Titolo della tesi: Towards the Critical Edition of the Prologue Lives of SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius
The research is grounded in the field of Slavic Philology, and its objective is to provide a significative contribution towards the critical edition of three brief Church-Slavonic hagiographical texts dedicated to SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, whose manuscript tradition has never been comprehensively addressed and systematized. The compositions are transmitted in various redactions of the Prologue, the Church-Slavonic version of the Greek Synaxarion – a collection of brief life of saints for liturgical use – and thus they are regarded as Prologue Life of SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, Prologue Life of St. Constantine-Cyril and Prologue Life of St. Methodius. Being abridged versions of the authoritative Vita Constantini and Vita Methodii – traditionally dated to the 9th century – they have been neglected by scholarship for the purpose of reconstructing the Cyrillo-Methodian activity and its impact on the dawn of Old-Church Slavonic Literacy. This perspective is strengthened by the fact that in a few cases they provide information that diverges from their above-mentioned sources. Nevertheless, the present research proceeds from regarding the three hagiographies as traces of the cult towards the “Apostle of Slavs” and its evolution between 10th and 14th century throughout the Church-Slavonic writing Slavia.
The compositions have been introduced in the scientific debate as appendixes: the Prologue Life of SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius within K. F. Kalajdovič’s monograph on John the Exarch (1824), while the Prologue Life of St. Constantine-Cyril and the Prologue Life of St. Methodius within M. P. Pogodin’s Russian version of J. Dobrovský’s Cyrill und Method der Slawen Apostel (1825). Between their editiones principes and their only available editions conducted with a modern philological perspective by A. P. Lavrov (1930), they have been addressed either as peripherical sources or only in relation to isolated passages of their texts such as the mention of the grave of St. Methodius in the Prologue Life of SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius or the connection of the brothers’ activity with the city named “Kanaon” or “Kaon” as emerges in both the other two compositions. Unfortunately, Lavrov’s editions present the limits of a non-revised volume published after the death of its author, which occurred in 1929. Moreover, the latter – at least for what concerns the Prologue Life of St. Constantine-Cyril and the Prologue Life of St. Methodius – is conducted on a relatively small number of manuscript witnesses. Apart from individual contributions from R. Jakobson, B. N. Florja and S. Nikolova, which do not concern the evaluation of preserved textual variants from a genealogical perspective, the last century of studies on the compositions has been devoted to the identification of unknown witnesses: the tradition of Prologue Life of SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius has been enriched of one witness after the investigations of Pavlova, while the other two compositions’ manuscript traditions increased consistently and exceeded one hundred units each after the contributions of K. M. Kuev, G. Petkov, L. Gnatenko, S. Babalievska, A. Naumow, J. Stradomski, A. Nikolov and B. Mirčeva. The plethora of newly identified witnesses was still unexplored, and deserved to be addressed systematically.
The dissertation is structured around three chapters, one for each composition under scrutiny, preceded by an introductory chapter dedicated to the state of the art and, more broadly to the scholarly editions of the rather heterogeneous groups of compositions known as Cyrillo-Methodian Sources. Each chapter opens with a section dedicated to the heuristic of the manuscript witnesses involved in the research, which is followed by an overview of the linguistic features of the composition. The heart of the chapter is the text-critical analysis of the previously presented manuscript traditions – intended as establishment of existing genealogical dependencies between their witnesses conducted in the methodological framework of stemmatology – and culminates with a proposal of edition, reflecting the state of the art achieved through the research. For each composition it is finally provided a commentary of significant selected passages. Given their high number and the impossibility of working in situ on the manuscripts preserved in the archives of Russian Federation and of Ukraine, in the framework of the present research there have been gathered the majority of – and not all – the identified so far witnesses of the Prologue Life of St. Constantine-Cyril and of the Prologue Life of St. Methodius. The conducted analysis has confirmed the validity of Lavrov’s choices and has attempted to provide a methodological adaptation for further inquiries towards the final establishment of the genealogical relations within the compositions’ manuscript witnesses.