The Synaxarion Redaction of the Life of St. Alexander Svirsky: A Reconstruction of the Early Stages of the Text History

Abstract

The paper addresses the problems of the attribution and the geographical and chronological origins of the synaxarion redaction of the Life of St. Alexander Svirsky; it relies on textological, codicological, and palaeographic analysis of the surviving manuscripts. The author draws some conclusions about the formation of the regional variants of this medieval hagiographic text. Alexander Svirsky was the only Christian saint who was honored by receiving a manifestation of the Holy Trinity; this occurred in 1508. He founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity and was its archpriest until his dormition in 1533. The Life of Alexander Svirsky was written in 1545 by Herodion Kochnev, one of the saint’s acolytes, at the directive of Metropolitan Macarius for the Great Menaion Reader. The Life of St. Alexander Svirsky survives in a large number of copies— about 200—from the 16th and 17th centuries. Only nine of these copies show the text variant that the author of this study calls “the synaxarion variant”; they appear in synaxaria from the second half of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. Word-by-word text comparison allows one to conclude that these nine copies fall into three different redactions, each reflecting Herodion’s text. All three redactions originate from different areas, and they differ in subject matter and in the methods of elaboration of the Menaion text. On the one hand, this confirms that obviously there was a great need for this kind of text; on the other hand, it acknowledges the absence of a norm by means of which such texts might be compiled. The first, earliest, synaxarion redaction survives in seven copies, including one of the earliest copies of the Life, which dates back to 1549, according to a note by the scribe. It might have been created soon after Herodion’s text for the Great Menaion Reader to coincide with Alexander’s canonization in 1547. Despite the small number of surviving copies, this redaction was rather widespread and was known in Pskov and Novgorod, in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, and probably in Romanov. The other two redactions were found in late, isolated copies. The second synaxarion redaction is known from the Vologda Synaxarion, and the third one—from the Synaxarion delivered from Moscow to Mozhaysk.