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ОглавлениеEnina Apostolos, Old Bulgarian Cyrillic manuscript (fragment) of the 11th century
Inscribed 2011
What is it
A fragment of thirty-nine parchment folios, forming the oldest extant Slavonic copy of the Acts and Epistles of the New Testament.
Why was it inscribed
The fragments contain one of the oldest forms of Cyrillic script that is evidence of the crucial change in the history of the Slavonian conversion to Christianity. The Enina Apostolos has unique historical significance as testimony of the old Cyrillic script, in the region from which it emerged.
Where is it
SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library, Sofia, Bulgaria
The 11th-century Enina Apostolos is the most ancient extant Slavonic copy of the Acts and Epistles. Written on parchment, the fragment represents one of the oldest forms of the Cyrillic script. It is important in the history of Slavonic literacy and in particular, of the translations from Greek made by St Cyril and St Methodius and their disciples. The translations were transmitted in East Bulgaria at the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th century.
Enina Apostolos is akin to other ancient Old Bulgarian manuscripts, but has several very distinctive features. The script is archaic Cyrillic ustav (uncial), sloping to right and hanging from the ruling line, 3–3.5 mm high. The illumination is represented by two headpieces, of the band- or strip-type, and several initials preceding each reading. Their ornament is prevailingly geometric with early elements of the Slavonic teratological style. A peculiar feature of the decoration is the giant initial on f. 1v, comparable to those in two Glagolitic manuscripts – Codex Zographensis and Codex Marianus, both datable to the 10th century.
St Cyril and St Methodius
Even though the greatest part of the copy is missing, the extant leaves form a unity, the synaxarion comprising the readings from the Acts and Epistles provided for the services between the thirty-fifth week after Pentecost and Holy Saturday, and the menologion comprising readings for the period between 1 September (the beginning of the indiction) and 3 October, the commemoration of St. Dionysius Areopagites.
SS. Cyril and Methodius National Library, Sofia, Bulgaria
The readings supplied with their corresponding liturgical elements: antiphons, prokeimena and alleluia, together with the liturgical indications are a valuable source for the earliest liturgical practices introduced with the conversion of Bulgarians and followed by Bulgarian Church in the epoch of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. The language of Enina Apostolos is an ancient example of the phonetic and syntactic features of Old Bulgarian.
From the time of its discovery until today the fragment has proven to be of crucial importance for establishing basic linguistic, textological, orthographic, paleographic, historic and liturgical issues of the Slavonic cultural heritage based on the works of St Cyril and St Methodius.
The text of the Apostolos Lectionary (selected parts or readings from the Acts and Epistles, arranged according to the liturgical calendar) is of great importance as it comprises the basic formulae of Christian dogma. As an inseparable part of the text corpus for the Christianization of Slavs and the performing of Slavonic liturgy in vernacular, the New Testament text preserved in Enina Apostolos is a witness of the affiliation of Slav people to Christianity – a crucial change in their history and culture.