The Malediction of the 318 Fathers in Slavic-language Manuscripts from the 16th–18th Centuries
The Malediction of the 318 Fathers in Slavic-language Manuscripts from the 16th–18th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: Manuscript books are valuable not only because of their monetary value, but also because the creation of a book is a God-pleasing deed. In the period after the fall of the Balkans under Ottoman rule, donators increasingly donated liturgical books to a church or a monastery so that they would serve for the salvation of their souls and those of their families. In the notes on the bestowal of the book, anyone who dares to remove or damage it is threatened with a terrible malediction. Most often, the incantation formula mentions the 318 holy fathers of Nicaea, that is, the participants in the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicaea in 325. Similar texts are found in Bulgarian, Serbian, South Slavic, and Vlach-Moldovan manuscripts, especially in the 16th–17th centuries. We find them in the scribe’s main notes, when the donator ordered and paid for the creation of the manuscript, or in secondary inscriptions in cases where the donator bought the book specifically to use it in the church. The earlier inscriptions follow the Byzantine model and mention Arius, because of whose heresy the council was convened. In the later texts, his name is not included, probably because early Christian dogmatic disputes are no longer relevant for the scholars. Instead, the help of the saint whose name the church to which the book was donated bears is invoked. The authority of the 318 fathers is preserved, and the old incantations prove to be a way of emphasizing one’s own identity at a time when Orthodox Christians are under the rule of non-Christians. This is also the reason why the same curses appear in books created in different ethnic environments.

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