Clement Of Ohrid Research Articles

THE SERMON AND MODERN GENRE CLASSIFICATION

The sermon is defined as a "genre of oratorical prose: a didactic work that contains ethical demands and prompts the listener to an emotional perception of those demands". In the literary room encyclopedia has not been given much attention until now, and the interest in it can even be named as limited. It occurs only within general rhetoric, history, theology, and philosophy. The area functional variety of language includes the sphere of religion, where the sermon also belongs. Here, in this paper, we try to systematize the observations related to the genre classification of the sermon. Concerning the sermon, as one of the most significant genres in the area of the sacred, special attention deserves consideration and analysis of its specific communicative properties. The questions in this sphere refer to its realization in oral form, the referral to a collective addressee, the asymmetry between the communicants (absolute dominance of the preacher over the recipients), strong presence of intertextuality and linguistic features, among which the interaction of archaic and modern language units on the lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactic level. The textological peculiarities of the sermon remain the focus of one of the following scientific - research activities, which on the other hand enables a functional analysis of the medieval literary texts (the praise epistle of St. Clement of Ohrid, for example).

“Bible in Translation”: Bulgarian Narrative About St. Clement of Ohrid in the Interwar Period and the Transfer of Modern Ideas

The paper raises the question of the role of Biblical tradition in the transfer and adaptation of modern ideas in cultures rooted in Eastern-Orthodox tradition. The subject of reflection is the narrative about St. Clement of Ohrid, the most famous disciple of SS. Cyril and Methodius, and its various literary paraphrases during the interwar period in Bulgaria, in the context of modernist reading of the Bible, as well as the ambivalent experience of secularization among the local intellectual elites.

DEMETRIOS CHOMATIANOS’ ACCOUNTS OF THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF BULGARIANS AND THE POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THREE TOPONYMS FROM THE BULGARIAN NORTHERN BLACK SEA COAST

This article examines one of the latest and most controversial pieces of information about the origin of the Bulgars . In our attempt to establish its historical credibility, we compared the most important Greek and Old Bulgarian copies of St. Clement of Ohrid’s Life, and suggested a date and possible ideological motives behind the creation of so-called „Moesian legend”. Special attention is paid to the coincidence between the names of the modern Bulgarian cities and towns of Varna, Kavarna and Shabla and the toponyms registered in the Hittite inventory inscriptions of the 2nd millennium BCE.

On Colloquial Phenomena in the Language of the Monument of Church Slavonic Writing of the 15th Century (Based on the Material of the Torment of Paraskeva Friday)

