CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Vojvoda, Rozana |
|---|---|
| Title | DALMATIAN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS WRITTEN IN BENEVENTAN SCRIPT AND BENEDICTINE SCRIPTORIA IN ZADAR, DUBROVNIK AND TROGIR |
| Summary | The dissertation is conceived as an art historical and paleographical study of Dalmatian manuscripts and fragments written in Beneventan script from Dalmatian towns of Zadar, Dubrovnik and Trogir. I have pursued the goal of shedding more light on the Benedictine context of manuscripts written in Beneventan script in Dalmatia and I have tried to define a Dalmatian variant of decoration accompanying the Beneventan script. The Beneventan script, a minuscule handwriting that developed towards the middle of the eighth century in the Duchy of Benevento was used exclusively in Southern Italy and Dalmatia. It was primarily a Benedictine script, firmly bound to the history of the first Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino and later Benedictine monasteries in the region concerned. Although the Beneventan script was also used in other Dalmatian towns such as Split, Kotor, Rab and Osor, stress is put on Zadar, Trogir and Dubrovnik because the quality and quantity of preserved manuscripts and fragments that originated in these towns permit specific research questions to be answered. Consequently, the thesis, apart from the introduction and conclusion, comprises three analytical chapters for each of the mentioned towns, hand list of all items written in Beneventan script and related to Dalmatia as well as an extensive catalogue of discussed fragments, mainly still preserved in Dalmatia and manuscripts, which are apart from the manuscripts from Trogir scattered around the world in the libraries of Oxford, Budapest, Berlin and elsewhere. The main concern regarding the chapter on Zadar eleventh century manuscripts written in Beneventan script was to detect the transmission of motifs from Italy, that is to establish a precise repertory of the initials and their origin with regard to Monte Cassino and Apulia. The chapter on Dubrovnik, the richest town in Dalmatia as far as the fragments written in Beneventan script are concerned, focused on the development of the Beneventan script from the eleventh to the thirteenth century and the argumentation for the existence of the Benedictine scriptorium of St. Mary on the island of Lokrum. The chapter on Trogir focused on the analyses of thirteenth century manuscripts written in Beneventan script and preserved in Trogir. I argued that the conservatism visible in the illumination, the script and the choice of liturgical book is deliberate and that the archaic forms were chosen by the Benedictines to testify to a long tradition (suffice it to say that a late thirteenth century Evangelistary from Trogir was thought to be an eleventh century product). This idea was further explored by comparison with other contemporary visual materials with pronounced conservative features and related to the Benedictine context (the illumination of the fragments of the Rab Evangelistary written in Beneventan script, the silver covers of codices from Trogir and Split). |
| Supervisor | Szakacs Bela Zsolt |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/mphvor01.pdf |
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