Archives for May 19th, 2004

A page from the medieval Freising manuscripts.

The Freising manuscripts have arrived in Slovenia. The thousand-year-old manuscripts contain three liturgical texts written in old Slovene and are the oldest Roman-script record of any Slavic language. The FM are normally housed in the Bavarian State Library, which isn’t keen on loaning them out. In fact, they’ve done so only once before: to the Vatican in the 1970s.

It’s now being exhibited in the Ljubljana University Library. Here’s a sample:

If our forefather had not sinned, he would have had eternal life, he would not get old, would not have troubles, or pain, but would live forever. When he was driven from God’s glory because of the devil’s envy, pain, sorrow, illness and finally death came over mankind. However, brothers, let us remember that we call ourselves the sons of God. Therefore, let us give up these hateful works, which are the devil’s works, like idolatry, speaking ill of your brother, theft, manslaughter, fleshliness, dishonouring oaths which we break, hatred; nothing is more loathsome in God’s eyes than these works. (source)

See also:

The Freising Manuscripts at Wikipedia
and
The Freising Manuscripts: An electronic text edition