Bonaventura Vulcanius’ De literis et lingua getarum, sive gothorum [On the Alphabet & Language of the Getae or Goths], published in Leiden in 1597, contains texts & wordlists in Gothic, Crimean Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, Persian, Welsh, Icelandic, Basque, Romani & Rotwelsch.
In this pioneering work of comparative linguistics, Vulcanius attempted to define the relationship between the Gothic language and High German, Crimean Gothic (after Busbecq's vocabulary, first published eight years previously in 1589), Anglo-Saxon and Frisian.
At the same time, he also considered the Persian, Welsh, Icelandic and Basque languages. When the book went to press, what would otherwise have been blank space at the end of the last gathering was filled with a Romani and a Rotwelsch wordlist.
Vulcanius had access to the silver-on-purple codex containing the ancient Gothic translation of the Bible by Bishop Wulfila, and this book includes an extract - the first ever publication of a Gothic text. He gave the ms the name by which it is still known today: Codex Argenteus.
Vulcanius presents a vocabulary & a brief song extract - shown below - of the variety of Gothic observed in the Crimea by the diplomat Ogier de Busbecq, and first published in his account of his embassy to Turkey in 1589. This is the only attestation of Crimean Gothic to survive.
Immediately following the language specimens of Gothic and Old High German, Vulcanius proceeds with Old English - part of Alfred’s Preface to the Pastoral Care. He informs the reader that he had heard of many Anglo-Saxon manuscripts still extant in English archives and libraries.
The printer Raphelengius did not possess any Anglo-Saxon typefaces, and Vulcanius apologizes for the fact that the text, notably the f, g, r, s, t, and z (he means the yogh), as well as a number of abbreviations, had to be substituted in his specimen by ordinary Latin characters.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
"Cut off from the world by military clashes, the fate of the Abba Garima monastery and its spectacular Garima Gospels is still unknown. But the area around the monastery is controlled by soldiers who have looted systematically since the start of the war." theglobeandmail.com/world/article-…
The Garima Gospels are a two volume Ethiopian Gospel Book dating to the 5th century. Garima 2, the earlier of the two, is believed to be the earliest surviving complete illuminated Christian manuscript - an incomparably important heritage for Ethiopia, Africa and all humanity.
The abbott and a monk at the Abba Garima Monastery near Adwa examining the Garima Gospels, thought to be the oldest surviving illuminated Christian manuscript. Local tradition holds that this codex was written before the year 500, a date supported by recent radiocarbon analysis.
Kōetsu Utaibon 光悦謡本 [Saga, Kyoto, 1607].
The 100 Noh libretti called "Koetsu-bon" represent an astonishing leap, something unprecedented in the history of the illustrated or decorated book: this was the first time a book had been conceived as a single unified work of art. 1/
Not until William Blake’s books two centuries later, do we encounter anything like this as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" in the West, and the creation on any sort of scale of books composed as integrated, decorated printed works of art.... 2/
.... did not arrive in the West until the private presses of the late 19th century Arts & Crafts movement in Britain, and the French livres d’artistes produced in Belle Epoque Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 3/
One of the smallest extant medieval Psalters, measuring just 50mm x 37mm.
This miniature Ferial Psalter, written around 1280, shows however that the interest and complexity of a manuscript has nothing to do with its size... 1/12
Representing the end-stage of a miniaturization fad that had been accelerating from the mid-twelfth-century, this manuscript - and others like it - could only have been possible after the introduction of the lens.... 2/12
The Psalter is profusely ornamented, with a range of decoration including ten multi-line, sometimes page-size, puzzle initials in red and blue, with frogspawn penwork and red and blue extensions forming three- and four-sided borders, some with “firework” designs... 3/12
The 'Statute of Kalisz' was the first major manuscript project of the artist Arthur Szyk. It celebrates the General Charter of Jewish Liberties, which granted civil and religious rights to Polish Jews when issued in 1264 by Duke Bolesław in Kalisz. 1/4
Printed in Paris in 1932, this is a visually stunning production. The integration of text and image is vastly better handled than in Szyk's more widely known Haggadah, and the reproduction of Szyk's artwork is outstanding: crisp, vivid, colorful, impactful. 2/4
The full 500 copies planned of the Statute of Kalisz were never printed, and a large part of the actual printed run was destroyed in the German bombing of Warsaw. Szyk himself stated that only 50 copies existed, and some sources place the number as low as twenty or thirty. 3/4
This is an untouched box of the legendary Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk, made in Japan circa 2014. The company closed down in 2015, and while a version of the chalk is now made in Korea, purists mourn the loss of the unsurpassable original - the finest blackboard chalk ever made. 1/
Mathematicians in particular revered Hagoromo for its unequalled legibility, usability and durability. Here, by @jeremyjkun, is a teary goodbye to Hagoromo. 2/ link.medium.com/Bpcbj5TMMfb
"I tried it. It was love at first sight. I couldn't believe such a thing existed," says math professor Satyan Devadoss. Since then, he's been a Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk convert." 3/ cbc.ca/1.3116153?__vf…
In the 90 years since its discovery the unique text of this papyrus (known as P. Michael.4), has defied simple identification. Known as the "Inundation" papyrus, it may be a fragment of an Ancient Greek novel. It describes the annual flooding of the Nile in poetic language. 1/5
"... An area thirty stades in circumference it embraces with Egyptian soil and weaves together with a piling up of black mud. Now this area is a promontory with Poseidon and Nile on either side. It seems to me that around this area human nourishment came into being...." 2/5
Merkelbach in 1958 identified it as a previously unrecorded section of the geographies of Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550 - c. 476 BC.), the first recorded Greek geographer. 3/5