Freising manuscripts

Freising manuscripts (also Freising monuments; German Freisinger Denkmäler, Latin Monumenta frisingensia,Slovenian Brižinski spomeniki,Slovak Frizinské pamiatky) are the first Roman-script record of any Slavic language. They consist of three texts in the oldest Slovenian, bound into a Latin Codex (manuscript book) from Freising in Bavaria, Germany. Four parchment leafs and a quarter of a page have been preserved. Linguistic, stylistic and contextual analyses reveal that these are church texts of careful composition and literary form.

The precise date of the origin of the Freising Manuscripts cannot be exactly determined; the original text was probably written in the 9th century. They were discovered in 1807 in the Munich National Library during the examination of the manuscripts from Freising near Munich, which was once the centre of a diocese.

During the time of the writing of the two manuscripts (sermons on sin and repentance, a confessional form), bishop Abraham was active (from 957 to 994) in Freising, who also acquired a large estate of land in the Creina province around Škofja Loka (now central Slovenia). For this reason some linguists (e.g. Jernej Kopitar and Rajko Nahtigal) linked him closely to the origin of the Freising Manuscripts and, without any firm evidence, attributed him as being the author of one of the texts and suspected that he was of Slovenian origin.

See also: Carolingian minuscule

External link

• F. Kortland, The Freising Manuscripts - An electronic text edition: http://www.kortlandt.nl/editions/freis.html