Scripta & e-Scripta vol 2, 2004

The article presents a first attempt of a publication of fragments from medieval Slavonic written records in electronic form – a problem which so far has not found a satisfactory solution. Two manuscripts from the National Library on Budapest (Szechenyi) have been studies, described and realized as electronic publications. The first one (MS Duod. Eccl. Slav. 2) is Glagolhic, from XI-XII century and contains Vita of Simeon Stulpnik. The second one (Fragm. Eccl. Slav. 3) includes seven parchment fragments from XIII-XIV century with partially conserved Cyrillic text by the Apostle. The possibilities to deliver the data and metadata from the fragments are examined. As a result the most precise and close to the original electronic publication can be realized. Subject of discussion are the rules created in the framework of the Text Encoding Initiative, which although oriented to a wide range of different kinds of texts, do not reflect the specificity of the medieval manuscripts. Regarding the fragments, of paramount importance is the necessity in the model of description the degree of preservation of the text, depending on the preservation of the material on which it has been conserved, to be noted. As the fragment does not contain the whole text of the primarily existing manuscript but only part of it, the hierarchy of the computer description should reflect this peculiarity, as at the same time it well presents the separate lines in the text, about the separation of words, about the preserved (or missing) letter symbols and the punctuation. Meanwhile a place for marking the identification of the biblical text should be provided. Discussed in detail are the possible approaches to the elements, their characteristics and order in the publication – from the highest to the lowest level at the description of the text and its articles. Some questions connected with Unicode have been presented, in the context of the author’s view that not only the encoding of the texts is important, but also the adequate representation of their position in the writing margin, for example, referring to the rubrics and their writing in the margins. Enclosed is an illustration of the acquired approach – publication of fragment No. 1 (its front side, Romans 1:8-14).

The article offers a formal model of description of the compulsory encirclements of the lexical units, their semantic combinability, as well as the possible formation of diathesis. The structure of the presented dictionary article contains the following units: * A title word and part of speech * Classification of the word to a respective class * Meaning descriptively including the arguments * Information on every argument separately, including the following components: – Type of phrase – Explicity of the phrase – Syntactic function – Semantic signs of each argument – Prepositions in the preposition groups – Introductory connection for the relative clause –Other comments * Information on the admissible diathesis of the respective verb in the following order: – Type of diathesis – Examples The formal model has been implemented in the computer system Syntext (Syntactic lexicon Tool) which has the following basic merits: Linguistically independent system – SynText allows the inclusion of data from different languages, as the language-specific parameters and their measures, when necessary can easily be reformulated, added, removed, etc. Dynamic system – SynText allows fast and easy administration of the linguistic markers (the parameters and their measures) and it is fully configured and modified according to the needs of the examiners. Web-based system – the main advantage of Syntext is that we can work with it under different operation systems with minimal requirements to the parameters of the user’s computer. Informative-oriented system – the system allows the execution of different kinds of checks: extraction of words from one grammatical type, extraction of words by certain criteria, extraction of words with the same grammatical characteristics, etc.

The article presents a description of a computer application, developed by a team of authors at the Charles University in Prague, meant to support a multiaspect processing of examples of the cultural heritage in the intelligent environment of the information technologies. Provided is a possibility for the application to be used when describing and analyzing medieval manuscripts, experimented in the project of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Annotation corpora of Text (ACT, see http://prometheus.ms.mff.cuni.cz/act). The system is a linguistically-independent product for lexical and corpora processing of written texts. It has been created with the purpose to process large corpora with linguistic annotation, which mostly includes lexicographic and morphological analysis, and the syntactic and semantic information is marked on basic level. The system allows the users when working at different places, to compare the data between one another, and to keep the results regardless of the number of specialists working at the same time. A product which completely solves the problems of the linguistic analysis of medieval records with the help of computers is offered.

The article briefly presents the history of the preparation of catalogues of medieval Slavonic manuscripts electronically in Bulgaria on the basis of the experience of two projects: “Repertoire of the old Bulgarian literature and letters” and “Electronic access to manuscripts (MASTER)”. Motivated is the necessity to process them by a specialized editor, which can accelerate the entering of data and contribute to the reduction of the structural errors in the descriptions. Presented id the editor XEditMan, developed by P. Pavlov, which is being used at the moment for the mass entering of data for manuscripts in IMI. So far 250 descriptions have been entered. The offered approach will hasten the electronic publication of descriptions of manuscripts and will perfect the ways to work with them.

