Elissaveta Moussakova

Book Review: Пенкова, Бисерка, Веселина Йончева, Георги Геров, Емануел Мутафов, Иван Ванев, Майа Захариева, Маргарита Куюмджиева, Мария Колушева, Цвета Кунева. Корпус на стенописите от ХVІ век в България. Под ред. на Бисерка Пенкова. София: Институт за изследване на изкуствата – БАН, 2022

Catherine Mary MacRobert, M.A., D.Phil., formerly University Lecturer in Russian Philology and Comparative Slavonic Philology at the University of Oxford, is presently Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College. Her main research interests have been in the history of mediaeval Slavonic translations from Greek and comparative grammar. A great deal of her work is devoted to the textual tradition of the mediaeval Slavonic Psalter. It would be not an exaggeration to say that nowadays she must be esteemed as one of the best experts on the subject.

The Psalter of John Alexander (1331–1371), a copy dating from 1337 (Sofia, BAS 2) is both the only genuine “aristocratic” psalter in Bulgarian mediaeval art and the only royal codex kept in Bulgarian libraries. Even if modestly illuminated, with one miniature at Ps. 77, some of its features are rather peculiar. In this paper they are analysed in the light of certain Byzantine concepts, like that of the “mid-Psalm” in the two-fold composition of the Book of Psalms, the imperial ideology and the encomiastic genre. The author offers an explanation of the unique arrangement of the text-pictorial units in the book as a result of sophisticated references between the theological concepts in the image of the Ancient of Days, the comments on the Creed and Lord’s Prayer on the folios preceding the image, and the religious and political situation around the enthronement of Bulgarian king.

Reviews of published books in the domain of slavic studies and literature