Historical Linguistics

Linguistics vs. Digital Editions: The Tromsø Old Russian and OCS Treebank

  • Summary/Abstract

    This article provides a description of the Tromsø Old Russian and OCS Treebank (TOROT), which, along with its parent treebank, the PROIEL corpus (built by members of the project Pragmatic Resources in Old Indo-European Languages), is the only existing treebank of Old Church Slavonic, Old East Slavic and Middle Russian texts. The TOROT is a part of a larger family of treebanks of ancient languages which all use the PROIEL open-source annotion web tool and annotation schemes. In this article we present principles and selected problems at several levels of analysis in the TOROT, and then briefly discuss ways that corpus linguists and edition philologists can fruitfully collaborate and complement each other.


Recycling the Metropolitan: Building an Electronic Corpus on the Basis of the Edition of the Velikie Minei Čet’i


Исторический корпус как цель и инструмент корпусной палеославистик

Diachronic OCS Corpus as an Object and an Instrument of Corpus Palaeoslavitic


Copies of Filip Stanislavov’s Abagar (Rome, 1651)

  • Summary/Abstract

    The article discusses the currently available information on the extant copies of Filip Stanislavov’s Abagar, printed in Rome by the Propaganda Fide in 1651. Starting from Božidar Rajkov’s 1979 edition, which lists fifteen known copies and their presumed location, the article offers information on several copies that are not reported by Rajkov. These include copies in London, Paris, and Uppsala, the latter in the form of a scroll. In addition, the current location of most of the earlier known copies has been verified, and new information on a number of copies is presented: for example, the copy formerly located in Brussels is currently preserved at the Bibliothèque Diderot in Lyon, whereas the two German copies seem to have been lost.


Re-Reading the Vita Constantini: the Philosopher in Constantinople


Scholia from Gregory of Nyssa’s Apologia in Hexaemeron in the Fourteenth-Century Slavonic Hexaemeron Collection


The Kievan Manuscript of Synopsis Basilicorum major


The Neapolitan Wall Calendar From a Medieval Slavic Perspective


The Fourteenth-Century Slavonic Version of the Longer and Shorter Rules of Saint Basil: Text of the Questions and Remarks

  • Summary/Abstract

    In this paper the text of the questions in the Longer Rules (Ὅροι κατὰ πλάτος, Regulae fusius tractatae, PG 31, 901–1052) and the text Shorter Rules (Ὅρoι κατ᾿ ἐπιτομήν, Regulae brevius tractatae, PG 31, 1052–1305, CPG II 2875 Asceticon magnum sive quaestiones) of St. Basil in their medieval Slavonic version are presented according to Zografou 3, a manuscript, dating from the 14th century. Some observations are made about the text of the questions on the basis of comparison on orthographical and lexical level between Zografou 3 and three other manuscripts: British Library Additional MS 27442, National Library in Sofia 1045 (Slepčenskij sbornik) and Zografou 126, dating from the same period. The quotations from the Scripture in the text of the questions are an object of special interest. The results of the comparative analysis give a good reason to suppose that Zografou 3 preserves the oldest text in comparison to the other three witnesses.


Text and Context: Story about the Handsome Joseph in the Miscellanies with Mixed Content


Semantics of the Book’s Macro-Compositional Level? A Visualisation Method of Analysis

  • Summary/Abstract

    The publication opens for discussion an approach to macrostructural analysis of certain calendar miscellanies with selected readings which belong to the Medieval Balkan tradition. The author proposes that the selection of feasts and saints’ commemorations, as well as the order of the corresponding texts might be interpreted as determined by certain overall theme(s) / thematic fields and could be „read“ on the level of the book’s content. This approach was encouraged by the outcomes of a study on the calendar-thematic composition of Damaskenos Studites’s Thesauros and its transformations in Bulgarian literary tradition in the 16th-18th century. Aiming at a search for similar preceding models, the survey makes comparison on macro-compositional level between some panegyrica, such as Mihanović Homiliar and Jagić Zlatoust of the late 13th – early 14th century, the 1358/59 Miscellany of German, and the 16th-century Panegyricon No. 85 from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In addition, the study explores the relevancy of a method for visualisation, which can be supportive of a thematic analysis.


