(scholarly abbreviation ''Ass'') is a rounded

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and othe ...

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

evangeliary The Evangeliary or Book of the Gospels is a liturgical book containing only those portions of the four gospels which are read during Mass or in other public offices of the Church. The corresponding terms in Latin are and . The Evangeliary develo ...

consisting of 158 illuminated

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins ...

folios, dated to early 11th century. The manuscript is created in the

Ohrid Literary School The Ohrid Literary School or Ohrid- ''Devol'' Literary school was one of the two major cultural centres of the First Bulgarian Empire, along with the Preslav Literary School ( Pliska Literary School). The school was established in Ohrid (in what i ...

of the

First Bulgarian Empire The First Bulgarian Empire ( cu, блъгарьско цѣсарьствиѥ, blagarysko tsesarystviye; bg, Първо българско царство) was a medieval Bulgar- Slavic and later Bulgarian state that existed in Southeastern Eur ...

Name and library

The Codex is named after its discoverer, Italian

Maronite The Maronites ( ar, الموارنة; syr, ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of the Middle East, whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church, with the lar ...

scholar and Vatican librarian of Lebanese origin Giuseppe Simone Assemani, who discovered it and bought it in Jerusalem in 1736. His nephew Stefano Evodio donated it to the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( la, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, it, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally es ...

, where the codex is still kept today.Its precise collocation is Codex Vaticanus Slavicus 3 Glagoliticus.

Composition

By content it is an

Aprakos Aprakos is a kind of Gospel or Acts of the Apostles book, otherwise known as weekly or service Gospel (Acts). In aprakoses, the text is organized not in the natural order of books, but along with the weekly church readings starting from the Holy ( ...

(weekly, service) Gospel. It contains only

pericope A pericope (; Greek , "a cutting-out") in rhetoric is a set of verses that forms one coherent unit or thought, suitable for public reading from a text, now usually of sacred scripture. Also can be used as a way to identify certain themes in a cha ...

s (starting with the beginning of the Gospel of John), i.e. lectures prepared for the celebrations in church. At the end of the manuscript there is a

Menologium Menologium (), also written menology, and menologe, is a service-book used in the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite. From its derivation from Greek , ''menológion'', from μήν ''m� ...

which has lessons to be read during the feasts of the menaion (Sts. Demetrius, Theodosius, Clement and other saints). The codex is held by many to be the most beautiful

book.

History of research and editions

The first person to write about the codex was

Mateo Karaman Mateo may refer to: People ;Name * Mateo (given name) * Mateo (surname) ;People named Mateo * Mateo (singer) (born 1986), former stage name of American pop/R&B singer-songwriter Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Mateo'' (1937 film), a 1937 Argent ...

in his work ''Identitá della lingua letterale slava'' (manuscript, Zadar 1746). The manuscript was published by

Franjo Rački Franjo Rački (25 November 1828 – 13 February 1894) was a Croatian historian, politician and writer. He compiled important collections of old Croatian diplomatic and historical documents, wrote some pioneering historical works, and was a key f ...

(Zagreb 1865, Glagolitic), Ivan Črnčić (''Assemanovo izborno evangjelje''; Rome 1878, published privately, transcribed in Latin), Josef Vajs and Josef Kurz (''Evangeliář Assemanův, Kodex vatikánský 3. slovanský, 2. vols'', Prague 1929, ČSAV, phototypical edition) - republished by Josef Kurz in 1966 in Cyrillic transcription. The newest Bulgarian edition is by

Vera Ivanova-Mavrodinova Vera may refer to: Names * Vera (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * Vera (given name), a given name (including a list of people and fictional characters with the name) **Vera (), archbishop of the archdiocese of Tarr ...

and Aksinia Džurova from 1981 (''Asemanievo evangelie''; Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo), with facsimile reproductions.

Linguistic description

The manuscript abounds with ligatures. Linguistic analysis has shown that the manuscript is characterized by frequent vocalizations of yers (''ъ'' > ''o'', ''ь'' > ''e''), occasional loss of epenthesis, and ''ь'' is frequently replaced with hard ''ъ'', esp. after ''r''. These are the traits pointing to the Macedonian area, and are shared with Codex Marianus. Yers are also frequently omitted word-finally, and occasionally non-etymologically mixed (''ь'' being written after ''k'' and ''g'').

References

* *

External links

Manuscript

Editions

Codex Assemanius
scans of the newest 1981 facsimile edition

at the Corpus Cyrillo-Methodianum Helsingiense *

Description

*{{cite web , title=Codex Assemanianus; Asemanievo evangelie , url=http://kodeks.uni-bamberg.de/AKSL/Quellen/AKSL.CdxAssemanianus.htm , website=Kodeks – OCS Sources , publisher=Slavische Sprachwissenschaft , location=University Bamberg , access-date=2019-01-17 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190117070310/http://kodeks.uni-bamberg.de/AKSL/Quellen/AKSL.CdxAssemanianus.htm , archive-date=2019-01-17 , url-status=dead Assemanius, Codex 11th-century Christian texts

Marianus Marianus is a male name, formerly an Ancient Roman family name, derived from Marius. Marianus may refer to: * Marianus of Auxerre (died 462 or 473), French monk and saint * Marianus Scotus of Mainz (1028–1082 or -83), otherwise Máel Brigte (Dev ...

Medieval Bulgarian literature of Macedonia Cyrillo-Methodian studies Ohrid Literary School