Tag: Old Slavonic

Translating the Russian preface to the works of Methodius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I sat down with the text of Michael Chub’s preface to his edition of a selection of the works of Methodius.[1].  I took the output from Google Translate, and went through it, smoothing and amending.

I got a very long way!  It’s about 3,400 words, and nearly all of it fell into English quite neatly.  But not all. If you know Russian, some thoughts in the comments on the following would be useful.

My first stop was:

The literary activity of St. Methodius, as can be seen, coincides with the end of the donikeyskogo period of development of theological thought, and, to some extent, can be regarded as a peculiar result of this development.

The period in question is that before the Edict of Milan in 313; but as I wrote this, it came to me that this meant “ante-Nicene”.

So far so good; but bluff and a machine translator will only take you so far.  Now it gets hard.

Молитва св. Мефодия, известная только в славянском тексте, вне всякого сомнения, ^ принадлежит к числу наиболее ранних христианских молитв. Употребленные в ней формулировки и выражения чрезвычайно характерны для суждения о догматическом словоупотреблении доникейской эпохи. Заслуживает особого внимания то место молитвы, где говорится о победе над смертью, совершенной страданиями и умерщвлением Бесстрастного и Бессмертного. Здесь встречаются и скрещиваются слоза и мысли, знакомые уже древнейшей христианской Церкви (сравн. Игнатий Богоносец, „Послание к Поликарпу”, 3, 2; Григорий Неокесарийский, „Послание к Феопомпу”, 7, 8, ІО) и прочно вошедшие в молитвенный обиход последующих веков (сравн., напр., в „Последовании на сон грядущим” в современных молитвословах Молитва вторая). Вся молитва имеет большое значение для суждения о прочности и устойчивости церковных традиций и, в частности, о способах сохранения и передачи этих традиций.

The prayer of St. Methodius, known only from the Slavonic text, no doubt, belongs among the earliest Christian prayers. Its formulation and expression are extremely characteristic for evaluating the dogmatic discourse of the ante-Nicene era. Deserving of special attention is a passage in the prayer, which says the victory over death, suffering and killing of a perfect passionless and Immortal. Here you can meet and interbreed sloza and thought, already familiar to the ancient Christian Church (cf. Ignatius, “Epistle to Polycarp,” 3:2, Gregory of Neocaesarea, “Message to Theopompus”, 7, 8, 10) and entered the everyday life of prayer of later ages (compare, for example, in the “Succession before sleep” in the modern prayer book, Prayer Two). The whole prayer is important for judging the strength and stability of church traditions and, in particular, on how to preserve and pass on these traditions.

I’ve often wanted to interbreed sloza and thought, of course.  Whatever sloza is.    Nor did the previous sentence make sense to me either.

При чтении трактата „О прокаженин” следует помнить, что по замыслу автора это диалог.

9) When reading the treatise “On prokazhenin” should be remembered that the author’s idea is a dialogue.

Mine too, as it happens!

Ссылки на Свящ. Писание после цитат не принадлежат св. Мефодию. Они вставлены в текст перевода для удобства чтения, причем прямые цитаты снабжены ссылками в круглых ( ) скобках, а непрямые цитаты и реминисценции — в квадратных скобках [ ].

Quotation marks from Holy Scripture are not by St. Methodius. They have been inserted into the translation for readability, and direct quotations are provided with round brackets, and indirect quotations and reminiscences – in square brackets [].

I’m pretty sure I’m confused here.  Does the text really put scripture in brackets?  Or in quotes?

По связи речи следует здесь же отметить, что проф. Н. Г. Бонвеч совсем не затрагивает тему о наличии аграфов в творениях св. Мефодия.

Speech Communication should also be noted here that Prof. N. G. Bonwetsch does not affect the subject of the presence of agrapha in the works of St. Methodius.

Any ideas?

The final chunk is rather serious: it’s the list of manuscripts and libraries of the Old Slavonic text.  Not that I can’t get a general idea: but specifically it’s not great.

Основной рукописью для работы над текстом названных творений явился „Сборник” XVI века, хранящийся в Ленинграде в Государственной Публичной Библиотеке имени Салтыкова-Щедрина (Q I 265).

