Abstract: Recent scholarship on the historical development of the Slavic liturgy in its early stage has shown that one of the important prerequisites for its practical implementation was the establishment, under the guidance of a bishop, of a church organization which was entitled to use Church Slavonic as a liturgical language. Research has also demonstrated that the methodological approach linking the history of the Slavic liturgical texts with the development of the Slavic ecclesiastical structures administered by bishops offers valuable insights. The first Slavic corpus of liturgical books of Byzantine rites (the so-called Corpus of Clement, CC) came into being in the Slavic ethnic eparchy and then in the Slavic territorial dioceses which were to be integrated into the church organization of the First Bulgarian Empire. The core part of the CC, to which the complex of original Slavic hymnographic writings belongs, was created in the years between 893 and 916 in the Slavic ethnic eparchy of St. Clement of Ohrid in the western part of the First Bulgarian Empire (in the region of southern Albania, northwestern Greece, and southwestern Macedonia). The supplementary part of the CC, which contains the complex of the word-by-word translations of hymnographic writings, originated in the mid-10th century in Slavic territorial dioceses located at that time in the western part of the First Bulgarian Empire. This two-stage formation of the CC was due to the two-stage development of the Slavic church organizations, and it was thus neither linguistic nor literary in nature. Having special features characteristic of the western Byzantine liturgy, the CC differed from both its preceding and subsequent corpora of Slavic liturgical books in its liturgical, textological, and linguistic character. Every subsequent corpus of Slavic liturgical texts, however, built upon the preceding one, and this ensured the continuity of the Slavic liturgical and, consequently, linguistic tradition as a whole.

Abstract: The paper seeks to outline the overall framework for the reception of St. Clement’s tradition in Slavic literacy in northern, Serb-populated areas; the paper also analyzes major Serbian literary monuments, both Glagolitic and Cyrillic, which may be brought into a close relationship with the literacy tradition of St. Clement. They are presented individually, also taking into account an earlier linguistic background from which they stemmed. These older linguistic traits which are Old Slavonic as well as some later characteristics are generally possible to arrange in an ideal chronological sequence. This makes it possible to suggest a relative chronology of the formation of some Serbian literary monuments. There are also some local linguistic traits and other parameters that allow one to date Serbian literary monuments more precisely and, sometimes, even to delimit their territory of origin. This series begins with the Codex Marianus and continues with Miroslav’s Gospel, the Mihanovic Fragment, the Grskovic Fragment, Bratko’s Menaion, the Jerusalem Palimpsest, and the Belgrade Prophetologion, ending with the Serbian Prophetologion from St. Petersburg and Kiev. One must keep in mind that the Serbian language, which underlies the spoken background of the Serbian redaction of the Church Slavonic language, was, shortly after its formation (up to the end of the 11th century), still dialectically undiversified (regardless of the potentially heterogeneous situation before the 9th century); thus, based on the current body of knowledge, it is not possible to identify dialectical traits that would provide more specific information about individual writings. However, traces of the general logic of the developmental dynamics of the folk language can be identified in the language of the only 11th-century source presented in this paper: the Codex Marianus . This literary monument is temporally and spatially located in the third quarter of the 11th century and the southeastern boundary of Raska (roughly in Poibarje), near the fortress of Zvecan and the early medieval settlement of Cecan. Miroslav’s Gospel is dated to the period between 1161 and 1170 (ca. 1165) and is linguistically associated with the territory of the Bishopric of Raska because its scribes were the bearers of a dialect typical of this region: the manuscript either originates from Raska or it was written by Rascian scribes in some other area. Based on a rather large number of literary monuments, it is possible to get insight into the third stage in the life of this form of literacy in Polimlje, where the hereditary estates of the Nemanjics and their relatives were located. From the early Middle Ages this area witnessed lively ecclesiastical activities, though they were based on the Roman Rite. One of the cultural centers must have been located around the trefoil church of St. John at Zaton (9th–11th centuries). In this wider area, a more conservative Serbian literary tradition, which can be traced in the Mihanovic Fragment, could have persisted slightly longer. The Mihanovic Fragment was the purest representative of the Serbian redaction, without secondary shadings typical of the innovative southern Slavic areas in the 11th century (with the mildest divergence from the vernacular variety when pronouncing the literary language), and it was still based on the linguistic background shaped by St. Clement. The linguistic picture of this literary monument indicates that it could have originated from an area where an ancient linguistic redaction dating back to the early 10th century, or perhaps an even older variety of a literary language from the 9th century (associated with the Roman Rite) combined with a later South Slavic layer of undetermined age (10th–11th centuries), persisted.

