New Old Church Slavonic Manuscriptson Mount Sinai

ROBERTMATHIESEN

THE SLAVOMC MANUSCRIPTS DISCOVERED IN 1975 AT ST.CATI{ERINE'S MONASTERY ON MOUNT SINAI. By loannis C.Tarnanidis. Thessaloniki: St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai,and The Hellenic Association for Slavic Studies, 1988. 363 pp. 1000copies.

In 1975 a great hoard of medieval manuscripts was discovered in a rubble-filledroom inside of the north wall of St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. Newsof this discovery was leaked to the West European and Greek press in 1978. Evenfrom the early reports it was clear that the find included not only Greek manuscripts,but also manuscripts in a variety of other languages: Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew,Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Coptic, Latin, and Church Slavonic. Some of theearly reports were by scholars who had been permitted briefly to examine the newlydiscovered manuscripts, namely, Professors S. Agourides, L. Politis, and N. M.Panayotakis from Athens, and Professor M. Altbauer from Jerusalem.l Finally, in1981 Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, head of the autocephalous Orthodox Church ofSinai, gave official notice ofthe discoveries in areport to the Sixteenth IntemationalCongress of Byzantinists, at Vienna.2

Two years later, in 1983, the Hellenic Association for Slavic Studies announcedthat a catalogue ofthe newly discovered Slavonic manuscripts, written by ProfessorI. C. Tamanidis of the University of Thessaloniki, would be ready to send to thepress "in a matter of months."3 However, its publication was delayed until 1988, inpart because Professor Tamanidis was able to make a third study trip to themonastery in 1984, during which the new Slavonic manuscripts were "finally anddefinitively numbered and photographed" (p. 41). As a result of this trip he was ableto reassign a number of fragments to one or another codex.

Professor Tamanidis's final assessment is that the new finds represent forty-onedistinct Slavonic manuscripts, not twenty or so as reported earlier. Five of them areGlagolitic, the rest Cyrillic. The Glagolitic manuscripts are all ascribed by him tothe eleventh and twelfth centuries, as are two of the Cyrillic manuscripts. Of the

I On the discovery in general see Agourides and Charlesworth (1978), Charlesworth (19?9,1980, l98l), Politis (1980). For its Slavic aspects see Veder (1981:30-32), SevIenko (1982),and Altbauer (1987); cf. also Altbauer (1985) and Altbauer and Mare5 (1980, 1981).2 Aoproviq(1982).3 Announcement(1983).

SLAVOMC MANUSCRIPTS ON MOUNT SINAI

remaining Cyrillic manuscripts, seven are attributed to the thirteenth century, five tothe thirteenth or fourteenth century, nineteen to the fourteenth century, and three tothe fifteenth or sixteenth century.

Two of the Glagolitic finds and seven of the Cyrillic ones consist of new leaves

from codices already known to be in the monastery's library. We now have substan-

tially more folia not only of the two well-known Glagolitic Old Church Slavonicmanuscripts (at least 28 new folia of the Euchologion and 32 new folia of the

Psalter), but also of three early Cyrillic manuscripts: 17 new folia of the earlyRus'ian Psalter, 9 new folia of Dobromir's Tetraevangelion, and 30 new folia of the

oldest Serbian Psalter.A Professor Tamanidis provides clear black-and-white photo-graphs of all the new leaves from these five manuscripts, which serve as a necessary

supplement to their earlier photographic editions.s These photographs occupyslightly more than one third of the entire volume (pp. 219-351) and are by far itsmost important contribution to Church Slavonic paleography, codicology, textology,and linguistics.

In addition to these photographs, the volume contains a preface (by ArchbishopDamianos of Sinai), a foreword and an introduction in Greek and in English(pp.9-59), descriptions in English of the five Glagolitic manuscripts (pp.65-108)and of the thirty-six Cyrillic ones (pp. 109-181), and color photographs of individual leaves from all the Glagolitic manuscripts and from about two-thirds of the

Cyrillic ones (pp. 185-216).6 A very brief bibliography, an index, and a list oferrata conclude the volume.

