Житието на Варвар Мироточец Пелагонийски (Битолски)
The Life of Varvar Mirotochets Pelagoniiski (Bitolski)

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to the little known Saint Varvar Mirotochets (Varvar the Holy oil Giver) whose cult is closely connected with Turnovo. The historical documents show that during the time of King Alexander the Patriarchy of Turnovo, emphasizing its independence from that of Constantinople, did not buy holy oil from the “Mother Church” and used the holy oil exuding from the relics of St. Dimiter of Salonika and St. Varvar of Bitolja. The detailed vita was published already at the end of the past century by A. I. Yatsimirski, who had discovered it in a Moldovian manuscript of 1448, autograph of Gavriil Urik. In the copy known to Yatsimirski at the end of the Life there is an addition according to which it was written in 1435. In this publication are given all the archaeographic data on the five hitherto known copies of the work, supported are the already expressed assumptions that Cyprian was the author only of the verses and that the Life is an anonymous literary monument that appeared in Turnovo about the middle of the 14th c, but up to 1371. The comparison between the Slavonic text and the Greek works of Constantine Acropolitis and Akakius shows that the Life is a highly artistic rhetorical work of a metaphrastic type, reflecting a Bulgarian transformation of the cult of St. Varvar of Hellas, in which the image is considerably altered and above all is stressed the important for the Bulgarians “holy oil giving” of the hero.

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