Kiev Missal

Kiev Missal
Kiev Missal
	Pages with Glagolitic writing (Kiev Missal). Copy. Kiev History Museum
Created	10th century
Discovered	19th century
Present location	Kyiv

Last updated June 05, 2024

The Kiev Missal (or Kiev Fragments or Kiev Folios; scholarly abbreviation Ki) is a seven-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript containing parts of the Roman-rite liturgy. It is usually held to be the oldest and the most archaic Old Church Slavonic manuscript,^[1] and is dated at no later than the latter half of the 10th century.^[2] Seven parchment folios have been preserved in small format (c.14.5 cm × 10.5 cm) of easily portable book to be of use to missionaries on the move.

Discovery and publishing

Kiev Folios were found in the 19th century in Jerusalem by the Archimandrite Andrej Kapustin (Antonin Kapustin), who donated them to the Kiev Theological Academy.^[3] After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the folios were transferred to the library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv where they are being kept today.

Izmail Sreznevsky made the manuscript known to the public, editing the first edition of Kiev Folios in 1874. They have been republished many times since, though not always successfully. Notable editions are by Vatroslav Jagić in 1890 (Glagolitica. 2. Würdigung neuentdeckter Fragmente, Mit 10 Taf., Wien 1890, Denkschrift. Kaiserl. Akad., Bd. 38), by Sievers in 1924 (Die altslavischen Verstexte von Kiew und Freising, Leipzig 1924, Akad. Wiss., phil.-hist. Kl., Bd. 76/2) and by Mohlberg in 1928 (Il messale di Kiew/sec IX./ed il suo prototipo Romano del VI-VII).

Special attention to the Kiev folios has been paid by Václav Vondrák in a paper O původu Kijevských listů a Pražských zlomků a o bohemismech v starších církevněslovanských památkách vůbec (Praha, 1904). The newest facsimile edition has been published in 1983 in Kiev to honor the ninth International Congress of Slavists which was held there (V. V. Nimčuk, Kijivs′ki hlaholični lystky, AN USSR). That edition contains extensive overview of the existing bibliography of the Kiev Folios.

Dating and origin

The first page of the first folio was written later than other pages, probably at the boundary of the 11th and 12th centuries.^[3] Linguistic, paleographic and graphic features indicate South Croatia as its place of origin.^[3] This page contains parts of Paul's epistles (13, 11-14 and 14, 1-4). That part of the Kiev Folios and the problems associated with it has been thoroughly analyzed by the Croatian Slavist Marija Pantelić,^[4] who finally situated it somewhere in the Dubrovnik area.

The rest of the folios, containing part of the Roman Missal, is dated at no later than the second half of the 10th century.^[3]

Content

By content it is a Roman Missal, i.e., a book collecting all the text used at the holy mass service. Missal texts are accompanied by instructions on how to perform rites throughout the liturgical year, called rubrics , which is a term originating from Latin word rubrica designating red soil used for painting.

The text of the Kiev Missal folios has been for the most part written in black (the text meant to be pronounced), and for the lesser part in red (the instructions for gestures that the priest must perform and other instructions for the ceremony). Since the Kiev Missal has only 13 pages preserved, it's obvious that only a part of the missal has been preserved, from the sacramentary containing crucial and unchangeable parts spoken by the priest.

Linguistic features

The Kiev Folios are generally held by Slavists as the oldest among the OCS canon manuscripts, even though they exhibit several West Slavic features that place them at the beginning of the Czech-Moravian recension of OCS.^[5] These are:

Instead of OCS št, žd we find West Slavic reflexes of Proto-Slavic */tj/ (also from earlier *kt) and */dj/, i.e. instead of pomoštь, prosęšte, priemljǫšte, daždь, tuždimъ, tъžde we find pomocь, prosęce, priemljǫce, dazь, tuzimъ, tъze etc.^[5]
At the place of Proto-Slavic *stj and *skj we would expect a reflex of OCS št, but we find šč: očiščeniě, zaščiti (imperative), zaščititь.
As an ending of instrumental singular of masculine o-stems we would expect -omь. But instead, -ъmь is used, so instead of expected oplatomь, obrazomь, vъsǫdomь we find oplatъmь, obrazъmь, vъsǫdъmь.
Genitive of first-person pronoun azъ is mene in OCS. In Kiev Folios we find mne by the elision of weak yer.

As features that connect Kiev Folios to the canonic manuscripts of other important Slavic area, namely Bulgarian, one has to note:

consistent distinguishing between yers ъ and ь, and only twice ъ is found where ь is expected
Kiev folios preserve nasal vowels (/ę/ and /ǫ/) and don't mix them

Controversies

Croatian Slavist Josip Hamm stirred a fierce debate in his book Das Glagolitische Missale von Kiew (Wien, 1979). In it, and in his other papers and lectures he maintained the view that the Kiev Folios are a 19th-century fake by Czech patriots in order to prove the antiquity of Czech literary culture. However, in general Slavists do not hold this view.^{[ citation needed ]}

Notes

↑ Lunt (2001 :9) "The seven glagolitic folia known as the Kiev Folia (KF) are generally considered as most archaic from both the paleographic and the linguistic points of view..."
↑ Damjanović (2003 :15)
1 2 3 4 Damjanović (2003 :16)
↑ Pantelić (1985)
1 2 Damjanović (2003 :17)

Related Research Articles

The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity there. After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, their disciples were expelled and they moved to the First Bulgarian Empire instead. The Cyrillic alphabet, which developed gradually in the Preslav Literary School by Greek alphabet scribes who incorporated some Glagolitic letters, gradually replaced Glagolitic in that region. Glagolitic remained in use alongside Latin in the Kingdom of Croatia and alongside Cyrillic until the 14th century in the Second Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire, and later mainly for cryptographic purposes.

Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic is the first Slavic literary language.

Church Slavonic, also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic, New Church Slavic or just Slavonic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The language appears also in the services of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America.

A yer is either of two letters in Cyrillic alphabets, ъ and ь. The Glagolitic alphabet used, as respective counterparts, the letters (Ⱏ) and (Ⱐ). They originally represented phonemically the "ultra-short" vowels in Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic, and are collectively known as the yers.

The Codex Zographensis is an illuminated Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript. It is composed of 304 parchment folios; the first 288 are written in Glagolitic containing Gospels and organised as Tetraevangelium, and the rest written in Cyrillic containing a 13th-century synaxarium. It is dated back to the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century.

The Codex Marianus is an Old Church Slavonic fourfold Gospel Book written in Glagolitic script, dated to the beginning of the 11th century, which is, one of the oldest manuscript witnesses to the Old Church Slavonic language, one of the two fourfold gospels being part of the Old Church Slavonic canon.

The Codex Suprasliensis is a 10th-century Cyrillic literary monument, the largest extant Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript and the oldest Slavic literary work located in Poland. As of September 20, 2007, it is on UNESCO's Memory of the World list.

The Old Church Slavonic Institute is Croatian public institute founded in 1952 by the state for the purpose of scientific research on the language, literature and paleography of the mediaeval literary heritage of the Croatian vernacular and the Croatian recension of Church Slavonic.

Codex Assemanius is a rounded Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon evangeliary consisting of 158 illuminated parchment folios, dated to early 11th century. The manuscript is created in the Ohrid Literary School of the First Bulgarian Empire.

The Psalterium Sinaiticum is a 209-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript, the earliest Slavic psalter, dated to the 11th century. The manuscript was found in Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, after which it was named and where it remains to this day.

The Euchologium Sinaiticum is a 109-folio Old Church Slavonic euchologion in Glagolitic script. It contains parts of the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, and is dated to the 11th century. It is named after Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, where it was found in the 19th century.

The Glagolita Clozianus is a 14-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon miscellany, written in the eleventh century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sava's book</span>

Sava's book is a 129-folio Cyrillic Old Church Slavonic canon evangeliary, written in the 11th century.

Missale Romanum Glagolitice is a Croatian missal and incunabulum printed in 1483. It is written in Glagolitic script and is the first printed Croatian book. It is the first missal in Europe not published in Latin script. Its editio princeps, unique in the achieved typographic artistry, was published only 28 years after the Gutenberg Bible's 42-lines, bears witness of high cultural attainment and maturity of Croatian Glagolites and Croatian mediaeval literature.

Josip Hamm was a Croatian Slavist best known for his research on Old Church Slavonic language and literature.

As the 9th-century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius undertook their mission to evangelize to the Slavs of Great Moravia, two writing systems were developed: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Both scripts were based on the Greek alphabet and share commonalities, but the exact nature of relationship between the Glagolitic alphabet and the Early Cyrillic alphabet, their order of development, and influence on each other has been a matter of great study, controversy, and dispute in Slavic studies.

Stjepan Damjanović is a Croatian linguist, philologist and paleoslavist. He worked as a regular professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. He is a former President of Matica hrvatska.

Inscription of Župa Dubrovačka is a Glagolitic inscription dated to the 11th century.

Dimitri's Psalter is an 11th-century Glagolitic manuscript containing verses from the Psalms.

References

Damjanović, Stjepan (2004), Slovo iskona (in Croatian), Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, ISBN 953-150-567-5
Schenker, Alexander M. (1995), The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-05846-2
Pantelić, Marija (September 1985), "On Kiev and Sinai folia" (PDF), Slovo (in Croatian), 35, Old Church Slavonic Institute: 5–56
Zagiba, Franz (September 1964), "Die historische Umkreis der Kiever Sakramentarfragmente" (PDF), Slovo (in German), 14, Old Church Slavonic Institute: 59–77
Koschmieder, Erwin (September 1955), "Die vermeintlichen Akzentzeichen der Kiever Blätter" (PDF), Slovo (in German), 4–5, Old Church Slavonic Institute: 5–23
Nedeljković, Olga (September 1964), "Akcenti ili neume u Kijevskim listićima" (PDF), Slovo (in Croatian), 14, Old Church Slavonic Institute: 25–51
Damjanović, Stjepan (2003), Staroslavenski jezik (4th revised and extended ed.), Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, ISBN 953-169-095-2
Lunt, Horace G. (2001), Old Church Slavonic Grammar (7h revised ed.), New York: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-016284-9

External links

Kiev Folios, at TITUS project
Kiev Folios, at MANUSCRIPT project

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[1] Lunt (2001 :9) "The seven glagolitic folia known as the Kiev Folia (KF) are generally considered as most archaic from both the paleographic and the linguistic points of view..."

[2] Damjanović (2003 :15)

[Damjanovic_2003_p16-3] 1 2 3 4 Damjanović (2003 :16)

[4] Pantelić (1985)

[Damjanovic_2003_p17-5] 1 2 Damjanović (2003 :17)

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