The described resource is an online tool, designed for studying texts and diachronic variation of language. The core of its corpus is represented by the Pop Punčov Sbornik, a West Bulgarian manuscript from 1796, released together with smaller examples of 14th–19th century Balkan Slavic varieties. Aside from the data, providing a unique view of historical dialects, it also provides a user- friendly interface and modular structure, thus allowing both easy additions of new content and features, as well as training of students and lay people interested in historical literature. The resource also contains extensive documentation concerning both grammar and philological data about the sources.

The results of statistical experiments to find the characteristics of words that are traditionally considered as the Ohrid-Moravian and Preslav components of synonymous series – иерѣи ‘priest’ – жьрьць ‘priest, cleric’ – свѧщеньникъ ‘priest, clergyman’, колѣ- но ‘knee’, ‘kindred’ – племѧ ‘tribe, genus’, коньчина ‘demise, end’ – коньць ‘end’, кънигы ‘books’ – писаниѥ ‘scripture’, любодѣица ‘adulteress, fornicator’ – блѫдьница ‘harlot’ are presented. The use of information about the relative number of words in a subcorpus, about significant deviations from the average values, and the calculation of statistical characteristics of lexemes in each of the subcorpora made it possible, in particular, to detect opposed and non-opposed components of synonymous series. The methods used to identify the statistical characteristics of words have shown that the degree of opposition of synonyms can be different – statistically significant or statistically insignificant. On this basis, it is concluded that it is necessary to move away from the unconditional attribution of the components of the synonymic series to the Ohrid-Moravian and Preslav vocabulary: the relations between the components of each synonymic series are individual and can range from statistically opposed in the texts of different schools to

The papers in the sections Scripta and Debuts were presented at the international conference “Transfer and Adaptation: languages and Cultures in Dialogue (the Balkans from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Times)”, held from 24-26 January 2024 in the Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’. Participants were from Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic and Romania. The conference was organised at the Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Scienc- es within the reintegration program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The financial support of the Bulgarian National Scientific Fund (contract Nr. ФНИ КП-06-МНФ/21 of 08.08.2023) was provided following the Memorandum of August 2020 between the Foundation and the Fund. No financial means received through the framework of this contract were planned or used for the publication of the articles in the present journal issue.

The Balkans, where the Greek and Latin written traditions co-existed in the framework of the Roman empire, became a “battle field” of scripts after the disintegration of the empire and the great changes that occurred in the Early Middle Ages. In this development the successful introduction of a “Slavonic script” (Glagolitic and shortly thereafter Cyrillic) played an important role. The changes in the use and the territorial distribution of these and other scripts (Latin, marginally also Arabic and Greek) for Slavonic languages are prese

The Corpus Dionysiacum, possibly authored in the 6th century by an enigmatic figure, stands as a pivotal work within the Byzantine oikumene, yet its reception in the Slavic context has been underexplored. This paper provides an overview of both direct and indirect receptions of the Corpus Dionysiacum, highlighted by direct quotations from a newly discovered cycle of original Slavic homilies from the late 9th century, a discovery that potentially shifts the paradigm of our understanding. We will examine the breadth, philological nuances, and theological applications of these quotations, employing a comparative analysis to contextualize our findings within a broader scholarly conversation. Through this examination, we shed light on the intricate web of cultural and theological exchanges between the Byzantine and Slavic worlds.

The article draws attention to two long scholia by Severus of Antioch, Severus of Antioch, identified in Constantin Preslavski’s Didactic Gospel, which, however, did not refer to his name. The first one, a fragment from 77th Cathedral Homily of Severus, forms the second half of the exegetical part of Sermon 3. The other one, an excerpt from the 89th Cathedral Homily, which also contains two fragments by Gregory of Nyssa, constitutes a significant part of the Exegesis Section in Sermon 35. It appears in Sermon 35 as part of the Greek original, the catena on Luke CPG C130.1, which Constantine used when composing the sermons on the Gospel of Luke. The fragment in Sermon 3 is not part of the main Greek source of Constantine used to explain the passages from Matthew’s Gospel. It was borrowed from catena on Matthew C110.4, which was not used as a source anywhere else in the Didactic Gospel and was probably added later by an unknown author rather than Constantine himself. Nevertheless, the name of Severus, who was explicitly named as the author of the scholium in C110.4, was omitted in the Didactic Gospel, most likely because he was considered a heretical author in 10th century Bulgaria.

