In this paper, a Latin-German-Czech glossary is presented which follows the Latin monolingual glossary Catholicon by Johannes Balbus of Genoa in a Brno manuscript stored in the City Archive of Brno, Manuscript Collection No. 115. The Latin-German-Czech glossary is a Czech adaptation of two Latin-German glossaries. The author of the Brno glossary copied the whole Abstractum glossary from a source containing probably Latin-German Abstractum, Abba, and Abbreviare glossaries including a complete translation into Czech, yet he supplemented it by adding entries of the Abba glossary. The same trilingual source was used also by the author of a glossary preserved in an Esztergom manuscript (Esztergomi Föszékesegyházi Könyvtár, sign. M II 8) but its author omitted the German equivalents. A transliterated edition of the Latin-German-Czech glossary from the Brno manuscript accompanied by a critical apparatus is also contained in the present study.
The paper focuses on the Old Czech interjections expressing anger and derision, present in texts from the 14th and 15th century. Two main types of interjections are discussed: the interjections based on physiological processes of a speaker (fí, pfí, pfuj) and the interjections imitating the animal voice (bú and mrau).
The article presents a new found Old Czech manuscript fragment of the Gospel of Matthew with Sermons (Evangelium sv. Matouše s homiliemi) from the third quarter of the 14th century (Prague, National Museum Library, shelf mark 1 D a 2/18b). The translation of the Gospel of Matthew, accompanied by sermons, had been previously known from a single manuscript (Prague, National Library, shelf mark XVII A 4, the 1370s) and from the paraphrases of the Gospel of Matthew without sermons in the Old Czech biblical manuscripts (Bible drážďanská, Bible litoměřicko-třeboňská, Bible olomoucká). This paper compares the text of the fragment with those biblical sources. The strip from the parchment folio contains only short passages from Matthew 8 and 9, which are divided into pericopes similarly to the Evangelium sv. Matouše s homiliemi, however, no sermons are included. Therefore this fragment poses new questions about the origin and history of the Gospel of Matthew with Sermons.
The main aim of the article is to reconstruct the form and meaning of the Old Czech equivalent of the Latin term molus preserved in the manuscript of Claretus’ Glossarius in the chapter De piscibus in two forms, vmek and omek. Two different interpretations are possible. They are based on a description of the fishes mulus and mullus, both identified with some uncertainty as a mullet by modern scholars, in the encyclopaedia Liber de natura rerum of Thomas of Cantimpre, a main source for Claretus, as far as zoological terms, especially fish names, are concerned. The first interpretation is based on the Medieval etymology of Isidorus of Sevilla, that mullus is allegedly derived from the Latin adjective mollis “soft”, thus Claretus in all probability connected it with Old Czech měkky “soft”and created the new word oměk with the secondary form uměk. The second interpretation is inspired by the sliding movement of a mullet on the seabed, where a mullet can find seaweed, bivalves, and mud (the description of the food of the mullet comes from Pliny the Elder). The Old Czech umek with the secondary form omek is identified as a derivative of the unpreserved verb *umknuti, which belongs to the Slavonic verbal family mъčati, (s)mъkno˛ti, (s)mykati “to slide, to move fast or suddenly”.
In the oldest Czech translation of the whole Bible from the mid-14th century, the Pauline Epistles are preceded by short prefaces containing a brief summary of the given letter, the so-called Argumenta. At first, the article analyses the Argumenta included in three Bibles of the so-called first redaction and compares them with the respective prefaces, included in two 15th century collections of the Prologues, the so-called Litoměřice Prologues and St. Vitus Metropolitan Chapter Prologues. The following part of the paper studies the occurrence and character of these prefaces in the Bibles of the second redaction and their employment in the Bibles of the third redaction. The conclusion is arrived at that the Argumenta were newly translated for the collection of Prologues, and this text was taken over by the Bibles of the second redaction; in the Bibles of the third redaction, the text of the Argumenta was substantially modified or replaced by a new translation. In the Bibles compiled beyond the main evolutionary stream of the Old Czech Bible translations, the Argumenta of the Pauline Epistles were subject to more frequent changes.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.