Issue 71-72 (2025)
| Abbreviations | 7-12 | |||
| ARTICLES | ||||
| Dobriela Kotova | (Sofia) – Constantine of Preslav as Translator and Preacher: Emotion and Reason in the Uchitel’noe Evangelie | 13-48 | CONSTANTINE OF PRESLAV AS TRANSLATOR AND PREACHER: EMOTION AND REASON IN THE UCHITEL’NOE EVANGELIE Dobriela Kotova Abstract: This study examines the intersection of emotional engagement and rational decision-making in the compilation of the Uchitel’noe evangelie (Didactic Gospel) by Constantine of Preslav, an exegetical and homiletic collection of foundational significance to early Slavonic literature. The Prologue to the work reveals that Constantine was commissioned to translate from Greek into Slavonic the commentaries (ἑρμηνείαι) on the Gospels. These ἑρμηνείαι belong to a distinct category of catena commentary on the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John – identified as CPG C110.1, C130.1, and C140.1 – and consist solely of exegetical material. The urgent demand for systematic pastoral and didactic activity necessitated not only their translation but also their incorporation into newly composed homilies addressing topics of particular relevance to a recently baptized congregation. The scope of this enterprise prompted a strategic decision: the creation of a homiliary intended solely for Sunday liturgical services. Significantly, no precedent for such a work appears to have existed in Byzantine literature of the time. The Prologue, together with the introductory and concluding sections of the sermons, bears witness to Constantine’s profound emotional investment in the educational mission he embraced with steadfast dedication, even in the face of inner doubts and fears. His translations manifest not only exceptional philological mastery but also the rhetorical acuity of a preacher whose words must be grasped with precision, exert maximum impact, and remain indelibly imprinted in the minds of his audience. Such an approach inevitably led to deliberate translation strategies and a carefully crafted stylistic register. Keywords: Constantine of Preslav; Uchitel’noe еvangelie (Didactic Gospel); homily; New Testament catenae. | /issues/71/13-Kotova.pdf |
| Ana Stoykova | (Sofia) – St. Eusignius’ Passion (BHG 639) in the Slavic Manuscript Tradition | 49-71 | ST. EUSIGNIUS’ PASSION (BHG 639) IN THE SLAVIC MANUSCRIPT TRADITION Ana Stoykova Abstract: This article is dedicated to St. Eusignius’ Passion – a piece of premetaphrastic hagiography, whose Slavonic translation is preserved in a single copy in a Serbian manuscript from the Hilandar Monastery, No. 446 from the 17th century, written by a collaborator of the monk Averkie in the tower at Karyes. The text of the Passion is remarkable because, for the most part, it is devoted to Constantine the Great, with the important episodes of his life narrated in the first person by Eusignius, a soldier in the emperor’s army and eyewitness to the described events. Arising from oral traditions, the Passion is one of the earliest sources of the legendary history of Constantine the Great and was perceived as a kind of hagiography of him. The Slavonic translation of the work originated in a very early period, during the First Bulgarian Empire, when the Preslav menologia were being compiled. Although preserved in a 17th-century copy, the translation retains grammatical forms and lexemes that characterize its linguistic base as Old Bulgarian, and its analysis leads to the conclusion that it was the work of a highly educated man of letters. It is difficult to say what motivated Averkie’s collaborator to choose this hagiographic work, which had long fallen out of use. It is known that the Hilandar monks who worked in the scriptorium of the tower at Karyes sought out unknown works in manuscripts in order to revive the memory of long-departed Christian saints. However, there is no doubt that the miraculous events surrounding the birth, heavenly visions, and baptism of the greatest among Christian rulers also captured the scribe’s attention. Keywords: St. Eusignius; Constantine the Great; Preslav literary production; monk Averkie of the Kareya Tower | /issues/71/49-Stoykova.pdf |
