Church Slavonic Translation Research Articles

The ideas of the 14th century’s book revision in the late Church Slavonic translations: Moscow bookmen of the second half of the 17th century between Church Slavonic and Polish traditions

The ideas of the 14th century’s book revision in the late Church Slavonic translations: Moscow bookmen of the second half of the 17th century between Church Slavonic and Polish traditions

The Donatio Constantini in Church Slavonic Translations of the 14–15th Centuries: toward the Problem of their Dating and Localization

The article studies two Slavic translations of the Donation of Constantine from the 14th and the 15th centuries in comparison with the Greek text (in some cases with the Latin original) in order to establish the time and place of their appearance. F. Thomson believed that the first Slavic translation was made in Serbia, and the second one in Bulgaria, but the study shows that both translations are of East Slavic origin. Both translations have a number of ideological inserts, on the basis of which it is possible to put forward assumptions about the goals of creating them. The first translation was probably made for Metropolitan Cyprian and served as an authoritative source to which the metropolitan could appeal in the matter of collecting church taxes in Moscow Russia. The second translation, in our opinion, could have been made in Southwestern Russia in a circle of scribes denying the Church Union of 1439.

Prijevod uraškog glagoljskog Novog testamenta i mogući utjecaji jezika istarskih hrvatskocrkvenoslavenskih kodeksa (na primjeru Drugog beramskog brevijara)

U Urachu kraj Tübingena je otisnuto protestantsko izdanje Novoga testamenta, na glagoljici (I. dio 1562. i II. dio 1563.). Poznato je da su u njegovu prevođenju sudjelovali Istranin Stipan Konzul i drugi istarski svećenici. Svi su oni dobro poznavali crkvenoslavenske kodekse nastale i upotrebljavane u središnjoj Istri, baš kao što su i Beramski brevijari. Iako je dobro poznato i već potvrđeno, da su protestanti napravili odlučan iskorak prema narodnom jeziku zanimat će nas ‒ na temelju konkretne usporedne analize ‒ u kolikoj je mjeri to doista i provedeno, odnosno koliko se u njima ipak odražava poznavanje crkvenoslavenskih prijevoda. Osim toga, ustanovljena je bliskost protestantskih prijevoda s latiničkim lekcionarima, pri čemu se utvrdila sličnost sa Zborovčićevim lekcionarom iz 1543. godine, otisnutim u Veneciji, a riječ je o drugom izdanju Lekcionara Bernardina Splićanina (1495.). Analiza je napravljena na tekstu Prve Epistole svetoga Pavla Korinćanima (1 Kor 11,20–33) koji se nalaze u Drugom beramskom brevijaru iz 15. stoljeća kao predstavniku srednjoistarskog kodeksa, te u Lekcionaru Bernardina Splićanina i u II. dijelu glagoljicom pisanog protestantskog izdanja Novoga testamenta. Usporedbom se dolazi do zaključka da čakavski, tj. hrvatski elementi prevladavaju u Novom testamentu, dok je udio crkvenoslavenskih elemenata u ovom dijelu teksta zanemariv.

Jeden z herezjarchów? Przedstawienia ikonograficzne Mahometa w rękopisie Рнб, f.IV.151 w kontekście staroruskich narracji na jego temat

The РНБ, F.IV.151 manuscript is the third volume of a richly illustrated his­toriographical compilation (so-called Лицевой летописный свод – Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible), which was prepared in one copy for tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in 1568-1576 and represents the development of the Russian state on the broad background of universal history. The aforementioned manuscript, which contains a description of the history of the Roman Empire and then the Byzantine Empire between the seventies of the 1st century A.D and 919, includes also an extensive sequence devoted to Muhammad (Ѡ Бохмите еретицѣ), derived from the Old Church Slavonic translation of the chronicle by George the Monk (Hamartolus). It is accompanied by two miniatures showing the representation of the founder of Islam. He was shown in an almost identical manner as the creators of earlier heterodox trends, such as Arius or Nestorius. These images therefore become a part of the tendency to perceive Muhammad as a heresiarch, a false pro­phet, and the religion he created as one of the heresies within Christianity, which is also typical of the Old Russian literature.

