Reading of the text
Above the male figure a two-lined Glagolitic text is inscribed while on the right of the figure another symbol is carved whose meaning is not definitely ascertained. Reading of the text is fairly straightforward: the first line says ''SE EPIS'', and the second line ''ЪLЪS''. The sign whose function is questioned by Fučić has been inscribed with significantly deeper furrows and is four times larger than the average size of Glagolitic letters, and for that reason alone one can ask whether it's an indispensable ingredient of the Glagolitic inscription itself, has it been written by the hand of the same scribe and has it been inscribed at the same times as other text. A Glagolitic letter cannot be discerned from it for certainty. left, Glagolitic inscription on the Plomin tablet. Trying to read both of the lines continuously: ''SE E PISЪLЪ S..'', i.e. ''this was written S...'', the sentence remains unfinished. Whether the text was written by somebody whose name starts with ''S'' or somebody wrote something that starts with ''S'' is not known. Since Old Croatian verb ''pisati'' meant both "to write" and "to paint", it is uncertain whether this verb was used to denote also a sculptural work and concordantly, if Plomin tablet inscription is a signature of the sculptor, or the Glagolitic text some secondarily written graffiti, written by some scribe. Reading of the text introduces some additional phonetic and orthographic difficulties — an unusual orthography appears for writing the participle ''pisalъ'', where on the position of sound /a/ aPaleographic analysis
General paleographic analysis shows that the rounded Glagolitic is still used, preceding the development of Croatian angular Glagolitic, which dates the monument before the 12-13th century. An analysis of individual graphemes also points to this timeframe: There's the letter ''S'' (1, 6, 10) which still has triangular lower element and the letter ''I'' (5) which still has triangular upper element, i.e. which has not reduced the ductus the way it can be observed on Vienna Folios. There is also an older type of the letter ''P'' (4) with lateral dash. Sign for the semivowel (7, 9) on Plomin tablet is not found on Glagolitic monuments before the 11th century or after the 13th century. Finally, there is a peculiar letter ''E'' (2, 3) occurring twice in this inscription and in both attestations demonstrates the same type with two horizontal lines intersecting the vertical hasta. Taking into account the paleographic development of that letter, it can be ascertained that ''E'' originally appears with two horizontal lines, which are subsequently reduced to one, which is subsequently reduced to a dot, which is itself finally elided. With the letter ''E'' on the Plomin tablet, this development on Croatian Glagolitic areal can be connected with oldest preserved Glagolitic monuments at all: the Kiev Folios, Prague Fragments, and with Macedonian monuments: Codex Assemanius, Ohrid Folios, Euchologium Sinaiticum. All these traits indicate a great antiquity of the monument, which date the Plomin tablet to the 11th century. Perhaps, moreover, a lower limit can be posited in the 10th century, which is a dating held by scientists such as Marija Čunić.The relief
The relief shows a beardless male figure, clad in shortDating and interpretation
If the Glagolitic inscription is dated to the 11th century, than that date is ''terminus post quem non'' for the genesis of the relief, i.e. its upper bound. Lower bound is the Late Antique. Between that large range—from Late Antique to Early Romanesque—it is less probable that this work would have come into existence in the centuries from the 8th to the first half of the 11th century, because in that period the sculptural works used wattle ornaments, a stylistically marked type of creation, a tradition which rules out naturalistic conceptions of human figure. Following this line of thought, Branko Fučić has in 1953, publishing Plomin tablet for the first time, formed an alternative theory according to which the relief...should be looked upon as a primitive provincial work of Late Antique (either pagan or Christian), or as an early Romanesque work, which after the period of wattle ornamentation reintroduces human figure into sculptural works. At any case, the connections of monument with the Late Antique plastics are beyond any doubt. They represent either the very much alive Antique tradition, or the imitation of the medieval carver of some Antique template.Reflecting on Fučić's alternative interpretation, academician Ljubo Karaman has laid his arguments, deciding for a medieval origin of the relief. Following Karaman's arguments and his own later iconographic studies, Fučić has voiced an opinion that this figure represents Saint George—a saint to whom Plomin church is dedicated to. This conclusion was induced by the attribute the Plomin tablet figure hold in his hand. Fučić was unable to identify the object in the (back then) available repertoire of Roman plastics attributes that would match with the attribute of Plomin tablet figure. These were not fork or a fish gig but a three-leaved branch, a symbol of vegetation; it must have been an abbreviation for the conception of vegetation. Christian iconography can interpret that attribute by a palm branch—of course, in a stylised, non-naturalistic form—and palm is a symbol of martyrs. Saint George only in the time of Crusades has become an idolized knight, horse-rider, dragon-slayer. In older Christian iconography he is but a messenger of faith and a martyr, and hence the martyr palm would suffice as an adequate attribute. By comparing the Plomin tablet figure with the remains of fresco from the ruinous church of Saint George near
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