The author’s earlier linguistic and textual analysis of collections containing readings on particularly revered memorable dates and the lives of the most revered saints revealed the manuscript Festal Menaion and Chrysostom from the collection of Tikhonravov No. 185 (from the collection of the Russian State Library) as containing unique information about the Church Slavonic language of the 15th century. This time, as traditionally considered, is a clear indicator of the second South Slavic influence, but evidence of this influence (according to the collection) was not in the Word on the Council of the archangel Michael and Gabriel, the author of which was Clement of Ohrid. There were obvious colloquial elements, but the colloquial (common) facts of the Russian language are especially clearly recorded in another monument of this collection – in the Torment of Paraskeva Friday. In this article, this text is analyzed in comparison with the texts presented in the Great Menaion Reader of the SVT. St. Demetrius of Rostov and in the collection of the 15th century from the Collection of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.
 The author defines the broad and narrow contexts of the study. The first is connected with the Church Slavonic problems (language, writing), the second with the 15th century, the time when the so-called ‘second South Slavic influence’ was fully manifested. Church Slavonic itself is not a scientific term, although it emerged from a scientific tradition. We can define what the Russian language is by referring to ethnic and geographical boundaries, cultural and spiritual traditions, historical certainty, and keeping in mind, which is very important for the language, its ‘functional side’. It is impossible to evaluate the Church Slavonic language from these positions. Russian is a language that has developed different principles of development, and in relation to the Russian language, the Church Slavonic language appears to be as much an independent unit (a separate scientific ‘subject’) as the dialect language, which was the subject of lively discussions in its time, or the Russian spoken language, which occupies a strong position in the niche of the Russian language to this day.
 The Church Slavonic language is ultimately the desired object of Slavistic research, and the way to determine its structure and functional status lies through the analysis of specific written sources. The conclusions about the ‘colloquial’ (‘simple’, perhaps common) Church Slavonic language of the Torment of Paraskeva Friday according to the list of Thn-185 are quite obvious, the language of the monument according to this list destroys the myth of the so-called ‘second South Slavic influence’.
 The analysis allows us to take a new look at what we call the Church Slavonic language, to understand that the Church Slavonic language is still an unidentified linguistic object, rather than a philological one, because this language cannot be separated from the text. The text is the environment in which it exists. Linguistics has adopted the tools of linguistic analysis, which since ancient times served philological purposes, it is already presented in the ΤνΝη γραμματική of Dionysius of Thrace, but it did not serve to describe and understand language as such, the main task of grammatics was considered to be the evaluation of the work, “what is the best of all that grammar does”. This helps in the qualification of what is written in the Church Slavonic language: it should not only contain the traditional forms and vocabulary of this language (also with the traditional permissibility of innovations), but also have a functional correlation, correspond to the sphere of existence of Church Slavonic texts.

Монастырская архитектура эпохи святых Наума и Климента Охридских в контексте храмового зодчества Первого Болгарского царства и архитектурных традиций византийских провинций IX–XI веков

Монастырская архитектура эпохи святых Наума и Климента Охридских в контексте храмового зодчества Первого Болгарского царства и архитектурных традиций византийских провинций IX–XI веков

THE INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN BULGARIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The following publication is based on a research project in support of doctoral students whose topic is: Education in children organisations in Bulgaria (1944-1990) presented through sources’’, funded by the state budget of the University of Sofia ‘’St. Clement of Ohrid’’and functioning as scientific research.This research is historical,pedagogical and scientific and it aims to reconstruct the basic trends in the development of children’s intellectual education in Bulgaria in the second half of XX century by means of historical sources. Its chronology spans half a century and includes one entire period of Bulgaria’s latest history. The key motive of the research is the absence of a new non-ideologised and objective scrutiny of the educational development of children within this period,including intellectual education as one of its types. This is only possible if based on a comprehensive source-centered research which is the actual sort of this project that has systematised sources from the Central State Archive, the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Bulgarian Historical Archive of the ''St. St. Cyril and Methodius'' National Library and the periodical press.Retrospectively, the publication presents the essential specifics, the content and the manifestation forms of intellectual education of children within the period of state democracy (1944-1947); the imposing of totalitarism and its development, called ‘’Todor Zhivkov’s power (zhivkovism in Bulgarian);the first decade of post-totalitarian development of Bulgaria, also known as Democratic transition. Considering the specific social situation in the country and the form of power, we put highlight on the organised school and extra-curricular intellectual education. The extracted positive practices and methods of intellectual education,existing in various extra-curricular forms, are a valuable historical capital for contemporary structures for informal education of children.The conclusions in this aspect are logically drawn from a historical view of the relation between the social situation in Bulgaria and the organised education of children – school or extra-curricular education, as well as from historically grounded place, role and importance of intellectual education prior to other kinds of education - patriotic, international, aesthetic, moral, physical and labour education.The definition of „child“ is explained by a normative order existed back then in the researched period.