Abstract: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Dr. Angel Nikolov, from Sofi a University “St. Clement of Ohrid,” is well known among historians of Byzantium and the Southern Slavs through his book on political thought in medieval Bulgaria, based on his Ph.D. dissertation defended in 2002 [N 2006], and through the publication, with commentary, of the medieval polemical Slavonic text “Useful Tale on the Latins,” part of a collective research project entitled “History and Historicism in the Orthodox Slavic World” [ 2011]. His new book, Between Rome and Constantinople: From the Anti-Catholic Literature in Bulgaria and in the Slav Orthodox World (11th–17th centuries), continues this work; here, he sets the object of his previous study along with other related texts in the Slavonic manuscript tradition of the 14th through the 17th centuries within the rich context of the Orthodox polemics against the Latins in the Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Slavonic literature relating to the Schism of 1054 and through the acute political confl icts of the 13th and 14th centuries, concluding with the debates around and after the Union of Brest of 1596. Nikolov’s new book aims “to reveal the important place of Bulgaria in the growing confessional confrontation between the Orthodox East and the Catholic West since the НИКОЛОВ А., Между Рим и Константинопол: из антикатолическата литература в България и славянския православен свят (XI–XѴII век), София, Фондация “Българско историческо наследство”, 2016, 353 с. Болгарская полемическая литература в конфессиональном расколе между Римом и Константинополем Bulgarian Polemical Literature in the Confessional Strife between Rome and Constantinople

Abstract: The article is dedicated to the linguistic features of the Didactic Gospel by Constantine the Presbyteros, who is also known as Constantine of Preslav or Constantine of Bregalnica. The earliest witness of the original text, which Constantine wrote down at the end of the 9th century in the First Bulgarian Kingdom, is the Old East Slavonic manuscript dating to the end of the 11th–beginning of the 12th centuries (this manuscript is sometimes dated to a later period). The manuscript is remarkable for its graphic and orthographic features characteristic only for the earliest Church Slavonic sources of East Slavonic provenance; these sources are dated to the 11th century or to the beginning of the 12th century. At the same time, the manuscript attests phonetic innovations caused by the initial stage of the loss of the jer -vowels, such as “new jat’ ” and the change of e into o . On the basis of the earliest manifestations of the change of e into o in the written sources, the author argues that this phonetic change took place in the southern part of the East Slavonic area and first of all in the prefinal syllable before the final jer in the absolute weak position. Phonetic and orthographic peculiarities of the East Slavonic witness of the Didactic Gospel testify to the southwest Balkan provenance of its South Slavonic protograph, which must have been a Cyrillic one. (On the basis of lexical data, the southwest Balkan origin of Constantine’s archetype was argued by the author elsewhere.) From the point of view of verbal morphology, the earliest witness of the Didactic Gospel seems to be one of the most archaic East Slavonic manuscripts, which is particularly testified by a number of forms of the root aorist. Special attention is devoted to the construction called “relativer Attributivkonnex” (Ch. Koch). It was discovered by scholars in a number of South Slavonic sources or in East Slavonic manuscripts which go back to the South Slavonic tradition, and is to be observed in the Didactic Gospel, too.

Abstract: In 2015 in Pons, in the former province of Saintonge, an Old Russian pilgrim graffito was found on the wall of the parish church of St Vivien, a monument of the mid-12th century It is the second graffito found in France after the one discovered at St Gilles Abbey The town of Pons is located on the westernmost route of Santiago de Compostela (via Turonensis) and is noteworthy because of the preserved pilgrim almshouse of the latter half of the 12th century On the walls of its long archway are horseshoe drawings made by medieval pilgrims, the latest of which, dating from the 16th–17th centuries, bends around a name that is also apparently written in Cyrillic script The earlier inscription, which appears at the base of the northern end wall of the original facade of the St Vivien church, is made in the name of one Ivan Zavidovich: “Ivano ps[а]lo Zavi|doviche ida ko | svetomu Ie|kovu” (= ‘Ivan Zavidovich wrote this when going to Saint James’) The most probable palaeographic dating is in the 1160s–1180s As suggested by birch bark manuscripts, the name of Ivan’s father, Zavid , was popular among Novgorod boyars Novgorod is also the place with the greatest indirect evidence of the occurrence in Old Russia of the western cult of St James This well preserved inscription is an important epigraphic discovery, but its main value lies in the direct evidence of pilgrimages by Russians to the shrine of St James in Galicia