“Diatriba de Europaeorum linguis” by Joseph Justus Scaliger and the Church Slavonic Translation of the 17th century

The article contains a linguistic analysis of the Church Slavonic translation of a short fragment of one of the chapters from the Latin-language geographical atlas compiled by the Dutch cartographers Willem and Joan Blaeu in the first half of the 17th century. The fragment we’re interested in is the Diatriba de Europaeorum linguis (Diatribe on the Languages of the Europeans) by Joseph Justus Scaliger, written in 1599 and published in 1610. Joan and Willem Blaeu include the complete text in their chapter on Europe. The translation of the first part of the Atlas, which contained this chapter, was carried out by Epiphanius Slavinetsky in 1650s in Moscow, and is preserved in the author’s draft, as well as in the clean copy made by a Moscow scribe, both of which are located today in the State Historical Museum manuscript collection. The language of this translation provides a vivid example of the “scholarly” register of Church Slavonic, which was developing at the time, indeed, amongst Slavinetsky’s circle of companions. The article is mainly concerned with the lexical structure of the translation; creation of new words, expanding meanings of lexemes and use of rare Church Slavonic words are characteristic for the Atlas’ translation as a whole, and they have been found in the analysed fragment in particular. We are also inspecting some graphical and orthographic specifics of the translation, mainly the ways of interpreting personal names, which are fairly frequent in a geographical text. The article includes the full text of Scaliger’s Diatribe according to the 1645 edition of the Blaeu’s Atlas, with marked differences from the original edition of 1610, as well as Slavinetsky’s Church Slavonic translation according to the manuscript kept in the State Historical Museum (Moscow).

Utjecaj tekstova latinskih rimskih sakramentara na crkvenoslavensku rimsku liturgiju (9. – 14. stoljeće)

The liturgical texts of the Church Slavonic sacramentaries (Kiev Leaflets, Vienna Leaflets, Sinai missal Sin. Slav. 5N and others) from the early stages of the Slavic liturgy (9th to 14th century) with its textological and euchological content mostly belong to the Roman rite. These texts are euchological texts with proper liturgical function: texts are written and arranged for the celebration of the Mass and they are preserved in the liturgical book called sacramentary. The medieval Latin liturgical textological tradition is divided into two branches: Gelasian and Gregorian, which formed a unique textological tradition in parts of Northern Italy and Transalpine countries (from Aquileia to Salzburg) establishing a new textological tradition known as the »Gelasianized-Gregorian Sacramentary«, which was used in the mentioned parts of Central Europe. Based on the research of the history of Old Church Slavonic liturgy and historical and comparative analysis of Latin and Church Slavonic texts, mostly conducted for the doctoral thesis entitled Historical and liturgical peculiarities of the early stages of the Slavonic liturgy, this study presents influences of Latin liturgical textological tradition from Central Europe on the oldest Church Slavonic translations of sacramentaries from 9th to 14th century and other liturgical texts, mainly euchological, which continued to exist in the Croatian Glagolitic tradition even after the liturgical reform at the end of the 13th century.

Textology of Early Printed Cyrillic Tetraevangelions in Middle Bulgarian and Serbian Recensions and their Relation to the Manuscript Tradition (Gospel of Mark, Pericopes 1–9)

Of about 120 early printed liturgical Tetraevangelions only nine Church Slavonic tetras of the Middle Bulgarian recension, and three of the Serbian recensions, have survived. All of them were printed in the 16th century. Textual analysis of the Gospel of Mark (zachalas 1–9) demonstrates differences between the text of East Slavonic Tetraevangelions and others, i.e. Middle Bulgarian and Serbian ones. Comparing them with the manuscript material proves that, from the textual point of view, eleven Tetraevangelions of Middle Bulgarian and Serbian recensions are in a close relation to the first edition of the Church Slavonic translation of the Gospel text. This is particularly noticeable in the later Middle Bulgarian tetras printed from 1560 to 1582. The early Middle Bulgarian (issued from 1512 to 1553) and all Serbian Tetraevangelions share textual variants that can be attributed to the Commentary on the Gospels by Theophylact of Ohrid.

