Medieval Slavic Menologies On Line

Cynthia Vakareliyska
Department of Russian
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1262 USA
vakarel@oregon.uoregon.edu

Abstract: The paper proposes features for an Internet collation of medieval Slavic menologies (calendars of saints).

Keywords: menologies, liturgical calendars, saints

The project described in this paper is a proposed Internet collation of medieval Slavic menologies. The term "menology" is used here to mean a calendar of saints, i.e., a liturgical calendar which includes the names of saints and events to be commemorated on specific days of the year. These listings vary widely among individual manuscripts, depending, among other factors, on the time and place in which the menology was written. The extent of variation is illustrated by the following range of entries for 29 October from eighteen menology texts:[1]

This degree of discrepancy, which occurs even between otherwise very closely related manuscripts, makes it very difficult to recognize general patterns of correspondences and discrepancies among individual menologies. One of the two major goals of this collation is to facilitate the development of a general typology of Slavic menologies through computer identification of such patterns among a large corpus of texts. The second goal is to aid in the analysis of any individual menology text, within the corpus or without, by providing a large database of textual variants against which it can be compared.[2] Since most menology texts are unpublished, an Internet collation will make them easily available to scholars, helping to avoid both the necessity of travel to archives, and reduplication of efforts in data collection. Another advantage of an Internet collation is its capacity for continual expansion and refinement, as individual scholars contribute to it further data and emendations.

The corpus consists of listings from over 100 medieval Bulgarian, Serbian, and East Slavic menology manuscripts from the SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library, the Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and the Theological Academy Library in Sofia; the Ivan Vazov Library in Plovdiv; the Rila Monastery Library; the Hilandar Center microfilm collection at the Ohio State University; the British Library in London; the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg; and the Russian State Library, the Moscow University Library, and the Russian State Archive for Ancient Documents in Moscow. The corpus currently covers texts from the eleventh through fourteenth centuries, and can be expanded to include later texts as well.

The collation presently is limited to entries of saints and events, and does not include any accompanying pericopes or other liturgical instructions from the menology texts. It would be desirable, however, eventually to include the entire text of each menology listing, since variations in lections and in the textual redactions represented in the pericopes can provide further information on specific menology traditions. It may also prove advantageous in future to add entries from typika, menaia, and other types of liturgical manuscripts in addition to menologies per se, although these do not contain as wide a variety of saints. Eventually the corpus should be expanded to include early Byzantine Greek menology listings, particularly as some of the textual formulae found in Slavic menologies are verbatim translations from these.

Since orthographic and morphological variation among manuscripts may present obstacles to a computer text collation, it is anticipated that in the beginning stages of the project, all searches will be conducted the basis of English-language keywords, with an option to view the actual corresponding Old Cyrillic text from any given manuscript or manuscripts on command. The user would then draw his or her own conclusions regarding the extent of relatedness between or among the textual variants displayed onscreen, rather than relying on the computer to make such decisions. Eventually, however, it would be useful to have the option to conduct certain types of searches directly on the basis of textual formulae, as discussed below.

Directories

a. Manuscript directory.The collation should include a directory of all the manuscripts in the corpus, and the identification codes to which they are referred onscreen; the directory should be organized, in default form, similarly to the list of manuscript signatures at the end of this paper. It should be possible to search the directory by selecting keyword categories that permit viewing of its contents by century, by recension (Bulgarian, Serbian, etc.), by manuscript genre (tetraevangelion, aprakos, etc.), by type of menology (full menologies, which generally provide entries for every calendar day, vs. short menologies, which list fewer dates), by archive location, and, for the minority of manuscripts with established names, in alphabetical order by title. The following sort of on-screen display of manuscript codes would be obtained under the multiple selections "archive: Russian National Library", "recension: Serbian", "century: fourteenth", and "genre: tetraevangelion":