Abstract: This paper introduces a previously unstudied manuscript, “Opyt perevoda vetkhozavetnykh knig [. . .] Mikhailom Fotinskim” (1806). In this article, we analyze the history of this manuscript, the circumstances surrounding the translation, and its purpose; some personal facts about the translator are also reviewed. This source represents the earliest Russian translation of the Old Testament, antedating by more than fifteen years the Russian Bible Society translations. Rev. Mikhail Fotinsky’s translation of five Old Testament books (only two ones in the Genesis) was sent to the Moscow Religious Censorship Committee (Moskovskaia Dukhovnaia tsenzura) in 1806, and the next year, Fotinsky asked the Censorship Committee to allow him to make a translation of the entire Old Testament. However, the censors left the manuscript in their repository, and there was no further development on this project. Contemporaries ignored this translation for several reasons. The first reason might be related to language: Fotinsky’s translation includes many Ukrainian elements. The second reason relates to its literary quality (or lack thereof), as the translation was interlinear and thus not stylistically developed. The manuscript contains many commentaries by Fotinsky, who concentrated on the Hebrew original and Judaic exegesis, trying to show different interpretations that may have occurred as a result of the polysemy of the original text.

Abstract: Vorliegender Aufsatz betrachtet die im kirchenslavischen Kanon auf den heiligen Wenzel enthaltenen Gottesmutterhymnen (Theotokia) aus einer zweifachen Perspektive: Der slavische Text wird mit der bis auf die erste Ode ermittelten griechischen Vorlage einerseits und mit anderen slavischen Ubersetzungen andererseits verglichen. Die Theotokia des Wenzelskanons weisen frappante Ahnlichkeiten mit der Oktoechos und dem Kliment von Ohrid zugeschriebenen Commune Sanctorum auf; die festgestellten textuellen Ubereinstimmungen legen die Vermutung nahe, dass es sich beim Wenzelskanon um die Ubernahme bereits vorhandener Ubersetzungen handeln konnte. Das im Aufsatz zusammengestellte Material soll der weiteren Vertiefung der angesprochenen oder nur angedeuteten Fragen dienen.

Abstract: The coexistence of ethnic and territorial principles in the structure of ecclesiastical organizations is a well known fact in church history. Both principles are equally legitimate from the point of view of canonical law. The “ethnic principle” was based on legal norms of the so-called 34th Apostolic Rule, and contrary to the opinion of scholars of the 19th century, it was still in use after the era of the Ecumenical Councils. This fact must be considered by students of the history of Church organizations in the First Bulgarian Kingdom, too. The observations regarding the structure of church organizations in Simeonic Bulgaria make it possible to assume the coexistence of ethnic and territorial principles of church organizations in his kingdom. As is known, Slavonic church schools were established in the southwestern part of the First Bulgarian Kingdom after 886. They were aimed at training the Slavonic clergy for the Slavonic church organization. In 893, the Bulgarian King Simeon was elevated to the throne, and a Slavonic eparchy headed by St. Clement of Ohrid was established in the southwestern territories of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. As a result, heterogeneous church organizations were established in the region, and church structures of ethnic and territorial types appeared. They differ from each other by the language of their church services. Old Church Slavonic must have been used as a liturgical language in the ethnic Slavonic eparchy. Since direct historical evidence for such heterogeneous church structure in the First Bulgarian Kingdom is absent, new interpretations of sources made on the basis of canonical law can be of importance for Slavonic studies.

Abstract: A study of the so-called zero-forms of the present tense 3rd person singular and plural (without inflectional - t ь) in the birch bark manuscripts has once again attracted the attention of researchers to this grammatical phenomenon. Andrey Zaliznyak established the zero-forms usage positions and their range and functions, and he arrived at the conclusion that they are Novgorod dialectisms. Analysis of the Old Slavonic and written sources of the Russian Southwest found similarities with the Novgorod birch bark manuscripts, so the zero-forms should be considered Proto-Slavic dialectisms, inherited by different Old Russian dialects and tracing back to the injunctive and the conjunctive, its later substitute. At the same time, data correlation showed the narrowness of the birch bark manuscripts’ discursive range. A. Zaliznyak discovered several j е ‘is’ word forms in a supposedly enclitic function. He noted, however, that there was a lack of material for drawing final conclusions. The present paper provides evidence of the j е word form usage in the function of Wackernagel enclitics in different sources, especially in the 11th century Sinaiskii Paterik (Pratum spiritual), where, as it turns out, this type of enclitic was closely related with an interrogative sentence type, not always functioning as a link-verb and meaning a non-factive action of supposition. The j е word form is also used widely in a non-enclitic position, where it has a non-actual, primarily gnomic, present tense meaning.

