The System of signs in the decoration of a sixteenth-century Tetraevangelion as an information and communication source

ENThis work takes a closer look at a sixteenth-century Tetraevangelion, a manuscript book historically originating from the eastern lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the present-day western part of the Republic of Belarus). The study aims to evaluate the book as an integrated document, an artifact of the past, and a witness to various historical periods, which is unified by a single idea, expression and form. The study of the Tetraevangelion looks at the characteristic elements of the book: binding, provenances, headpieces, decorations, tooled impressions, fastenings, watermarks, and signs of damage. We make an assumption that features of the decoration and binding of the sixteenth-century Tetraevangelion, as well as traces left by time, may help to pin down the dating of the binding, and that the decorative elements of the book are connected with its contents and purpose. The book is viewed as an indivisible whole, i.e. a system consciously organized by causal relations. We aim to look at the document in a structured way through the worldview of the semiotic school of communication sciences. Taking basis in the school of the pioneer of logical semiotics, Charles Peirce, we view such phenomena as inscriptions found in the book, elements of decoration, technological solutions, and marks of damage, as signs. The study employs both the comparative historical and synthetic research methods.Throughout the research, criteria for interpreting the data were identified by the principle of verification, which specified the dating of the creation of the Tetraevangelion and two instances of rebinding. The results obtained were systematized and published in a separate chapter of this article. The article is accompanied by photographs illustrating the object described. Keywords: book, sixteenth-century Tetraevangelion, semiotics, sign codes, interpretant, information content of signs, communication response, verification, artifacts, provenance, inscriptions, headpiece, decoration, fastenings, cover boards, watermarks, type of paper. [From the publication]