Византийското пространно житие за св. Петка Епиватска (BHG3 1420z) като извор за химнотворчеството за светицата
The Byzantine Vita of Saint Paraskeva of Epivates (BHG3 1420z) as a Source for the Saint’s Hymnology

Summary/Abstract: By comparing the text of the Byzantine vita of St. Paraskeva of Epivates (BHG3 1420z) and the canon from the oldest Slavonic office for the saint from the 13th c., this article establishes that the canon in question (whose Byzantine original has not been found) was composed on the model of the hagiographic text. The episodes from the saint’s life are introduced almost in the same sequence as in the Vita and sometimes even use similar phrases. Such correspondences suggest that the canon is a translation from Byzantine Greek, and that the Byzantine vita here analyzed was probably the one brought and translated into Slavonic together with the encomium and the hymns for St. Paraskeva at the time of the transfer of her relics from Kallikrateia to the Bulgarian capital Tarnovo in the second quarter of 13th c. The Slavonic translation of the Vita was probably the basis for the composition of the oldest Slavonic canon. Unlike the oldest Slavonic canon, the extant Byzantine canon, written most likely in the 14th c., and its Slavonic translation both omit important hagiographic episodes and differ from the Vita in some details. These differences indicate either that, in the meantime, the vita had been shortened and revised or that it had lost its popularity after the 13th c. This assumption is confirmed by the fact that the early Byzantine hagiographic text has a very limited manuscript tradition: it is documented only in two fourteenth-century codices and its Slavonic translation has not yet been discovered.

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