Abstract: The article elaborates on the basic linguistic features of the Macedonian redaction manuscripts. A survey of the characteristics is presented on different levels: orthographical, phonological, morphological, lexical, and the level of word formation. Linguistic features of these texts can contribute to their more precise localization, indicating that the manuscripts analyzed here are related to the wide zone of southern and western Macedonian dialects, a wider area in which the activities of the Ohrid Literary School took place. The lexicon of the manuscripts, especially the Greek loanwords present, leads to the conclusion that the place of their formation is a Slavic-Greek contact zone. Part of this paper is dedicated to the comparison of rare lexicon and productive word formation models present in a group of Church Slavonic manuscripts of Russian redaction. The comparative analysis of the lexicon and word formation models can help in establishing the corpus of books of the Byzantine rite that were created in the period of activity of Cyrillo-Methodian disciples, under the leadership of Clement of Ohrid. It is obvious that part of that corpus was the main liturgical book, the Gospel, and some previous works have verified that the Menaion was also translated in this literary center. Based on the analysis made in this work, it can be noted that the same rare lexicon and word formation models, in many cases verified in the hymnographic works of Clement of Ohrid, characterize the Apostle, Psalter with commentary, Triodion, Euchologium, and Prophetologion, leading to the conclusion that all these books were part of Clement’s corpus.

Abstract: The paper addresses the problems of the attribution and the geographical and chronological origins of the synaxarion redaction of the Life of St. Alexander Svirsky; it relies on textological, codicological, and palaeographic analysis of the surviving manuscripts. The author draws some conclusions about the formation of the regional variants of this medieval hagiographic text. Alexander Svirsky was the only Christian saint who was honored by receiving a manifestation of the Holy Trinity; this occurred in 1508. He founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity and was its archpriest until his dormition in 1533. The Life of Alexander Svirsky was written in 1545 by Herodion Kochnev, one of the saint’s acolytes, at the directive of Metropolitan Macarius for the Great Menaion Reader. The Life of St. Alexander Svirsky survives in a large number of copies— about 200—from the 16th and 17th centuries. Only nine of these copies show the text variant that the author of this study calls “the synaxarion variant”; they appear in synaxaria from the second half of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. Word-by-word text comparison allows one to conclude that these nine copies fall into three different redactions, each reflecting Herodion’s text. All three redactions originate from different areas, and they differ in subject matter and in the methods of elaboration of the Menaion text. On the one hand, this confirms that obviously there was a great need for this kind of text; on the other hand, it acknowledges the absence of a norm by means of which such texts might be compiled. The first, earliest, synaxarion redaction survives in seven copies, including one of the earliest copies of the Life, which dates back to 1549, according to a note by the scribe. It might have been created soon after Herodion’s text for the Great Menaion Reader to coincide with Alexander’s canonization in 1547. Despite the small number of surviving copies, this redaction was rather widespread and was known in Pskov and Novgorod, in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, and probably in Romanov. The other two redactions were found in late, isolated copies. The second synaxarion redaction is known from the Vologda Synaxarion, and the third one—from the Synaxarion delivered from Moscow to Mozhaysk.

Abstract: The paper deals with questions regarding the formation of the modern Ukrainian nation and, particularly, the impact of the political activities and writings of G A Poletika (1725–1784) The author reconstructs the context of the genesis of Poletika’s views of the history of “Malorossiya” and the Zaporozhian Host The paper shows that the debates about the rights and duties of the nobility, in which Poletika was deeply involved, could not produce radically new political language capable of questioning the integrity of the Russian Empire This, in turn, derives from the fact that preservation of “Malorossiyan rights” was an important element of political bargaining for the Ukrainian Cossack elite The purpose of this bargain was to consolidate the privileged position of the Cossack elite In Poletika’s writings, the ideal of the “Hetmanate” or independent “Ukrainian Cossack state,” as well as feelings about the loss of the “Ukrainian state,” was absent, even though this concept was common to all Malorossiyan social groups The Cossack past was considered by Poletika as an “age of misfortune,” in contrast to the Polish times The author concludes that there were significant ruptures in the process of building the modern Ukrainian nation

