| Abstract | Paper -a:
The proposed paper will entail a study of natural disasters in Medieval Russian Chronicles covering the period from the 11th to 17th centuries viewed against the background of Classical accounts (Tacitus, Livy, Pliny, Pausanias). The paper will concentrate on atmospheric disasters, with the aim of distinguishing two categories of evidence: the accounts of eyewitnesses and historical evaluations of geological facts. The paper will offer a contrastive analysis of records in the Russian Chronicles (hurricanes, thunderstorms and fires) and historiographic evidence by Pliny the Elder, an eye-witness of a volcanic eruption (who offers an emotive account of the stages of volcanic activity and protective measures adopted by citizens of Pompey, e.g. pillows tied to heads as a shield from rock fall), supplemented by impersonal evaluations of seismic events by Pausanias, cataloguing the warning signs of an earthquake.
Paper -b:
At the end of the 11th century, Wilhelm, abbot of the monastery of Hirsau (c. 1030- 1091), created the new customs based on the Cluny's. Hugo, the abbot of the monastery of Cluny (1024- 1109), gave Wilhelm instructions to take what was necessary from Cluny's customs, to improve what needed to be improved and to add what needed to be added. This meant that the cultural, geographical and climatic conditions of the monastery allowed for flexibility in the customs. This paper shows how the Hirsau monasteries responded to the climatic conditions by modifying the scale of their liturgy and manuscript production.
Paper -c:
The paper deals with votive masses in some Glagolitic Missals from the 15th century as a depiction of local culture and beliefs transmitted through spoken rites. The most prominent passages come from the Bribir misal (Cod. Glag. no. III, preserved in the Archive of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb) with invocation of rain and against drought. In these ritual patterns it is possible to discover a particular transfer of medieval knowledge, as well as the correlation between meteorological concepts and popular culture (for example, presented in Lucidar, a Glagolitic variant of the medieval encyclopaedia Elucidarium).
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