Metamorphoses of ascetic texts in some depictions of St. Cyriacus the anchorite in the Balkans from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century

Abstract

The text presents several unpublished Greek inscriptions written on the scrolls of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite from Bulgaria. The main focus falls on an inscription from the narthex of the Rozhen Monastery (sixteenth century) and its identification; parallel inscriptions observed in Athonite monasteries are discussed too. A second group of inscriptions from Bulgaria and Macedonia are also discussed, with a stronger focus on an inscription in the church St. Apostles Peter and Paul in Veliko Tarnovo. The linguistic analysis attempts to discern the patterns by which such ascetic texts are visualized and transformed along the way from their original textual source to their final destination - the wall painting.

Keywords

• Byzantine art
• post-Byzantine art
• Byzantine epigraphy
• Greek inscriptions
• ascetic texts
• medieval monasticism
• sayings of the desert fathers