Fragments of a Serbian Apostolos in Budapest and Their Significance for Textual Criticism
Fragments of a Serbian Apostolos in Budapest and Their Significance for Textual Criticism

Summary/Abstract: The article describes a manuscript of the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest (Frag. Eccl. Slav. 3), which consists of seven fragments from a thirteenth-century Serbian continuous Apostolos. The study of the fragments has also provided valuable methodological lessons to be applied to the future study of the Apostolos. In the first place, it must be remembered that a manuscript is not a text. While it is possible for a manuscript to contain one and only one text of a work (such, for example, would be the prototype of a redaction or sub-redaction), it is clear that very many manuscripts contain parts of different texts. At present it is common practice, when studying a particular manuscript, to adduce variants from other manuscripts, but this is of extremely limited value, because unless it has been established which text a particular manuscript contains at each point, the comparison is completely uninformative. If, instead of comparing whole manuscripts, comparisons are made lection by lection52, it will be possible gradually to build up a textual pattern for each manuscript, which will in turn enable it to be used successfully for comparative purposes.

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