It should be noted at once that Professor Tamanidis was able to spend onlythirty-six days at the monastery while preparing the present volume; he was obligedto work chiefly from microfilms and other photographs. He himself considers hisbook to be not so much a catalogue as a preliminary contribution to the cataloguingand study of the newly discovered manuscripts, which eventually will be followedby a full catalogue of all the Slavic manuscripts, old as well as new, at Mount Sinai(p. 58).? He also has felt himself free to treat individual manuscripts in different

4 The parts of these codices that were already known to scholarship are rrass 37lO, 38/O, 610,4310, and 8/O, respectively. Further leaves from three of these manuscripts ale in the USSR(cf. Svodnyj katalog 1984: nos. 28, 34-36,7l) and in Paris (cf. Standev 1981: no. 1). Theother four manuscripts for which new leaves have been discovered are russ 2/O+324'[,16/0 + 16/N, 40/O + 40/N and probably 28lO + 35/N. It is not yet clear whether uss 10/N and21/O are parts of the same manuscript.5 Natrtigal (1941 -42), Altbauer (1971, 1973,1979)' Altbauer and Lunt (1978).6 Color photographs 7 and 8 have been interchanged by mistake. The leaf from the Psalter ofDimitri (r,ls 3/N) is photograph 7, whereas photograph 8 reproduces f. 2lr of the newlydiscovered part of the Psalterium Sinaiticum lrus 2N), matching the black-and-white photo-graph on p. 269.7 It might also be desirable to include in such a catalogue descriptions of all Slavicmanuscripts formerly in St. Catherine's Monastery, but removed by scholars and coUectors

during the last two centuries. Among them are the palimpsest leaves with part of an earlyGlagolitic liturgical text (an Okto&hos?) as their undertext (Lunt 1958; Svodnyj katalog 1984:

no. 305) and probably also the Kiev Folia (Nimduk 1983:7- 13; Svodnyj katalog 1984: no. 1).

r93

194 ROBERTMATHIESEN

ways, describing some at considerable length, others in cursory fashion. Thus, thedescriptions of all but seven of the Cyrillic manuscripts are quite brief, occupying nomore than two pages each; and even the longest descriptions of Cyrillic manuscripts(uss 204.{, 2tllN) ue only about eight pages long. In contrast, twenty-two pages aredevoted to the description ofthe new leaves from the Euchologium Sinaiticum (us1fi).8 Regarded as.a preliminary contribution, hofessor Tamanidis's book meritsthe praise of his fellow slavists and sharpens their eagemess to have a full catalogueof all Slavic manuscripts at Mount Sinai.e

***

All five of the Glagolitic manuscripts are Old Church Slavonic in the wide sense ofthe term, and in their totality they constitute by far the largest body of new materialto be discovered in that language since 1845- 1850. It is clear that all future gram-mars and dictionaries of Old Church Slavonic will have to take these fivemanuscripts into account, and that full facsimile and critical editions of them shouldbe published as soon as possible.

Of the Glagolitic manuscripts, it is rvrs 54.I, the Sinai Missal, that may prove to bethe most interesting, inasmuch as the next oldest church Slavonic missals (otherthan small fragments) are about three centuries younger than it. The badly damagedcharacter of this manuscript has prevented Professor Tamanidis from providing adetailed account of its contents, but even the brief description and the two photo-graphs of it which he gives have led this reviewer to the conclusion that rvrs 54.{ isnot a separate manuscript at all, but a further part of the Euchologium Sinaiticum,Ms 37lO + 1A.{. The present separate binding of us 54.{, of which only a small frag-ment is left, need not be original; the hand and orthography ofits first scribe, as wellas its layout and its size, all appear to be the same as those of the Euchologium.ro

Further support for this conclusion comes from a recent discovery made by ho-fessorJ. Schaeken(1989),whohasobservedthatsomeof thebrief scrapsof thenewmanuscript's text that Professor Tamanidis has printed correspond much moreclosely to the Byzantine Liturgy of St. Peter than they do to the Roman Catholic

