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The paper demonstrates how modern metric survey techniques and digital technologies can contribute to traditional methods of art-historical investigation. The original choir screen in the Dominican church in Cracow, spanning the width of the chancel arch, was built in the mid-13th century. An analysis of the laser scanning data of the existing church enabled a construction of a 3D model of the subsequent and larger choir screen, built in the second half of the 14th century, which extended across the nave and both aisles and encased the initial screen. A keystone decorated with a carved boss of unique iconography, interpreted as a symbol of St John the Evangelist, survives from the carved decoration of this screen. The 3D model of the choir screen helps to visualize the original location of particular altars, some tombs and surviving artworks within the screen porch. Its north bay housed the tomb of Hyacinth Odrowąż, the first Polish Dominican friar and future saint. In 1543 the north part of the screen's loft was cut off with a grille and transformed into a chapel of St Hyacinth, accessible to lay people by stairs running from the north aisle. The most important part of the chapel was a shallow niche which accommodated a new tomb and an altar with Hyacinth's relics. Construction from 1581 to 1583 of a new and more spacious chapel, located slightly higher than the old one, involved demolition of the choir screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper refers to the epic poems by the Polish baroque writers who took up religious themes, namely to Andrzej Dębołęcki’s Poseł niebieski, to jest Archanioła Gabryjela nowiny z nieba do Panny czystej Maryjej o wcieleniu Syna Bożego w jej żywot sprawującego (Message of Heavenly Envoy Archangel Gabriel to Holy Mary, Pure Virgin, about the Incarnation of the Son of God into Her Life) (Toruń 1633) and Aleksander Obodziński’s Poważna legacyja w Konsystorzu Trójce Przenaświętszej (The Important Mission in the Consistory of the Holy Trinity) (Kraków [1640]). The authors, referring to Jacopo Sannazaro’s epopee De partu Virginis, in their works presented an independent (though recalling tradition) evangelical motive of transferring Mary the message by Archangel Gabriel that she is going to be God’s Mother. It must also be mentioned that Obodziński in many places plagiarised Dębołęcki. Both of the writers focused on describing God’s estate, and first and foremost on the appearance of Archangel Gabriel and his diplomatic skills which he showed as the envoy sent with the Annunciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the inhomogeneity of the texts in the first printed Octoechos (Schweipolt Fiol, Krakow 1491), the study focuses on the text's most archaic layer, which contains Old Bulgarian works by Cyrillo-Methodian disciples and was written in Bulgaria at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century. The article examines three original (non-translated) canons that form parts of the Sunday and weekday Octoechos offices. Two of them are considered to have been written by St. Clement of Ohrid: Canon to St John the Baptist (Tuesday, 2nd Tone) and Canon to Theotokos (Wednesday, 3rd Tone), both of which were very common until the 14th century in Slavic manuscripts of various origins. The third one, Canon to the Holy Trinity (Midnight Office for Sunday, 2nd Tone), is anonymous and has so far only been discovered in a single Serbian Octoechos, Gilf. 26, the National Library of Russia (14th century), while in Eastern Slavic literature it is only found in the codex under review. The specificities in the texts of Fiol’s Octoechos as well as its particular position in the written tradition of these hymnographic works are described in comparison to copies of various origins. Textological data are interpreted mostly in search of the protograph of the printed version. The collation of the texts shows that the archaic layer of the Krakow incunabulum is most probably based on at least two protographs (or antigraphs) which are indirectly related to the earliest core of the Old Bulgarian Octoechos. One was used for the Tuesday and Wednesday offices (probably through an Eastern Slavic medium), and the other (of possible South Slavic origin) was used as the source of the canon to the Holy Trinity (2nd Tone) in the Sunday office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]