Manuscript Fragments from Transylvania
Partner Project
Partner Projects
1. Full Title: MedMod – Medieval Books in the Early Modern Period: The Case of Cluj in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cartea medievală în modernitatea timpurie: cazul Clujului în secolele al XVI-lea și al XVII-lea) – PN-IV-P1-PCE-2023-0465.
Partner Institutions: Centre for the History of the Book and Texts (CODEX), Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj (Centrul pentru Istoria Cărții și a Textelor, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj).
Financed By: Ministry of National Education, Romania – Unitatea Executivă pentru Finanțarea Învățământului Superior, a Cercetării, Dezvoltării și Inovării (UEFISCDI), PNCDI IV - Program 5.1 – Idei.
Duration: 2025-2028
Project Leader: Prof. Adrian Papahagi
Academic Collaborators: Dr. Zsuzsa Czagány; Dr. Carmen Fenechiu; Ms. Carmen Oanea (PhD student); Mr. Andrei Crișan (PhD student).
2. Full Title: FRAGMED – A Transylvanian Puzzle: Reconstructing Medieval Culture from Manuscript Fragments (FRAGMED – Un puzzle transilvan: reconstituind cultura medievală din fragmente de codice).
Partner Institutions: Library of the Romanian Academy-Cluj (Biblioteca Filialei Cluj a Academiei Române); Centre for the History of the Book and Texts (CODEX), Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj (Centrul pentru Istoria Cărții și a Textelor, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj); National Unity Museum, Alba Iulia, Restoration Centre (Muzeul Național al Unirii, Alba Iulia).
Financed By: Ministry of Culture, Romania: ‘RO-Cultura’ programme, SEE 2014-2021 grants.
Duration: 2020-2022
Project Leader: Prof. Adrian Papahagi
Academic Collaborators: Dr. Bogdan Crăciun, Dr. Codruța Cuceu. Around two hundred medieval manuscript fragments have been identified in the bindings of early modern printed books and manuscripts from the collections of the Academy Library in Cluj.
With the support of a grant from the Romanian Ministry of Culture, twenty-one of these fragments were detached from the host books, restored, digitized, described, and exhibited in 2020-2022. The exhibition catalogue be downloaded from here. A new collection, bearing shelfmarks Fragm. Cod. Lat. 1-21, was thus born.
A second project, financed by the Romanian Ministry of Education between 2025-2028 (PN-IV-P1-PCE-2023-0465), will enable another team led by Adrian Papahagi to study and to catalogue the remaining fragments, which will be detached from the host volumes only exceptionally.
St. Michael’s parish church, the Dominican and Franciscan convents of Cluj, and the Benedictine abbey of Cluj-Mănăștur (established in the eleventh century), had significant book collections in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, the Reformation scattered these libraries. However, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century local libri inutiles were reused as binding material by the Unitarians and Jesuits, who had access to surviving medieval books. Apart from local, mainly late-medieval liturgical manuscripts, we have also identified fragments of chronicles, sermons, theological, and even medical works copied from the tenth to the fourteenth century outside Transylvania. In a few cases, we have been able to discover membra disiecta from the same manuscript in the Academy Library in Cluj and in foreign libraries – four such fragments were discussed in an article published in Fragmentology 2 (2019).
Literature: Adrian Papahagi, ‘Lost Libraries and Surviving Manuscripts: The Case of Medieval Transylvania’, Library & Information History 31 (2015), 35-53.
Adrian Papahagi, ‘An Eleventh-Century Fragment of the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum in Beneventan Script (Cluj, Biblioteca Academiei Române, Cod. lat. 8, Fol. 72)’, Mediaeval Studies 78 (2016), 277-83.
Adrian Papahagi, ‘A Fragment of the Graduale Varadiense at the Romanian Academy Library in Cluj (Kolozsvár)’, Magyar Könyvszemle 133 (2017), 455-59.
Adrian Papahagi, ‘A New Fragment of the Antiphonale Varadiense at the Romanian Academy Library in Cluj’, Études bibliologiques/Library Research Studies 1 (2019), 39-46.
Gabriella Gilányi, Adrian Papahagi, ‘Membra disiecta from a Transylvanian Antiphonal in Budapest and Cluj’, Fragmentology 2 (2019), 5-34.
Adrian Papahagi, ‘Reformation and Transformation: Medieval Liturgical Manuscripts in Early Modern Transylvania’, in The Image of Piety in Medieval Manuscripts in Slovakia and in Europe, ed. Eva Veselovská, Bratislava: Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, 2021, 67-82.
Adrian Papahagi, A Transylvanian Puzzle: Reconstructing Medieval Culture from Manuscript Fragments. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Library of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, 8 February-8 April 2022, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2022.
Adrian Papahagi, Books from Lost Libraries: The Medieval Dioceses of Cenad, Oradea, and Transylvania, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2023.
Zsuzsa Czagány, „Neuentdeckte Fragmente des Klausenburger Graduale”, in Lætabundus Francisco decantet chorus alleluia, ed. Réka Miklós and Inga Behrendt, Szeged: Gerhardus Kiadó, 2024, 101-116.
Contact:
Prof. Adrian Papahagi
Centrul CODEX-Facultatea de Litere
Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai
Str. Horea 31, 400202 Cluj, Romania
adrian.papahagi@ubbcluj.ro
https://centrulcodex.com/