Methodology of Polish manuscripts of the second half of XVI – late XVIII centuries reading: the theory and practice (via examples of the documents of the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Lviv)

Abstract

Via examples of the documents of the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv we have presented the theoretical and practical theses of Polish documents of the XVI–XVIII centuries reading methodology. The theoretical part of the methodology includes: 1) Polish alphabet and writing general historical and graphical peculiarities definition; 2) analysis of graphics of types of writing, separate letters, numbers and abbreviations, used in Polish documents of the XVI–XVIII centuries; 3) letters, numbers, abbreviations etc graphic forms change demonstration; 4) the demonstration of the stated documents reading diffi culties and addressing readability issues. The practical part is given as a set of appendices of different types: 1) examples of letters (capital and small) and numbers given in calligraphic writing manuals of the XVI – late XVIII centuries and selected from various documents; 2) fragments of offi cial and non-offi cial manuscript documents from the CSHAL, where calligraphical copy-books had been recorded. We have also developed general technical principles of manuscripts reading.