SEER, Vol. 86,No. 4, October 2008 BIBLIOGRAPHY Undescribed Cyrillic Manuscripts in Britain RALPH CLEMINSON When the union catalogue of Cyrillic manuscripts in the British Isles was published, itwas stated in the introduction that the publica tion of supplementary descriptions of material not included was envisaged.1 Now, twenty years after the appearance of the catalogue, it is an appropriate moment to publish descriptions of the ten items which have come to light over this period. These are all items which, although already in England at the end of the 1970s, were for one reason or another not revealed by the survey of collections made at that time in preparation for the catalogue. Although a considerable amount of other Slavonic manuscript material has passed through this country since then, notably at the Fekula sale at Sotheby's in 1990, it does not appear that any of ithas found a permanent home here; and indeed, in the present state of themarket, Russian antiquities sold in theWest tend to return to their homeland. Of the ten items here described, seven are Cyrillic manuscript codices, one is a Romanian Cyrillic charter, and two are Greek manuscripts with Slavonic inscriptions. They range in date from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and in origin from Russia to South-East Europe. Probably themost important of them isAdd. MS 61747 in the British Library, a fifteenth-century Apostolos lectionary written in north-west Russia, which apparently contains a second redaction text throughout ? the only such manuscript so far recorded in a collection outside Russia.2 It is thus a very significant witness for the text of the Slavonic Bible. There are four other manuscripts of East Slavonic provenance, of which one, the Snowshill Heirmologion, is a musical manuscript which uses the stave notation usual in theUkraine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Two others evidently orig inated inOld Believer communities, and thus although comparatively recent continue mediaeval practice. Ralph Cleminson is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Portsmouth. 1 Ralph Cleminson, A Union Catalogue of CyrillicManuscripts inBritish and Irish Collections, London, 1988, p. x. 2 The Maticin Apostol in Novi Sad has a text which alternates between the first and second redactions. In general, the second redaction of the Apostolos is very uncommon in comparison with the first and fourth. 686 UNDESCRIBED CYRILLIC MANUSCRIPTS IN BRITAIN Outstanding in another respect is the Illyrian Armorial held by the Society ofAntiquaries. This manuscript belongs to a very different tradition from the others, dealing as it does with Central European heraldry, and while it contains little text, does have 153 full-page full-colour illustrations of coats of arms. The two Greek manuscripts both have an Epirot origin, and are connected in particular with the city of Berat inmodern Albania. They are interesting forwhat they suggest about Greek-Slavonic bilingualism in this area at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. Both Berat and Siderokastro, the home town of the scribe of British Library Add. MS 37008, had lain within the borders of Stefan Dusan's empire, and though neither had been under Serbian rule for a generation by the time of these inscriptions, the persistence of a Serbian population and written tradition is quite probable. Such diversity within a relatively small group ofmanuscripts is typi cal of the Cyrillic manuscripts in the British Isles; the addition of these ten to those already described can only add to the importance of the holdings here, as some of themost extensive and significant outside the manuscripts' countries of origin. 205. London, British Library Add. MS 61747 Acts and Epistles, Russian, 15th century (last quarter) Paper: Watermark: Gothic p, similar to Piccard P IV 338 or 340 (1488, 1489). iii + ii + ii + 97 + i + iii leaves; modern (19th- or 20th-century) foliation, [i?vii], 1-97, [98-101]. Previous foliation on ff. 2-3: 33-34 and on ff. 5-71: 35-46, 48-62, 64-69, 71-104. Size of leaves: 270 x 190mm. Collation: all leaves had become detached before restoration, and there are no signatures, so the original composition is indeterminable. Layout: 2 cols./p., 29 11./col.,written area 225 x 155mm...