Cf. also Svodnyj katalog 1984: nos. 166 and 304 (both of which, together wirh no. 305, arcparts of Sinai rras 34lO), as well as nos. 321 and322.8 None of the descriptions, whether long or short, are quite on the level of sophisticationwhich one might have hoped for if Professor Tamanidis had had more time to work with theoriginal manuscripts. For some general discussion of the desiderata see Mathiesen (1987).e Cf. other reviews by Bimbaum (1989), Bldhov6 (1989), TkadlEft (1989), and Veldeva(1988).10 Note, too, that the early Glagolitic Kiev Folia, although probably not originally a part ofthe Euchologium, may have been prcserved in the same binding with it for a time, since theyhave been severely trimmed to the same size as the leaves of the Euchologium. Moreover, thelater Glagolitic hand of the added text on f. 1r of the Kiev Folia appears to be the same as theGlagolitic hand of the Easter Table added to f. IIr (Srcznevskij trk) of the Euchologium. Cf.Panteli6 (1985: 25 -41) and Schaeken (1989: 36-37).

SLAVOMC MANUSCRIPTS ON MOT]NT SINAI

Order of the Mass.ll In an article which seems not to have been noticed either byProfessor Tamanidis or by Professor Schaeken, the present reviewer had alreadyargued that the Euchologium Sinaiticum originally contained a text of the Liturgy ofSt. Peter (in a different redaction than that of the two known Cyrillic manuscripts) aswell as one of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and that the detached fragment ofthe Euchologium Sinaiticum known as Uspenskij's Bifolium preserves the end ofthe latter text and the beginning of the former.l2 He is now confident that a muchlarger fragment of this same text of the Liturgy of St. Peter is still extant in us 54.{,and that Uspenskij's Bifolium belongs to this part of the Euchologium Sinaiticum.

Thus we come to see ever more clearly how the Euchologium Sinaiticum, whichis not a homogeneous manuscript either in its language or in its texts, consists oftranslations made during several distinct periods in the early history of Church Sla-vonic. The Church Slavonic translation of the Liturgy of St. Peter that is preservedin this manuscript probably belongs to one of the oldest of these strata, as does theLiturgy of St. John Chrysostom.r3 A full critical edition of all extant parts of theEuchologium Sinaiticum, such as Professor Tamanidis proposes to make(W.73-74), is therefore greatly needed. However, such an edition cannot be madeuntil MS 5/I.{ has been examined with more care, in order to determine whether ornot its leaves belong to the Euchologium. Such a determination will have to takephysical as well as textual evidence into account,

Fortunately, even the severely damaged condition of these leaves need notprevent a properly equipped scholar from editing them, for the technology nowexists not only to conserve the manuscript-to separate its leaves, to clean them andto stabilize their condition-but also to produce photographs of them which will bemuch more legible than the original leaves themselves, even after they have beenconserved. In addition, it has recently become possible to determine by laboratorymeans to within approximately thirty years just when the Euchologium Sinaiticum,or any other Glagolitic or Cyrillic manuscript, was written, if its ink meets certainchemical criteria.l4 In the course of the next two or three decades, this new

1r For the Liturgy of St. Peter in Church Slavonic see the studies by Va5ica (1939-46, 1940),Dostdl (1965), Laurendik (1971), Tkadldik (1971), Mare5 (1977, l98la,198lb, 1982), andRobinson (1988). hior to Schaeken's discovery, a Church Slavonic version of the Liturgy ofSt. Peter had been known only from two Cyrillic manuscripts of the seventeenth century andfrom the scant ffaces of a different, much earlier text which Va5ica had succeeded in extractingfrom the oldest extant Church Slavonic version of the Roman Catholic Ordo Missae (preservedin some of the oldest Glagolitic missals, from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). Even thelimited material that Tamanidis gives permits one to see that the version of us 5[.{ correspondsmore closely to the traces of the Liturgy of St. Peter in the Glagolitic Ordo Missae than doesthe version ofthe two seventeenth-century Cyrillic manuscripts.12 Mathiesen(1985).13 Cf. Dostdl (1965, 1966).la Much of this technology has been developed only within the last decade, and the greatmajority of specialists in medieval manuscripts is stifl pcorly informed about it. Moreover, notall of it has been described in print, and what is in print is often in publications not usually readby manuscript specialists. See especially Richards (1977), Benton, Gillespie, and Soha (1979),Hellinga (1982:89-94, pl. IV), Stemberg and Brayer (1983), and Neff (1986), as well as a

