The Serbian manuscripts of the lader of divine ascent of St. John Sinaites (14th c.)

Abstract

The Ladder of Divine Ascent of St. John Sinaites has been very popular among the Slaves in the Middle Ages. From the 14th century 66 manuscripts were kept, 29 of them are Serbian. Not less than seven ancient manuscripts are kept in the National Library of Serbia (in the collections of the monasteries of Decani and Pec and in the New collection). Two manuscripts are kept in the library of the University of Belgrade, in the collection of manuscripts Lesnovo monastery. Five Serbian manuscripts of the Ladder are kept in the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg). Three ancient Serbian books of the Ladder are kept in Moscow, in the Russian State Library. Six ancient Serbian manuscripts of the Ladder are kept in the libraries of Mount Athos: four in the Hilandar monastery and two in the Zograf monastery. Four manuscripts of the Serbian Ladder are kept in Bucharest, in the Library of the Romanian Academy of Sciences. One ancient manuscript is kept in Macedonia, in the Ohrid National Museum. One Serbian book of the Ladder is kept in Paris, in the Slavic Fund of the French National Library. Of course, the former number of ancient Serbian manuscripts of the Ladder was much more than 29. The Serbian manuscripts preserved all ancient Slavonic translations of the Ladder: Preslav (in two versions), Tarnovo, Serbian (in two versions) and Athos. The author gives a description of each manuscript, names its location, dating and the related manuscripts. The Ladder as a book has many components. The basics of this book are the Life of St. John Sinaites and his message to John of Raif and 30 homilies. In the Slavic tradition we added a lot of new texts to this, not Greek but Slavic. One of these texts is the dictionary ?Tolkovanie recem?. According to our observations, this dictionary appeared in the Serbian book culture not later than the second half of the 14th century. The text of this dictionary began to appear separately from the Ladder very early as a part of the ascetic Sammelbands. An example is a Sammelband of the library of the Hilandar Monastery, number 455. The text of this dictionary is in the appendix of the article.