Byzantine New Testament Catenae and Constantine of Preslav’s Uchitel’noe Evangelie (‘Didactic Gospel’): from Catena to Homily (Some Preliminary Remarks)

Summary: 

The paper focuses on the Greek New Testament catenae and the ways Constantine of Preslav utilised them as the main sources for his Uchitel’noe evangelie (‘Didactic Gospel’). In the second half of the 19th century, it was convincingly demonstrated that for the largest part of his homilies in the Uchitel’noe evangelie Constantine of Preslav had extensively borrowed material from the Greek New Testament catenae. In most of the cases the translated texts from Greek into Slavonic remained unaltered and, thus, formed the exegetical core of the homilies. Nevertheless, in order to present a more expressive homiletic text, Constantine of Preslav added some salutations, rethorical questions, and exhortations addressed to his audience to the introductory and concluding parts of his homilies. In addition to that, the some of the homilies contain extensive catechetical sections, e.g., the one on the signiifcance of the Eucharist (homily fifthy-one), as well as prayer texts, e.g. the short opening prayer in the third homily, which are deemed to be originaly composed by Constantine of Preslav himself.

Georgi Mitov (Leuven, Belgium)

References: 

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