195

196 ROBERTMATHIESEN

technology will give us not only a number of newly legible texts, but also muchmore accurate dates for the many medieval Glagolitic and Cyrillic manuscripts thatserve as primary sources for the history of most Slavic languages and literatures.This may, in tum, require us to reexamine some of the commonly accepted results ofpast scholarship in these fields. Truly these are exciting times for a Slavic philolo-gist to work in!

A comparison of Professor Tamanidis's work with Altbauer's brief reports givesrise to the question whether one Glagolitic manuscript-namely, a largehomilary-may have been overlooked during the cataloguing of the newdiscoveries.ls Professor Altbauer was able to see the new Glagolitic manuscripts foronly about twenty minutes, in May 1979. He wishes it to be clearly understood thathis identification of such a homilary is based on nothing more than his hasty firstimpression of the contents of a large number of Glagolitic leaves which he was notallowed time to examine thoroughly, and thus it may prove to be erroneous.Nevertheless, the question can only be answered by a thorough reexamination of thewhole body ofnewly discovered manuscripts which have not yet been identified andcatalogued. The importance of this manuscript, if it exists, would justify the labor ofsuch a reexamination.

Tantalized by the early reports, and by a small number ofphotographs privatelyobtained, scholars have already applied for photographs of the newly discoveredmanuscripts, only to be informed that such requests would not be honored until thefirst catalogues of the finds were published.r6 Now that Professor Tarnanidis'scatalogue ofthe Slavonic manuscripts has appeared, one hopes that it will be possi-ble to order such photographs directly from St. Catherine's Monastery. Slavic phi-lologists in many lands are eager to begin studying these new manuscripts.

Brown Universittt

recent news rcport inTime (l4March 1988: 80-81), on the technology to enhance photographsof medieval manuscripts. For the new method of dating medieval manuscripts see McNeil(1984).15 Veder (1981: 3l), Altbauer (1987: 39).16 Cf. Sevdenko (1982: 120).

{.**

SLAVOMC MANUSCRIPTS ON MOI]NT SINAI 197

REFERENCES

Agourides, S., and J. H. Charlesworth. 1978. "A New Discovery of OldManuscripts on Mt. Sinai: A Preliminary Report." Biblical Archeologist4l:29-31.

Altbauer, M. 1971. Psalterium Sinaiticum: An I lth Century Glagolitic Manuscriptfrom St. Catherine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai. Skopje: Makedonska akademija nanaukite i umetnostite.

1973. Dobromirovo evangelie: Kirilski spomenik od XII vek. Vol. 1.

Skopje: Makedonska akademija na naukite i umetnostite.1979. Der tilteste Serbische Psalter. Slavistische Forschungen, 23.

Cologne and Vienna: Btihlau.1985. "One Pericope from an Old-Russian Praxapostle (Sinaitic Slavic

Manuscript nr. 39)." Litterae slavicae medii aevi Francisco Venceslao MarelSexagenario oblatae. Sagners slavistische Sammlung, 8. Munich: OttoSagner. Pp.19-29.

1987. *Identification of Newly Discovered Slavic Manuscripts in St.

Catherine's Monastery in Sinai." Slovo 37;35-40.Altbauer, M., and H. G. Lunt. 1978. An Early Slavonic Psalter from Rzs'. Vol. 1:

Photoreproduction. Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Sources and Docu-ments Series. Cambridge, Mass.

