Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures

The article discusses a significant episode in the Martyrdom of St. Thecla describing Thecla sitting next to the window and listening to the preaching of St. Paul the Apostle. She could observe the people crowding and hear Paul’s voice, but she could not look at him. Anxious to see Paul’s face, Thecla left her home and followed Paul. In a recent study Adelina Angusheva-Tihanova has already interpreted this part of St. Thecla’s passion. In this article Apostle Paul is considered as a key figure for the understanding of the whole episode. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13-12) he uses a
catoptrical metaphor which could be used as an  interpretative key which allows us to think about the episode as an allegory of what was said by Paul in 1 Cor. 13:12. It is
interesting that the Passion of another early Christian martyr, St. Justina, contains the same episode. The author suggests that Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 13-12 cast light on the
symbolic meaning of episodes about virgins sitting by the window as a symbol of the spiritual change they were going through.

Space of Remembrance
(Observations on the Panegyric manuscript, written in 1483 by Mardarii of Rila)

The paper analyzes some features of the so called Mardariev Panegyric (Panegyric manuscript written in 1483 by Mardarii of Rila) – one of the emblematic late Medieval Slavic manuscripts. It is compiled and written by the well known learned man Mardarii, who lived and worked at the Rila Monastery in the XV century. The paper tries to reconstruct the literary taste of Mardarii, reflected in the manuscript collections he had compiled and to show how the personal choices were representative for the specific literary culture of that period and that region. The main argument is that the marked narrativity of the texts in the Panegyric manuscript, most of them pre-Metaphrastic passions, was probably an evidence for the emergence of new type of cultural memory, where the shared Christian history was used as a source for the re-enforcement of the collective identity. The pre-Metaphrastic hagiographical texts were providing historical, geographical and moral knowledge that served as an identity framework for the Christian societies in these turbulent times.

"Bulgarian Kingdom in the Last Prayer of Martyr Arethas
(Observations on the Slavic Version of Martyrium S. Arethae et Sociorum)"

The article explores the appearance of “Bulgarian kingdom” in a verse of the last prayer of Arethas in the South Slavic version of the Martyrium S. Arethae et Sociorum. There are only two South Slavic witnesses that preserve the last prayer of the saint. These are a miscellany, compiled and written by Vladislav the Grammarian in 1469 and a panegyric manuscript, written in 1483 by Mardarii of Rila. While in the Byzantine original the verse under discussion sais: Jesus Christ, raise the horn of the Christian Romaions and give the kingdom of the lowless Jews to the Cristians who will obey, in its South Slavic version there is an interesting addition mentioning Greek, Ethiopian and Bulgarian Kingdoms (compare with: Jesus Christ, raise the Christian horn and strengthen Greek, Ethiopean and Bulgarian kingdoms and give this kingdom to the Christians who obey your will).
What has provoked this concretization of the kingdoms? Main hypothesis of the paper is that the addition of Greek, Ethiopean and Bulgarian kingdoms produced new meaning of the verse, which is result of different frames of knowledge. The  mentioning of the three kingdoms is not just a symptom of the awareness of the medieval Bulgarian copyists of the cultural, political and religious environment of their time, but also it sheds light on the functioning of the hagiographical text as repository of historical knowledge and figures of remembrance.
And in conclusion - the insignificant (at the first sight) addition represents in a wonderful way the devices of reading, understanding and compiling the texts in the Medieval world, on the one hand, and the ways the man becomes aware of himself and his place in the Christian community, on the other. It shows how man’s concrete and private history corelates with the big narrative of the sacred Christian history.
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The principal task of the project “Reconstruction of the Preslav Hagiographic Collections: Publication and Research of the Stanislav Menologion”, financially supported by the Bulgarian Science Fund (DMU 03/ 19, 12.12.2011), is the preparation and publication (both digital and in print) of and research on the Stanislav menologion. The Hagioslavica webpage has been developed in a way that the information
available could be regularly updated and elaborated not only with some news related to the project but also with additional content, including further manuscripts
and metadata on them.

