The Kokalyane Beadroll: Text Edition and Survey

Summary: 

The study is dedicated to the 26 folia beadroll part of the Kokalyane miscellany, or manuscript № 368 from the repository of the Church Historical and Archive Institute at the Bulgarian Patriarchate in Sofia. Insofar, the manuscript was famous mostly by its second part with readings for the feast of Archangel Michael and the Synaxis of the holy Angels, among them the Sermon about St. Michael and Gavril by Kliment of Ohrid. This first part was published and exhaustively investigated by Małgorzata Skowronek. In purpose of completing the full body of the miscellany, as it is preserved nowadays, the current study focuses on the first full edition of the beadroll part, together with a comprehensive analysis and appendix of the onymic material. The collected data allows the conclusion of the 17th century provenance of the overall manuscript to be sustained, which means whether both parts began at one and the same time in the frame of one and the same body, or they belonged to two different bodies created at the same time in the Kokalyane monastery “St. Arch. Michael”, where they served the local liturgical and memorative needs of the Christian community. The beadroll notes date from the 17th and the 18th cc., giving a truly authentic picture of the everyday life of the Bulgarians in Ottoman times.

Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova (Sofia, Bulgaria)