ETHICS IN TEACHING

A teacher, an educator, a professor, an instructor is a noble profession. The twenty-first century has its own challenges, demands and needs to be tackled. Medieval literature and the beginnings of Slavic literacy in Macedonia are the aspects we are addressing. How to adjust the distant ninth century to today's modern times in a versatile way, interesting to students? How to conduct an exegesis of St. Clement's teachings, the hymnographical verses of St. Naum of Ohrid, the lives of a great many Saints? These are the challenges of the medievalists in the course of studies related to such programme contents. Medieval literature is for the most part theological, excepting the apocryphal literature which is non-canonical. Can the biblical phrase "Be perfect" be perceived in the modern living, and what aspects of interpretation can there be? Does perfection exist, or is there only the feat, the struggle for one's constant self-improvement and advancement towards ontological values? Sophists asked questions such as: Who am I?; Why am I?; What is the meaning of my existence? Existentialists further deepened these questions. We, once again, in the modern age, ask these eternal questions. How to convey the moral aspects of St. Clement of Ohrid in contemporary teaching? How to explain the eternally current issues related to ethics and the code of living in times of "lack" of ethics or its reduction? In St. Clement's didactic teachings, the ethical aspect is not only theological, but universal. In fact, St. Clement of Ohrid, as well as the most prominent educators and their teachers St. Cyril and St. Methodius of Thessaloniki, are cosmopolitan figures. Their aspects are universal codes of life directed towards continuous learning, progress and the light of human existence. Permanent personal growth is a lifelong process in which ethics is at the forefront, along with the remaining contemporary ethical norms of living. Learning ennobles the human personality. Enlightenment in Slavic literature proved that knowledge is the most powerful weapon of mankind.

A New Bibliographic Contribution. [Neli Gančeva. St. Clement of Ohrid

This is a review of the most recent bibliography on St. Clement of Ohrid, which was prepared by Neli Gancheva, a philologist and bibliographer at the Cyrillo-Methodian Research Centre of the Bulgarian Academy of Science. This study, dedicated to the 1100 anniversary of St. Clement’s dormition, is a continuation of the previous Cyrillo-Methodian bibliographies (1934; 1942; 1980; 1983; 2003; 2010) and bibliographies on St. Clement (1966; 1980). It reflects 1302 publications of the last 35 years in the Bulgarian and foreign scholarship as well as popular papers and artistic works (both fine arts and music are included here as well); folklore texts about St. Clement and thescholarly research on the folklore material. In summary, the bibliographic work by Neli Gancheva comes on time, brings contributions and is extremely useful.

12 тези за разбирање на светиклиментовата етика

12 тези за разбирање на светиклиментовата етика

Interactions of language and culture in the Slavic space: the ethnolinguistic aspect

The author reviews a new book on Slavic ethnolinguistics. The book was published by Slovak and Bulgarian scholars based on the results of the “Language and Culture in Slavic Contexts. Clement of Ohrid and his Contribution to the Slavic and European Culture (on the occasion of his 1100th Death Anniversary)” conference, held in Bratislava on October 5–7, 2016. The book is a part of the research project “State and Prospects of Ethnolinguistic Research in Slovakia”.

SV. KLIMENT OCHRIDSKÝ A JEHO PÔSOBENIE V MACEDÓNSKU

SV. KLIMENT OCHRIDSKÝ A JEHO PÔSOBENIE V MACEDÓNSKU

About some lexical characteristics in the philosophy of Saint Clement of Ohrid

About some lexical characteristics in the philosophy of Saint Clement of Ohrid

The Archaeological Evidence of St. Clement of Ohrid’s Activities in the Ohrid Region

