Glagolitic Missal of Count Novak

An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Glagolitic Missal: The Example of the Missal of Count Novak

The focus of the interdisciplinary project is one of the oldest wholly preserved and the oldest dated Croatian Glagolitic missal, the Missal of count Novak or the Novak’s Missal, from 1368. It was written, as stated in the extensive colophon of the manuscript, by count Novak Disislavić of the kindred Mogorović, a knight of the Anjou Royal House while he was governor of Nin in Croatia and Salgó in Hungary. Novak's missal is particularly valuable in that it was used as a pattern for the first Croatian printed book, Missal according to the law of the Roman court, printed on 22 February 1483, the first printed book of Western civilization in alphabet that was not Latin. Their link in text, language and script has been scholarly proven (Pantelić 1967) and the upcoming printing was recorded in a marginal note on the last page of the Novak Missal. 

The objective of the project is liturgical-historical, theological-historical, philological, literary-historical and historiographical research of the Novak’s Missal. The main goal is digital processing of the Missal’s structure, which will serve as a basis for further research and publication of texts. The elaboration of the structure will be based on methodology of research of Latin missal, described in the dissertation of the project team member K. Kuhar (Kuhar 2017). The main result of the project will be digital concordance of the Missal. The project will be implemented at the Old Church Slavonic Institute, in collaboration with the Centre for Manuscript Studies Vestigia (University of Graz). The research group consists of digital humanists, theologians, historians and philologists.

Project details:

Period: 2020 -
Project led by: Straoslavenski Institut, Uni Zagreb
Project director: Kristijan Kuhar
Project staff: Sandra Požar, Andrea Radošević, Ivan Botica, Silvio Košćak
Project partner: VESTIGIA; Erich Renhart, Thomas Klampfl (Advisor)
External Link: https://nomis.stin.hr/

^{Image: Replica of a graffito with Glagolitic characters in the former institute building, from Hum/Istria 12th century / detail (c) Renhart}