Codex Marianus
Encyclopedia
Gospel Book
The Gospel Book, Evangelion, or Book of the Gospels is a codex or bound volume containing one or more of the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament...
from the beginning of eleventh century , which is (along with Codex Zographensis
Codex Zographensis
The Codex Zographensis ) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel Book that was found in the Bulgarian Zograf Monastery on Mount Athos in 1843 by Croatian writer and diplomat Antun Mihanović, and which dates from the late 10th or early 11th century....
), one of the oldest manuscript witnesses to the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
language, one of the two fourfold gospels being part of the Old Church Slavonic canon, which contains a parts written by old-serbo-slavonic (Serbian redaction of old-slavonic language).
Most of the Codex (172 folios, 171 according to some sources) was discovered by Viktor Grigorovič at Mount Athos
Mount Athos
Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...
during a journey to the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
in 1844-45, in a hermitage belonging to the Monastery of the Holy Mother of God, and thus the manuscript was named Codex Marianus. Grigorovič took the found folios to Kazan', and after his death in 1876 the Codex was transferred to Russian State Library
Russian State Library
The Russian State Library is the national library of Russia, located in Moscow. It is the largest in the country and the third largest in the world for its collection of books . It was named the V. I...
in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
where it carries the catalog number грнг 6 (M.1689). Croatian diplomat and amateur scholar Antun Mihanović
Antun Mihanovic
Antun Mihanović was a notable Croatian poet and lyricist, most famous for writing the national anthem of Croatia, which was put to music by Josif Runjanin and adopted in 1891. Klanjec, his birthplace, holds a monument to him and a gallery of his works.Mihanović studied law and worked as a military...
acquired 2 folios (containing Matthew 5.23 - 6.16) some time before Grigorovič made his discovery, and sent it to renowned Slovene Slavist Franc Miklošič
Franc Miklošic
Fran Miklošič , was a Slovene philologist.-Biography:Miklošič was born in the small village of Radomerščak near the Lower Styrian town of Ljutomer, then part of the Austrian Empire....
, who had them published in 1850. After Miklošič's death, the two-folio fragment was deposited in the Austrian National Library
Austrian National Library
The Austrian National Library , is the largest library in Austria, with 7.4 million items in its collections. It is located in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna; since 2005 some of the collections are located in the baroque Palais Mollard-Clary...
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
under the catalog number Cod. Slav. 146.
The Codex was first published by Croatian Slavist Vatroslav Jagić
Vatroslav Jagic
Vatroslav Jagić was a Croatian language researcher and a famous expert in Slavic languages in the second half of the 19th century.-Life:...
in 1883 in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
as Quattuor Evangeliorum versionis palaeoslovenicae Codex Marianus Glagoliticus, transcribed in Cyrllic and with extensive philological commentary in Latin. Reprint was published in Graz in 1960.
Analysing the language of the Codex it has been ascertained that one of the scribes of the Codex came from Štokavian area, namely the one under Eastern-rite. On the basis of substitutions u - ǫ, i - y, u - vъ, e - ę etc. Jagić deduced that the manuscript could have originated on Serbian area, warns that vocalization of yer
Yer
The letter yer of the Cyrillic alphabet, also spelled jer or er, is known as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets and as er golyam in the Bulgarian alphabet...
s (ъ > o, ь > e), as well as the occasional disappearance of epenthetic l, suggests Macedonian (Western Bulgarian) provenience. Text of Codex especially abunds with the usage of asigmatic aorist, and very frequent is the assimilation of vowels in compound adjectival declension and present forms (-aago, -uumu instead of -aego, -uemu; -aatъ instead of -aetъ etc.).
Codex forms the base text for the scientific edition of the Slavonic gospels in the series Novum Testamentum Palaeoslovenice.
Further reading
- V. Jagić, Quattuor Evangeliorum versionis palaeoslovenicae Codex Marianus Glagoliticus, (Berlin: Weidmann, 1883; reprint Graz: Akademsiche Druck, 1960).
- B. M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 405-406.
- Evangelium secundum Ioannem, Novum Testamentum Palaeoslovenice 1 (St. Petersburg, 1998).
- M. Garzaniti, Die altslavische Version der Evangelien, (Köln: Böhlau, 2001).
External links
- Codex Marianus transliterated in 7-bit ASCII, at the Corpus Cyrillo-Methodianum Helsingiense
- Codex Marianus, at TITUS project