Medieval Studies

Personal as well as communal reading is one of the main activities in the monk’s daily life, as witnessed since ancient times. In all likelihood, the readings within the great ascetic framework were then concretely linked to the spiritual proposal that inspired the individual community. Gregory of Sinai himself gave advice on ascetic readings for the monks around him. It was precisely for this use that miscellaneous manuscripts containing texts for reading were formed. In Slavic, the first manuscripts of this type to be attested date back to the fourteenth century and refer directly to the communities linked to Gregory of Sinai.

This essay focusses on Evagrius Ponticus’ Kephalaia Gnostika and its reception. It will offer some results of novel research into the literary structure of this work, including the issue of its so-called ‘silent chapters,’ as well as into its rhetorical strategies and philosophical theology, in particular its anthropology and conception of bodies, Christology, with a proposal for a new reading of one of the Kephalaia Gnostika, and eschatology, especially Evagrius’ doctrine of apokatastasis. Evagrius inherited the last theory from Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, and integrated it in its own further. The influence of Gregory of Nyssa on Evagrius is an aspect of recent research that has been offered as a contribution to scholarship and should now be taken into account. Finally, a brief look will be given at the literary, and partially theological, legacy of the Kephalaia Gnostika.

The article explores the development of the genre kephalaia in the history of medieval Bulgarian literature, especially the changes of its context in the miscellanies in the 10th c. and later in the 13th–14th c. Paraenetic works by many patristic authors, usually presented as short wise sayings in groups of 100 (centuriae), were translated, excerpted, revised, and translated again – a century-long tradition preserved in many Slavic manuscripts. The survey is focused on two works in this genre – Capita de oratione (CPG 2452) by Evagrius of Pontus and Centuriae iv de caritate et continentia (CPG 7848) by Thalassius of Libya. They were first introduced into the Slavic literatures in the early 10th c., and with the development of monasticism and the rise of Hesychasm, their renewed and revised translations were included in the monastic miscellanies from the 14th c. onwards. The linguistic comparison of the versions of the two texts reveals the connections and the differences between them. The analysis of their respective contexts in several manuscripts shows the continuity between the literary traditions of the early and the later period of Slavic literatures.

The paper presents results, including work in progress, related to study of Fragments from the Ladder of St. John of Sinai in the oldest Byzantine and Slavic Codices. The article published 10 fragments of the text of the Ladder as part of Simeon’s Miscellany according to the text of Izbornik of Svjatoslav 1073. The publication of the texts is based on the edition of the text of the Izbornik prepared by P. Janeva (Sofia, 2015) and is accompanied by indications of discrepancies in the most ancient Byzantine manuscripts of the Ladder and comments. The article contains clarifications and additions to the Sofia edition of the Izbornik. As a result of the study some fragments are reconstructed, I consider to be part of the lost Byzantine book, which became the source of the Bulgarian translation of the Simeon’s Miscellany. The article contains biblical quotations in the fragments of the Ladder as part of the Izbornik. The article lists the words of the Preslav literary school, typical for the translation of the Simeon’s Miscellany and for the first Slavic translation of the Ladder.

The Dioptra, a work consisting of over 7000 political verses in form of a dialogue between the body and the soul, as well as prose paratexts, heavily borrows from other texts. Whereas the sources paraphrased in the verses often go unacknowledged, other prose excerpts, mostly patristic but sometimes scriptural, are quoted verbatim and attributed to their respective authors. These paratexts are marginal scholia, texts inserted in the verse parts, and appendices. They are related to aspects of the verse parts, either by supporting an argument, by elaborating on details of the text, or by elucidating an argument from a different angle. The fictional setting of the dialogue functions as a frame, holding together the numerous sources, organising them in questions and answers that prompt more questions, and commenting upon them.

2 Enoch used to be called “Slavonic Enoch” for about 150 years until 4 fragments of the pseudepigraphon were found in Coptic. This Old Testament Pseudepigraphon has been often considered “an enigma”, starting from the fact that the scholars cannot decide whether it was of Jewish or Christian origin. The article provides the scholarly community with state-of-the-art on the most important and “everlasting” problems concerning the text in question, making a special emphasis on the consensus about the provenance of the Slavonic text among Slavists which is based on the comprehensive analysis of the textual history of 2 Enoch.

The article is dedicated to a rare text of Acta Thomae, which has so far been found only in a copy in a manuscript of the 16th century. A review of textological features is made and the text is compared with several Slavic and Greek copies. Such a version is not found among the transcripts of the Acts of the Apostle Thomas known to us and is a separate branch of tradition that emerged after the translation of the Actа Thomaе and Acta Thomae Minora. It is believed that the text in Slavic tradition appeared in the 14th century, probably in Bulgaria, but underwent significant revision before being included in Izmaragd. The research includes a publication of the text.