THE BETROTHED AND THE BRIDE: FEMALE MARTYRDOM AS A
TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIAL ROLES

Early Christian martyrdom is related to the transgression of certain social conventions characteristical of the late Hellenistic period. It is, however, important to address its
nature. Did it come as an uniform behaviour of Christians refusing to obey pagan rules? Or could we talk about gender -
specific patterns of expressing Christian identity? This presentation will look at examples of some early agiographic text in which two social roles of women could be disclosed -
as betrothed and as a bride - which, although at first glance closely related, are in fact representations and specific images of admittance into two different socio-cultural paradigms.

The topic I’m going to address is the reception of the Passion of St. Arethas and his companions (Martyrium sancti Arethae et sociorum, BHG 166) – the way it was translated and disseminated in the South Slavic literary tradition between the tenth and the seventeenth century.

Теоретизирането върху историята (или метаисторическият дискурс) разглежда историческия разказ не само като запис, съобщаващ определени факти, а и с оглед на употребите на фигури и езикови средства, постигащи внушения и пропагандиращи идеи. В този смисъл реториката на историята се състои в изучаването на прийомите при предаването на историческите сведения. Ако обърнем фокуса и разгледаме употребите на историческия разказ като реторически похват, то тогава ще говорим за реторизиране на историчното, или реторика на историчното. Традиционно се смята, че реториката работи с тропи, които съдържат разкази в кодиран вид. Както ще видим обаче, понякога средновековният книжовник преценява за по-удачно да разгъне фигуратива в наратив, включително с разказ, препращащ към исторически или квазиисторически събития. Различните реторични стратегии са израз на различна прагматична ориентация, различна публика, към която първоначално е бил ориентиран текстът. Реторичните похвати не са затворена система, а поле на избор, което дава косвени свидетелства за културното самосъзнание на книжовника и културното равнище на публиката, към която той адресира текста си. В настоящата статия чрез примера на похвално слово за св. Никола, приписвано на Климент Охридски, ще опитам да илюстрирам как историческият разказ чрез имплицираните в него послания служи на определени реторически цели.

. LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION. PRAXIS DE STRATILATIS IN THE SOUTH SLAVIC MILIEU

The main objectives of my article are the possible channels of transmission of cultural impact and literary influences from Byzantium to Bulgaria on the example of Praxis de stratilatis (BHG 1349z). Besides the translations in Old Church Slavonic and their dissemination in the South Slavic manuscript tradition the adaption of the Byzantine literary models in medieval Bulgaria are on focus. The study looks for the reasons of the multiple translations form Greek into Old Bulgarian and it reveals that the specific literary context (i.e. the kind of the manuscript collection) determines the appearance of more than one translation of one and the same text.

The article focuses on the introduction and the dissemination of the earliest account about St Nicholas - Praxis de stratilatis in the South Slavic tradition. Praxis de stratilatis is a story about a miracle of St. Nicholas who rescued three generals from death. The text was translated not once but twice at the dawn of Old Bulgarian literature. My research aims to explore the earliest translation of Praxis de stratilatis produced in a South Slavic milieu. The main objective of the study is to identify the Greek prototype of the Slavonic version and to trace the textual tradition of this account in the South Slavic context.  The study is based upon the hypothesis that the two translations were affected by the introduction of specific types of calendar collections. In this respect, the earliest translation of Praxis de stratilatis was introduced into the repertoire with the emergence of a collection known in the Byzantine tradition as panegyrikomartyrology – an assemblage of texts that pertain to both the movable and immovable Orthodox feasts. Witnesses of the earliest translation of Praxis de stratilatis date from the 14th through the 17th centuries. Despite the large temporal scope, however, individual manuscripts do not show significant differences or other traces of deliberate editing or interventions. This gives us reason to believe that the Slavic version of the collection panegyrikomartyrology was not reproduced as a whole, which would account for the fact that the texts, although they were copied in the later manuscript tradition, remained relatively unchanged.