Новооткрит канон на Константин Преславски с тайнописно поетическо послание
A Newly Discovered Canon Written by Constantine of Preslav with a Cryptic Poetical Message

Summary/Abstract: A newly discovered canon of Constantine of Preslav – a Christmas Canon, has been preserved in a Slavonic handwritten menaia of the 13th–15th с. This hymnographic work was drawn up after the mode l of the well-known iambic Christmas Canon of John of Damascus’. The hirmi of the work of John of Damascus’ were used as rhytm and melody models. Their text was in places reworked in order to preserve the dodeca syllable structure of the verses. The troparia are built on the same isosyllabic principle. Each contains five lines of 12 syllables. The initial letters of the verses (120 in all) form an Old Bulgarian acrostic with the name of the author and a poetic triplet message to the newly converted Slavs. The recently discovered Christmas Canon confirms the conclusion about the joint literary activity of the Cyrillo-Methodian disciples in the period immediately after their arrival in Bulgaria (886). It is a new proof of the great poetic gift of Constantine of Preslav and one of the greatest achievements of Old Bulgarian literature of the „Golden Century“.

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