (Book of the Soul), written by Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-styled Türkmenbaşy, President of Turkmenistan from 1990 to 2006, intended to serve as the "spiritual guidance of the nation" and the "centre of the Turkmen universe". 1/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The Ruhnama was introduced to Turkmen culture in a gradual but increasingly all-pervasive way. Niyazov first placed copies in all the nation's schools and libraries - but by the end of his reign, an exam on its teachings was an essential element of the driving test... 2/
It was mandatory to study the Ruhnama in all schools, universities and governmental organisations. New governmental employees were tested in detail on the book in job interviews. 3/
Huge excitement here at the Incunabula Library - 26th April is OLD PERMIC ALPHABET DAY! 🥳🎉 🍾
Old Permic script (Важ Перым гижӧм), sometimes also called ANBUR, was used to write medieval Komi, a Uralic language spoken by the Komi peoples in the northeastern European part of Russia. 2/
Old Permic was developed by the Russian missionary, St Stephen of Perm (Степан Храп, св. Стефан Пермский) in 1372. The name Anbur is derived from the names of the first 2 characters: An and Bur. The script is derived from Cyrillic, Greek, and runic-style Komi "Tamga" glyphs. 3/