Altbauer, M., and F. V. Mare5. 1980. "Fragmentum glagoliticum evangeliariipalaeoslovenici in codice Sinaitico 39 (palimpsestum)." Anzeiger derdsterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophisch-historischeKlasse) ll7:139-52.

Altbauer, M., and F. V. Mare5. 1981. "Das Palimpsest-Fragment eines glagoli-tischen Evangeliars im Codex Sinaiticus 39-Ein neues altkirchenslavischeskanonisches Denkmal.' Wiener slavistischer Almanach 7 : 253 - 58.

Announcement. 1983. "Announcement /'Avcrrorv<ilon," Cyrillomethodianum7:277 -80.

Benton, J. F., A. R. Gillespie, and J. M. Soha. 1979. "Digital Image-ProcessingApplied to the Photography of Manuscripts, with Examples Drawn from thePincus Manuscript of Amold of Villanova." Suiptorium 33:40-55, plates9- 13.

Bimbaum, H. 1989. [Review of Tamanidis 1988]. Die Welt der Slaven34:173-81.

Bl6hov6, E. 1989. [Review of Tamanidis 1988). Byzantinoslavica50: 64-68.Charlesworth, J.H. 1979. *St. Catherine's Monastery: Myths and Mysteries." BiDl-

ical Arche olo gist 42: 17 4 -7 9.1980. "The Manuscripts of St. Catherine's Monastery." Biblical Archeolo-

gist 43:26-34.Charlesworth, I. H., and G. T. Zervos. 1981. The New Discoveries in St.

Catherine's Monastery: A Preliminary Report on the Manuscriprs. AmericanSchools of Oriental Research Monograph Series, 3. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-brauns.

198 ROBERTMATHIESEN

Aoprcwbg opperioroaog lrv&. 1982. "Eioriyaorq dai t6lv ve<ooti eipe06vtcovnolor6rv 2gerpolpdgrov 6v { IepQ MovfiLtti"." tahrbuch der OsterreichischenBy z ant ini s ti k 32 I 4 : 105 - 16.

Dost6l, A. 1965. "The Origins of the Slavonic Liturgy." Durnbarton Oak"s Papers19:67 -87.

1 966. "L'Eucologe slave du Sinai." Byz antion 36: 4l - 50.Hellinga, L. 1982. Caxton in Focus: The Beginning of Printing in England. Lor.-

don: The British Library.Laurendik, J. 1971. "Kot4zce slovansk6 linugie sv. Petra." Studiapalaeosloyenica.

Prague: Akademia. Pp. 201 - 14.Lunt, H. G. 1958. "On Slavonic Palimpsests." American Contributions to the

Fourth International Congress of Slavists, Moscow, September 1958. TheHague. Pp. l9l-2D9.

Mare5, F. y. 1977. "Rukopisn6 dochov6nf slovansk6 liturgie sv. Petra." ZbornikVladimira Molina. Beograd, 1977. Pp. 25-29.

1981a. "Slovansk6 liturgie sv. Petra." Telcstologija srednjovekovihjuinoslovenskih knjiievnosti. Srpska akademija nauka i umefirosti, Naudni sku-povi, 10, Odeljenjejezika i knjiZevnosti,2. Beograd, 1981. Pp. 195-215.

1981b. "Das Verhiiltnis des slavischen Textes der Petrusliturgie zumgriechischen Original im Lichte der Rubriken." Cyrillomethodianum5:l2O-29.

1982. "Quomodo proprietates textibus missalium croatico-glagoliticorumet liturgiae S. Petri slavicae cornmunes explicandae stnt." Vita religiosa moralee sociale ed i Concili di Split (Spalato) dei secc. X-XI: Atti del Symposiuminternazionale di Storia ecclesiastica, Split,26-30 settembre 1978. Meclioevoe umanesimo,49. Padua: Editrice Antenore. Pp. 155-61.

Mathiesen, R. 1985. "Uspenskij's Bifolium and the Chronology of Some EarlyChurch Slavonic Translations." Slavica Hierosolymitana: Slavic Studies of theH ebrew University 7 : 77 -86.