A Short Note on the Glagolitic Ornament in Pamvo Berynda’s Triod Cvetnaya (Kiev 1631)

  • Summary/Abstract

    The article draws attention to two lesser known lines written in Glagolitic which are part of the Epilogue to Pamvo Berynda’s Triod Cvetnaja, printed in Kiev in 1631. Thanks to their typographic realisation, these two lines seem to have been mainly considered „an ornament“ or a „cryptographic“ element of the text in older literature. The article presents the Glagolitic text in standard Unicode encoding, so it becomes electronically searchable as such, along with a transliteration and a translation. It turns out that the Glagolitic text is nearly identical to the self-descriptions famout printer Pamvo Berynda had used before (although in Cyrillic). Another question put forth in the paper is the provenience of the actual printing types used in Kiev in 1631. A comparision shows that the letters look similar – but not identical – to printing type used around the same time Italy (Rome, Venice) or by Primož Trubar in the century before. The typographic quality of the Kievan types is, however, inferior.


Употребление причастий в Енинском апостоле

Use of Participles in the Eninski Apostol


Divine Chrysostom Liturgy from Manuscript D. Gr. 143 (AD 1368) in the Ivan Dujčev Centre for Slavo-Byzantine Studies


Hellenophilism in Georgian Literature as Cultural Orientation towards Byzantine Thought: Ephrem Mtsire‘s Cultural Orientation. Part I

  • Summary/Abstract

    This paper is part of a more extensive study on the medieval Georgian writer and translator Ephrem Mtsire who continued the traditions with his works that gradually acquired clearly Hellenophile character, thus beginning the formation of Hellenophilism as a trend in Georgian literature. Hellenophilism is not considered in this paper only in its narrower linguo-literary aspect which meant attaining the formal equivalence to the original. Hellenophilism is regarded here in its wider sense of special interest of non-Greek scholars towards the thinking processes of Byzantine culture of different periods. The study of both aspects reveals the positive influence of Hellenophilism on Georgian literature. Hellenophilism as cultural orientation begins with Ephrem Mtsire‘s literary activities.


Illuminated Manuscripts from the Family of the Hippiatrika Codex (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phillipps 1538)

  • Summary/Abstract

    Two manuscripts discussed in this paper – the Homilies of Gregory the Theologian GIM Syn. gr. 63 (Vlad. 144) and the Four Gospels ÖNB Theol. gr. 240 – were examined for a special study, the results of which were published in 2009 and 2013. They both are unique examples of tenth-century Byzantine book illustration, remarkable for their unusual ornamental style. The study revealed the decoration, datable to the 940s, as a work of one and the same artist, conditionally referred to as the ‘Master of the Arabesque Style’. His ornamental style is unique in the history of the Byzantine manuscript book, only existing for a short period and evidently corresponding to the activity of this one illuminator. The manuscript Berlin, Phillipps 1538, which contains a Treatise on Horse Medicine, has appeared in many publications. However, its artistic decoration has not yet received the elucidation it merits. After a new research using colour reproductions it transpired that many of the Berlin codex folios were actually decorated by the same artist as the Vienna and Synodal manuscripts. The assumption that one artist devised the three manuscripts under scrutiny brings to the conclusion that the Vienna Gospels should be classed among manuscripts from the Imperial scriptorium and dated to the period from 945 to 959. With regard to the development of minuscule script, the scribe responsible for the Hippiatrika obviously was regarded as a distinguished calligrapher, whose earliest activities should be sought in the first quarter of the century. The archaic characteristics found in the codex are in accordance with the illumination. Therefore the Berlin manuscript should be used as a reference for the attribution of manuscripts from the second half of the tenth century.


Subscribe to Historical Linguistics