About the Project

The goal of this project is to create a searchable database of medieval Slavic texts. Due to the lack of encoding standards for medieval Slavic manuscripts, this is the first attempt to create electronic corpora of such texts. The ultimate goal is to include the most important medieval East and South Slavic documents.

When a diplomatic as well as a normalized version of the same text exists, we intend to provide the capability of viewing the two versions side by side, so a search can be conducted on the normalized text (for grammatical forms, syntactic structure, lexicon, etc.), and the original version can be seen at the same time. In addition, the linking of the diplomatic and the non-diplomatic transcriptions will enable the user not only to search either way but also to find all variants of a particular word form with one search of the normalized transcription; a natural by-product of this link would be the building of a concordance which will have the advantage of grouping together entries with minor morphological or orthographical variations. No existing web site offers such a unique and very beneficial for scholarly research as well as for teaching capability.

The first text will be the Hypatian Codex which contains three Rusian chronicles: one version of the Primary Chronicle, covering the years 972-1117, the Kievan Chronicle (1119-1199) and the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (1205-1289). The first stage will also include the First Nogvorod Chronicle and the Laurentian Codex, containing another version of the Primary Chronicle and the Vladimir-Suzdal' Chronicle. After that, we will include the Tale of Boris and Gleb, and the Life of Feodosii, which although attested from ca. 1200, represent the most archaic language of all the original East Slavic texts.

Because this is among the first attempts to create such a database, we are aware of the possibility of encountering technical problems. We welcome all suggestions on how we can improve the database in any way, especially in terms of "scribal errors" in the electronic versions.