The Serbian translation of the "Evergetis synaxarion" in two Sinaitic manuscripts

Abstract

When the Greek substrate of the Hilandar (and Studenica) typikon was discovered, scholars raised the issue whether the complete Greek text of the Evergetis Typikon had been translated into the Serbian language or not (1895). There were several attempts to prove that a complete version of the Evergetis Typikon had been used in the territory under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Church before the introduction of the Jerusalem Typikon (1318/1319). In the Description of the (Old) Manuscript Collection of the Sinai Monasteries, Djordje Sp. Radojicic suggested that there must have been a Serbian Small Euchologion (trebnik, hagiasmatarion) with a synaxarion modelled in accordance with the typikon of the monastery of the Virgin Evergetis. Over the past several decades, attention has also been drawn to the presence of liturgical rules typical of the Evergetis Typikon in Serbian liturgical books (menaia and oktoechoi) from the late 13th and early 14th century, but no definitive answer has been given to the question whether the whole liturgical section of the Evergetis Typikon was translated at the time of Saint Sava (at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries) or it happened later. The character of the Evergetis synaxaria, which were on various occasions identified in two Sinaitic manuscripts though no mutual relationship between them was established, also remains unknown. This paper seeks to offer a partial answer to these questions, with the idea of encouraging new research that will provide as detailed picture as possible of liturgy in the Serbian Church in the 13th and 14th centuries.