Church Slavonic Words имарменя, фатунъ, фортунa in Maximus the Greek’s Works

Abstract

Within the linguistic research on the works of Maximus the Greek, the article raises the question of the peculiarities of an individual intellectual dictionary in his creative work. The object of this study is the authors use of three terms conveying the concept of "fate", in particular the lexical borrowing from the Greek είμαρμένη and from the Latin words fatum and fortuna, rarely used in Church Slavonic literature up to the 16 th cent. The use of significant terms is described through lexicographical analysis in the first two volumes of the modern edition of Maximus the Greeks works. Special attention is paid to the comparison of the meanings of individual words and their functioning with the data taken from the historical section of the National Corpus of the Russian language, and as well as from a selection of dictionaries of Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic languages, in order to identify the characteristic features of lexical preferences of Maximus the Greek. Thorough contextual analysis of the texts allows us to show how, conveying the concept of necessity caused by the stars or mysterious destiny, the author shows himself as an innovator, enriching Church Slavonic vocabulary with new borrowings. The article verifies the hypothesis about the reasons for lexical preferences of Maximus the Greek and makes assumptions about the interpretation of synonymy of the words denoting "fate" that appears in the studied texts. Linguistic goals, formulated on the basis of the results obtained, can be achieved only taking into consideration the general trends in the development of religious and philosophical thought in Europe in the Early Modern Era.