Original scientific paper
Female Monastic and Manuscript Culture: Listening, Reading, Translating and Writing in the Convents of Rab
Saša Potočnjak
; University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
This article aims to reconstruct the early modern manuscript culture in the convents of the Rab Diocese, with special attention paid to the practices of reading, listening, translating and writing in the female monastic community. In addition to the historiographical overview of Rab's convents, the paper also emphasizes early modern representations of women in the convent made by J. Baraković and I. T. Mrnavić. The central part of the paper is dedicated to previously unknown manuscripts that had been created for the needs of the Rab female monastics or had been compiled by them, and are kept in the archives of the Benedictine convent of St. Andrew the Apostle in Rab; the archives of the former Diocese of Rab and the Chapter of Rab; the archives of the Franciscan convent of St. Anthony Abbot in Rab; the archives of the Archdiocese of Zadar in Zadar; the Archaeological Museum in Split; the National and University Library in Zagreb; the State Archives in Rijeka, as well as outside Croatia, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This paper presents a variety of written sources, from administrative documents, constitutions, visitations, ceremonials, poems, hagiographies, prayers and planctus to poems, all of which bear testimony to the way of life led in the convents and the various roles that women had in the consumption, production and transfer of premodern written culture.
Keywords
manuscript culture; Rab Diocese; female monastic community; early modern representations of women
Hrčak ID:
312598
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2023.
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