Вестник Свято-Филаретовского института (Mar 2021)
From the History of Translations of the “Chapters on Love” by St Maximus the Confessor into Church Slavonic and Russian
Abstract
The full Church Slavonic translation of the “Chapters on Love” and its revisions are explored in detail, and there is an overview of the Russian translations of the 19th and 20th centuries. A number of manuscripts are drawn to the history of ancient translation for the first time, allowing for significant specification of the history of the original translation. It is proved that the translations of the fragments in the Slavic izbornik (anthologies) are derived directly from the Greek text and do not depend on the full Church Slavonic translation. The archetype of the complete translation (the time of creation needs to be specified; probably not earlier than the late 10th or early 11th centuries) underwent an initial editing between the 11th and 13th centuries, reflected on the one hand, in Sin and Деч, on the other – in Гам, Хлуд and Син. 644. New versions of the translation were carried out with the involvement of divergent Greek manuscripts in the first half and the middle of the 14th century. The first such edit is reflected in the БРА. A later version, presented in Нням, was widely spread in the Slavic countries. Manuscripts have also survived (Печ. 90 and 91, Гильф), which present a “mixed” text with occasionally combined variants of earlier and later editions. The late edition was used by Arseny the Greek, who made minor revisions to it from the old printed editions of the Greek text and published the translation in the book “Anthologion” (1660). The text from the “Anthologion” was sequentially checked by Revd. Paisios Velichkovsky with different later manuscripts (according to the БРА and Нням), as well as with the Greek text from the Venetian edition of the “Philocalia” (1782). The glosses preserved from these verifications are analysed in this article. The Church Slavonic translation of the “Chapters on Love” from the “Anthologion” was reprinted in 1816–1817 and 1819, parallel to the first Russian translation by St Philaret (Drozdov). Using the example of chapter IV, 5, some features of the Russian translations of St Philaret (1816), St Theophan the Recluse (1889) and A. I. Sidorov (1993). The conclusion emphasises the unity and continuity of the Church Slavonic translation tradition over many centuries, and also the significance of the book “Our Holy Father Maxim, On Love” (1816–1817) in the formation of a new tradition of translating patristic works into Russian.
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