Текст основной рукописи сличен с текстом следующих рукописей;

  • Рукопись Библиотеки Академии Наук Союза ССР 16. 16. 2 (XVII в.).
  • Рукопись Библиотеки им. Ленина из собрания Московской духовной академии №41, ранее находившаяся в Троице-Сергиевой Лавре (нач. XVII в.).
  • Рукопись Государственного Исторического Музея из Синодального собрания №170 (XVI в.).
  • Рукопись Библиотеки им. Ленина из собрания Моск. дух. академии № 40, написанная для Арсения Суханова (XVII в.).
  • Рукопись Библиотеки им. Ленина из собрания Общества Истории и Древностей Российских № 137 (XVII в.).

Кроме указанных выше рукописей, были привлечены следующие;

  • Рукопись Госуд. Исторического Музея из Уваровского собрания № 115 (XVI в.).
  • Рукопись Госуд. Истор. Музея из собрания Чудовского монастыря № 233 (XVI — XVII в).
  • Рукопись Госуд. Истор. Музея из собрания Чудовского монастыря № 205 (XVII в.).
  • Рукопись Госуд. Истор. Музея из собрания Единоверческого монастыря № 12 (XVII в.).
  • Рукопись Госуд. Истор. Музея из собрания Барсова № 264 (подделка — довольно искусная — под XVI век, воспроизводящая, по-видимому, слово в слово текст старинной рукописи, послужившей образцом для настоящей).

OK.  This comes out as something like this:

The main manuscript for the text of these works is the Sbornik 11 of the XVI century, kept in the Leningrad State Public Library in the Saltykov-Shchedrin (QI 265) 10.

The main text was produced by collating the following manuscripts;

1) Manuscript Library of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR 16. 16. 2 (XVII century).
2) Lenin Manuscript Library, from the Collection of the Moscow Theological Academy, number 41, previously found in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra (the beginning of the XVII century.).
3) The manuscript of the State Historical Museum of the Synodal Assembly number 170 (XVI century).
4) Lenin Manuscript Library, from the collection of the Spiritual Academy of Moscow number 40, written for Arsenius Sukhanov (XVII century).
5) Lenin Manuscript Library, from the meeting of the Society of History and Russian Antiquities number 137 (XVII century).

In addition to these manuscripts, the following were involved;

6) The manuscript gov’t. Historical Museum of Uvarov meeting ? 115 (XVI century).
7) The manuscript gov’t. History. The Museum from the collection of the monastery Chudovsky No 233 (XVI – XVII c).
8 ) The manuscript gov’t. History. The Museum from the collection of the monastery Chudovsky No 205 (XVII century).
9) The manuscript gov’t. History. The Museum from the collection of ? 12 Edinoverie monastery (XVII century).
10) The manuscript gov’t. History. The Museum from the collection of Autograph No 264 (a forgery – a rather ingenious one – from the XVI century, reproducing, apparently, word for word the text of an ancient manuscript that served as a model for this).

Could anyone with Russian skills help here?  We need to get a reliable list of manuscripts, if we’re going to put it online, as some poor soul may one day make his travel plans by this!

But that’s it.  Otherwise the 3,400 words is pretty much done.

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  1. [1]M. Chub, Preface to the edition of the Slavic collection of the works of St. Methodius, Bogoslovskie Trudy (=’Theological works’) 2, Moscow Patriarchate, 1961, p.145-151.↩

An introduction to Old Slavonic literature?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have spent a couple of hours online attempting to locate some evidence of an introductory work to Old Slavonic literature.  This has been in vain, although guides to the language are common enough.  The only text I have found is an 1883 SPCK publication here.

Does anyone know of such a guide to what exists in Old Slavonic; like a patrology in organisation?

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Old Slavonic manuscripts online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A comment on this post leads us to a wonderland of Old Slavonic patristic manuscripts, all online and in full colour.  I will repeat some of the information here.

I wonder if you know about this website: http://www.stsl.ru/manuscripts . This an online collection of manuscripts from the former library of St.Sergius Monastery near Moscow, now in the Russian National Library.

Now I know no Cyrillic.  But Google translate does!

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stsl.ru%2Fmanuscripts&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

The Russian-text images on the left are not translated, but if you hover the mouse over them, English text appears!

Then I clicked on the “Main Library” link.  This takes you straight to a catalogue.  OK, it’s a bit wonky, and you have to be a bit imaginative, but it’s perfectly usable for English-speakers, thanks to Google; and this link takes us to a list of manuscripts in the main library collection.  And if you click on the book, you get a detailed catalogue of the ms, and then a box at the bottom to ask for the folio!  This is SUPER!!!