Theodosius “the Greek”, Kliment Smoliatich, and the Unnamed Patriarch

The article addresses the issue of dating a Church Slavonic translation from Greek of Pope Leo the Great’s Tome to Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople (449), confirmed by the Fourth Ecumenical Council as an essential document of dogma (451). So far the translation has been dated as widely as the 12th century. The existing interpretations were mainly concerned with the biography of the translator, a monk Theodosius, who lived in the Kievan Rus' in the 12th century and is thought to have been an abbot of the Kievan Caves monastery (A. Shakhmatov’s version) or a cleric under the metropolitan (E. Golubinski’s version). Dwelling on the second of these suggestions, and adding his own hypothesis that Theodosius was educated in Byzantium, at the Orphanotropheion of St. Paul, the author of the article goes on to elucidate an obscure passage in Theodosius’s introduction to the Slavic translation of the Tome with a mention of an unnamed patriarch and to further hypothesize about the date of the translation: supposedly the translation activities took place at the time when Kliment Smoliatich was the nominal head of the Kievan metropoly and thus can be dated between September 1149 and April 1151. The final part of the article addresses the issue from a different perspective, discussing Theodosius’s introduction in the context of Old Slavonic hymnography. It interprets the phrase about the unnamed ʽPatriarch’ in the view of the Slavonic text of a church service devoted to Pope Leo and held in monasteries, thus producing a more exact date for the translation, February 18, 1151.

Первый русский перевод книг Ветхого Завета с древнееврейского языка

This paper proposes new data to the study of Russian Bible translations history. It introduces to the manuscript which is called Opyt perevoda tochnago vethosvyaschennyh knig iz podlinnago evreyskogo na rossiyskiy, po evreyskomu perevodu kak oni samy perevodyat, s prilozheniem nekotoryh ih iz’yasneniy uchinen namestnikom iereem Mikhailom Fotinskim 1806 goda and is kept in the Russian State Library. It is commonly supposed the first Russian Old Testament Translation was made by Gerasim Pavskij during the work of Russian Bible Society. But Fotinskij’s translation is earlier one. This translation hasn’t been described, studied and published before. In the article main peculiarities of the translation are described. It is the new-type translation which breaks off with the tradition of Church Slavonic translations. The purpose of the translation is interpretation of Judaic exegesis, and the method is literal. Additionally, translator’s stylistic conception is examined. The language of the translation is characterized as a variant of the Russian language by XVIII–XIX centuries with archaic, vernacular and Ukrainian elements.

“The Word for Mercy” in the Church Slavonic Translation of the Second Half of the 17th Century and Its Polish Original: Realia Interpretation

“The Word for Mercy” was considered to be an original essay, written by Epiphanius Slavinetsky or Euthymius Chudovsky. In fact, it is a translation of Piotr Skarga’s cognominal sermon. The Church Slavonic translation is an example of the so-called inter-confessional rendering of the Polish original that shows its adaptation to the Orthodox tradition and to Russian historical and cultural specificity. The present paper analyses the problems of realia interpretation in the Church Slavonic translation of the Polish source. A distinctive feature of the translation is the elimination of specific signs of the Polish origin of the text. The translator pretends that a translated text is an original composition. To achieve this goal, he changes or omits the names of the Western saints. As markers indicating its place within the Byzantine tradition, he uses Greek lexical borrowings. Making a choice between lexical equivalents for transmission of the foreign realia, the translator probably uses multilingual lexicons such as the Thesaurus Polono-Latino-Graecus by Grzegorz Knapiusz and the Trilingual Lexicon by Epiphanius Slavinetsky. Very similar methods characterize the works of Simeon of Polotsk. Thus, it was not only the practice of the Chudov Monastery bookmen, but also Muscovite prevailing practice. “The Word for Mercy” is a unique example of adaptation of the Western ideas of state charity to the Russian situation in the second half of the 17th century. The ideological changes in the translation give this sermon features of the socio-legal project that is the hallmark of Early Modern times.