Information on a manuscript should appear automatically onscreen, possibly in the form of a header or footer, any time the identification code of that manuscript is selected. In addition to the information provided in the directory, the header or footer would include notations concerning features of the manuscript which could affect the analysis (e.g., a list of those calendar dates that are deliberately omitted from a short menology, the beginning and ending calendar dates for missing folia that might account for further omissions in entries, any apparent misnumbering of calendar dates, whether any portions of the calendar were written by a second scribe or are obviously taken from a different menology tradition, whether the names of the months appear in their Slavic variants, etc.):

b. Directory of saints/events. A separate feature is a directory of English-language labels for the saints and events listed in the corpus. Selecting a given label should call onscreen all references in the text database to the saint or event it represents, regardless of textual variation among individual manuscripts: for example, the label "Theodore of Tyrone" should cover the entries theodoru tironskomu, todora tirona, tedora tironskago, etc.[3] Where several saints are traditionally grouped together as a single entry (e.g., "Cosmas and Damian"), they should be indexed in the directory both jointly and severally. Users should be able to browse through the directory alphabetically in order to find the proper English-language label for a given saint or event. In addition, by selecting a given saint or event, it should be possible to obtain a short summary of information, including date(s) of commemoration. For saints, the summary should also include nationality, date of canonization, brief biographical information, and, for figures in the church hierarchy, the range of titles which they held at different periods in their lifetime, with approximate dates. The range of titles can be particularly important, because a number of saints who share the same name can be distinguished only by the descriptive titles which accompany their names in the menology listings (e.g., "Father Theodore" vs. "Theodore the Martyr"). A notation should also be made if the particular saint or event is primarily associated either with one of the three major Eastern menology traditions (Constantinople, Jerusalem or Stoudite) or with the Latin tradition, or if it is archaic. It should also be possible to select to view the contents of the directory organized, alternatively, by country of origin for each saint, by century of canonization, and by general menology tradition.

c. Keyword directory. A separate directory or directories should be available for searches based on more general types of keywords (see below).

Texts

The collation should permit the viewing of all the listings from any given manuscript in calendar order (September 1 - August 31), both by English-language label, and, alternatively, in the original Church Slavonic text. Selection of two or more manuscripts should permit a comparative viewing of all the entries from each manuscript, presented on-screen in interlinear format. Once pericopes and other additional text from the menologies are included in the database, it should be possible to view them either in isolation, or together with the entries of saints and events.

Search features

In addition to the searches of the directories, the computer collation should permit the following searches of the text database:

a. Search by saint/event.Selection of the appropriate English-language label for a given saint or event should result in an onscreen display of the identification codes of all manuscripts in the database in which that saint or event is commemorated, together with the calendar date(s) for which it is listed in each manuscript. Where a manuscript contains multiple entries for a given day, a numeral appearing at the end of the entry should indicate its position in the listing (e.g., "Q59₂"); this detail can be significant in establishing textual relationships between manuscripts. The following display, composed from the same eighteen manuscripts as above, would be obtained by searching under the key phrase "Cosmas and Damian":

The user should be able to narrow the search in the same manner as in searches of the manuscript directory above, i.e., by manuscript recension, century, genre, calendar date(s), or specific manuscript identification code(s); it should also be possible to combine two or more of these categories (comparing, for example, fourteenth-century Bulgarian and thirteenth-century Serbian lectionary gospels). Another perspective for limiting the search is by category of saint, under keywords such as "nationality", "century", or "title". Once the list of appropriate manuscripts appears onscreen, the option should be available to select to compare the Church Slavonic textual formulae of the entries. To the extent possible, the on-screen display of textual formulae should be organized more or less alphabetically (taking into account variations in abbreviation and orthography), so that similar formulae are grouped together:

In instances of multiple saints' listings for a given day, the user should also have the option to view the complete Church Slavonic text of that day's entry in any given manuscript(s), or, alternatively, in all the manuscripts listed onscreen:

A further option should be available to view a list of all manuscripts which do not list the specific saint or event selected.

b. Search by calendar date.Selection of a specific calendar date should call onscreen a list of all saints and events recorded for that day in the corpus, each listed according to its English label and followed by the identification codes of all manuscripts in the corpus in which it appears. The display would be similar in form to the list of entries for October 29 shown on the first page of this paper. It should be possible to narrow the range of manuscripts or saints by using the keyword categories described above for searches by saint or event.

c. Search by frequency of correspondence.The option should be available to view a list of all those manuscripts in which a specific percentage of the entries (for example, 80% or more) correspond substantively. Of course, this type of statistical analysis can only give a very general idea of the extent of similarity between manuscripts, since the percentage of correspondence will be lowered artificially by extraneous factors such as missing folia, misnumbered dates, and multiple antegraphs for a given manuscript (all features that should be noted in the unprompted descriptive headers to the individual manuscripts); neverthless, in most cases a preliminary statistical check should provide a starting-point for identifying related texts.

