We are grateful to
PRO HELVETIA
Swiss Cultural Programme
Serbia and Montenegro
for the support which enabled this translation.
RECONSTRUCTION OF FACES OF THE NOTABLE MONUMENTS OF SERBIAN LITERACY PREPARED FOR USE ON THE COMPUTER
author: Stjepan Fileki
translation into English: Vesna Janković
Importance of promoting literacy tradition as preservation of national identity is manifold. And certainly it should not be elaborated. On the other hand it is also important to promote distinctive style in the Serbian Graphic art. The Serbian Cyrillic provides nice possibilities for that having in mind its original style and rich tradition. The new computer technology offers exceptional possibilities to fill the gap created by negligence and to correct the mistakes made by the previous generations resulting from insufficient sense for national graphic culture and dependance upon German graphic supremacy in our region. This negligence has brought us today to embarrassing situation in which we do not have, to put it in a most simple way, either one form of traditional cyrillic suitable for journalism or publishing. To be honest, there is something which is called »Miroslavljevo« a form of typographic typeface which was designed by a litographer from Belgrade Mr. Panta Stojicevic in 1921. But that typeface, save for its name, does not have anything in common with our beautiful and rich calligraphic tradition for the simple comparison immediately shows that this so called Miroslav typeface has nothing similar to the handwriting of monumental Miroslav's Gospel. On the contrary, that form is nothing else but rephrased Russian ninetenth century typographic pattern. As we are speaking about our most beautiful written monument we are obliged to pay special attention to it: to carry out reconstruction (of one of the two different handwritings in which the Gospel is done) followed by designing of a computer font, paying special attention to calligraphic characteristics so that printed text is as close as possible to the original manuscript of the Gospel.
The other three faces presented in this review are reconstructions of other, not less important and beautiful manuscripts from our calligraphic past. They have been chosen not only because of their general importance but also because of their graphic expression. Namely, diversity of ductus, (direction and thinkness of strokes) and specific proportions of each of these faces enrich in multiple way the selection of wanted faces' shapes.
Miroslav's Gospel, writen at the end of the 12th century (around 1192) is the greatest and most significant monument of the Serbian literacy. Today it is kept in the Belgrade National Museum.
This precious work has interesting history. It was written by two scribes: one of them, scribe Gligorije wrote that he had decorated it with gold for honourable Miroslav, son of Zavida. Calligraphic beauty of this famous manuscript was another reason and inspiration for its materialization in the computer fonts.
In archeographic literature the manuscript is first mentioned in the work of Russian scientists Porfirije Uspenski. He saw Miroslav's Gospel in 1846 in Hilandar and on that occassion took one page from it (165). Today this page is kept in the Sankt Petersburgh Museum. Its first description was made by Stojan Novaković who saw the mentioned page from the Uspenski's collection in Kiev in 1874. He published a text with brief description using for the first time the name which this monumental manuscript preserved till today: Miroslav's Gospel. Ljubomir Stojanović produced considerably more detailed description with more paleographic, language and textual data. Until 1896 the Gospel was kept in the Hilandar monastery. That year it was presented to the King Aleksandar Obrenović as a token of gratitude for the considerable amount of money by which the King had helped the monastery. With Ljubomir Stojanović endeavour three hundred numerated chromolithographic pieces of the manuscript were printed in Vienna. Based on paliographic and ortographic characteristics of the text Stepan Kuljbakin found out that Miroslav's Gospel was the work of the two scribes announcing that in 1925. He writes that scribe Gligorije, apart from his short notes, did also most of the titles of the Gospel's chapters and two and a half pages of the text. Other scribe, whom Kuljbakin calls Versameleon wrote major part of the text. The word versameleon is written at the end of the text, in different letters (than the ones used for the very text), its of a Greek origin and means: balsam oil. The word was probably written by a miniaturist. In that time this fragrant oil was used for preparing the colour for writing initials and drawing miniatures. The calligraphic face used in Miroslav's Gospel belonges to the family of Ustav faces. It stands out among other faces by the elegance which cannot be seen among Ustav or latin uncial faces which are similar to the former ones.
In 1313 King Milutin had a church built dedicated to Holy Virgin's parents, St. Joachim and Anne. The church is built of white Studenica marble and its external eastern wall bears inscription on it. The inscription was chiselled in two rows, about 5 meters long, with letters 7 cm high which, at the time, were painted; they are very regular and have distinctive shape — the one specific for the carved letters of that time.
The first edition of Abecedary consists of only two sheets – four pages. Reprint recently done has eight pages on which second edition was reproduced. Both editions were printed in Venice in 1597, the first one on May 20, and the second one on May 25. On the fourth (last) page of the first edition it is noted that it had been printed »with the blessing of prior Stefan hieromonk« and that it was done with the efforts of »inok Sava« and further on that it was completed »in the year 7105 or in 1597 since Christ was born, on the 20th day of month May in Venice.« The contents of both editions show it is one and the same Abecedary made in two different versions. The only preserved copy of the first edition is kept in the National Library of Serbia, Belgrade.
ith Studenica Typicon St. Sava materialized his idea on independent Serbian Church. There are many similarities between Typicon of Hilandar and Typicon of Studenica. It is believed that this resulted from the same source – Typicon of Eurgetis Monastery in Constantinopole dedicated to Holy Virgin Benefactress (Eurgetis). The original manuscript was not preserved. However there is its transcript from1619 contained in the collection of 187 sheets given to Pavle J. Šafarik by deakon in Sremski Karlovci, later on Patriarch Samuilo Maširević to anal y se them. Afterwards this collection was taken from Šafarik's library to the National Museum in Prague where it is still kept.
We are grateful to
PRO HELVETIA
Swiss Cultural Programme
Serbia and Montenegro
for the support which enabled this translation.