Language Innovations in Manuscripts Attributed to Cyprian the Metropolitan

Abstract

This article deals with the language innovations characteristic of translations of the 14th century as represented in manuscripts regarded by scholars as emanating from the literary activities of Metropolitan Cyprian (†1406): the Ladder of Divine Ascent, the Psalter, and the works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite. The number of innovations is different for each of the texts listed above, the Psalter being the least innovative and the Ladder the most innovative text. Nevertheless the distribution of corrections in the Ladder seems to be irregular, with the initial part containing more innovations than the end of the codex. The works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite represented in MDA 144 (Russian State Library, Moscow) have nothing to do with Cyprian’s literary activities, for this manuscript is a copy of a translation made by Isaiah, a monk at the St. Panteleimonos Monastery on Mount Athos. The number of innovations in this translation lies between those seen in the Psalter and in the Ladder. Thus, a text attributed to the same person may differ significantly in terms of translation technique, which leads to the conclusion that the so-called attributional criterion is unreliable for a description of the written language of the 14th century. Along the same lines, such notions as the Athos norm and the Tarnovo norm are quite fluid and do not have any strictly defined borders. Therefore we suggest that these 14th-century translations have to be examined in the context of the degree to which they illustrate language innovations in a particular text. This criterion has been already successfully applied by M. G. Galchenko for a description of the orthographic features of the Second South Slavic Influence in Russian manuscripts of the 14th–15th centuries.