d. Search for statistical/numerical correspondence between any two given manuscripts.It should also be possible, by selecting two or more manuscripts, to obtain both numerical and statistical information on correspondences in listings, both on the basis of the English-language labels, and, eventually, if possible, on the basis of textual formulae as well. A further option should be available to view, in chronological order, only those calendar entries which coincide between or among specific manuscripts, or, alternatively, only those entries which do not coincide. Particularly in cases of lower statistical and numerical correspondences, this second step will show whether the correspondences are limited to a particular portion of the calendar, as is sometimes the case where one of the manuscripts has more than one antegraph.

e. Search by discrepancy between/among individual manuscripts. Where two or more manuscripts appear to be somewhat consistent in their listings, a search by discrepancy will provide a display of only those entries, organized by calendar date, which do not correspond in substance. Here too, the option should be available to view the non-corresponding pairs of entries (including pairs in which one manuscript has a zero entry) either by English-language labels, as directly below, or, alternatively, according to textual formulae:

It would be particularly useful, if possible, for text-based searches to include textual discrepancies between substantively corresponding entries, with an option to view the discrepancies onscreen either in isolation, or within the complete listing in which they occur:

i. isolated display:

ii. complete listing:

G5, F110: Sept 1
G5	Nachet'k' jndiktu. rekshe novu lEtu. pam[t]e pr[d]pobnomu otcu nshemu sime|onu
F110	nachet'k' indiktu {_}ek|she novu lEtu. {_}am[t]e pr[d]pobnaago otca nshe|go sumeona stl'pnika

f. Search by lexical item.Searches for unusual lexical items would be helpful both for analyzing individual manuscripts, and for identifying manuscript families. Unusual forms might be listed either in the keyword directory, or in a separate directory: the stem might be used as the keyword form, in order to avoid possible variations in grammatical endings:

g. Keyword search.This feature would permit a search of the text corpus by general categories that are not easily included under any of the search keywords described above; these would include "astronomical listings", "Graecisms", and, perhaps eventually, even specific types of linguistic features (e.g., "cokan'e"). In the response to the search, the onscreen display should include for each entry its calendar date, an English label for the entry, and the textual formula:

Conclusion

The features outlined above for an Internet collation of medieval Slavic menologies should facilitate analysis from a number of different perspectives of an otherwise unwieldy text corpus. It is hoped that implementation of these features will result in a versatile collation system that will be accessible and useful to scholars both for analysis of individual menology texts, and for study of the general Slavic menology tradition.

Notes

[1.] English versions of saints' names are from The Book of Saints, compiled by the Benedictine monks of St. Augustine's Abbey (London: A.&C. Black, 1981). Manuscript signatures appear at the end of this paper. The term "listing" is used here to refer to the entire text for a specific calendar date; each saint or event included in the listing is a separate "entry".

[2.] A computer collation will have several distinct advantages over the most comprehensive published source on Eastern menologies, Arximandrit Sergij's Polnyj mesjaceslov Vostoka (2nd ed., Moscow 1902) ("PM"). In addition to permitting searches based on keyword categories which are not available in the PM indices, the computer collation includes a considerable number of Slavic menology texts which are not covered by the PM, and which list a number of saints not mentioned there. Moreover, whereas the PM listsentries from most menologies only according to the Russian-language variants of the saints' names, the computer collation will offer the option to view the original non-normalized Church Slavonic texts, thus permitting comparison of textual formulae.

[3.] A simplified Roman transliteration system for Old Cyrillic has been used for the web version of the article. Here "eN" represents the front nasal vowel letter,"oN" represents the back nasal vowel letter, "E" represents jat', an apostrophe represents a front jer, and a quotation mark represents a back jer. Omega and upsilon are represented as regular "o" and "u", respectively; theta is represented as "th". Superscript letters are indicated in brackets and are placed wherer they occur in the manuscript. "|" indicates the end of a line in the original text. Illegible letters in the original manuscript are indicated by curly brackets: {_}.

Manuscript Signatures

Archives

Manuscripts