Abstract: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Professor Peter Angelov, the renowned medievalist from Sofia University “St. Clement of Ohrid,” has published a new book, Foreign Peoples as Viewed by a Medieval Bulgarian, following the path laid out in his previous works on images of Bulgaria and Bulgarians in Byzantium and on medieval Bulgarian diplomacy [Angelov 1999; idem 2011]. His new research uncovers unexplored perspectives provided by an imagological approach to the study of the Bulgarian mind during the Middle Ages, and he raises new questions about the rare written, iconographical, and folklore evidence that originated in both domest ic and foreign sources. Angelov chooses as his subjects those who differ from Bul garians by faith (for example, Judaists and Catholics) and by the polities to which they belonged (for example, Byzantines or Westerners, who, in medieval Bulgaria, were called Franks or Latins). Depending on the circumstances, members of each of these groups might be considered by the medieval Bulgarian state and society as insiders or outsiders. Proving that this situation to some extent was rooted in the regional specifics of Bulgaria, Angelov quotes the evidence of writings by Demetrios Chomatenos, arch­ bishop of Bulgaria (1216–1236), which state that the territory of his diocese, with its see in Ohrid, “from ancient times was allowed to be inhabited by peoples of other faiths and by different pagans, namely Jews, Armenians, Ishmaelites, Hagarians, etc.” (p. 8). Reviews Рецензии

Abstract: The article offers some corrections to Vassily Adodurov’s Anfangs-Grunde der Russischen Sprache (1731), as edited by S. S. Volkov and K. A. Filippov in 2014. There is one thing to note regarding the quality of this edition. On page 7, the editors list the typographical errors they corrected when working with the original text. The list they present has four items and contains a total of six errors , which are actually misreadings by the editors themselves as well as typos they appear to have introduced during the production of the book (including that they cite pages 49 and 51 of the 48-page original). The work, produced by a team of ten, consists of different sections: four prefatory essays; a facsimile reprint of the 1731 original; a rendition into modern typeset with a Russian translation; two indexes; and three supplements. These multiple parts are poorly coordinated and, overall, can be evaluated as ranging from being somewhat acceptable to being defective. The editors knowingly and without any explicit polemics ignore the original conception of the history of Petersburg Academy’s Russian grammar in the 1720s and 1730s that was offered by Helmut Keipert (2002) and has been accepted by most scholars. Whereas Keipert’s fundamental work presents multiple Russian grammars created in St. Petersburg in this period as the product of collective work, conducted mostly by and for German speakers, the editors of the volume under review tend to see the Anfangs-Grunde as an individual work, an “original grammar produced by V. E. Adodurov.” Any extensive comparison of the Anfangs-Grunde with other early Petersburg grammars would demonstrate the dependence of this short essay on the more profound work of its predecessors. The present edition has almost no commentary; of the five commentaries included in the volume, two are erratic, one is obvious, one shows that the editors are new to the typographical term custos , and only one—dealing with Lomonosov’s use of examples from the Anfangs-Grunde for his Russian Grammar (1755)—makes any sense. The German text in modern typeset is extremely poorly prepared: in the first 23 (of 46) pages there are 34 significant typos and omissions that take the place of the 5 typos corrected from the original. This only underscores the observation that the 18th-century German Gothic typeface is obscure for the editors. The two indexes are partly unusable; not only are both full of omissions (the index of Russian examples omits almost 10% of the forms in the original, including more than half of the words starting with the letter Z as well as most of the examples for superlative and even the verb form bytʹ ), but furthermore, the ‘Index of Grammar Terms’ is not what it says it is. The correct title would be ‘Index of Latin Grammar Terms,’ for it does not include German terms, with the result that there are no listings for terms relating to phonetics, normative style, etc. The text of the 1738‒1740 grammar of the St. Petersburg Academy Gymnasium in the final supplement, although carefully retyped from B. A. Uspensky’s book (1975), omits all of its commentaries—both explanatory and textological—which leads to presenting without comment letter sequences such as rereniiakhʺ , imennno , navodishishʹ , etc. The article also discusses principles for the study and publication of the entire body of works that present the St. Petersburg grammatical tradition of the period from the 1730s to the 1750s. Appendices to this article include publication of Adodurov’s note on er and erʹ (1737) and the major corrections to the text of Russian grammar (1738–1740) from the St. Petersburg Academy Gymnasium as published by Uspensky in 1975.

