International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Ivan Biliarsky
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of History, Sofia, Bulgary; 
[e-mail]
The Printed Rumanian Synodikon from Year 1700
(No text)

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506
Ivan Christov
University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria; 
[e-mail]
Notes on the Greek–Old Bulgarian Lexical Parallels in Tsar Boril’s Synodikon
In this paper, I will inspect the translation of Greek terms related to the Church History 
and Theology in Tsar Boril’s Synodikon. A variety of approaches will be applied to appreciate the 
ways of rendering terminology a part of which has a sporadic presence in the Slavonic Middle 
Ages. First, studying the lexico-morphological term formation and applying statistics about term-
forming affixes allows us to make a statement if this is just a 
loan translation
creating a mechanical 
morpheme-to-morpheme
correspondance or it is closer to the principles of isomorphism, sensibly 
rendering the elements of the terms in the original according to the translator’s feel for the structure 
of Slavonic words. Secondly, studying the term-compounds that are a product of lexical and 
syntactical term formation adds to our understanding how sensitive the translation is. Thirdly, the 
variability of rendering the different meanings of the same term will be observed to appreciate 
the translator’s effort to avoid homonymy and ambiguity. Finally, a somewhat sceptical conclusion 
about the meaningfulness of the translation will besoftened by a comparison to the reception of 
more sophisticated Greek sources.
Kirill A. Maksimovič
Academy of Sciences of Göttingen, Göttingen /
Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; 
[e-mail]
The Russian Synodicon of Orthodoxy 
(Primary Version of the Eleventh Century with Later Additions)
The study of Old Slavonic translations of the 
Synodikon of Orthodoxy
has a long tradition. 
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the oldest Slavonic versions of the 
Synodikon
were 
supposed to be based on the ‘second’ (or ‘enlarged’) redaction of the original Greek text. However, 
the textual tradition of the Greek 
Synodikon
at that time had not yet been properly studied, so that 
nothing but the C redaction (after Gouillard) was meant under the name of ‘second redaction’. 
This latter should be chronologically regarded as the third redaction after the original, Methodian 
redaction of 843–844 and the redaction of the Macedonian dynasty (M).
The oldest evidence of the Old Russian 
Synodikon
is preserved in the Kievan 
Primary Chronicle
. 
In the Laurentian copy of the 
Chronicle
, in 1108, it is said that after the death of St Theodosius, 
abbot of Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves, prince Svjatopolk ordered the Greek Metropolitan to enter 
Theodosios’s name in the 
Synodikon
. Although in this context the term ‘synodikon’ simply indicates 
a diptych with the names of saints commemorated during the liturgy, the very term ‘synodikon’ 

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507
(literally ‘synodal act’ in Greek) refers to the contemporaneous Byzantine usage of the word 
συνοδικόν as an official liturgical book of the Church.
According to the entry, only the Metropolitan of Kiev had the right to enter a name into the 
Synodikon
. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, almost all metropolitans were Greek and came from 
Constantinople. Being an official liturgical book of the Byzantine Church, the 
Synodikon
was most 
probably brought to Kiev by a metropolitan to celebrate the Feast of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday 
of Lent. Since the Greek text was incomprehensible to most Russian laymen, a Russian-Slavonic 
translation was urgently needed. This conjecture may be reinforced by the contents of the Russian 
Synodikon
, whose oldest part omits anathemas against John Italos (1082) and thus reflects the Greek 
original preceding the Komnenian C redaction. The absence of entries concerning John Italos leads 
us to the conclusion that 1082 might be regarded as a 
terminus ante quem 
for the emergence of the 
oldest Slavonic 
Synodikon
translation in Kiev.
The 
Synodikon
is mentioned a second time in Vsevolod-Gabriel, Prince of Novgorod’s Church 
statute (composed by the year 1135).
Both of these reports, which go back to the first half of the twelfth century, along with other 
arguments, allow one to conclude that the Byzantine 
Synodikon of Orthodoxy
(in its pre-Komnenian 
form) was known in Kievan Russia as early as the second half of the eleventh or the first half of the 
twelfth century. This, in turn, makes it possible to place the translation of the 
Synodikon
within the 
context of the school of translators founded in Kiev by Prince Jaroslav the Wise by 1037.
The last Patriarch to be mentioned in the diptychs is Joseph II (1416–1439). The list of 
patriarchs in the oldest version of the Russian 
Synodikon
thus goes up to the epoch of the union of 
Florence. Hence, the final form of this redaction could not have appeared any earlier than in the 
middle of the fifteenth century.
Apart from the Old Russian translation of the 
Synodikon
, there existed another, apparently 
made in the early or mid-seventeenth century and contaminated with the late Greek redaction of 
the sixteenth century
 Lenten Triodion
. Russian-Slavonic translation of the Triodion is transmitted 
in a number of printed editions which had been undertaken throughout the 17
th
century (Kiev 
1627, 1640, 1648; L’vov 1664, 1699).

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