  • No 6 is the Explanation of Revelation by the catenist Andrew of Caesarea.
  • No 7 is the Instructions of Ephrem Syrus.
  • No 8 is Gregory the Theologian.
  • No 10 is The Ladder of John Climacus.  There are loads more of this further down.
  • 124-5 are Cyril of Jerusalem
  • 126-8 are Ephrem, although 128 is not online.
  • 129-135 are Basil the Great
  • 154 is Antiochus the monk — I’m pretty sure he turned up in Harnack’s catalogue.
  • 172-5 is Isaac the Syrian, although whether anyone can stomach his mystical teachings I don’t know.  (Maybe it’s just that the English translation of his work is so bad)
  • 176-7 are John Damascene.
  • 178 is Theodore the Studite.
  • 180 is Symeon the New Theologian
  • Lives of the Saints start to appear around 680-ish
  • 687-690 are “Barlaam and Joasaph Indian and Theodore edesskago”; i.e. Theodore of Edessa.
  • 728 is a chronography!  Yes, it’s a world history.  The catalogue is worth a read here.

There are loads of biblical manuscripts in here.  Of course you have to wade through synodicons, and all the stuff that makes up the bulk of ecclesiastical libraries.  But … this is simply splendid!

My next stop was the search facility.  As expected, entering “eusebius” made no sense to the Cyrillic engine.  So I went back to Google translate, entered “Eusebius” into it and got out “Евсевий” in Russian.  I tried this; but it didn’t work.  Then I tried “Gregory”, got “Григорий” and tried that.  That didn’t work either.  Hum.  Lack of a search engine we can use is a problem.

Another collection is here.  These are not as well catalogued, but the images are top-notch.  Dionysius the Areopagite, the “Creation Methodius of Patara”… hmm!.  #75 is a Slavonic ms of Cosmas Indicopleustes!  #100 is the Annals of George Hamartolus; 102 is Cosmas again; 146 is Chrysostom.  I got to ca. 239, but have to stop there.

The mss are late, but so what?  They’re accessible!!!

But all the same, this is really wonderful!  The images are gorgeous, undefiled, and quite fit for any scholarly study imaginable (other than examining the stitching of the book!)  Frankly this is how it should be done!  Who, I wonder, did this?  I wish I knew the names of those involved, for they deserve a big cheer!

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Fathers in Old Slavonic – 2

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A number of ante-Nicene writers exist in an translation in Old Slavonic.

  • Portions of the Shepherd of Hermas, from the Similitudes.
  • The Letter of Barnabas.
  • Ignatius of Antioch, Letters.  I don’t have any details of which ones, tho.
  • The martyrdom of Polycarp
  • The quotation of Papias in the work of Apollinaris on Judas.
  • Barlaam and Joasaf also exists in the list, although it isn’t ante-Nicene!
  • Justin Martyr
  • Irenaeus

I think all of these are extracts, tho.

  • Hipploytus, on the anti-Christ, the end of the world, and the Commentary on Daniel.  Also on the Song of Songs; on Revelation 20; on Proverbs 30; on the 12 apostles and 70 apostles.
  • Origen, On the psalms.
  • (ps).Origen, Dialogue of Adamantius.
  • Dionysius of Alexandria.  There is quite a section of materials by him.
  • Methodius.  Likewise there is a long list of manuscripts containing material.
  • Eusebius.  There’s some sort of explanation about the Psalms.  The Letter to Carpianus, and the canon tables.

Unfortunately now I look at it, I’m finding Harnack’s text almost impossible to understand!

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Patristic literature in Old Slavonic – 1

Posted on by Roger Pearse

What do you do, when you find that the mediaeval Greeks carelessly forgot to preserve a copy of some patristic text in which you are interested?  Well, you have a couple of choices.

Firstly you can go and search manuscript libraries and see if you can find it.  This option is rarely exercised, since dealing with many Greek libraries is only just preferable to torture.

Your other alternative is to see if anyone translated it into something else, before it was lost.

This happened a lot.  Back in the 5th century, the Armenians sent off an expedition to Edessa, got a whole load of Syriac books, and translated these into Classical Armenian.  They also set up a monastery in Jerusalem, which translated books and sent them back to the old country.  As a result we have works by Irenaeus and Eusebius extant in no other language.

Old Slavonic is another language group that came into contact with the Greek world during the Dark Ages.  The language was spoken by Old Slavs (of course).  Once these had been taught literacy, they too acquired Greek literature.

I’ve found in Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, Theil I, halfte 2 — which I can’t find online — a list of ante-Nicene patristic authors whose works are extant in Old Slavonic.  The list is more than a century old, but I think it would be interesting to look at, for those of us who know almost nothing about that language group.  More in my next post!

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