Russian Orthodoxy and Autobiographies in the Early Modern Period from a Mediterranean Perspective

[Rev. of: Faith and Selfhood in a Changing Society: Autobiography and Orthodoxy in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, ed. Laurie Manchester and Denis A. Sdvizhkov. Moscow: NLO, 2019. 408 pp. (in Russian)] The collection of papers “Faith and Selfhood in a Changing Society: Autobiography and Orthodoxy in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century” served as a stimulus for reflection on Orthodoxy in Russia and autobiographies as a literary genre at the beginning of the early Modern Age from a Mediterranean point of view. Studying the contributions of fifteen prominent scholars from Russia, Poland, Germany, Canada and the United States on various aspects of the immensely rich Russian spiritual heritage from the mid-17th until the first half of the 20th centuries, the author recognizes their fundamental connection in a sincere interest in the gradual modernization of the Russian society, deeply rooted in the Russian Orthodox faith, as well as in the gradual development of individualism, both in its institutional and non-institutional forms: within the framework of the Russian imperial state and official patriarchal church institutions, but also on the periphery of political movements and religious sects. Despite the relatively narrow area of research devoted to various forms of autobiographies (written mainly by the clergy, less often by the members of secular aristocratic and bourgeois circles), this collection of papers represents not only a carefully written and reliable way to understand one of the fundamental aspects of the Russian spiritual culture, but it also invites for comparison with other similar environments. This prompted the author of the review to make a journey through the parallel literary world of the Republic of Dubrovnik (as the only independent Slavic state in that period, with the exception of the Russian Empire) from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with the conclusion that the predominance of biographies to the detriment of autobiographies in Dubrovnik at that time also speaks of strong pragmatism and aspiration to take care exclusively of the state interests in the literary sphere.

Russian Liturgical Memories in the Slavic Byzantine-Catholic Menologion (Recensio Vulgata) of the Mid-20th Century

The article is devoted to the menologion (calendar of saints) compiled in the 20th century for Russian Byzantine Catholics. The latter are a church community with its own Byzantine-Slavic worship and piety, which follow both the Catholic and the Eastern spiritual traditions. Like the entire liturgical literature of the Russian Eastern Catholics, the menologion was created in Rome under the auspices of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, as part of the activities of the Russian Catholic Apostolate, i.e., of the mission of the Catholic Church addressed to Russia and the Russian diaspora in the world. The corpus of service books for Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian Eastern Catholics was called Recensio Vulgata. The menologion under study is contained in the books of Recensio Vulgata and was compiled on the basis of the Orthodox menologia of pre-revolutionary Russia. The compilers of the Byzantine-Catholic menologion did not just select Russian liturgical memories in a certain way, they also included the names of several martyrs of the Eastern Catholic Churches and some additional commemorations of Western saints. According to the compilers of the menologion, the history of Catholic (orthodox) holiness in North-Eastern Russia ended at the turn of the 1440s, when the Principality of Moscow and the Novgorod Republic abandoned the Union of Florence. The menologion reflects the era after the Union of Florence in the events that show the invariable patronage of the Mother of God over the people and the Russian land. The Recensio Vulgata menologion (RVM) contains twelve Russia-specific holidays that honor icons of the Mother of God, nine of which celebrate the events of the period from the late 15th to the 17th centuries. The compilers of the menologion created a well-devised system in which the East Slavic saints, the ancient saints of the Byzantine menologion, the Latin teachers of the Church, the saints of the Byzantine Catholic churches of different eras all are subject to harmonious logic, and harmony serves to organize the whole.

