Meeting at the Vatican Apostolic Library: Relaunching the VAL Byzantine Manuscripts Study Project
Vatican City, December 16, 2024 - The Laus Plena Foundation met with the Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, Don Mauro Mantovani, and his team, with a view to relaunching the VAL Byzantine musical manuscripts study project by the Kapodistrian University of Athens, under the direction of Prof. Achilleas Chaldaikes.
The project, initiated years ago by the Foundation with Prof. Dimitiros Balageorgos of the Kapodistrian University of Athens (who unexpectedly passed away in 2024), had been suspended pending solutions, following difficulties encountered in finding a common methodology to apply in view of a VAL publication at the end of the work. The Foundation had nevertheless proceeded, according to the commitments made, to finance the digitization of a first tranche of Byzantine musical manuscripts of the BAV (amongst the Barberiniani greci collection).
The intent is now to relaunch the project, again with a digitization contribution from the Foundation, in order to allow the online study of the manuscripts from Athens by a team of scholars and students from the Kapodistrian University. The discussions focused on the methodology to be applied, which will have to be agreed upon, and also on the final goal, now more oriented towards the creation of specific metadata for the musical manuscripts, to be published online.
Prof. Chaldaikes is already familiar with these issues, and is ready to adopt methodologies and terminologies that allow a comparative study with other Christian musical traditions, through the creation, amongst others, of specific metadata. The very definition of such metadata will represent a particularly interesting aspect of the project.
The next step will be the signing of an MOU between the institutions and bodies involved in the course of 2025 - the year in which Catholic and Orthodox Easter falls on the same day. The project is also seen as an opportunity for a cultural exchange and interaction between the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.
During the meeting, the VAL also expressed interest in collaborating with the Syriac Catholic researcher Poles Gajuo, supported by the Foundation, for the study of Iraqi Syriac manuscripts.
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