Berlinski Sbornig

Berlinski Sbornig – Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt (ADEVA) – Ms. slav. Wuk 48 – Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin, Germany)

Around 1300

Ecclesiastical, apocryphal, and eschatological writings: the "Berlin anthology" of theological texts are a supremely important testimony to the Greek and Slavic languages

  1. A unique manuscript collecting various theological texts written in Greek and Slavic

  2. This codex from ca. 1300 possesses equal linguistic and historical importance for Slavic and Greek speakers

  3. The collected volume includes a document concerning the creation of the Slavic alphabet

Berlinski Sbornig

  1. Description
  2. Facsimile Editions (1)
Description
Berlinski Sbornig

Sborník means "anthology" in Czech, and this anthology codex, named after its present location in Berlin, lives up to its name by its breadth of content and language. The texts of this florilegium were written in Church Slavonic with Cyrillic script in the 14th century. In terms of content, they can be assigned to the homiletic-hagiographic area as well as to the canonical-legal area, but they also contain apocryphal writing with eschatological themes. These texts are therefore of particular interest for Byzantine, Slavic, and patristic studies. From a codicological point of view, it is remarkable that the Berlinski Sbornig, due to its history of transmission, contains only 135 pages of the original 138 pages – the remaining three pages are now in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg.

Berlinski Sbornik

The influence of the Byzantines on Slavic language, culture, and religion is still apparent even today. Much of the linguistic history of this development is represented in the Berlinski Sbornik, a collected volume of texts written in Greek and Slavic addressing a wide range of issues relating to the church and theology. It is a unique manuscript because of the diverse compilation of texts, some rather mundane and others controversial, which were united into a single codex ca. 1300. Unlike the Mihanovic Homilarium, which was produced by the same workshop during the same epoch, this "collected codex" or * Sborník***, named after its abode in Berlin, combines Greek texts, genuine Slavic writings, and elementary-completive compositions with their own unique originality.
The codex was **discovered in the first half of the 19th century by the Serbian philologist Vuk Karadžić
(1787–1864), probably in Bosnia or Herzegovina. In 1858, Karadžić presented it to the Prussian Royal Library in Berlin. 135 leaves are now found in the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin under shelf mark Ms. Slav. Wuk 48, while three remaining leaves are stored in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg under shelf mark O. п. I. 15.

A Rich Assortment of Religious Texts

The total assortment of themes addressed in the Berlin Sbornikranges from canonical and apophthegmatic works of little authority to apocryphal and semi-apocryphal literature with eschatological or prognostic themes. Separately emphasized are, amongst others, the well-known struggle between body and soul; the sensory picture parabola of the blind and the lame, a hymn about Saint Paraskeue-Petka, as well as the middle-Bulgarian treatment of the Chrabr Treatise and the Constantine creation of the Slavic alphabet.
Therefore, this codex from ca. 1300 also sets a very high benchmark from a linguistic perspective even though it is incompletely preserved and possesses the same importance for the Slavic people today as it did the Byzantines and also theologians interested in the development of the canon. Among the diverse contents of the manuscript, we find the birth of Jesus and the history of Nason and his son, the story of choosing Jesus as a priest, the story of Longinus and the cycle of Emperor Avgar, and the crucified Jesus on the cross.

Codicology

Alternative Titles
Berlinski Sbornik
Size / Format
276 pages / 19.5 × 14.0 cm
Date
Around 1300

Available facsimile editions:
Berlinski Sbornig – Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt (ADEVA) – Ms. slav. Wuk 48 – Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin, Germany)
Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt (ADEVA) – Graz, 1988
Facsimile Editions

#1 Berlinski Sbornig

Binding: Cloth
Commentary: 1 volume by Heinz Miklas
Language: German

In addition, an 81-page facsimile of the corresponding manuscript stored under the shelf mark Ms. 42 in the Gil’ferding Collection of the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library in St. Petersburg is included along with an 8-page scholarly description by Vjačeslav M. Zagrebin.
1 volume: Exact reproduction of the original document (extent, color and size) Reproduction of the entire original document as detailed as possible (scope, format, colors). The binding may not correspond to the original or current document binding. 3 pages with colored ornaments, the rest in black and white facsimile.
Facsimile Copy Available!
Price Category: €
(under 1,000€)
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