Книгопечатане и магия на прага на модерна Европа: Типографският амулет между Апенините и Балкана
Printing and Magic at the Threshold of Modern Europe: The Typographic Amulet between the Apennines and the Balkans

Summary/Abstract: PRINTING AND MAGIC AT THE THRESHOLD OF MODERN EUROPE: THE TYPOGRAPHIC AMULET BETWEEN THE APENNINES AND THE BALKANS VALENTINA IZMIRLIEVA (NEW YORK) (Summary) The early history of Cyrillic printing presents us with a paradox. Even though the printed medium ensured in perspective the emergence of a broad reading public, some of the first Slavonic texts to appear in print were intended not for reading but for wearing on the body as amulets. The article focuses on the book that embodies the paradox: Božidar Vuković’s Miscellany for Travelers (Venice, 1520). This volume was the first non-liturgical Cyrillic printed book addressed explicitly to individual secular buyers, and it was the first to include typographic amulets. The article argues that these two precedents were mutually dependent. Three groups of amulet texts made their typographic debut in Vuković’s Miscellany: 1) a short “Eulogy of the Holy Cross” with “cross-shaped words” (krestnye slovesa); 2) texts from the apocryphal cycle about King Abgar; and 3) a pair of sacronymic lists, “The 72 Names of the Lord” and “The 72 Names of the Theotokos.” The Miscellany merged these previously unrelated texts into a well-crafted amulet corpus “against all evils”, designed to appeal specifically to the book’s target audience of secular travelers. The choice of the audience was no less calculated, since itinerant merchants were some of the most promising buyers on the emerging Cyrillic book market. The typographic amulet thus proved to be an important cultural agent of early Slavic modernity that helped consolidate the market in typographic goods by promoting books even to those who could not read at all.

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