An Old Church Slavonic Tale about a Sinful Mother (Sinodik, Patericon, Synaxarion, Izmaragd) and Its Greek Original (BHG 1449d)

The paper aims to identify the Greek original of an Old Church Slavonic tale included in the Old Russian Sinodik and known in manuscript copies from the 16th c. Previously, the tale was provisionally ascribed to the Latin tradition and thought to have reached the Old Russian literature via a Polish milieu. Recent attempts to identify its Greek original remained unsuccessful. The author argues that the tale is an Old Church Slavonic translation of the Byzantine text BHG 1449d, a spiritually beneficial writing ascribed to Paul of Monemvasia (second half of the 10th c.). The same translation is presented in East Slavonic manuscript copies of the Patericon, the Plain and Versed Synaxarion, and the Izmaragd. The earliest of the newly identified manuscript copies is dated to the first half of the 15th c. The article also contains an edition of the Old Church Slavonic translation (according to the manuscript copy in Moscow, Russian State Library, Collection of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, No. 701, Patericon, 1469) in parallel with the Greek original according to the scholarly edition of the manuscript version contained in a Greek codex of the 14th c. (ca 1330).

Lexicographic Miniatures: Research Notes on Russian and Church Slavonic Historical Lexicography

One of the most crucial problems in the historical lexicography of the Russian language is that lexicographers are regularly faced with texts and sources which often have neither been properly published, if at all, nor properly commented on from linguistic, philological, and historical points of view. The first part of these research notes shows that a Greek source of one of the liturgical chants dedicated to SS. Constantine and Helene has been erroneously identified in the Index of the Incipita of Old East Slavonic liturgical chants; this made it possible to assume textual corruption in the Slavonic translation and prevented scholars from establishing a correct understanding of the hapax legomenon tresadovnyj, which actually means ‘made of three species of wood’ (about the Holy Cross made of the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box, according to Christian exegesis of Is 60:13). In the second part of these research notes, the edition and lexicographic interpretation of one passage from the Church Slavonic translation of the Homilies by Gregory the Dialogist have been critically reconsidered. Editorial mistakes and a lack of commentary has made it impossible to understand and to explain adequately the phrase krotostʹ na tjažestʹ obratiti lit. ‘to transmute modesty into gravity.’ This phrase is important to exemplify the rare meaning of the Church Slavonic word tjažestʹ (lit. heaviness, gravity) ‘dignity,’ which is lexicographically recorded in this meaning only in a few translated texts, and attests a semantic calque. While the Slavonic translation of this passage is erroneous, its edition and lexicographic interpretation are corrupted and inadequate, so that on the basis of the edition and of the available dictionaries one could not understand that the phrase krotostʹ na tjažestʹ obratiti (‘to transmute modesty into gravity’) actually means ‘to renounce light-mindedness and to return to (proper) dignity.’ In the third part of the article, the lexical meaning of the words tščetina, tščetinnyj is analyzed. The final part is dedicated to the critical analysis of some erroneous editorial decisions made by scholars, who ignored the Greek origin of translated texts.