The paper deals with several sixteenth- and seventeenth-century mural representations from different Balkan regions, illustrating Christ Expels Seven Demons from Mary Magdalene as an individual scene. The representations can be grouped in two categories based on the iconographic interpretation of the subject. The first one includes those in the Church of Prophet Elijah (1550) in Sofia and churches associated with the work of St Pimen of Zographou: the Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos in Zervat (1603, Albania), the Church of St Theodore Tyron and St Theodore Stratelates in Dobarsko (1614), the Monastery of St Nicholas in Seslavtsi (1616). The iconography of these four monuments is as a whole very reminiscent of other scenes of healings by Christ. The scene is placed in the context of the Pentecostarion cycle. The second group includes monuments painted by the artists from Linotopi, especially by Nicholas: the Monastery of the Dormition in Spilaio near Grevena (1649); the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Dryovouno (1652) and the Church of St Demetrius in Palatitsion (1570; 17th century). The general iconography here reminds of the healings of demon-possessed, while the iconographic characteristics of Mary Magdalene are akin to those of St Mary of Egypt. The scene is placed among those illustrating the Miracles and Parables.
In the Hermeneias of Dionysios there is no description of the scene, although it is included as a title in Πήγαι in the Divine Works and Miracles of Christ. Probably Dionysios of Fourna was familiar with representations on the subject. For the time being we can only assume that a representation of this scene has existed before 1550, i.e. before it was painted at the Monastery of Iliyantsi.

The author examines rare and specific words from the incomplete Old Bulgarian translation of John Chrysostom’s Hexaemeron (YoZlSh) based on the manuscript Zogr19, introduced into palaeoslavistic not long ago (before two-three years). Parameters for the grouping of the extracted words are the peculiarities characteristic of the early Old Bulgarian translations. Their comparison with the Old Bulgarian manuscript corpus from the end of the 9th – 10th century is a kind of test of when the translation possibly originated: if at the lexical level the text is indicative of the early Old Bulgarian translations. The results are clear: all 15 orations of Hexaemeron (the 16th oration is incomplete) contain a huge wealth of vocabulary, and a significant part of the rare and specific words from YoZlSh is typical for the corpus of Old Bulgarian translations. This proves that the translation of John Chrysostom‘s Hexaemeron was created also at an early stage of the Old Bulgarian literature.

The article discusses the uncommon definite forms (with pronominal declension) of the possessive adjectives formed with -ов-, -ь and -ии/-ьи in the Old Bulgarian translation of Athanasius of Alexandriaʼs Orations Against the Arians, carried out by Konstantin of Preslav in 906. The translation survives only in Russian manuscripts ranging from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The Russian origin of the manuscripts raises the following question: have the definite forms of the possessive adjectives discussed here been the result of the spreading of the manuscripts in a Russian environment? Although rare, definite forms of possessive adjectives ending in -ов-, -ь and -ии/-ьи have been found in Old Bulgarian and Middle Bulgarian texts. This means that although uncommon, these forms were part of the Old Bulgarian language and the bishop Konstantin of Preslav could have used this declension model. The author argues that the uncommon definite forms of the possessive adjectives божии, отьчь, дѹховъ, съпасовъ, хрьстовъ are part of the translation strategy of bishop Konstantin of Preslav to distinguish between God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Spirit, and Christ the Saviour, on the one hand, and created beings, on the other hand.

The author presents the usage of some of the major Bible quotations in the Slavonic version of De Christo et Antichristo by Hippolytus of Rome. Mainly Old Testament quotations are examined, as well as the longer ones from Revelation. Among them, there are quotes from Genesis, the Book of Isaiah and the Book of Daniel which are compared to the same places in Prophetologium (Grigorovič No. 2 / М.1685, RGB), in the so-called Catena in Prophetas (Saint-Trinity Lavra No. 89, RGB) and where possible with the commentaries of Hippolytus In Danielem, and other early Slavic translations of the Scripture as well. The quotations from Revelation are compared with some later translations of this book in order to underline their importance and usage. The lexical analysis is not the main focus of the conducted study, but it is inevitable when the quotations are compared with biblical manuscripts. Тhe main aim and scope of the article is to highlight how the biblical quotations were approached by the translator. The large-scale comparisons made show how the medieval Slavonic biblical versions vary, depending on the function of the texts translated.

