Огни святого Эльма над Балканами: Мучение Еразма в древнеболгарском переводе
St Elmo’s Fire over the Balkans: The Martyrdom of Erasmus in the Old Bulgarian Translation

Summary/Abstract: The Life of St Erasmus (The Martyrdom of Erasmus, Passio Erasmi) is known in three versions, i.e. Latin, Greek and Slavic. The Latin version is represented by dozens of copies since the nineteenth century, the Greek one, by only three copies of the eleventh–fourteenth centuries. A number of facts, especially the rendering of toponyms, indicate the primacy of the Latin text, in comparison with which the three Greek copies appear as a reflection of two different translations or recensions. The Old Bulgarian translation of Passio Erasmi, unknown to the researchers of Latin and Greek hagiography, has been preserved in an Old East Slavic manuscript of the twelfth century and in several Russian copies of the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries; these two branches of the Slavic tradition show considerable similarity, but go back to the different archetypes. The article presents a critical edition of the Slavic text according to the oldest copy with significant variants from other manuscripts; in parallel, the oldest copy of the Greek version is published for the first time with variae lectiones of other copies relevant to the Slavic translation as well as the readings of the Latin version close to the Slavic one. The publication is accompanied by a reconstruction of the Old Bulgarian text and its translation into modern Russian. An analysis of the Slavic translation suggests that it was based on a Greek text that was different from the three surviving copies, but in a number of points coincided with the earlier Latin text. Some features of translation techniques and archaisms give grounds to trace the Slavic translation back to the tenth century. The fact that the Life of Erasmus, who suffered martyrdom in the Balkan lands, was chosen among thousands of others for translation in the First Bulgarian Empire, reflects the still living tradition of the veneration of Erasmus as a Balkan martyr par excellence, a tradition that was preserved by the Byzantine Church and was handed over to the Bulgarian Church, and from it – to the Russian Church and Russian scripture.

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