The Soviet Journal “LOKAF” on Foreign Literature: How not to Become a Remarquable

The article is devoted to the menologion (calendar of saints) compiled in the 20th century for Russian Byzantine Catholics. The latter are a church community with its own Byzantine-Slavic worship and piety, which follow both the Catholic and the Eastern spiritual traditions. Like the entire liturgical literature of the Russian Eastern Catholics, the menologion was created in Rome under the auspices of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, as part of the activities of the Russian Catholic Apostolate, i.e., of the mission of the Catholic Church addressed to Russia and the Russian diaspora in the world. The corpus of service books for Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian Eastern Catholics was called Recensio Vulgata. The menologion under study is contained in the books of Recensio Vulgata and was compiled on the basis of the Orthodox menologia of pre-revolutionary Russia. The compilers of the Byzantine-Catholic menologion did not just select Russian liturgical memories in a certain way, they also included the names of several martyrs of the Eastern Catholic Churches and some additional commemorations of Western saints. According to the compilers of the menologion, the history of Catholic (orthodox) holiness in North-Eastern Russia ended at the turn of the 1440s, when the Principality of Moscow and the Novgorod Republic abandoned the Union of Florence. The menologion reflects the era after the Union of Florence in the events that show the invariable patronage of the Mother of God over the people and the Russian land. The Recensio Vulgata menologion (RVM) contains twelve Russia-specific holidays that honor icons of the Mother of God, nine of which celebrate the events of the period from the late 15th to the 17th centuries. The compilers of the menologion created a well-devised system in which the East Slavic saints, the ancient saints of the Byzantine menologion, the Latin teachers of the Church, the saints of the Byzantine Catholic churches of different eras all are subject to harmonious logic, and harmony serves to organize the whole.

How Recently Borrowed Verbs in Russian Form Perfective Aspect — an Experimental Approach

This article examines how Russian aspectual pairs from borrowed and colloquial verbs are formed. This question is relevant since the most common source languages of Russian loan verbs do not express the aspectual distinction (imperfective-perfective) morphologically. Seventeen new verbs, most of which belong to the technological sphere, were examined in an online experiment (N=120), in which native Russian speakers were asked to form perfective counterparts for a number of new verbs, such as гуглить ‘to google’ and эсэмэсить ‘to text, to SMS’. The results show that there is variation in the formation of these new verbs, but also that one form was chosen by most participants who formed a valid perfective. The most common perfectivizers in this experiment were the suffix -ну-, followed by the prefixes за-, про-, от- and с-. The suffix -ну- is especially productive in verbs denoting actions that can be carried out or finished in a short time but is also found in verbs denoting longer processes. This use of -ну- is characteristic for verbs in Russian slang.

Flaying Angels: Аn Early Byzantine Edifying Tale Preserved Only in Slavic Translation

On the basis of four existing manuscripts, a Byzantine “spiritually beneficial tale” is published for the first time. This is an obvious translation from Greek but its original is nowhere attested. The action takes place in Jerusalem and its surroundings, the actors are pre-Islamic Arabs. In all probability, the story was written down at the beginning of the 6th century; the hidden message of the legend is the questionability of “barbaric” conversions as such.

The Ritual of “Exposing the Thief” in Old Rus: from the Enactment by the Archbishop of Novgorod Ioann III to Apocryphal Manuscript Culture

The Old Russian ritual of “Exposing the Thief” (“The Decree on the Proskomedia to the Holy Three Confessors Gurias, Samonas and Abibus”) was written by the Archbishop of Novgorod, Ioann III. The creation of the text was inspired by the sign from the icon of the confessors on December 24, 1410 in St. Sophia Cathedral. The full text of the “Decree…” is preserved in two copies from the 16th –17th centuries, whereas the prayer alone until recently was known in two copies not earlier than the 17th century. The corpus of copies of the prayer was replenished with two copies in manuscripts from the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century and from the 18th century, respectively. The discovery of the first copy raised the question about the original text written by Archbishop Ioann: did he write the prescriptive part for a previously known prayer only or the full text? A textual study of the “Decree...” and the copies of the prayer allows to reconstruct the history of the text and conclude that the archetype contained both the prayer and the prescriptive part. Thus, it could be confirmed that the author of both parts of the “Decree...” is Archbishop Ioann, but the prayer is a less uniform formation. The comparison with Slavic prayers showed that the fragment about the forefathers, going back to a Greek tradition, was borrowed by Ioann from a South Slavic manuscript, while the first part of the text about the three confessors was compiled by the archbishop himself in the context of the special attitude of Novgorod to the cult of St. Gurias, Samonas and Abibus.