Преславизмы в апокрифических Вопросах апостола "Варфоломея"

Paper deals with the lexical analysis of the Old Church Slavonic version of the Apocryphal Questions of Bartholomew, a literary monument written most likely in Greek in the 3rd century. The analysis shows that the Slavonic version contains not only lexical elements typical for the Preslav redaction, but also some archaic figures. This leads to the conclusion, that the primal Old Church Slavonic translation may be made in Bulgaria in the 10th century. There are two possibilities of a more exact dating. The text may have been translated in the early 10th century when the lexical elements of the Preslav redaction weren’t strictly used yet and still there occurred many archaic figures. The second possibility is that the translation was made later in the 10th century in one of the distant centers of the Preslav literary school, in which a specific tradition in using Preslav and archaic lexical elements was held. However, a further lexical and language analysis is needed for the confirmation of the stated dating.

Medieval Churches in Shushica Valley (South Albania) and the Slavonic Bishopric of St. Clement of Ohrid

There were numerous Slavic settlements in South Albania (including the valley of Shushica River) at the end of the 1st millennium. In the second half of the 9th c. a significant part of this region was conquered by the 1st Bulgarian Kingdom, and after 870 there were established ecclesiastical dioceses which became part of the church organization of the Kingdom. Slavonic ecclesiastical schools were established in that region as well, after 886 in the context of the so-called “Slavonic project” of the Bulgarian prince, Boris. St. Clement took an active part in this project. It was South Albania where the first Slavonic bishopric in Southeast Europe was founded, in 893, when St. Clement was appointed bishop. His bishopric was organized according ethnic principle, so that St. Clement was called “the bishop of Slavonic people.” The center of Clement’s bishopric was in Velica, which is related to the modern settlement Velçë in the Shushica valley. There are ruins of a cross-in-square church with a narthex in the Asomat region, which is located near Velica. The church was built at the end of the 9th‒beginning of the 10th cc. and dedicated to the Archangel Michael. The plan of this church is identical with that of the so-called “pronaos” of the church built by St. Clement in his Ohrid monastery. In St. Clement’s bishopric Church Slavonic was used as a liturgical language. For that purpose, a set of Byzantine liturgical books was translated from Greek into Church Slavonic, and Clement took an active part in this process. Liturgical pecularities of these books partially observed in Greek manuscripts of South Italian provenance testify to the hypothesis that Greek sources of the earliest Church Slavonic translations belonged to liturgical tradition of Epirus, similar to those of South Italy. This also proves the location of St. Clement’s bishopric in the valley of the Shushica River.

The Novgorod Antiphonal Psalters: Their Orthographical Peculiarities and Textological Significance

The thirteenth-century Novgorod antiphonal psalters were written for liturgical use by two choirs or readers in alternation; consequently each of them contains an incomplete version of the psalms, and they complement each other only in part. Nevertheless, they are of interest both in relation to the development of Church Slavonic norms of orthography and orthoepy as well as from a textological standpoint. In one of them, the older of the two, the infiltration of dialect pronunciation into the Novgorod variety of Church Slavonic can be detected (a list of the various different examples of cokan′e in this manuscript is provided in the appendix). On the basis of an analysis of the variant readings found in both manuscripts or attested in either of the two sources, it is demonstrated that they belong to Redaction II of the Church Slavonic translation of the psalms, and that they are important witnesses to the dissemination of this redaction among the East Slavs up to the end of the thirteenth century.

The Martyrdom of Polycarp in Church Slavonic: An Evidence of the Academic Menologion

Abstract This contribution deals with a significant gap in the studia Polycarpiana. It focuses, in particular, on a Church Slavonic translation of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, one of the earliest of Christian martyria. This versional evidence has not been published until now and, consequently, not taken into account by any of the previous editions of the Martyrdom. The present article offers a collation and a detailed analysis of the earliest available copy of the translation. Eventually it shows that the Slavonic version may provide an independent (from the extant Greek manuscripts) testimony to the text of the Martyrdom and as such is of significant text-critical value.