1987. "Some Methodological hoblems in Describing Old East SlavicCyrillic Manuscripts and Printed Books." Polata knigopisnaja 17- 18: 130*43.

McNeil, R. J. 1984. "Scanning Auger Microscopy for Dating of Manuscript [nks."Archaeological Chemistry 3 [Advances in Chemistry Series, 205]: 255-69.

Nahtigal, R. 1941-42. Euchologium Sinairicum: Starocerkvenosloyanski glagolskispomenik. Vols. l-2. Akademija znanosti in umetnosti v Ljubljani,Filozofsko-filolo5ko-historidni rared, 1 -2. Ljubljana.

Neff, D. 1986. "Recovering the Erased Gospels." Christianity Today,3 October1986:17 -2O.

Nimduk, V. V. 1983. Kyjivs'ki hlaholyCni lystky: Najdavnila pam" jatkaslov" jans' koji pys' mennosti. Kiev.

Pantelid, M. 1985. "O kijevskim i sinajskim listi6ima." Slovo 35:5-56.Politis, L. 1980. "Nouveaux manuscrits grecs ddcouverts au Mont Sinai: Rapport

pr€liminaire. " S c rip t or ium 3 4: 5 - 17, plates I - 9.Richards, G. B. 1977. "The Application of Electronic Video Techniques to Infra-

Red and Ultra-Violet Examinations." ,/aurnal of Forensic Sciences 22:53-60.

SLAVOMC MANUSCRIPTS ON MOI.JNT SINAI Ig9

Robinson, D. F. 1988. "The Slavic versions of the Liturgy of St. peter." Americancontributions to the Tenth International congress of slavists, softa, september,1988: Linguistics. Columbus, Ohio. pp. 329-34.

schaeken, J. 1989. "YorlEuflge Bemerkungen zum neuentdeckten glagolitischenMissale Sinaiticum." Die Welt der Slaven 34:32-40.

Sevdenko, r. 1982. "Report on the Glagolitic Fragments (of the Euchologiumsinaiticum?) Discovered on Sinai in 1975 and some Thoughts on the Modelsfor the Makeup of the Earliest Glagolitic Manuscripts." Harvard ukrainianStudies 6:119-51.

Standev, K. 1981. "Neizvestnye i maloizvestnye bolgarskie rukopisi v pariie."P alaeobul garica I Starobdlgaristika 513: 85 -97.

Sternberg, P. R., and J. M. Brayer. 1983. "Composite Imaging: A New Techniquein Bibliographical Research." Papers ofthe Bibliographical society ofAmerica77:431-45.

Svodnyj katalog. 1984. Svodnyj katalog slavjano-russkix rukopisnyx knig,xranjallixsja v SSSR. XI -XIII vv. Moscow.

Tkadldik, y. 1971. "Byzantinischer und rOmischer Ritus in der slavischen Litur-gie." Wegzeichen: Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag von prof. Dr. Hermenegild M.Biedermann OSA. Das <istliche Christentum: Abhandlungen im Auftrag desostkirchlichen Instituts der deutschen Augustiner, 25. wiirzburg: Augustinus-Verlag. W.313-32.

1989. [Review ofTarnanidis 1988]. S/avia 58: 165-70.Va5ica, J. 1939-46. "Slovansk6 liturgie sv.Pefa.', ByzantinoslayicaS: l-54.

1940. "Slovanskd liturgie novd osvEtlen6 Kijevsklmi listy.,, Slovo a slo_yesnost 6:65-77 .

veder, w' R. 1981. "The second summer colloquium on old Bulgarian studies(13-27 August 1980, Sofia)." Polata knigopisnaja 5:29-41.

veldeva, B. 1988. [Review of ramanidis l9B8). palaeobulgaricalstarobdl-g ari s tika 12 13 : 126 - 29.

HARVARD:

; UKRAINIAN STUDIES

Volume XV, Number ll2June L99I