Among the activities of St. Clement of Ohrid was the construction of the church and monastery in Ohrid, which was carried out at the end of the 9th century at the location where some Byzantine basilicas had stood previously. As findings of archaeological excavations have shown, St. Clement first built a small triconch church at the location of the ruined basilica. This triconchos was later expanded by the addition of a capacious “pronaos” in inscribed-cross form, where St. Clement was interred. This “pronaos” was characterized by entrances on the north and south sides that were identical to those of the inscribed-cross church that existed near the village of Velcë along the Šušica River (in southern Albania) at the turn of the 9th‒10th century. During the tenure of Archbishop Dmitrios Chomatianos (1216–1236), the “pronaos” was replaced with a new church into which the relics of St. Clement were placed. In the Ottoman period, the Church and Monastery of St. Clement were disassembled to build a mosque. At the very beginning of the 10th century, the triconchal church in the Monastery of St. Clement served as a model for the church in the Monastery of St. Naum, in the southern part of the Ohrid lake area. The groundwork(s) of a further church in a triconchal shape, whose construction can be traced back to the time of St. Clement, has also been discovered at Gorica, near Ohrid. Ruins of yet another triconchal church which also belongs to the period under review can be found near the village of Zlesti, in the Dolna Debarca region, not far from Ohrid. In the vicinity of the village of Izdeglavje, in the Gorna Debarca region, there is also a church whose establishment is related to the activity of St. Clement of Ohrid as well.

Territorial Dioceses and Ethnic Episcopies in the Structure of the Church Organization of the First Bulgarian Kingdom (Canonical Aspects)

The coexistence of ethnic and territorial principles in the structure of ecclesiastical organizations is a well known fact in church history. Both principles are equally legitimate from the point of view of canonical law. The “ethnic principle” was based on legal norms of the so-called 34th Apostolic Rule, and contrary to the opinion of scholars of the 19th century, it was still in use after the era of the Ecumenical Councils. This fact must be considered by students of the history of Church organizations in the First Bulgarian Kingdom, too. The observations regarding the structure of church organizations in Simeonic Bulgaria make it possible to assume the coexistence of ethnic and territorial principles of church organizations in his kingdom. As is known, Slavonic church schools were established in the southwestern part of the First Bulgarian Kingdom after 886. They were aimed at training the Slavonic clergy for the Slavonic church organization. In 893, the Bulgarian King Simeon was elevated to the throne, and a Slavonic eparchy headed by St. Clement of Ohrid was established in the southwestern territories of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. As a result, heterogeneous church organizations were established in the region, and church structures of ethnic and territorial types appeared. They differ from each other by the language of their church services. Old Church Slavonic must have been used as a liturgical language in the ethnic Slavonic eparchy. Since direct historical evidence for such heterogeneous church structure in the First Bulgarian Kingdom is absent, new interpretations of sources made on the basis of canonical law can be of importance for Slavonic studies.

The Slavic Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite and the Corpus of Slavic Liturgical Books at the End of the 9th and the Beginning of the 10th Centuries

Recent scholarship on the historical development of the Slavic liturgy in its early stage has shown that one of the important prerequisites for its practical implementation was the establishment, under the guidance of a bishop, of a church organization which was entitled to use Church Slavonic as a liturgical language. Research has also demonstrated that the methodological approach linking the history of the Slavic liturgical texts with the development of the Slavic ecclesiastical structures administered by bishops offers valuable insights. The first Slavic corpus of liturgical books of Byzantine rites (the so-called Corpus of Clement, CC) came into being in the Slavic ethnic eparchy and then in the Slavic territorial dioceses which were to be integrated into the church organization of the First Bulgarian Empire. The core part of the CC, to which the complex of original Slavic hymnographic writings belongs, was created in the years between 893 and 916 in the Slavic ethnic eparchy of St. Clement of Ohrid in the western part of the First Bulgarian Empire (in the region of southern Albania, northwestern Greece, and southwestern Macedonia). The supplementary part of the CC, which contains the complex of the word-by-word translations of hymnographic writings, originated in the mid-10th century in Slavic territorial dioceses located at that time in the western part of the First Bulgarian Empire. This two-stage formation of the CC was due to the two-stage development of the Slavic church organizations, and it was thus neither linguistic nor literary in nature. Having special features characteristic of the western Byzantine liturgy, the CC differed from both its preceding and subsequent corpora of Slavic liturgical books in its liturgical, textological, and linguistic character. Every subsequent corpus of Slavic liturgical texts, however, built upon the preceding one, and this ensured the continuity of the Slavic liturgical and, consequently, linguistic tradition as a whole.