| Ivan P. Petrov | (Vienna) – The Biblical Quotations in the Medieval South Slavonic Translation of the Life of St. Pachomius the Great | 72-99 | BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS IN THE MEDIEVAL SOUTH SLAVONIC TRANSLATION OF THE LIFE OF ST. PACHOMIUS THE GREAT Ivan P. Petrov Abstract: The objective of this article is to explore the use of quotations from the Bible in the South Slavonic translation of Vita Pachomii. The Slavonic witnesses of southern origin demonstrate a clear unity that can be traced back to a single translation, possibly produced on Mount Athos. The translated text is an exact reproduction of one of the sub-branches of the so-called Vita Altera in the Greek tradition of the Vita. The examination of quotations from the Bible can provide insight into the time and origin of the Slavonic translation, as well as its potential connections to earlier traditions of Preslav literary production and Cyrillo-Methodian translations. This study focuses primarily on New Testament and Psalter quotations and their textual similarities to different Old Church Slavonic versions of the New Testament. The verses under consideration are taken from the Rila copy of the Vita and have been collated with two other witnesses preserved in the collections of the Zographou and Hilandar Monastery libraries. Particular attention is also given to the lexical and grammatical nuances within the quotations in the Vita. The analysis of quotations from the New Testament and the Psalter in the medieval translation of the Life of St. Pachomius the Great demonstrates a strong closeness between this translation and those considered to be of Athonite origin. Keywords: Pachomius the Great; biblical quotations; Slavonic translations from Greek; reception of hagiography; monastic Vitae | /issues/71/72-Petrov.pdf |
| Lora Taseva | (Sofia) – Old Bulgarian Translation Correlates of ἀμφιβάλλω ‘doubt; disagree, quarrel’ | 100-119 | OLD BULGARIAN TRANSLATION CORRELATES OF ἀμφιβάλλω ‘DOUBT; DISAGREE, QUARREL’ Lora Taseva Abstract: This article examines the correspondences of the Greek verb ἀμφιβάλλω ‘doubt; disagree, quarrel’ in Old Bulgarian translated monuments of the 9th–11th centuries. The data are extracted from the Řecko-staroslověnský index to the Slovník jazyka staroslověnského and supplemented with information from seven bilingual dictionaries to translated texts of the early period. Quite a variety of correspondences is found – 13 in total – covering a wide semantic range. Correlates with a semantic nuance of internal, non-verbalized doubt express different degrees of intensity – from neutral mental evaluation to complete denial – and derive from different roots: непьщевати → недомꙑшлꙗти → сѫмьнѣти сѧ → на дъвоѥ сѧ мѫтити → не вѣровати → отъметати сѧ. Correspondences pointing to contestation by verbal opposition are derivatives mainly from the root пьр-. Overall, the root пьр- has the highest frequency with 14 occurrences in five different texts, followed by negative forms of verbs with the root вѣр- (eight occurrences in total, but concentrated in two translated corpora). While the Didactic Gospel and the Codex Suprasliensis are distinguished by a considerable variety of Slavonic transpositions, the Syntagma in 14 Titles (Efremovskaya Kormchaya), Oratio I against the Arians, and the two editions of the Service Menaion show a clear preference for certain correlates. Keywords: Old Bulgarian translations; lexicography; Greek-Slavic lexical correlates; semantic nuances | /issues/71/100-Tasseva.pdf |
| Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova | (Sofia) – The Title Against the Armenians From Panoplia Dogmatica in the Life of St. Hilarion of Moglena by Patriarch Euthymius | 120-146 | THE TITLE AGAINST THE ARMENIANS FROM PANOPLIA DOGMATICA IN THE LIFE OF ST. HILARION OF MOGLENA BY PATRIARCH EUTHYMIUS Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova Abstract: This article reproduces and analyses the Slavic copy of the title against the Armenians from Euthymius Zigabenos’ composition Panoplia Dogmatica (PD). It is based on manuscript MS. Slav. BAR 296 from the Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, dated to the first quarter of the 15th century – the only surviving written evidence of the existence of a Slavonic translation of the famous Byzantine anti-heretical treatise produced during the reign of Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118). A comparison carried out with the Life of St. Hilarion of Moglena (LHM) by Patriarch Euthymius, in which the same title is used for the purposes of the dispute of the