Medieval Slavic Manuscript Studies

Summary:
This study is the result of research conducted on the text of the
rite of confession based on approximately 50 unpublished South Slavonic
manuscripts dating from the early 13th to the early 16th century, up
to its first printed edition. The research offers much more accurate and
detailed evidence confirming observations on the heterogeneity of the
South Slavonic confessional rite. The study classifies the text of the rite
of confession based on the type, the contents and the preserved South
Slavonic manuscripts. Research suggests two main textological circles
that determine the order of the enactment of the rite. One group of texts
belongs to the type of the service of confession of the Euchologium
Sinaiticum, a Glagolitic service book dating from the 11th century, and
the other belongs to the service of confession found in the Penitential
Nomokanon of John the Faster (John Nesteutes). Both groups contain
models that dictate the framework of the ritual for the Sacrament of
Penance. These models could include questionnaires with premade
questions, but usually there were long lists of “secret” sins about which
the penitent needed to be asked. Over time, owing to the influence
of practice and the reconsideration of existing forms, the texts of the
above-mentioned types of confession became entwined, creating new
compilations and recensions of the text. By the end of the medieval
period, the “Sinaitic” model survived as the main pillar of priestly
ministry but in several younger recensional and sub-recensional forms.
Research has distinguished its two late-medieval recensions (one of
them had prevailed since about 1350) and thus there seem to have been
three recensions of the “Sinaitic” service of confession in the period
from the 11th to the early 16th century.

Annotation The submitted professional essay is purely informative. That is, it informs about Slavic manuscripts written in Church-Slavic at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. Apart from the typological classification of individual manuscripts (and manuscript collections-envelopes), the study does not deal with linguistic, textological, codicological or philological analysis. These elements of the study of manuscripts, including methodology, must be elaborated in many other scientific works, including monographs.

This article, framed in part as an autobiographical narrative, explores the power of minute textual analysis.  Textual archaeology, as we may characterize this type of analysis, has the potential to penetrate the human origins of seemingly impersonal texts—in this case Croatian Church Slavonic (Glagolitic) liturgical and biblical texts of the 14th and 15th centuries—through detailed analysis and close inferential reasoning.  This allows us to recover more than just details and broader connections regarding language, chronology, and textual affiliations.  Just occasionally, it may also elucidate aspects of the lives of the people who created the texts.  The paper goes on to demonstrate that in order to properly understand the textual development of Croatian Glagolitic translations from the Hebrew Bible, one most occasionally have recourse back to the original Hebrew text and its own intricacies of transmission, even though the Church Slavonic texts were translated from Greek and/or Latin versions without recourse to the Hebrew original.  Finally, it is noted that the power of minute textual analysis is not limited to medieval and ancient texts, but has application in the modern world as well, including in the forensic analysis of texts believed to have been utilized by persons in positions of leadership to incite hatred and violence.

Гомилетика Климента Охридского и его “литературной школы” становилась в течение последних десятилетий предметом лингвистического и литературного анализа. Внимание исследователей привлекали в основном лексика и синтаксис, но не раз затрагивалась и проблематика композиционной структуры отдельных текстов и исследовались отдельные риторические приемы. Между тем разные аспекты стилистики и “авторского стиля” по отношению к конвенциональным требованиям “литературного этикета” не получили по сей день тщательного анализа.
В статье особое внимание уделяется специфической функции некоторых “ключевых” слов в отдельных текстах, а также определению происхождения некоторых фразеологических построений, переходящих из одного слова в другое и часто характерных для гимнографического жанра. Анализ проводится на основе полного гомилетического корпуса Климента Охридского, сопоставляемого с одной стороны с гимнографическим творчеством того же Климента, а с другой, с византийской традицией. Целью анализа является попытка выявить некоторые особенности “авторской” фразеологии в общем пласте заимствованной византийской и старославянской письменной традиции.

The article provides information about the identifcation of the manuscript
NBKM 1417, kept in the department of Manuscripts and Old Printed Books at the National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”. The results show that the fragment belongs to manuscript NBKM 307 by the same collection.