Кодиколошки осврт на српске повеље Хиландарског архива
Codicological observations on the Serbian charters in the Chilandar archive

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents unsystematic codicological observations on Serbian charters made during explorations in the archives of the Chilandar monastery and discusses the significance they may have for diplomatic analyses. The research covers 158 very diverse items from the Chilandar collection of Serbian charters, dating from the late 17th century. The selection, preparation and individual properties of the writing materials are analyzed, including watermarks on the paper, the use of various types of ink, and material traces of the writing process. It has been found that the process lasted for a certain period of time, as well as that it took place in several steps and could involve a number of participants. It was based on the principles of multiplication through copying and content reuse, which were crucial for the functioning of the written culture of the time, and on the techniques used to achieve this in books, either regularly or as needed: the dominant shape of a rectangle with a longer vertical side (carta transversa), i.e. text lines parallel to the shorter side of the page; the way of preparing materials for writing, ink preparation, the involvement of several scribes, comparing text models, types of errors and ways of correcting them, subsequent text additions or ornamentation, text edits, etc. Due to their peculiar character and limited length, examples of documentary texts also had their own specific features: as a rule, they conformed to a single-page, single-column layout; parchment remained in use over a long period and only its inner side was used; in some cases, ruled guidelines could extend across the whole sheet and not only in the section intended for writing; the use of different ink types was determined not only by aesthetic reasons or better readability of the text, but also by the drive towards achieving a luxurious effect; there is an apparent striving to transfer a long text on several consecutive sheets so as to avoid interruptions, which is more suited to scroll writing than to the codex, as a model form. Thanks to the direct insight, the significance of which is especially highlighted in the paper, some individual discoveries have been made – e.g. manuscript Chil. 39 is a parchment sheet a from which the text of a ruler’s document in Greek was scraped.

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