Old Church Slavonic

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.

Subject: Scripta

Keywords: Dionysius the Areopagite Old Church Slavonic Quotations Translation from Greek Theology

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.

Subject: Scripta

Keywords: Old Church Slavonic Translations MANUSCRIPTS Greek Patristics Gregory of Nazianzus Constantine of Preslav translation techniques modality adverbs

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.

Subject: Scripta

Keywords: Emphasis perfect tense information structure Old Church Slavonic Vita Methodii Vita Constantini-Cyrilli

Digital annotation of verbal aspect in Old Russian and Church Slavonic texts is a challenging and quite complicated task that requires a complex approach. While studying Slavic aspect systems synchronically, we always know whether the verb is perfective, imperfective or biaspectual, however, this is often not the case for the research of aspect in a diachronic perspective. The determination of the aspectual status of a particular verb for earlier stages is possible only after considering together different parameters such as: actionality, lexical semantic, morphology, functional distribution, syntactic restrictions, collocations, statistics etc. All essential parameters should be annotated sufficiently for an effective use of a corpora. That would enable a researcher to collect quickly the information necessary to build aspectual profile of a verb. It is also important to understand the hierarchy of the parameters, as they might have different degrees of importance, and for this purpose a special algorithm should be developed. The preliminary results, related to the parameters of annotation and the algorithm for aspect determination (using ‘Morphy’, the System for digital morphological annotation of Old Russian and Church Slavonic manuscripts, developed in Vinogradov Russian Language Institute RAS), are discussed in the paper.

Subject: Digital humanities

Keywords: verbal aspect digital annotation Old Russian Old Church Slavonic