Early Old Bulgarian Layer in the Office Menaion of Rostov Provenance of the 13th c. (RNL, F.p.I 37)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the linguistic and textual peculiarities of the Festal Menaion F. p. I 37 preserved in Russian National Library (S.-Petersburg) and dated to the beginning of the 13th c. Numerous linguistic features of the manuscript testify to Old West Bulgarian (Old Macedonian) literary usage of the end of the 9th — beginning of the 10th c., on the basis of which the earliest Slavonic hymnographical translations were performed. Despite of such an archaic linguistic and textual layers observed in the manuscript, its calendar, structure and content were influenced by the monastic rite based on the Typicon of Patriarch Alexius the Studite which had been translated and introduced in Kievan Rus' at the second half of the 11th c. The linguistic features of the text version as attested by F. p. I 37 have been compared to the manuscripts testifying to the Alexius the Studite text version. It has been affirmed that adaptation of the Old Bulgarian hymnographic heritage in Kievan Rus' followed the unstable trend to neglect the most remarkable South (and South West) Slavonic lingustic features and aimed at establishing “neutral” over dialectal Church Slavonic literary usage. The significant part of the article contains the edition of the earliest Slavonic, i.e., Old Bulgarian, translation of the Greek kanon Τάφῳ παρθενοδόχῳ dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos. The earliest Slavonic translation of this kanon has been preserved in the unique available manuscript, that is F. p. I 37. The publication of the Slavonic translation is supplied with the first critical edition of the Greek source performed on the basis of twelve manuscripts, the linguistic commentary of the Slavonic text, and remarks concerning some metric peculiarities of the original Greek version.