The article analyses the translation correlates of ἀρετη, πολιτεία and φιλοσοφία in Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel. Their contextual meanings are systemised together with their Old Bulgarian transponents. Other Greek words that are translated by the same slavic transponents are analysed and the data are compared to the information in the major palaeoslavic dictionaries. The observations reveal that φιλοσοφία and ἀρετη are rendered by a wide range of lexemes whose array rivals that in far more voluminous Old Bulgarian corpora. It can be shown that the choice of synonyms for the three polysemous Greek nouns is not arbitrary but consistent with the meaning in a specific context. It appears that there is a tendency towards rendering each meaning of a Greek word by one particular Slavic word, i.e. a tendency to transform semantic differentiation in the source language into lexical differentiation in the target language. There is also a rather clearly noticeable semantic differentiation between the synonymous lexemes житиѥ and жиꙁнь and it is motivated not by the translated Greek words but by their contextual meanings, in which житиѥ refers more often to the earthly life whereas жиꙁнь means the eternal life.

This paper provides novel, relevant data to study the translation technique of the First Old Church Slavonic Version of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homily 38 “On the Theophany” (Εἰς τὰ Θεοφάνια, CPG 3010.38; BHG, 1921-1921b; PG 36, 312A-333A). This work was rendered from Greek into Old Church Slavonic by an anonymous Bulgarian translator, presumably between the late 9th and the early 10th century. The text is transmitted by two testimonies, one of East Slavic (St Petersburg, Russian National Library, Q.п.I.16, late 11th century), the other of South Slavic origin (Sofia, SS Cyril and Methodius National Library, № 674, mid-14th century). The translation’s archaic morphological and lexical features reveal a marked analogy with the language of the Old Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Writer, Constantine, Bishop of Preslav. By investigating hitherto unexplored aspects of the translation technique the author offers further compelling evidence of a connection between Homily 38 and Constantine’s Didactic Gospel. The focus is on a very peculiar rendering of the Greek modality adverb ἴσως (“possibly, perhaps”), which is translated by means of the verb “мьнѣти” (“to mean”, “to think”, “to assume”, “to consider”), conjugated in the first-person singular present indicative.

The paper analyses the different ways, lexical information can be positioned relative to the two parts of the Old Church Slavonic periphrastic perfect tense, formed by auxiliary быти + l-participle. We find that positioning of information before or behind the construction is most open to rhetoric-stylistic shaping of the utterances in a given context. Positioning of information within the periphrastic construction leads to focus steering; insertion of information of different kind into the periphrastic construction can be interpreted not so much as focus steering towards rhematic, but towards emphasized information. Complex forms of information positioning are a sign of written conceptuality.

In the palaeoslavic studies, it is known that the perfective aspect is used to render the Greek future and various forms of the conjunctive and optative, for the most part – in the aorist. On some occasions, though, Constantine of Preslav used more specific (vis. lexical) ways of rendering the Greek optative. The paper aims at systemising and commenting on the material excerpted from Constantine’s Didactic Gospel Greek sources. Such an approach, oriented towards the Greek as a starting point, might bring a better understanding of how these grammatical forms were perceived in the 9th century when they were no longer active in the spoken Greek language of the epoch. Furthermore, it will elaborate our understanding of Constantine of Preslav’s translation technique.

The paper explores the sources, from which the newly converted Bulgarians could obtain information about the deviations from Orthodoxy and the most famous heresiarchs. It seems that most of the notices are contained in the translations dated to the first decades of the 10th c. during the reign of Simeon the Great. The fact should not surprise us given the role this ruler played in the cultural and literary policy of the new Christian state. Could we however speak about a conscious policy in this regard, or is this a mere coincidence?

The creation of a text in the Middle Ages was a process of superimposition of persistent patterns and ‘topos’ formulas that had acquired universal meaning. It is very difficult to point out a historical-apocalyptic text that consistently conveys the Greek original, without exception all translated works have the intervention of the Slavic scribe who amends, adds or abridges the text. This is a natural process, especially for this type of literature, which has no liturgical purpose, it is outside of following the canon and the liturgical statute. The main reason for the compilation nature of historical- apocalyptic literature is the desire to express and highlight the current local (in most cases – Bulgarian) point of view on the events that took place, to adapt the images of historical figures to the current reality.