East Slavonic Sources of the First Serbian Primer Composed by Gabriel Stefanović Venclović (1717)

The article discusses the identification of textual and pictorial sources that were used in 1717 by the famous Serbian writer Gabriel Stefanović Venclović (c. 1680 – c. 1749) to compile a handwritten textbook containing a collection of elementary knowledge on the Slavonic language, grammar, and the basics of the Orthodox faith. According to our study, Gabriel used several educational and liturgical books published in Kiev, Lvov, and Moscow. In particular, we conclude that the school book issued from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra printing office in 1705 served as the primary source for Venclović’s Primer. We also analyzed how Gabriel adapted the syllabic verses written by the poet Karion Istomin from Moscow, containing sententious examples for different Slavic letters. In our opinion, it is Venclović’s handwritten textbook, but not the famous Venetian edition of 1597, that should be interpreted as the first Serbian Primer.

Problems of Editing and Dating of the Course of Rhetoric by Theophanes Prokopowicz: The Publication of Russian Translation

[Rev. of: Theophanes Prokopowicz. Ten Books on Rhetorical Art. Trans. by G. A. Stratanovsky, ed. by S. I. Nikolaev, E. V. Markasova, E. V. Vvedenskaya. Moscow, St. Petersburg: Alyans-Arkheo, 2020. 488 pp. (in Russian)] The book under review is the first edition of the Russian translation of the course of rhetoric, which was taught in Latin by Theophanes Prokopowicz in Kyiv-Mohyla College. This course was translated in the 1960s by the famous translator George Stratanovsky. It was supplied with a detailed and interesting commentary by Elena Markasova and published as a high-quality edition. But the fact that the publication had been done before the critical edition of the Latin text appeared limits the chances to use Russian translation for further research, and only the presence of the excellent commentary allows to label this edition academic. The main points in the review are questions of the dating of Prokopowicz’s Rhetoric, handwritten witnesses of this text (manuscript copies taken by students) and some text problems, with which researchers and editors of this monument of didactic literature have to deal.

A Latin Poem Translated into Russian in 1670: A Panegyric in Praise of King Louis XIII from Antoine de Pluvinel’s Book “Maneige Royal”

This paper offers an analysis of an early prose translation of a Latin panegyrical poem into Russian. The poem, “In lavdem Lvdovici XIII” was written by Peter / Petrus / Pierre Valens in 1623 or earlier. It was included in the book “Maneige Royal”, first published in 1623 under the name of A. de Pluvinel, who was the riding teacher of the young King Louis XIII. The book was translated into Russian in 1670, albeit not from the original French edition, but from the German version in the bilingual edition “Maneige Royal / Königliche Reitschul”, published in Braunschweig, 1626. The book's Russian title is a verbatim translation of the German one, “Korolevskaia ezdnaia shkola”. The translation is known from two copies: RNB, F.XI.1 (Saint Petersburg), and as one of the texts in the Codex AD 10 (Västerås, Sweden). Our analysis leads to the conclusion that both the translation itself and the two copies most probably were made at the Ambassadorial Chancery (Posol'skii prikaz). The translation of the Latin panegyrical poem shows that the translator understood the Latin text quite well, although it contains a few isolated errors. At the same time, some of these mistakes might have been the result of misprints in the German original, or they may have been caused by the copyist who produced the fair copy. It seems very likely that the translation of the Latin poem (as well as of the entire book) was made by the translator Ivan Tiazhkogorskii, who knew all three languages used in the book (German, Latin, and French). Although Tiazhkogorskii for the most part translated texts from his native language, German, he was able to make decent translations also from Latin and French; however, historical, political and above all mythological allusions caused a few difficulties.

Polish Literary Legend in the Russian Historical and Cultural Context

This paper reviews the book Old Russian Translation of Krzysztof Dzierżek's Tale about the Astrologer Mustaeddin and its Later Reworkings (Study and Edition) by Eliza Małek, which is the ninth volume of the Library of 17th–18th Century Russian Translations of Old Polish Literature series. The book is concerned with Polish-Russian literary relations of the Early Modern period.