“An Early Church Slavonic Translation of the Martyrdom of St Polycarp”: Three Decades Later

Le présent article s’attache à la traduction en vieux-slave du Martyre de Polycarpe. Cette version demeure quasiment inconnue de la communauté scientifique, en partie à cause de l’accessibilité restreinte des manuscrits qui la contiennent mais aussi en raison du manque de connaissance du vieux-slave. Prenant pour point de départ une courte note publiée sur ce sujet en 1979, l’article rectifie d’abord plusieurs erreurs qui s’étaient glissées dans cette contribution, par ailleurs très utile. Il considère ensuite un manuscrit en slavon, resté inaccessible aux auteurs de la note en question. Enfin, il met en lumière la valeur textuelle de cette version en vieux-slave, qui s’avère indépendante des manuscrits grecs disponibles du Martyre de Polycarpe (BHG 1556-1560, 1560a, 1560b, 1560c).

The Slavic Adventures of Greek Kohath: On the Origin of the Title of the Old Russian Book of Kaaf

The article deals with the origin of the title of the Slavonic-Russian Book of Kaaf which has been still attributed to a hazy Hebrew source. In fact, the name of the second son of Levi, Kohath (קהת), appeared in the title absolutely accidentally, and the title came from from the Greek gloss Καὰθ ἐκκλησιαστής included in the explanatory onomasticons of Biblical names. This gloss is, perhaps, connected with the corresponding passage in the Testament of Levi from the apocryphal Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Moreover, the article contains comparative data of the spelling of Kohath’s name in Church Slavonic translations of the Pentateuch and in the Palaea Interpretata, in the latter not only in the Testament of Levi, but also in its main text. The adventures of the word Кааѳъ / Каафъ in medieval Russian writing turn out to be entirely literary, and not connected with any hypothetical verbal tradition, which might have proved to have been a tempting explanation for this word.

Le manuscrit grec Coislin. 305 : la version primitive de la Chronique de Georges le Moine

La question de l'antériorité entre les deux versions principales de la Chronique de Georges le Moine peut être examinée à nouveaux frais si l'on prend en considération les faits suivants : 1). la traduction vieux-slavonne de ce texte (Letovnik) est faite à partir d'un manuscrit grec de cette version, dont le texte est meilleur que celui des manuscrits grecs P (Coislinianus 305) et Q ; il en résulte que beaucoup d'erreurs de P doivent être considérées comme des fautes de copie ; 2). P comprend des citations plus développées que celles de la vulgata, provenant de sources particulièrement rares, comme la Vie de S. Nicétas de Médikion dans sa forme complète (celle-ci n'ayant pas été conservée en grec) ; 3) des passages (au moins cinq) de la vulgata qui font tous défaut à P pouvant être identifiés comme des emprunts (ou des allusions) à la version originale de la Lettre des trois patriarches d'Orient à l'empereur Théophile. Ces faits permettent de réfuter les arguments anciens avancés en faveur de l'antériorité de la vulgata, ou, en tout cas, confirment directement l'antériorité da la version comprise dans P. Ainsi, l'état primitif de la Chronique de Georges le Moine, de toute probabilité rédigé en 846/847, est représenté par ce manuscrit et, aussi, par la traduction vieux-slavonne (Letovnik), alors que la vulgata est le fruit d'une révision datant du dernier quart du 9e siècle.

Формы имперфекта в Ассеманиевом евангелии

The paper claims that in Old Church Slavonic documents imperfect forms undergo processes of transfer and congruence, their full forms being ousted by shortened forms of the imperfect. The history of imperfect forms is well reflected in the Codex Supra­sliensis on the one hand, and Savvina Kniga on the other. Classical documents and material from the Codex Assemanianus are studied insufficiently regarding shortened and full imperfect forms. The present paper intends to examine the correlation of shortened and full imperfect forms as well as to reveal the morphological peculiarities of the imperfect in the Codex Assemanianus with respect to the significance of this document in the history of Old Church Slavonic gospel translations.