This study delves into the common attributes of criteria used to pinpoint invalidity in theses and implausibility in narratives within ancient rhetoric. To achieve this, a comparative analysis is undertaken between the various types of invalid or insoluble issues (asystata) outlined in the “stasis” theory and the theory of coherent narrative as presented in the four key treatises on rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata). These two conceptual frameworks, developed in tandem throughout post-classical Antiquity, are built upon the firm foundation of Aristotle’s logic and find practical application in contexts such as persuasive communication, historical narration, and literary fiction. The study’s findings highlight the shared terminological framework and educational objectives of both theories, fostering critical thinking and enhancing communicative proficiency among students of rhetoric. The article concludes with a comparative table juxtaposing the criteria for inconsistency and incoherence, viewed as breaches of the Principles of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Sufficient Reason, providing a practical tool for analyzing and improving narratives.

The article discusses the ongoing work on some forty Greek manuscript fragments which Rumen Manov recently donated to the Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Iv. Duichev”. After introducing Manov’s donation as a whole, the author presents six items in terms of their dating, script, and content (hagiographic, liturgical, patristic, biblical, etc.).

The article examines the different versions of the story of the Trojan War – ancient plots known in Bulgarian medieval literature as a result of translation work. The works are examined in the context of the medieval idea of the historical process. An attempt has been made to show the ways of adapting, rethinking and reassessing the works – through commentary and additions to the native history, by “inserting” into the world Byzantine chronicles, moving the corresponding text from the periphery of literary production to more elite compositions or by combining them with other works in collections of different function.

The article tries to retrace the paths of the semantic development of some Slavic borrowings, which in the history of the Romanian language designate ‘fear’ at different degrees of this emotion: timidity, dread, fear or fright. Five word families have been examined: groază, a se (în)crâncena, scârbă, a se stidi, a se oțărî. As a result of the etymological analysis, various semantic changes have been established. The research on the semantic evolution of the Slavic loanwords in Romanian in the field of emotional vocabulary shows above all that these particular cases reveal the tendency of mixing emotions. The same tendency can be observed when we analyze the autochthonous words from different Indo-European languages.

The poet Palladas of Alexandria is one of the most curious figures of Late Antique literature. In his ca. 160 epigrams preserved as a part of the Greek Anthology and dating from 4th c. AD, he assumes the poetic persona of a poor schoolmaster equally distanced from the crowds of Christian monks flooding the streets of his home city and from the teachings of his contemporary pagan philosophers. It seems probable that he might have been indeed a italicized by trade, since many of his poems abound in linguistic puns, word plays (successful or less so), and parodies of the great poets from the literary canon, especially Homer, as well as of their commentators, the famed Alexandrian grammarians, Palladas’ colleagues. In several of his works, he even goes beyond the realm of the Greek language in order to make jokes about Latin loanwords used by his fellow citizens. The present paper will examine the attitude of the poet towards language reflected by such linguistic puns and jokes in his works.

This paper is dedicated to a bilingual manuscript from the 1660s, conserved at the Library of the Romanian Academy as ms. rom. 312, which contains, between folios 217v and 254r, a copy of Meletius Smotrytsky’s Slavonic Grammar and its Romanian translation by Staico the Grammarian (who taught Slavonic in Târgoviște). The Romanian text, titled Tâlcuirea sau arătarea gramaticii slovenești („The Interpretation or the Expression of the Slavonic Grammar”), is on the pages opposite to the Slavonic text. The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary comparison between this grammatical text and the first grammars of the Romanian language from the 18th century, namely the one penned by Dimitrie Eustatievici Brașoveanul in a manuscript from 1757 and the one published by Ianake Văcărescu in 1787. By comparing them, it is possible to illustrate the different mechanisms used to render the corresponding terminology for parts of speech and nominal cases, ranging from direct translations and calques to neologisms.

This article focuses on the Slavonic reception of Methodius of Olympus, a Greek patristic author who flourished in the second half of the third and the beginning of the fourth centuries. Most of his writings have not survived in their Greek original; however, most of them have been preserved in a full Slavonic translation. Most probably, this translation was produced in the First Bulgarian Kingdom at some point between the end of the ninth and the eleventh centuries. The present article focuses exclusively on one of the writings of Methodius of Olympus, viz. the exegetical letter De cibis ad Chilonam (CPG 1814), presenting – for the first time in a systematic manner – some preliminary observations on the question of transmission of this text in the Slavonic manuscript tradition. Furthermore, it explores how the study of the Slavonic hermeneutical terminology in this text can shed more light on the biblical patristic exegesis of Methodius of Olympus, in general.