The fragment of an icon, which has been published here for the first time, belongs to the department “Old Bulgarian Art / Cripta” of the National Art Gallery and has an inventory No. 590. It comes from the church “Holy Virgin” in Veliko Turnovo. Only the right part of a large-sized work is preserved. In the central part used to be painted saint Demetrios on a horse, stabbing his defeated enemy with a spear. In two vertical columns to the left and to the right of the central image eight scenes from the hymnographic cycle of the saint used to be placed. The four scenes in the right column have remained: 1) St. Dimitrios speaks to the emperor Maximilian; 2) Emperor Maximilian and his wife at the amphitheatre; 3) St. Dimitrios blesses Nestor; 4) The martyr’s death of St. Dimitrios. Some of the scenes, especially the second and third ones, have interesting iconographic peculiarities. They, as well as the stylistic marks, indicate that the work was created in the XIV century. As a closest stylistic parallel to our icon, we can point the miniatures of the well-known manuscript Vaticanus slav. 2 of the Manasius chronicle, which was painted and decorated for Tsar Ivan Alexander around 1344-1345. Therefore, the present icon should also be referred to the artistic production from the middle of the XIV century in the capital city of Turnovo. The cult to St. Dimitrios represents an important element of the propaganda of the first Asens, which continues to be maintained and developed by the following Turnovo rulers. The icon we publish here is a product of this political and religious-spiritual context. For the history of the medieval art the work is important mainly because it is the earliest, for the time being, example of including a hymnographic cycle in an icon of St. Dimitrios.

In the article a unique by it plot for the Bulgarian Middle Ages and the Orthodoxy icon is studied – “Provenance of the Honest Cross” from the collection of the Rila Monastery. For the appearance of such a plot in the East, they appointed is the wrong translation to church-Slavonic from the Greek name of the holiday “Taking of the Honest Cross”. The author finds works by the same artist from the end of the XVIII century in other Bulgarian collections, searches even remote iconographic parallels, as well as historical grounds for such imagery, summarizes the cult to the Holy Cross in the Orthodoxy. The artistic basis for comparison in the article is diachronical – it stretches from the VI to the XIX century and it moves from Russia, across the Balkans to the island of Cypress. The comparison with the western tradition has not been omitted. Finally, the author correlates the appearance of the icon “Provenance of the Honest Cross” to the specific religious-festive complex in the Rila Monastery, suggesting hypothesis for the presence of such an icon, made by a master from Athos, namely at the Rila Monastery. E. Mutafov’s approach is comparative-linguistic, supported by art-critical methodology and a

In the article an attempt is made to revise the opinion that the apocrypha are the local, popular, even layman literature of the Middle Ages. Their place in the Old-Bulgarian literature is defined. They acquire the status of “rejected” books together with the final formation of the canonic biblical corpora, accompanying the institutionalization of the Christianity. The genre peculiarities of the apocryphal texts remain parallel to the biblical. The new information in the apocrypha on biblical persons and events is classified, and the following main groups are determined: information, complementing the biblical story with details aiming to explain the respective episodes of the canonic texts; a doubling story about events described in the canonic texts, including new motives or different variants of biblical motives; a detailed story about events marked in the canonic texts; free interpretation of biblical motives, as the biblical variant refers to completely different people and events; interpretation of motives and images from the pre-biblical mythology of the Jews or from mythologies of neighbouring peoples. The Byzantine text of Apocalypses of Moses and the Old-Bulgarian text of Oration for Adam and Eve are compared. An opinion is expressed that in this case there is rather a free retelling with new added elements. Special attention is paid to the Secret Book of the Bogomils, offering a peculiar code for realizing the information from the canonic and some apocryphal texts. This bears record of the high erudition of its author, as well as of the narrow circle of readers, it was intended for. A testimony for the author’s self-esteem is also the approach to the source material of presbyter Jeremiah, who giving a new meaning to the motive of the grateful dead man, builds a new plot on the text of the biblical book Tovit. Special attention is paid to the texts which include motives and plots taken from the oral narratives of the Middle Ages, and there is an opinion that in this case we cannot talk about insufficient theologian erudition of the relevant authors, but about literary fashion. As a result of the studies done, it is concluded that the apocryphal literature has been translated and read exclusively by highly educated scholars, searching “a different point of view” towards the biblical events, or offering a new interpretation of well-known biblical events. Regarding the influences between folklore and apocrypha within the framework of the Bulgarian medieval culture, they have been realized solely towards folklore – literature. This is the only way to explain the presence of motives, missing in the Judean-Christian tradition (canonic, non-canonic and anti canonic) in the Bulgarian apocrypha. At the same time the Christianization of the Bulgarian traditional culture was done mainly under the impact of the official church sermon.

