Literature Studies

Sv. Kliment Ohridski: His Tombstone and its Inscription

  • Summary/Abstract

    In the Presveta Bogoroditsa Perivlepta church in Ohrid the tombstone of St Kliment Ohridski is preserved. This large stone slab, with several inscriptions from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, remained there, while the holy relics of St Kliment have been transferred back to its original place – the church, built by the saint himself (completely rebuilt in 2001–2002). Until recently not much attention has been given to the tombstone. The paper offers a new reading of the main inscription, illustrated by the first contemporary picture and a new drawing made out of it, thus correcting many mistakes in the earlier publications.


Comparison of Four Medieval Bulgarian Inscriptions by Letter Frequency

  • Summary/Abstract

    This article compares the letter frequencies of four old Bulgarian inscriptions: the Samuel inscription of 993, the Samuel inscription of Voden, the Bitola inscription of Ivan Vladislav and the Tărnovo inscription of Ivan Asen II. We establish the proximity of the letter frequencies of these inscriptions and thus obtain an argument in favor of the view that the Voden inscription is a product of the same scribal tradition and orthography, and of the same epoch, to which both Samuel’s of 993 and Bitola’s inscriptions belong. The impressive ‘frequency proximity’ of the Voden and Bitola inscriptions is used to offer the hypothesis that the Samuel Dynasty’s royal administration has had a consistent tradition of writing and orthography.


Аріевъ ледъ

Ares Ice

  • Summary/Abstract

    The paper discusses the translation of Ἄρειος πάγος into Slavonic, which until the late seventeenth century is almost invariably Аріевъ ледъ. It is suggested that although this does not correctly render the original meaning of the Greek, translators (and others, including their Greek contemporaries) did not necessarily perceive place names as literally meaningful. Аріевъ ледъ was thus simply the established Slavonic name for the Areopagus, and known as such to Slavonic writers. The principle place where it occurs is in the Acts of the Apostles, where it is used consistently, and there is a varied body of commentary in Slavonic attached to this passage, which is discussed in detail. The use of the toponym in a number of non-Biblical texts is also traced.


Исторический корпус как цель и инструмент корпусной палеославистик

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


“Kliment Std” – a Free Font for Slavic Medievalists

  • Summary/Abstract

    The font Kliment Std is a result of the work of the author on a number of fonts used in medievalistic publications – they include Glagolhic fonts, fonts in Old-Bulgarian Cyrillic, special diacritic signs and fonts with decorative arrangement. Although they are well-known from the academic editions, they were not widely accessible for the Slavistic community and this situation is improved by the distribution of the presented font. It can be found in the official Web site of the author and can be legally used for academic purposes, publications and studies. The main limitations are: 1) not to be used in editions and events which violate the copyright; 2) the user does not have the right to change, modify or rename this product. The font was developed on the basis of the standard Unicode and it is distributed in format TTF. This makes it usable in the system MS Windows, as well as in the system Mac OS X. it contains supplements: Latin alphabet, Cyrillic, Glagolithic, Greek, diacritics, and special punctuation marks. As the content and the location of the Old-Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet in the Unicode space has not yet been established, the font has the possibility to evolve, in order to adequately reflect all requirements of this standard.


How to Enter Data on Medieval Bulgarian Manuscripts More Easily or XEditMan: An XML Editor for Manuscript Descriptions

  • Summary/Abstract

    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 Segmentation of the Erotapokriseis of Pseudo-Kaisarios as a Source for the History of Its Slavonic Translation

  • Summary/Abstract

    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 Tradition of St. Eustathius Placidas in Latin

  • Summary/Abstract

    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.


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