In the text, an attempt is made to establish the origin of a dialectal form of a noun isolated in the Bulgarian linguistic territory. Based on its formal connection with another literary lexeme in the Bulgarian language, the question is raised not only about the etymology but also about the existence of such a word in general.

In academic circles, Prof. Dr. Habil. Elka Bakalova, Corresponding Member of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, is widely known as an art historian and cultural anthropologist, long-time academic lecturer and expert in the field of preservation of cultural monuments. Her 85th birthday, celebrated at the end of 2023, is a good occasion to show her once again the deep respect that her rich scientific and public activity deserves at all times and without special pretext. In today’s Bulgaria, charismatic great academic intellectuals are so rare that we can only be happy and grateful as long as they are among us, because they are bearers of already disappearing moral values and scholarly talents and skills, being the last of the Mohicans of the humanities.

One of the most prominent palaeo-Slavists of our time has left us – Prof. Dr. Heinz Miklas from the University of Vienna, who devoted his entire life to the Glagolitic and Cyrillic writing, to the translation of Old Bulgarian literature, the study of its origin and spread in the Slavic written traditions.

I first knew Yavor and his work when he was studying Bulgarian philology at the St. Clement of Ohrid University of Sofia (1996-2001). He was an alumnus of the National High School of Ancient Languages and Cultures, from which he had graduated with a thesis on The History of Mount Athos by Stefan the Hagiorite and it came naturally to him to specialize further in the field of Old Slavonic letters. His MA thesis Apocalypsis Johannis Apocrypha: Survey, Critical edition and Word Index (published in 20011) was distinguished by the depth of the analysis and by the accomplished methodology mastered by a very talented and a very promising specialist in the history of medieval Slavonic texts. It was to this area – medieval text history – that Yavor Miltenov would return to constantly over the years, creating a legacy.

On August 6, 2024, we lost a notable specialist in the field of Byzantine studies and Paleo-Slavic studies Petya Yaneva, DSc, professor at the Department of Classical Philology at the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. For more than 10 years, she was a member of the editorial board of the Scripta & e-Scripta annual and contributed immensely to the high professional level of the publication. She especially supported the participation of young specialists with publications and their growth in the field of translated medieval literature.

Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalyptic Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Writings. Ed. Lorenzo DiTommaso and Matthew Goff. SBL: Atlanta, (No 57), 2023. 579 pp. ISBN 978-1-62837-533-6.

А. Д. Паскаль. Каталог славянских рукописных книг молдавского и валашского происхождения в фондах отдела рукописей РГБ. Вып.1, Собрание П. А. Овчинникова. Российская Государственная Библиотека, Центр по исследованию проблем развития библиотек в информационном обществе, Пашков дом, Москва, 2024, 395 стр. [A. D. Pascal. Catalogue of Slavonic Manuscripts of Moldavian and Wallachian Origin in the Collections of Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library, issue 1, Collection of P. A. Ovčinnikov. Russian State Library, Centre for Study of Library Development Problems in the Information Society, Pashkov Dom, Moscow, 2024, 395 p., ISBN 978–5–7510–0884–0.]

Enigma in Rus and Medieval Slavic Cultures, edited by Ágnes Kriza in collaboration with W. F. Ryan (Volume 8 of the series Sense, Matter, and Medium: New Approaches to Medieval Literary and Material Culture, edited by Fiona Griffiths, Beatrice Kitzinger, and Kathryn Starkey). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2024.

Учителното евангелие на Константин Преславски и южнославянските преводи на хомилетични текстове (IX–XIII в.): филологически и интердисциплинарни ракурси. Под редакцията на Лора Тасева, Ахим Рабус и Иван П. Петров. София: Институт за балканистика с Център по тракология, БАН, 2024 (Studia Balcanica 37)

[Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel and the South Slavonic Homiletic Texts (9th–13th Century): Philological and Interdisciplinary Aspects. Ed. by Lora Taseva, Achim Rabus, and Ivan Petrov. Sofia: Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology

Abbreviations