Moglena bishop, allows for the following preliminary conclusions. The title against the Armenians from PD was used as a source for constructing the narrative in the LHM not literally, but selectively. Patriarch Euthymius’ translation did not serve as the source for the translation of the complete composition of PD, at least according to what is known so far about the Second Book in manuscript BAR 296, and its anonymous translator adhered to his own recognizable style of translation, which has not yet revealed all its subtleties. Linguistic and textual dependencies between the original Greek text and the Slavonic translation are also discussed. Keywords: Armenian heterodoxy; Panoplia Dogmatica in a Slavic environment; Life of St. Hilarion of Moglena | /issues/71/120-Tsibranska-Kostova.pdf |
| Aleksa Karajić | (Belgrade) – The South Slavic Parakleses and the Meanders of Their Manuscript Heritage: An Overview | 147-193 | THE SOUTH SLAVIC PARAKLESES AND THE MEANDERS OF THEIR MANUSCRIPT HERITAGE: AN OVERVIEW AND A CHECKLIST Aleksa Karajić Abstract: This article presents and discusses the dominant features of minor, non-menaion services of the παράκλησις (Slav. параклисъ), as they are framed within the Southern liturgical sphere of Slavia Orthodoxa. The objectives of this overview are two-fold: to present an up-to-date state-of-the-art on the topic and to establish the grounds and a selection of perspectives for further research. According to the known manuscript heritage of both Serbian and Bulgarian provenance, it is confirmed that parakleses gained popularity in the Balkans during the 14th century, having been practised in both official and private domains. Such usages, alongside their cultural impact and literary heritage in both translated Greek and original Slavic, remain to be explored. This gap in current scholarship has led me to pay more attention to certain elements, raise different questions and reconsider their appearance in the South Slavic manuscript heritage until the end of the 17th century. Concerning the latter, in this article I provide a checklist of extant for future reference. Besides questions on their elusive origin, historical justification, and thematic and liturgical background, this article also includes a presentation of material for a future case study, based on parakleses dedicated to one of prominent saints of the Slavic South ‒ St. Parasceve of Epibatae. Keywords: Supplicatory canon / paraklesis; hymnography; South Slavic liturgical practice; manuscript heritage; St. Parasceve | /issues/71/147-Karajic.pdf |
| Margarita Kuyumdzhieva | (Sofia) – The First Creation Days in Post-Byzantine Art: Notes on the Scenes in the Church of St. George in Veliko Tǎrnovo | 194-222 | THE FIRST CREATION DAYS IN POST-BYZANTINE ART: NOTES ON THE SCENES IN THE CHURCH OF ST. GEORGE IN VELIKO TǍRNOVO MARGARITA KUYUMDZHIEVA Abstract: Visual depictions of the cosmographic episodes of the Creation of the World, as described at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, are not common in Orthodox painting in the Balkans during the medieval and post-Byzantine periods. This article examines the images related to this biblical narrative as preserved in the narthex of the church of St. George in Veliko Tǎrnovo, Bulgaria. Its main aim is to explore their iconography in comparison with other known examples of such cycles, which raises the question about their origin and possible models. To achieve this, two main groups of Genesis pictorial narratives in Eastern Christian art of the Balkans from the 16th and 17th centuries are outlined, based on evidence from church wall paintings of the period. The first group unites the anthropocentric cycles, which begin with the story of Adam and Eve and predominate in church frescoes from the 16th century onwards on Mount Athos and in major artistic centres such as Ioannina in Epirus, Meteora, Veria, Elassona, and Agia. The second group consists of the cosmographic cycles that begin with the Creation of the World and are attested in monuments in the Peloponnese and on Rhodes starting from the 1620s, and during the first half of the 18th century in Arta and Thessaly as well. The Creation cycles in the second group are more heterogeneous, and, to some extent, autonomous from one another. The cosmographic cycles of the Creation of the World raise complex questions about how strongly Western painting influenced their iconography and whether they may reflect patterns already present in late Byzantine art. The scenes from the church of St. George in Tǎrnovo belong to this second group and provide evidence for the complex problem of the formation of cosmological cycles and their dissemination in the Eastern Orthodox Balkans during the premodern era. Keywords: Creation of the World; Genesis imagery; cosmographic images; Adam and Eve; Christian iconography | /issues/71/194-Kuyumdzieva.pdf |
