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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2020 year, number

BIBLICAL BOOKS IN THE VELIKIE MINEI CHETII: ON THE HISTORY OF CORPUS FORMATION

V.A. ROMODANOVSKAYA
Institute of Russian literature RAS, 4, Makarova emb., Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
Keywords: Книги Священного Писания, Великие Минеи Четии, митрополит Макарий, толковые и четии версии библейских книг, агиографические "конвой", дни поминовения святых, Books of Holy Scripture, Velikie Minei Chetii by Metropolitan Macarius, explanatory versions of biblical books, hagiographic "convoys", days of saints commemoration

Abstract

The biblical books included into the Velikie Minei Chetii (Great Menology) by Metropolitan Macarius compiled in the 1520-50s were perceived by scholars as a continuation of the tradition of the Old Russian Menology. However, their composition’s incompleteness compared to the complete Bible code compiled in the 1490s, known in science as Gennady’s Bible, was surprising. The Great Menology were based on a collection of lengthy Minea lives supplemented by the Prolog and Verse Prolog articles, with the Prolog readings placed at the beginning of each day, while the Verse Prolog texts completed each day; the daily readings are clearly structured, and their structure was developed in the process of the corpus creating. The biblical books included in a kind of hagiographic «convoy» usually occupy a сentral place in it, representing the main sacred «act» of their author or hero - a saint, whose memory is celebrated on the corresponding day. When creating Velikie Minei Chetii, the compilers turned to various types of biblical sources. The books of the New Testament are presented in elucidative editions: Explanatory Gospels, Explanatory Apostle, Explanatory Apocalypse. Various lists of Velikie Minei Chetii may contain different versions of the Bible books. The prophetic books in compiling Velikie Minei Chetii were used in three variants: interpretative, extracted from exegesis and divided into chapters, as in Gennady’s Bible, and a kind of «intermediate» one: taken from the commentaries but without division into chapters. The compilers of the hagiographic code did not give preference to any of the types of prophetic books, but set out to collect them all. The Explanatory Psalter and Maccabees books are read in Velikie Minei Chetii in a peculiar «historical» context, and the Explanatory Psalter in the assumption list is given in three versions: with the interpretations of Athanasius of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus and Brunon of Würzburg, and 1-2 Maccabees books presented in all three lists of the Great Menology, are the Latin translation made for Gennady’s Bible.