International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Anna-Marija Totomanova
Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria; 
[e-mail]
The History of the Bulgarian Synodikon
The history of the Bulgarian Synodikon read on the Sunday of Orthodoxy starts with the 
translation ordered by King Boril (1207-1218), who convoked a synod against the Bogomils on the 
11
th
of February 1211 in the capital city of Tarnovo. The Bulgarian translation draws on Komnene’s 
redaction of the Constantinople version of the Synodikon (
C
according to the classification of 
J.Gouillard) but the Bulgarian text does not agree completely with any of the extant versions of 
this redaction. The translated part includes some minor omissions, re-orderings and additions, 
the most important being the anathemas upon the Bogomils (344-402), the source of which is the 
Letter of Patriarch Kosmas
[Kosmas I, 1075-1081 or Kosmas II Atticos, 1146-1147] 
to the dearest 
metropolitan of Larisa in connection with the ungodly heretics, 
preserved in
 
Marcianus gr. II 74 
(Coll. 1454 olim Nanianus 96), ff. 77
v
-79
v 
of the 15
th
c. Some other additions (the list of heretics 
and some anti-heretic anathemas missing in 
C
) are inserted into the text later and come from the 
horoses of the three oecumenical councils (4
th
, 6
th
and 7
th
) and of two local councils (of the council 
of Patriarch Mennas and Tomos Unionis), that were translated and published together with the 
Synodikon. The revision, which involved a linguistic redaction as well, took place in 14
th
c. when 
the text of Synodikon became a part of a canonical-liturgical compilation (archieratikon). This 
compilation survived in Palaouzov’s manuscript (НБКМ 289) and was probably ordered by the last 
Bulgarian patriarch Euthymius of Tarnovo who was one of the most prominent figures of medieval 
Bulgaria. The recent research shows that the 14
th
century editors of the Synodikon must have had 
at hand the Paleologean version of the Synodikon, whose translation is preserved in both Drinov’s 
copy (НБКМ 432) and in the recently published Paleologean synodikon from the Library of the 
Romanian Academy of Sciences BAR, Ms. sl. 307). We presume that all Bulgarian amendments – 
the list of Bulgarian kings, queens and hierarchs, included into the diptych, as well as the historical 
accounts of the Synod against bogomils and of the re-establishment of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in 
1235 under King Ivan Asen II were inserted at the same time. The royal lineage in the diptych ends 
with the wife and children of the last Bulgarian medieval monarch, Ivan Shishman, whose name is 
missing in the list of the rulers.