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Traditional historiography of Japanese Buddhism presents the Muromachi period as an era of triumph for Zen, and of decline for the previous near-hegemony of Esoteric Buddhism. However, for the Shingon school, the period from the late Middle Ages to early Edo period was rather a phase of expansion, especially in the more remote locales of Eastern Japan. Focusing on a text authored during the fifteenth century, this article will analyze how this idea of the outskirts or periphery was integrated with the process of creation of orthodoxy in local Shingon temples. In doing so, it will shed new light not only on the evolution, but also on the epistemological role of discourse relating to heresy, and on their role in the legitimation of monastic lineages.

This article deals with the remains of dozens of ancient Ethiopic manuscripts kept in the Archives of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Rome. The material, gathered in Ethiopia by Antonio Mordini, then transferred to Carlo Conti Rossini’s private home, entered the rooms of the Accademia’s Archives following the death of the renowned scholar (1949). The fragments, most probably tracing back to several liturgical codices once belonged to the Təgrayan monastery of Däbrä Dammo, prove to be of remarkable scientific value and are still waiting for a thorough philological, paleographic, and codicological investigation.

Eritrea can boast a long-lasting scribal culture on parchment which is intimately associated with the presence of monastic and ecclesiastic centres. Monastic libraries scattered throughout the country preserve historical manuscript collections, in some cases very extensive, which are veritable parchment treasures still awaiting a proper cataloguing and investigation. Research initiatives that will hopefully carry out scholarly activities on the Eritrean manuscript culture will face manifold challenges, but will have the privilege to actively re-introduce that precious heritage into the scholarly discussion.

No one believes an autograph manuscript provides sufficient information to allow scholars to edit nineteenth- or early twentieth-century music, particularly in genres that accepted considerable modifications in performance, opera or virtuosic piano music. If anything, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, with doubts cast on the role of composers' autographs in choosing texts to serve for critical editions. This latter approach is problematical, even for composers known to introduce significant changes in their works to ensure their survival in the theater. One needs always to cite (while not necessarily adopting) autograph readings, which tend to reflectcompositionalconcerns rather thanpracticalconcerns. A critical edition may ultimately present a text oriented toward practical solutions, but it demands that users understand why and how a composer's ideas could not be maintained. This is particularly true for a composer like Verdi, who left autograph manuscripts close to a definitive version, but it is also true for a composer like Puccini who expected autograph manuscripts to be superseded in performance.

Ancient manuscripts store historical, literary, cultural, and geographical information. Therefore, the automatic analysis of manuscripts is of great interest in heritage culture and history preservation. Different approaches to handwriting recognition using images have been applied to analyze manuscripts. However, reliable handwriting recognition is a considerable challenge due to different factors related to the writer, the design, the script, the manuscript, and the economy. This paper presents the most relevant works in handwriting recognition using machine learning techniques. The contributions are: i) provide a review of previous research addressing handwriting recognition, ii) depict the general methodology using machine learning in handwriting recognition, iii) highlight relevant works at different levels of analysis (character, word, text line, and text block), iv) present handwriting datasets including the type of content they have, script and language, and v) present the importance and challenges in handwriting recognition. We are confident that the insights and reflections from this review will have a positive impact on the gaps for future research in handwriting recognition.

This study uses a series of medieval texts to address a set of urgent critical issues in Humanities centring on categories of L/literature, history, periodization, languages, and descriptions of script. These categories are inherited from the foundation of modern disciplines and fields of study, superimposed on what could be more flexible modes of scholarship. They are reinforced by modern academics in ways that hinder nuance, intellectual nimbleness, and new interpretative possibilities. Readers and researchers of English Language, Literature, Book Historical/Media Studies, and History are obliged by delimiting labels to navigate problematic foundational approaches and sources that confine and frustrate scholarly investigation. Through a series of cogent case studies, all situated from 1050 to 1250, the book highlights how restrictive and hierarchical modern scholarly categories can sometimes be.

This note presents a previously unedited ninth-century witness of a Carolingian rite of the cold-water ordeal from Septimania and provides an examination of its language and provenance.

This paper aims to recall some of the most important aspects of Vatroslav Jagić’s philological opus on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of his death. It consists of three sections: the first provides a short outline of his life and notable works to highlight his most outstanding achievements, with particular attention to his innovative conception of Slavic philology. The second section considers his understanding of textual criticism applied to medieval Slavic texts, emphasizing his innovative approach in combining codicological analysis with the study of text traditions. The third section analyzes how he addressed the political implications of certain linguistic and philological questions through his letters and memorial remarks.