Abstract: Among the activities of St. Clement of Ohrid was the construction of the church and monastery in Ohrid, which was carried out at the end of the 9th century at the location where some Byzantine basilicas had stood previously. As findings of archaeological excavations have shown, St. Clement first built a small triconch church at the location of the ruined basilica. This triconchos was later expanded by the addition of a capacious “pronaos” in inscribed-cross form, where St. Clement was interred. This “pronaos” was characterized by entrances on the north and south sides that were identical to those of the inscribed-cross church that existed near the village of Velce along the Susica River (in southern Albania) at the turn of the 9th‒10th century. During the tenure of Archbishop Dmitrios Chomatianos (1216–1236), the “pronaos” was replaced with a new church into which the relics of St. Clement were placed. In the Ottoman period, the Church and Monastery of St. Clement were disassembled to build a mosque. At the very beginning of the 10th century, the triconchal church in the Monastery of St. Clement served as a model for the church in the Monastery of St. Naum, in the southern part of the Ohrid lake area. The groundwork(s) of a further church in a triconchal shape, whose construction can be traced back to the time of St. Clement, has also been discovered at Gorica, near Ohrid. Ruins of yet another triconchal church which also belongs to the period under review can be found near the village of Zlesti, in the Dolna Debarca region, not far from Ohrid. In the vicinity of the village of Izdeglavje, in the Gorna Debarca region, there is also a church whose establishment is related to the activity of St. Clement of Ohrid as well.

Abstract: According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, when St Anthony settled in his cave near Kiev, people joined him and he tonsured them as monks We know, however, that in certain cases he did not tonsure the newcomers but sent them to be tonsured by a priest (hieromonk) Obviously St Anthony was not a priest Why, then, in some cases did he do it himself and yet in other cases, he did not? If he was not a priest, how could he tonsure people? The author of the present article attempts to answer these and similar questions with reference to historical, philological, and liturgical data The article is devoted to the evolution of the monastic tradition in Rus’ of the 11th century

Abstract: This paper discusses the development of the analytic future in Russian Romani In this Romani dialect, an analytic future tense can be expressed by means of the two auxiliary verbs avela ‘to come’ and lela ‘to take’ This article argues that the development of this analytic future was induced by contact with Eastern Slavic languages In Romani, the verb avela also functions as the future form of the copula, thus its use as an auxiliary to derive future tense is a calque from the Slavic construction with the verb budu ‘I will’ In the article it is argued that the use of the verb lela as an auxiliary is a “fossilized” calque from Old Russian, in which the verb jati ‘to take’ was, up to the 16th century, one of the main ways to derive the future tense It is also shown that there is no clear semantic distinction between the two constructions, and that preference is given to one or the other depending on the areal variety or even idiolect Finally, Soviet Romani literature offers interesting cases that demonstrate when the verb lela begins to function as a future tense copula

Abstract: Eastern and southwestern Macedonia, as well as southern Albania, became parts of Bulgaria in the first decade of the rule of Khan Boris. After his baptism (864/865) and the establishment of an archbishopric (870; 880), the renewal of the former Byzantine church organization on Bulgaria’s territory began. In the eastern parts, the process unfolded slowly because of the strength of the ruling ethnic Bulgarian class, which was pagan; in the western parts, however, the organization of church eparchies went more easily because the local, predominantly Slavic, population had accepted Christianity centuries earlier. This was exactly the reason why Boris-Mikhail sent the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, who had just arrived (885/886) and were well versed in holding religious services in the Slavonic language, to the remote southwest of the country to carry out the so-called “Slavonic Project.” These disciples (including Clement and his associates—Naum, Konstantin, and other unnamed companions) started training local people to serve as clergymen and formed a church structure in Kutmicevica in order to introduce religious services in the Slavonic language in those regions. When Kniaz Simeon came to power, he continued Boris’s “Slavonic Project,” which thus continued to be focused in the southwestern regions of Bulgaria. On being ordained the first Slavonic bishop, Clement organized his eparchy by ethnic (Slavonic) rather than territorial principles. It was Naum who continued his mission to educate people. Konstantin, for his part, was assigned bishop of Bregalnica when Bulgaria expanded close to Thessaloniki (904) in the early 10th century. Sources suggest that the fourth Slavonic bishop was Marko of Devol, one of Clement’s students, and therefore the question of the existence of a third Slavonic bishop has inevitably been raised. As of recently, scholars have been arguing that this third bishop is to be located in Pelagonija. The existence of these four Slavonic bishops and the location of the territories in which they served undoubtedly suggests that Boris’s “Slavonic Project” had chronological continuity and that it spread during Simeon’s rule to the neighboring Slavonic regions, along the Bregalnica and the surrounding area, and perhaps to Pelagonija as well. Their activities in the aforementioned regions continued at least until the middle of the 10th century.

