The Tenth-Century Cyrillic Manuscript Codex Suprasliensis: An ...

The Cyrillic manuscript
Codex Suprasliensis:
A full text electronic corpus
Anisava Miltenova, Dilyana Radoslavova
Institute of Literature
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Codex Suprasliensis
The most extensive early Cyrillic MS
• Late 10th century
• 37 quires
• 285 parchment leaves
• 1 о (in folio)
• Leaf: 310x230 mm
• Text box:
230x150 mm
• One column

10th-c. Preslav Literary school
The Round Church in Preslav

Scribes
• Main scribe: Retko
• Second copyist:
f.129.30, f.139.9-20
• Third copyist:
f.218.8-16
F. 104r with Retko’s note in margin

Decoration

Orthography and Language
Developed Cyrillic script system
Morphology
High frequency of
forms, typical of the
later stage of the Old
Bulgarian literary
language
Reflects peculiarities of
the Eastern Bulgarian
dialects

• Lectionary menaion for
March combined with
homilies for the movable
Easter cycle, most written or
ascribed to St John
Chrysostom.
• 24 vitae and 23 homilies
• Primarily vitae of martyrs:
Paul and Juliana, Basiliscus,
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste,
Forty-two Martyrs of
Amorium, Konon of Isauria
• Vitae of Anchorites
– Paul the Simple
Contents

The Discovery of
Codex Suprasliensis
• Discovered 1823
• Uniate Basilian Monastery
of Supraśl
– Then in Lithuania
– Now in Podlaskie Voivodeship,
NE Poland
• Discovered by Canon Michał
Bobrowski (1784-1848)
• Sent to Slovenian scholar
Bartholomaeus (Jernej)
Kopitar (1780-1844)
Jernej Kopitar
Canon Michał Bobrowski

Preservation of the Codex
• University Library in Ljubljana: 118 folia, Kopitar
collection
• Russian National Library in St. Petersburg: 16
folia, A. F. Byčkov collection
• National Library in Warsaw, 151 folia, Count
Zamoyski collection, lost during World War II,
reemerged in the USA and was returned to
Poland in 1968
• Listed in the UNESCO’s Memory of the World
Register since 2007

Codex Suprasliensis
the most studied and edited representative
of the Old Church Slavonic language canon
• Bibliography numbers more than
200 titles
• Printed Editions:
- Franc Miklosich (Wien, 1851)
- Sergej N. Sever’janov
(Sanktpeterburg, 1904 )
- Alfons Marguliés
(Heidelberg, 1927)
- Jordan Zaimov and Mario Kapaldo
(Sofia, 1982-83)

Codex Suprasliensis' text
e-Editions
Corpus Cyrillo-Methodianum Helsingiense:
An Electronic Corpus of Old Church Slavonic Texts:
http://www.helsinki.fi/slaavilaiset/ccmh/
TITUS Thesaurus Indogermanischer
Text- und Sprachmaterialien
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etcs/slav/aksl/suprasl/supra.html
Disadvantages
- in a 7-bit ASCII code Latin transcript
- numerous errors
- limited search options
- without context (no images, commentaries, bibliography,
Greek text, translation, grammatical annotation and analysis,
etc.)

Sponsored by UNESCO
The New Project
The 10th-Century Cyrillic Manuscript
Codex Suprasliensis:
creation of an electronic corpus,
exploratory workshop,
and exhibition
(2010–2012)
Initiated by the Repertorium Initiative Group -
based at the Institute of Literature, BAS

Main Goals
• A high quality scanning of the three MS parts
and an on-line presentation of the united book
• Developing a concept of an electronic version of
the Codex Suprasliensis’ contents, including the
Old Church Slavonic text with:
– critical apparatus,
– parallel Greek text,
– English translation,
– vocabulary,
– grammatical analysis,
– and searching tools.

Ongoing Activities and Outcomes
• Digitization and on-line presentation
- “page by page” jpg files,
suitable for download
- “turning pages” form
- detailed archeographic,
philological, historical and
bibliographic overview
- Catalog of the Codex
Suprasliensis’ Saints and
Feasts
http://csup.ilit.bas.bg/

Exhibition
• Sofia, August 2011
• Vatican, December 2011
• Warsaw, March 2012
• and Ljubljana, April 2012
The exhibition in Ljubljana organized
within the frames of the project
Digital Scholarly Editions and
Developments in the Slovenian and
Bulgarian Literary Studies between
the Institute of Slovenian Literature
and Literary Studies, SAZU, and the
Institute of Literature, BAS

International Conference
Rediscovery:
The 10th-Century Cyrillic Codex Suprasliensis
(Sofia, 19-20 August 2011)
• New facts concerning the history of the
Greek sources
• Investigation of the known and newlydiscovered
copies of Codex Suprasliensis
• Comparative analysis of the cults and
associated texts in the Byzantine and in
Slavonic traditions
• New data on the history of the manuscript
in Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Russia
• Contributions to the concept of the
comprehensive electronic edition

The Full e-Edition:
Work in Progress
• Conversion of the 7-bit ASCII Helsinki transcription into
UNICODE and its XML encoding (adviser: Prof. Anisava
Miltenova)
• Alignment of the Old Church Slavonic text, its Greek
counterparts and English translation (adviser: Prof.
David Birnbaum, University of Pittsburgh)
• Manual annotation with the assistance of the
morphological guesser developed by the PROIEL
(Pragmatic Resources in Old Indo-European
Languages) Project (adviser: Dr Hanne Martine Eckhoff,
University of Oslo)

Conversion of the 7-bit ASCII
Helsinki transcription into UNICODE

Text Alignment
Vita of Paul and Juliania
…in plane text and html view

Incorporation into PROIEL
http://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/research/projects/proiel//

The Full Text e-Corpus
in Perspective
• Alignment and linked Old Church Slavonic text
– with the Greek counterparts
– with English Translation
– with images of the manuscript (every folio)
Supplied with critical apparatus and commentaries
Annotating of Old Church Slavonic text and making the index
of words
• Search engine
– full text search
– grammatical search
Freely available under a Creative Commons BY- NC-SA license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
Paul the Simple's Sample...

http://localhost:8080/exist/paul/data/paul_main.html

Thank you!
• Anisava Miltenova, anmilten@yahoo.com
• Dilyana Radoslavova, radoslad@yahoo.com
• Project site: http://csup.ilit.bas.bg/