On the Theotokia in the Canon for St. Wenceslas

The present paper reports on the first results from the investigation of the Church Slavonic canon composed for the Czech saint Wenceslas (Václav, Viacheslav) and preserved in East Slavic manuscripts from the end of the 11th century. Particular attention has been given to the analysis of the Marian hymns (theotokia), whose Greek originals could be detected in all cases but one (the first ode). The Slavonic translation has been thoroughly compared with its Greek original and with other versions taken from different canons. Following the critical edition of each single Slavonic text, a synoptic interlinear version is provided, which allows the immediate identification of common readings, errors, and omissions. The theotokia contained in the canon for Wenceslas show interesting similarities with the textual tradition documented in the Oktoechos and the Common of Saints, the latter being usually associated with Clement of Ohrid; a possible explanation of this fact could be that these texts were not newly translated from Greek, but taken from already existing hymnographic sources. Undoubtedly, much deeper analysis is required in order to disentangle the textual history of these texts; the collected material aims to provide a good starting point for further investigations.

The Primary Slavic Complex of Liturgical Books of the Byzantine Rite (“Clement’s corpus”) and the Formation of the Macedonian Redaction of Church Slavonic

The article elaborates on the basic linguistic features of the Macedonian redaction manuscripts. A survey of the characteristics is presented on different levels: orthographical, phonological, morphological, lexical, and the level of word formation. Linguistic features of these texts can contribute to their more precise localization, indicating that the manuscripts analyzed here are related to the wide zone of southern and western Macedonian dialects, a wider area in which the activities of the Ohrid Literary School took place. The lexicon of the manuscripts, especially the Greek loanwords present, leads to the conclusion that the place of their formation is a Slavic-Greek contact zone. Part of this paper is dedicated to the comparison of rare lexicon and productive word formation models present in a group of Church Slavonic manuscripts of Russian redaction. The comparative analysis of the lexicon and word formation models can help in establishing the corpus of books of the Byzantine rite that were created in the period of activity of Cyrillo-Methodian disciples, under the leadership of Clement of Ohrid. It is obvious that part of that corpus was the main liturgical book, the Gospel, and some previous works have verified that the Menaion was also translated in this literary center. Based on the analysis made in this work, it can be noted that the same rare lexicon and word formation models, in many cases verified in the hymnographic works of Clement of Ohrid, characterize the Apostle, Psalter with commentary, Triodion, Euchologium, and Prophetologion, leading to the conclusion that all these books were part of Clement’s corpus.

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.

Playing at peace: Western politics, diplomacy and the stabilization of Macedonia

On 27 July 2001 negotiators of the ethnic Slav and ethnic Albanian political parties from the self‐proclaimed unity government of the Federal Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) met at Ohrid, a lakeside resort in the southwestern corner of the war‐torn country. The negotiators had fled Skopje, the country's starved, gray capital, because the pressures from the spreading war between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the dominantly ethnic Slav security forces had made constructive political dialogue nearly impossible. Ohrid, on the other hand, was a community that embraced many of the region's historical contradictions. The town had seen Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Ottomans, Serbs, Greeks and Albanians all come and go. Saint Clement of Ohrid (d. 916) had once lived and worshipped in the city, and much of the architecture, with its winding streets and numerous churches and monasteries, still bore the marks of its medieval and diverse past. All parties arrived in this contemplative setting under intense diplomatic pressure from the European Union (EU), the United States (US), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to find a constitutional and political solution to the crisis, and find one soon. As all parties sat down to thrash out a compromise, a senior EU mediator was heard to remark: ‘This country doesn't need mediators, it needs a psychoanalyst.”

Frescoes in the Virgin Peribleptos Church referring to the origins of the archbishopric of Ohrid

Frescoes in the Virgin Peribleptos Church referring to the origins of the archbishopric of Ohrid