The article studies the repeatedly published text of the Penitential of the Glagolitic Sinai Euhologion, X-XI century, in comparison with the archaic Cyrillic copy of the same text of Ustiujka Kormchaia, XIII-XIV century and with other later Cyrillic copies. The stability of the text model is studies, as well as the linguistic changes it is subject to. The authoress defends the view that the Glagolhic and the Cyrillic copies advance to one and the same unremaining archetype – this of the first and only Slavonic translation of the model of Poenitentiale Merseburgense, type ? or of a source very close to it. The latter, dating from the end of the VIII or the beginning of the IX century, is representative of the practice of the Franks Empire and Church and most likely it was respected and influential in its Latin aspect in the close west-Slavic lands oven before being translated into Slavonic. It is impossible to determine the authorship of the translation. Nevertheless, a number of considerations of historical-cultural and linguistic nature make the authoress support the most distributed thesis about the Moravian-Panonic origin of the translation. In that sense the text undoubtedly should be added to the church-juridical heritage, created during the Cyril-Metodii’s mission. The influence of the canonic apparatus of the Orders is also searched – especially of the formula “bread and water” on another early juridical monument, such as Law to judge people.

The article is dedicated to the naming of the woman in popular work from the early Byzantine epoch. The work of John Moschus "Leimon Pneumatikos" and in its Slavonic translation is attested in the so called Sinai patericon. Presented is the position that the monkhood, which is at the same time source and addressee of the text, is a specific group capable of producing ideologically significant messages, and the interpretations of the woman and the woman’s life, made by its representatives, should be important and obligatory models. Adopted is the concept of P. Burdijo, defining the act of naming as a beginning of the process of symbolic conception, which ends with the entry of the social identity in the biological nature of the individual. The author makes an attempt to systematize the naming of the woman in the medieval Christian work and its translation, which is viewed as a means of transference of specific ideological messages. Presented is the concept of the presence of two types of naming – implicitly and explicitly connotated – which for their part are united in subgroups. In conclusion the suggested is the interpretation that the presented types of naming illustrate the Christian vision of woman’s life in its trinity – as a possibility to choose, as a positive and negative realization, but in a subordinate position towards the man as an institution.

In the article examines are the function, language and distribution of childbirth and new-born till the 40th day prayers and of apocryphal prayers for an easy birth in South Slavonic manuscripts (XIV-XVII century) in comparison with Byzantine sources. The more archaic variants of prayers for the after birth period stand out, compared with the widespread later scheme, including texts about the old woman-midwife. The medieval Glagolhic and Cyrillic repertoire of prayers for an easy birth is based on one and the same evocative formula, added with instructions, dialogues, biblical quotations or names with sacred meaning. Regardless of the similarity of the texts, we can see the dynamics of their use and their functioning on the dictated by ritual border between written and oral, a border, in which the written is constantly activated by the oral, and the oral is never fully authentic.

The article offers new attributions and localizations of ten Adzhar monuments on the basis of a paleographic analysis. The scribal activity in the centre is viewed in comparison with that of the rest of the calligraphic centers in the Bulgarian lands in the XVII century. The analysis of the repertoire of Adzhar monuments in the light of the new material brings about the conclusion that in the second half of the century the settlement became a literary and educational centre of a parish type, where the book copying was directly bound with the preparation of priests.

The Slavonic translation of the Erotapokriseis of Pseudo-Kaisarios was made in the first quarter of the X century, but was kept only in Russian manuscripts from XV-XVII century, where it is distributed under a new title and with considerable absences of texts in the beginning and end of the work. The article is dedicated to the composition of the questions and answers in the Erotapokriseis. Examined is the possibility to obtain data about the translation itself, as well as its Greek prototype, from the organization and segmentation of the Slavonic text. The data studied in the article show that the translation of the Erotapokriseis was made completely, without eliminating parts of the text of adding others. The exposed arguments lead to the conclusion that the reason for the absences of text in the Russian copies is a physical fault in their Bulgarian protograph.

The present article is part of a dissertation work on the same topic. In the publication there is a new classification of the texts, constituting the Latin tradition of the hagiographic legend of St. Eustathius Placidas and systematization of the well-known copies of more popular hagiographic works about the saint. There are conclusions about the genealogical relations between the different versions, their distribution in chronological and spatial aspect has been traced and problems for further studies on the topic have been outlined.

The study is dedicated to two Bulgarian texts, which appeared in the collections with mixed content in XIV century. One of them is Vita of Simeon Jurodivy, and the other one is Vita of St. Andrey Jurodivy. The purpose of the study is to examine the two vitae and outline the broad context in which they enter in the Bulgarian, as well as in the Byzantine culture. The article does not aim to exhaust the questions connected to these saints, but rather to determine and find new ways of research and examination of the phenomenon. The main sources are two copies – in manuscript No. 434 of the Hilendar Monastery in Mount Athos, containing the text with the vita of St. Andrey and in manuscript No. 152 of the National Library of Vienna, containing that of St. Simeon. The study consists of four parts. In the first one the examined are peculiarities of the jurodivy saints and their manuscript and cultural Byzantine context. The second one is dedicated to the appearance of the Bulgarian translations of the vitae of St. Simeon and St. Andrey, the collections in which their eventual relations with the epoch of hesychasm are published. The last two parts look at each vita in detail with its Greek and Bulgarian variants.

Reviews for books in the domain of slavic and mediaeval studies published in 2002-2004

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