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This paper examines correspondences between unusual saints’ commemorations in the 9th-century Latin Neapolitan Wall Calendar and medieval Slavic calendars of saints, focusing on the menology to the Bulgarian Apostolus No. 882, the Zograph Trephologion (Draganov Menaion) and Palauzov Menaion, and the menology to the Ohrid Apostol. The analysis is based on data from Archimandrite Sergij’s collation of Slavic and Greek calendars of saints, and from the author’s electronic menology collation, for which Professor David J. Birnbaum developed the digital blueprint.
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Church Slavonic manuscript collections in Poland hold over forty copies of homilies and encomia traditionally attributed to Clement of Ohrid. Although scholars have known about these copies for years, they have not been subjected yet to detailed linguistic and textual studies. The analysis of the works from the Lenten and Paschal cycles reveals that part of the copies retain old linguistic features – spelling and lexical units – from South Slavonic manuscripts which, no doubt, were still in use in areas of Western Russia during the 14th–16th centuries. As a rule, Clement’s works were faithfully copied, but there are occasionally examples of textual interventions that evince editorial activity by local scribes and compilers. The source material confirms the opinion that, within the Polish-Lithuanian state, Russian Orthodoxy was actively drawing from the South Slavonic literary tradition.
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Slavonic compilations, recycling extant texts, must be considered texts in their own right even if they fulfil only half of the requirements imposed by text linguistics: their reception and transmission in no way differs from that of other texts. The two compilations named and eight others with similar content raise the question, whether their relationship is filial, i.e. shaped by accidents of transmission, or sibling, i.e. designed by different compilers. A review of the differences in content per chapter, complemented by reviews of five different types of editorial intervention and of the treatment of the more than 30 different source texts shows that nine of the ten compilations are, indeed, independent texts, while one is a version affiliated to an extant compilation. Slavonic compilations, recycling extant texts, must be considered texts in their own right even if they fulfil only half of the requirements imposed by text linguistics: their reception and transmission in no way differs from that of other texts. The two compilations named and eight others with similar content raise the question, whether their relationship is filial, i.e. shaped by accidents of transmission, or sibling, i.e. designed by different compilers. A review of the differences in content per chapter, complemented by reviews of five different types of editorial intervention and of the treatment of the more than 30 different source texts shows that nine of the ten compilations are, indeed, independent texts, while one is a version affiliated to an extant compilation.
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This article examines several unique examples in the Byzantine and Old Bulgarian hagiographical literature of the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries, which reflect the spiritual state of the Hesychast offering the so-called Jesus Prayer or Prayer of the Heart, a new form of the “inner prayer” (νοερὰ προσευχή), originating from the early Christian hermitic practices, which found theological justification in the writings of Evagrius of Pontus (ca. 345–399/400). The reason for searching for its literary reflection is the famous passage from the Encomium in praise of Patriarch Euthymius of Turnovo by Gregory Tsamblak. It describes how Euthymius as a disciple of Theodosius of Turnovo saw his mentor in an unusual and even frightening condition: standing in his full stature, with his hands raised up and his eyes radiating such a strong light, as if it were a flame. This image in Tsamblak is unique in the Old Bulgarian literature of the period and has its parallel only in the Vitaе of the Athonite Hesychast, Maximos of Kapsokalyvia (ca. 1270/1280–ca. 1365/75), three of which were written by his followers and disciples, St Niphon of Kapsokalyvia (1315–1411), Theophanes, Metropolitan of Peritheorio, and Hieromonk Ioannikios Kochylas, and the most recent one by the Byzantine scholar Macarius Macres (1382/1383–7 Jan. 1431). Due to the differences in the specific details and circumstances in their descriptions, it was established that they were not the original source of Tsamblak. Influenced by the second of the three Triads (In Defense of the Holy Hesychasts) by Gregory Palamas, he chose as a model a very similar story about the hermit Arsenius from the alphabetical collection Apophthegmata Patrum (PG 65: 94 C). The fear and astonishment of those who see the flames of the praying recluses, and the fact that the ascetics themselves somehow deny what is seen, can be explained not only by the extremely metaphysical nature of what is happening and ascetic modesty, but also by the notion of an evil spirit sent from the devil, or by the influence of heretical ideas and practices. Especially in the Vitae of the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries the hermit's apparent indifference and even the ban on sharing what was seen was probably dictated by the writers' desire to prevent a reaction of disbelief, as well as the accusation of non-Orthodoxy, as Hesychasts were known to be accused by their opponents as Bogomils and Massalians because of similarities in their ascetic practices with these heretical movements.
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Already during the Second World War, when it gradually imposed its power over vast Croatian territories, then within the boundaries of the Independent State of Croatia, and especially after its end, when it officially solidified its power, the Yugoslav Communist Party (YKP) began political repressions and trials against all its political opponents, one of which was the Catholic Church. Thousands of clergymen were sent to prisons, camps or were physically liquidated, and churches were massively destroyed in the spirit of the atheistic policy of the regime. Over time, Communist attacks on the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Zagreb Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, escalated and culminated in the Stalinist political trial of September 1946. The reason for that was that the Archbishop did not give in to the pressure of the authorities, did not disconnect the ties of the Catholic Church in Croatia with Vatican and became a symbol of the Croatian nation and its struggle for independence and statehood.
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Towards the end of the 19th century, approximately . of the Orthodox Bulgarians in the historical-geographic region of Macedonia remained loyal to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which served the Greek national idea. In the past, as well as today, this fact has raised the question of the national affiliation of the Bulgarian-speaking population in the European domains of the Ottoman Empire. Why did these people, despite the long-term efforts of the Bulgarian Exarchate to attract them to itself, remain loyal to the Patriarchate? The author points out the unequal position of the two church institutions in the Ottoman administrative system as a leading factor that hindered the normal functioning of the Bulgarian Church and severely limited its ability to guarantee the political, religious and cultural-educational rights of the Bulgarian exarchists. On the border between the two centuries, at the center of the struggle for the distribution of the Ottoman heritage in the Balkans, the Bulgarians in Macedonia were faced with a difficult choice, on which depended not only their personal well-being, but sometimes even their lives.
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