Elena Kotseva

The author discusses the image of the Serbian ruler Stefan Lazarević in his Life by Constantine of Kostenets and in particular, the role of the Old Testament allusions, citations and models. She finds out that the verbal royal iconography created by Constantine of Kostenets is supported by biblical, historical and mythological characters, referred to in a similar context also in the Manasses Chronicle and in the Alexander Romance. Elena Kotseva analyzes the image of Stefan Lazarević in the context of the trend in the 14th-15th literature to draw comparisons with Joshua, Moses, Samson and David, with Alexander the Great, Constantine the Great, Darius and Croesus. At the same time she finds parallels to the image of the Serbian ruler in the oral tradition, in epics and balladic motifs. She analyzes the image of the Serbian ruler created by Constantine of Kostenets in the context of the Balkan culture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and of the cultural memory for the apocalypse of the war in the epoch of the death and lamentation of Prince Lazar, the death of Vladislav Varnentchik and the fall of Constantinople.

The proposed notes to the chronology of the Codex Suprasliensis were provoked by the "Rediscovery" of this manuscript in the project of UNESCO (2009-2011), Institute for Literature, BAS. The electronic edition of the codex gave grounds of a new analysis, and with much more sophisticated technology and expectation to create a new annotated dictionary. Most of the authors of the publications in anthology “Rediscovery: Bulgarian Codex Suprasliensis of 10th century” (Sofia, 2012) suggested an earlier composition and production of the Codex Suprasliensis ‒ about the 970s. The author argues that the model of the handwriting of the Codex Suprasliensis lies on the basis of both the high and the low Cyrillic uncial. Her analysis includes details of the outline of graphemes and decoration of the Codex Suprasliensis as compared to the most important early Cyrillic manuscripts. The author also seeks terminus ante quem / post quem for the character set compared with epigraphic materials. She emphasizes that the handwriting of the Codex Suprasliensis remains unique – until a model of the early Cyrillic script is reconstructed, a model that depends probably on the early Greek tradition/ canon of graphemes. There is a good prospect for future research, because of the study of the corpus of the Slavonic liturgical books (reading menaia, triodia, apostoloi and others) nowadays: this gives good grounds for further development of a Slavic Cyrillic paleography and codicology.