Rudolf Gutowski’s Gift to the Jagiellonian Library: Medieval Cyrillic Manuscripts from the Macedonian Treskavec Monastery

Abstract

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Rudolf Gutovski, a native of P oland and military doctor in the Ottoman Cossack army, gave the Jagiellonian Library six manuscripts in a patriotically motivated gift. In his imagination, the old Cyrillic artifacts were links between joint Slavic heritage and intended to enrich the collection in Krakow as a personal perpetuation. The collection of items from the Treskavets has a tradition involving scientists and church hierarchs from the Russian Empire. The manuscripts from the region, which are now kept in Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, and Ukraine, demonstrate how the interests of different empires crossed in the Balkans region at the time. The manuscripts—Triodion of the Lent and Pentecostarion, a fragment of Four Gospels, three Liturgical Menaia, and Octoechos—were studied in the nineteenth century by F. Matejko, E. Kałużniacki, W. Wisłocki, J. Perwolf, and P. Syrku, but the articles with watermark studies propose more precise dating and full new descriptions for modern use.