Metamorphoses of ascetic texts in some depictions of St. Cyriacus the anchorite in the Balkans from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century

Tsvetan Vasilev

doi:10.2298/zog1842155v

Abstract

The text presents several unpublished Greek inscriptions written on the scrolls of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite from Bulgaria. The main focus falls on an inscription from the narthex of the Rozhen Monastery (sixteenth century) and its identification; parallel inscriptions observed in Athonite monasteries are discussed too. A second group of inscriptions from Bulgaria and Macedonia are also discussed, with a stronger focus on an inscription in the church St. Apostles Peter and Paul in Veliko Tarnovo. The linguistic analysis attempts to discern the patterns by which such ascetic texts are visualized and transformed along the way from their original textual source to their final destination - the wall painting.

Highlights

The text presents several unpublished Greek inscriptions writ- politan church of Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in the city ten on the scrolls of St
A further aim of the study is an attempt to classify the reasons for the changes in the texts, facilitating the definition of visualization and representation patterns for the moral-ascetic texts in post-Byzantine art
We find the same text in the refectory of Dionysiou osophical system, as well as his teachings about Divine Monastery too, on the scroll of St

Summary

Tsvetan Vasilev**

The text from the scroll of St. Cyriacus the scroll of St. Chariton the Confessor (Greek ὅσιος ΧαρίAnchorite in the narthex of Rozhen Monastery is sentence των ὁ ὁμολογητής, celebrated on September 2813) in the 58 from the second group (‘centuria’, a group of one hun- catholicon of Dionysiou Monastery (1546/47). We find the same text in the refectory of Dionysiou osophical system, as well as his teachings about Divine Monastery (after 1552) too, on the scroll of St. Chariton.[15] energy (or energies), that is at least partially cognoscible – in contrast to the incognoscible essence of God, – because it ‘surrounds God’, i.e. the energy is God’s grace or the activity of this incognoscible essence.[9] The sentence describes the entire process of transfiguration and deification (θέωσις) of man where the mind is liberated from its own energies in order to accept fully the energies of Divinity (or the marks of Divinity). This is the experiential perceiving of God, where man receives knowledge not of God’s incognoscible essence but precisely of the things that ‘surround God’ – a state that in Maximos the Confessor’s system is defined as the highest mystical state

The preceding and the following passages of this

Veliko Tarnovo and the inscriptions from the Byzantine