The paper discusses the use of topoi, prototypes and proto-characters to present the protagonists in the oldest surviving Old Bulgarian lives and deeds of saints (The Life and Works of Saint Cyril the Philosopher, The Life and Works of Saint Methodius, and the Anonymous Life of Saint John of Rila). The function of a prototype/ proto-character is to reveal the saint’s resemblance to the former concerning symptomatic characteristics, actions, and situations, for example, by analogy to a familiar authority (biblical, patristic, hagiographic or other). The lives recall the ascetic exploits of the prototype and simultaneously laud the new saint. The meanings of the topoi and prototypes extend beyond the particulars of the text and become a significant element in the creation of shared Christian memory. The topoi and prototypes in hagiographic texts portrayed ideal examples to be followed, passing them on in time and turning them into traditions.

The paper includes the edition of the recently discovered second witness of the Letter of Patriarch Callistus to the Bulgarian spiritual leader Theodosius of Tǎrnovo and his associate Romanus (RGB, f. 98, Egorov N 274). The edition is accompanied by variant readings taken from Syrku’s edition of the text found in RNB, F I 211, which has been the only known witness of the document for more than a century. Both witnesses have a western Russian provenance and date to the second half of the 15th c. (the new one has recently been dated to the last quarter of the 15th c.). The witnesses were compared in terms of orthography, grammar and lexis in order to establish their connection to a supposed Bulgarian original. The detailed philological analysis allows us to conclude that though both witnesses show significant traces of the Second Slavic influence on Russian literature, the two scribes introduced the innovations in different ways and to a different extent. Taking all this into account we dare to suppose that both witnesses descend rather from an earlier copy-mediator with Russian spelling features than directly from a Middle Bulgarian original.

The article compares the text of the „Vidin“ service for St. Petka Tărnovska (Paraskevi of Epivates), featuring a canon for the eighth mode, and the text of the Saint’s service known by three Russian copies in 16th–17th-c. manuscripts from the Trinity–Sergius Lavra. The main peculiarities of the 15 known South Slavonic transcripts of the „Vidin“ service (14th–17th cc.) are analyzied and there are underlined the main stages in the development of the text. It is concluded that the Russian copies are closest in composition and structure to the earliest Bulgarian copy in the 14th-c. manuscript Sinai 25, with added stichera and glories, known from Serbian copies from the 15th–16th cc., and a new kondakion. The Russian copies show that the „Vidin“ service was early included in Russian liturgical practice. It can be assumed that it was done by Gregory Tsamblak who introdusted the cult of Petka Tărnovska to the Orthodox Christian population in the northeastern Slavic lands. The Russian edition of the service for the Venerable Paraskevi-Petka from Epivates, preserved in a 1645 printed menaion, again from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, contains in addition to the canon for the eighth mode a different canon for the sixth mode (instead of the canon for the sixth mode known by the Menaion of Dragan). The new six-mode composition was created in the 17th c. by adding, reworking and adapting other texts, as shown by its distinction from the 16th-17th-c. Cyrillic copies originating from the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The study examines the cult of the unmercenary Saint Tryphon. Attention is paid to his folklore veneration in Bulgaria and the specifics of his iconographic depiction. The emphasis is on the examination of his image, presented in the Martyrdom as attested in two Slavonic manuscripts from the 15th century housed in the Library of the Romanian Academy, Nos. 306 and 152. The characteristics of both manuscripts are also presented, as both texts are related to the Serbian language environment. The comparison of the two texts shows a complete coincidence in the narrative. The plotline of the narrative has classic features for this genre: introduction, main part, and a short conclusion. The main part of the narrativе stands out two semantic cores: the first is the expulsion of demons from the daughter of Emperor Gordian by Tryphon and the second is the verbal opposition between Aquilinus and the saint and the physical torture he is subjected to after each verbal struggle with his antagonist proving the strength of his spirit and the strength of the Christian faith.

The last decade has brought an upswing in research on natural language processing. However, it is well known that historical language stages are largely underrepresented. Middle Bulgarian Church Slavonic, a language variety with a significant literary productivity, is a prime example. In the current paper, it is shown how annotated texts of related language varieties can be used to annotate texts written in Middle Bulgarian Church Slavonic, such as the 14th-century translation of the Dioptra. In particular, I present a way of adapting the available training data and of reducing the differences between training and test data, thereby improving the result of the automatic morphological annotation. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a comparison with the original work, written in Byzantine Greek, can further increase the results of the annotation by carefully disambiguating homonymous word forms. The presented results can benefit research on Middle Bulgarian Church Slavonic as it shows how texts in this variety can be annotated without authentic training data. The proposed method may be of use not only for Slavonic Studies, however. The method of using training data from genetically related language varieties in combination with translations may be used to annotate other underrepresented language varieties as well.