| Elissaveta Moussakova | (Sofia) – The Liturgicon of Patriarch Euthymius and Its Acquisition in the National Library in Sofia | 223-235 | THE LITURGICON OF PATRIARCH EUTHYMIUS AND ITS ACQUISITION IN THE NATIONAL LIBRARY IN SOFIA Elissaveta Moussakova Abstract: It is a well-known fact that although surviving only as a fragment, the Liturgicon of Patriarch Euthymius, kept in the National Library in Sofia (NBKM 231), is one of the most significant medieval witnesses to the Tărnovo literary school, organized around the last Bulgarian patriarch before the fall under the Ottoman Empire. Despite existing scholarly publications on the manuscript, including its edition, the circumstances of its acquisition by the National Library in 1908 have remained somewhat obscure. This brief communication sheds light on the acquisition procedure as part of the manuscript’s provenance by drawing on the correspondence between Vasil Stoyanov, then director of the library, and the Ministry of National Education. These letters are kept in the Bulgarian Historical Archive Department at the National Library. Keywords: manuscript NBKM 231; Vasil Stoyanov; Dionisii Moskov; Ignatii of Rila; Ministry of National Education; Bulgarian Historical Archive | /issues/71/223-Moussakova.pdf |
| PERSONALIA | ||||
| Nelly Gancheva | (Sofia) – Professor Bonju Stojanov Angelov (1915–1989) | 236-254 | /issues/71/236-Gancheva.pdf | |
| IN MEMORIAM | ||||
| Tsvetomira Danova | (Sofia) – Professor Maria Spasova (1947–2025) | 255-267 | /issues/71/255-Danova.pdf | |
| CRITICAL REVIEWS | ||||
| Mariya Yovcheva, Lora Taseva | (Sofia) – Yavor Miltenov. Preslavskite leksikalni markeri. Sofia: Avalon, 2024, 230 рp. ISBN 978-954-9704-47-1 | 268-280 | /issues/71/268-Yovcheva.pdf | |
| Elka Mircheva | (Sofia) – Lora Taseva, Dobriela Kotova, Ivan Petrov, Petra Stankovska, Georgi Mitov. Učitelnoto evangelie na Konstantin Preslavski. T. 1. Starobǎlgarsko-grǎcki rečnik. T. 2. Grǎcko-starobǎlgarski rečnik. Sofia: Izdatelstvo na BAN „Prof. Marin Drinov“, 2024. 704 pp., 544 pp. Vol. 1. ISBN: 978-619-7179-54-5; 978-619-245-490-6 (print); 978-619-7179-55-2; 978-619-245-491-3 (pdf); Vol. 2. ISBN 978-619-7179-56-9; 978-619-245-492-0 (print); 978-619-7179-57-6; 978-619-245-493-7 (pdf) | 281-289 | /issues/71/281-Mircheva.pdf | |
| Veneta Savova | (Sofia) – Iskra Hristova-Šomova. Južnoslavjanskite praznični minei. Sofija: Universitetsko izdatelstvo „Sv. Kliment Ohridski“, 2024. 510 pр. ISBN 978-954-07-5877-0 | 290-293 | /issues/71/290-Savova.pdf | |
| Aneta Dimitrova | (Sofia) – D. S. Penskaja, V. B. Krysʹko, R. Poup, Ya. Miltenov. Hoždenie v raj. Skazanie Agapija v grečeskoj tradicii i slavjanskom perevode. Izdanie. Issledovanie. Ukazateli. Pod red. V. B. Krysʹko. Moskva–Sankt-Peterburg: Nestor-Istorija, 2024. 160 pp. + 57 pp. snimki. ISBN 978-5-4469-2332-8 | 294-300 | /issues/71/294-Dimitrova.pdf | |
| Margaret Dimitrova | (Sofia) – Četivoto za mirjani v južnoslavjanskija repertoar XІV‒XVІІІ v. / Readings for Laymen Public in South Slavic Repertoire in the Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries. Meždunarodna naučna konferencija Sofija, 16–18 noemvri 2023 g. Sǎstav. Nina Gagova. Naučni redaktori: Nina Gagova, Maria Jovčeva, Ana Stokova. Sofia: Izdatelski centǎr „Bojan Penev“, 2025, 264 pp. ISBN 978-619-7372-92-2 | 300-303 | /issues/71/300-Dimitrova.pdf | |
| Desislava Naydenova | (Sofia) – Byzantinische Rechtsgeschichte im internationalen Kontext. Akten einer Tagung der Akademien der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen und Sofia (28.9.–1.10.2021). P. Schreiner, J. P. Laut, Iv. Biliarsky (Hrsg.). Berlin–Boston: De Gruyter, 2024, 407 S. ISBN 978-3-11-132992-5 | 304-318 | /issues/71/304-Naydenova.pdf | |
| BIBLIOGRAPHY | ||||
| Adelinа Germanovа | (Sofia) – Publications on Old Bulgarian Literature and Culture Published in Bulgaria 2024 | 319-364 | /issues/71/319-Germanova.pdf | |