This week on The Venerable Blog, we would like to draw your attention to the upcoming activities of Fordham History Professor Richard Gyug, who manages the website of the Society for Beneventan Studies.
The Society is dedicated to the study of the world surrounding the Beneventan script, a calligraphic text hand used in southern Italy and Dalmatia between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Typically, works produced in the Beneventan script come from monastic houses and contain liturgical texts, though many classical, medical, and historical texts were also written in this hand. This field regularly generates conference proceedings, dissertation topics, and other research.
Tempera colors, gold leaf, and gold paint on parchment
MS. LUDWIG IX 1, FOL. 289
The Society for Beneventan Studies exists to compile these developments, functioning as a notice board for events, organizer of sessions at conferences, and sponsor of research initiatives. Their website gathers information about relevant events and initiatives and collects links to online resources for Beneventan studies.
Dr. Gyug will be giving a talk focused on Beneventan script at Drew University for the conference Communities of Italy: New and Traditional Approaches, Saturday, April 5, 2014 from 10:00 am-5:00 pm.
The lecture, entitled “Between East and West on the shores of the southern Adriatic: Dubrovnik and Kotor”, is part of a session focusing on Beneventan Italy as a textual community. Also taking part in the session is Andrew Irving of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, whose talk will cover changes in mass book design at Montecassino.
In addition to his work as director of the Society for Beneventan Studies, Dr. Gyug has produced an edition of a Beneventan missal from Dubrovnik, an area covered in his upcoming talk. Complete with introductory material, the edition is entitled Missale Ragusinum: the Missal of Dubrovnik (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1990) and can be previewed here.
To register for the conference, see the Drew Valley Medieval Association (DVMA) website.