Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.47960/2712-1844.2023.9.71
Palaeographic Characteristics of the Fojnica Chronicle as a Possible Approach to Determining Its Place of Origin
Šimun Novaković
orcid.org/0000-0002-7387-445X
; Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine
Abstract
The paper deals with the place of production of the Fojnica Chronicle, as the manuscript makes no mention of where it originated or who wrote it. Judging by the year of the final event it entered, it originated after 1669. Since the origin and authorship of some mediaeval charters has been determined through palaeographic characteristics of the texts, the same approach is being applied to the Fojnica Chronicle. First, a description is given of all the letters in the Fojnica Chronicle in the context of their placement on an imaginary four-line grid, and then the letters are brought into connection with Berčić’s western Cyrillic types and the graphs of some Franciscan writers. With respect to the place of its preservation, the Fojnica Chronicle bears the greatest similarity to Berčić’s Bosanica. However, there are approximately the same number of similarities between the Bosnian and the Split-Poljica type of Bosanica. One can also conclude that Berčić’s division is relatively unreliable because of to its breadth, or rather its classification of the same letters into different types and different letters into the same type. It was, hence, impossible to determine that the graphs of Franciscan writers were the graphs of a micro-environment, and therefore, the production of the Fojnica Chronicle could not be brought into connection with any of them. It is evident that our region used a whole series of transitional graphic systems which exceeded assumed geographic borders. It is, therefore, impossible to position 17th and 18th century manuscripts in a determined geographic area based on palaeographic characteristics.
Keywords
Fojnica Chronicle; western Cyrillic; Bosanica; palaeographic characteristics.
Hrčak ID:
307827
URI
Publication date:
1.10.2023.
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