Freising manuscripts
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The Freising manuscripts (also Freising monuments; Slovene Brižinski spomeniki, German Freisinger Denkmaeler, Latin Monumenta frisingensia, Slovak Frizinske pamiatky) are the first Roman-script record of any Slavic languages.
They consist of three texts in the oldest Slovene, bound into a Latin codex (manuscript book) from Freising in Bavaria, Germany (translated to Slovene in 1854 by Slovene Slavist and grammarian Anton Janežič as Brizno, Brižnik, later adopted as Brižinje, Brižine or Brižinj), which was once the centre of a diocese. In 1803 the manuscript came to the Munich National Library in Munich, where they were discovered in 1807.
Four parchment leaves and a quarter of a page have been preserved. Linguistic, stylistic and contextual analyses reveal that these are church texts of careful composition and literary form.
The precise date of the origin of the Freising Manuscripts cannot be exactly determined; the original text was probably written in the 9th century. In this liturgic and homiletic manuscript, three Slovene records were found and this miscellany was probably an episcopal manual (pontificals). Brižinski spomeniki in it were created between 972 and 1093, most likely before 1000. The main support for this dating is the writing which was used in the centuries after Charlemagne and is named Caroline minuscule or Carolingian minuscule.
During the time of the writing of the two manuscripts (sermons on sin and repentance, a confessional form), bishop Abraham was active (from 957 to 994) in Freising, who also acquired a large estate of land in the Creina province around Škofja Loka (now central Slovenia). For this reason some linguists (e.g. Jernej Kopitar and Rajko Nahtigal) linked him closely to the origin of the Freising Manuscripts and, without any firm evidence, attributed him as being the author of one of the texts and suspected that he was of Slovene origin.
See also
External links
- F. Kortland, The Freising Manuscripts - An electronic text edition: http://www.kortlandt.nl/editions/freis.html
- http://www.thezaurus.com/sloveniana/freising_manuscripts.htm