Abstract: Основная цель настоящей заметки — обратить внимание исследователей на документ, в котором содержится намёк на возможное тайное участие России в убийстве наследника австрийского престола эрцгерцога Франца Фердинанда и его супруги 28 июня 1914 г. в Сараеве. Этот документ был написан в 1917 г. основным организатором фатального убийства — главой сербской военной тайной разведывательной службы полковником Драгутином Димитриевичем (Аписом) в то время, когда он был обвинен в организации очередного подобного покушения на сербского принца-регента Александра. Димитриевич-Апис пишет, что он принял окончательное решение об убийстве эрцгерцога Франца Фердинанда только после того, как был заверен российским военным атташе в Белграде полковником Виктором Артамановым (известным также как Артамонов) в том, что Россия не оставит Сербию без военной поддержки в случае австрийского нападения.

Abstract: This paper introduces a previously unstudied manuscript, “Opyt perevoda vetkhozavetnykh knig [. . .] Mikhailom Fotinskim” (1806). In this article, we analyze the history of this manuscript, the circumstances surrounding the translation, and its purpose; some personal facts about the translator are also reviewed. This source represents the earliest Russian translation of the Old Testament, antedating by more than fifteen years the Russian Bible Society translations. Rev. Mikhail Fotinsky’s translation of five Old Testament books (only two ones in the Genesis) was sent to the Moscow Religious Censorship Committee (Moskovskaia Dukhovnaia tsenzura) in 1806, and the next year, Fotinsky asked the Censorship Committee to allow him to make a translation of the entire Old Testament. However, the censors left the manuscript in their repository, and there was no further development on this project. Contemporaries ignored this translation for several reasons. The first reason might be related to language: Fotinsky’s translation includes many Ukrainian elements. The second reason relates to its literary quality (or lack thereof), as the translation was interlinear and thus not stylistically developed. The manuscript contains many commentaries by Fotinsky, who concentrated on the Hebrew original and Judaic exegesis, trying to show different interpretations that may have occurred as a result of the polysemy of the original text.

Abstract: Со археолошките ископувања на римскиот театар во Скупи 2013–2016, на неколку позиции се открија наоди кои што го потврдија постоењето на една мала словенска заедница на овоj простор од постаро време. Во средновековниот хоризонт каде што припаѓаат куќите-колиби, во две од нив се открија два фрагмента од грниња на кои се сочувани деловите от натписи, изведени со врежување на букви од првата словенска азбука-глаголицата.

Abstract: In dem Artikel wird die Aufmerksamkeit auf ein Dokument gelenkt, in dem Hinweise auf einen moglichen russischen Hintergrund der Ermordung des osterreichischen Thronfolgers Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand und dessen Ehefrau am 28. Juni 1914 in Sarajevo enthalten sind. Das fragliche Dokument stammt aus der Feder des Hauptorganisators dieses verhangnisvollen Mordanschlags, des Chefs des serbischen militarischen Geheimdiensts, Oberst Dragutin Dimitrijevic-Apis. Geschrieben wurde es im Fruhjahr 1917, als Dimitrijevic-Apis angeklagt war, einen weiteren Mordanschlag organisiert zu haben, diesmal auf den serbischen Regenten Aleksandar. Dimitrijevic-Apis legt dar, er habe die endgultige Entscheidung zur Ermordung von Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand erst gefasst, als ihm der russische Militarattache in Belgrad, Oberst Viktor Artamanov (oder Artamonov in anderen Quellen), versichert hatte, Russland werde Serbien im Falle eines osterreichischen Angriffs nicht im Stich, d.h. nicht ohne militarische Unterstutzung lassen.