Kiev Fragments

The Kiev Missal (or Kiev Fragments or Kiev Folios; scholarly abbreviation Ki) is a seven-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript containing parts of the Roman-rite liturgy. It is usually held to be the oldest and the most archaic Old Church Slavonic manuscript, and is dated at no later than the latter half of the 10th century. Seven parchment folios have been preserved in small format (14.5 cm × 10.5 cm) of easily portable book to be of use to missionaries on the move.

Discovery and publishing

Kiev Folios were found in the 19th century in Jerusalem by the Archimandrite Andrej Kapustin ( Antonin Kapustin), who donated them to the Kiev Theological Academy. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the folios were transferred to the library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv where they are being kept today.

Izmail Sreznevsky made the manuscript known to the public, editing the first edition of Kiev Folios in 1874. They have been republished many times since, though not always successfully. Notable editions are by Vatroslav Jagić in 1890 (''Glagolitica. 2. Würdigung neuentdeckter Fragmente, Mit 10 Taf.'', Wien 1890, Denkschrift. Kaiserl. Akad., Bd. 38), by Sievers in 1924 (''Die altslavischen Verstexte von Kiew und Freising'', Leipzig 1924, Akad. Wiss., phil.-hist. Kl., Bd. 76/2) and by Mohlberg in 1928 (''Il messale di Kiew/sec IX./ed il suo prototipo Romano del VI-VII'').

Special attention to the Kiev folios has been paid by Václav Vondrák in a paper ''O původu Kijevských listů a Pražských zlomků a o bohemismech v starších církevněslovanských památkách vůbec'' (Praha, 1904). The newest facsimile edition has been published in 1983 in Kiev to honor the ninth International Congress of Slavists which was held there (V. V. Nimčuk, ''Kijivs′ki hlaholični lystky'', AN USSR). That edition contains extensive overview of the existing bibliography of the Kiev Folios.

Dating and origin

The first page of the first folio was written later than other pages, probably at the boundary of the 11th and 12th centuries. Linguistic, paleographic and graphic features indicate South Croatia as its place of origin. This page contains parts of Paul's epistles (13, 11-14 and 14, 1-4). That part of the Kiev Folios and the problems associated with it has been thoroughly analyzed by the Croatian Slavist Marija Pantelić, who finally situated it somewhere in the Dubrovnik area.

The rest of the folios, containing part of the Roman Missal, is dated at no later than the second half of the 10th century.

Content

By content it is a Roman Missal, i.e., a book collecting all the text used at the holy mass service. Missal texts are accompanied by instructions on how to perform rites throughout the liturgical year, called ''rubrics'', which is a term originating from Latin word ''rubrica'' designating red soil used for painting.

The text of the Kiev Missal folios has been for the most part written in black (the text meant to be pronounced), and for the lesser part in red (the instructions for gestures that the priest must perform and other instructions for the ceremony). Since the Kiev Missal has only 13 pages preserved, it's obvious that only a part of the missal has been preserved, from the sacramentary containing crucial and unchangeable parts spoken by the priest.

Linguistic features

The Kiev Folios are generally held by Slavists as the oldest among the OCS canon manuscripts, even though they exhibit several West Slavic features that place them at the beginning of the Czech-Moravian recension of OCS. These are:
* Instead of OCS ''št'', ''žd'' we find West Slavic reflexes of Proto-Slavic */tj/ (also from earlier *kt) and */dj/, i.e. instead of ''pomoštь'', ''prosęšte'', ''priemljǫšte'', ''daždь'', ''tuždimъ'', ''tъžde'' we find ''pomocь'', ''prosęce'', ''priemljǫce'', ''dazь'', ''tuzimъ'', ''tъze'' etc.
* At the place of Proto-Slavic *stj and *skj we would expect a reflex of OCS ''št'', but we find ''šč'': ''očiščeniě'', ''zaščiti'' (imperative), ''zaščititь''.
* As an ending of instrumental singular of masculine o-stems we would expect ''-omь''. But instead, ''-ъmь'' is used, so instead of expected ''oplatomь'', ''obrazomь'', ''vъsǫdomь'' we find ''oplatъmь'', ''obrazъmь'', ''vъsǫdъmь''.
* Genitive of first-person pronoun ''azъ'' is ''mene'' in OCS. In Kiev Folios we find ''mne'' by the elision of weak yer.

As features that connect Kiev Folios to the canonic manuscripts of other important Slavic area, namely Bulgarian, one has to note:
* consistent distinguishing between yers ''ъ'' and ''ь'', and only twice ''ъ'' is found where ''ь'' is expected
* Kiev folios preserve nasal vowels (/ę/ and /ǫ/) and don't mix them

Czech forgery hypothesis

Croatian Slavist Josip Hamm stirred a fierce debate in his 1979 book ''Das Glagolitische Missale von Kiew'' In it, and in his other papers and lectures he maintained the view that the Kiev Folios are a 19th-century fake by Czech patriots in order to prove the antiquity of Czech literary culture.

He argued a single hand could have written the text of both 1r and 1v-7v, though not at the same time. Provided the hand was calligraphically skilled enough. The paleographic differences between the Epistle to the Romans and the Hail Mary are not so great that they could not have been bridged by a single, variable hand. Unless the scribe changd between the Epistle to the Romans and the Hail Mary, it follows that a single hand may have written both the Epistle to the Romans with its Eastern text type and the Hail Mary, a translation from Latin. To explain that textual contrast, one must assume the main text on 1v-7v is a sacramentary with Western additions and therefore a change of hands between the Epistle to the Romans and the Hail Mary associated with a change in scribe, but Hamm sees no grounds for such an assumption.

See also

* List of Glagolitic manuscripts (900–1199)
* Lists of Glagolitic manuscripts

Notes

References

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External links

Transcription
by the Old Church Slavonic Institute

Transcription
by the TITUS project

Transcription
by the MANUSCRIPT project

{{Glagolitic topics

10th-century biblical manuscripts
Old Church Slavonic canon
South Slavic manuscripts
Cyrillo-Methodian studies
Church Slavonic manuscripts