Partner Project

Partner Institutions: Košice City Archives, Slovak National Museum – Museum Betliar

Financed By: Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Department of Auxiliary Historical Sciences and Archive Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University

Research on medieval manuscript fragments in Slovakia began in the 1980s with the work of the codicologist Július Sopko. He described 170 fragments from various Slovak institutions in the third volume of his catalogues of medieval manuscripts (SOPKO, Július. Kódexy a neúplne zachované rukopisy v slovenských knižniciach. Kódexy slovenskej proveniencie III. Martin: Matica slovenská, 1986. [Codices and fragmentary preserved manuscripts in Slovak libraries]). A complete survey of all fragments is a crucial task for Slovak codicology, due to the very small number of fully extant medieval manuscripts. Sopko’s work, however, did not find a continuation until recently. Musicologists, and especially Eva Veselovská, revived interest in fragments as a rich source of plainchant: while only 18 complete codices preserve plainchant, more than 800 fragments survive. The results of musicological research are published in the series Catalogus fragmentorum cum notis musicis medii aevi in Slovacia. Tomus I – VIII. The majority of fragments with musical notation are available also through the website cantus.sk. Since 2020, when Eduard Lazorík joined the group, non-notated fragments were included in the process, and they are being published online via Fragmentarium.  

Contact: Eduard Lazorík, eduard.lazorik@savba.sk, Institute of Musicology of Slovak Academy of Sciences and Department of Auxiliary Historical Sciences and Archive Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University  

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