Ancient Slavic Manuscripts of Miracles of St Nicholas of Myra in Lycia. Problems of Slavic Translation I.I. Makeyeva (Moscow)

Tales about St Nicholas' miracles take a pride of place in the literary cycle devoted to this most revered saint in Russia. Not only these texts comprise the largest volume in this literary heritage but they were well preserved in the older menology of the 12^th century whereas many other works are only known from the turn of the 15^th century. There are grounds to believe that in Russia it was precisely the miracles that were the first known stories about St Nicholas of Муrа.

On the basis of two old manuscripts containing these texts: 12^th-century Torzhestvennik (Praises and Sermons for Holy Days) and the Хлуд. 215 13^th-century manuscript, it became possible to establish a list of the early miracles of St Nicholas. The cycle consists of the main part comprising six texts, and an additional part comprising four texts. Two of the miracles derive from South Slavic regions. The Miracle of the Three Voivode, included in the additional part of the cycle, was an early Bulgarian translation. As one of the more well-known works on St Nicholas of Myra it was part of an early Byzantine collection, where it was timed for 6 December, the day of the saint's death and therefore, his Memorial Day. The double miracle of St Nicholas the Miracle-maker and St George the Conqueror was extracted from the Bulgarian «Tale of the Monk Chistodul» about the miracles of the holy martyr St George the Conqueror. As for the six miracles of the early cyclés main part (miracles of Dimitry, of Simeon, of Agaric and his son Basil, of the youth Nicholas, of the priest Christopher, and of the monk Peter) it remains to be seen whether these texts were translated in South Slavic or Eastern Slavic regions.

In his paper «Characteristics of Russian Translations of pre-Mongolian Times» A.I. Sobolevsky includes «Miracles of St Nicholas the Miracle-maker» and «Tale of the Transporting of St Nicholas' Remains to Bari» in the list of translation made in medieval Russia. However, the scholar was probably not quite sure that all the miracles ascribed to St Nicholas were performed in Russia at the same time and, moreover, that they were of the same origin. Therefore, he attributed at least one group of texts to possible South Slavic translations. He believed the translations dated back to the 11^th century.

In the light of source studies it is possible that the six miracles of the main part of the early cycle were indeed translated in the South Slavic regions. Consequently, a certain South Slavic collection, already containing the Miracle of the Three Voivode, was replenished with the double miracle of St Nicholas the Miracle-maker and St George the Conqueror as well as those six translations. The order of these six miracles follows, in part, their sequence in Byzantine literature and could have been reproduced in some Byzantine collection from which the translation was made and which might have included different versions compared to the established full and abridged variants. The specific editing of the texts might have been connected with the genre of the collection, probably a calendar.

However, we ought not to exclude a possibility of the Eastern Slavic origin of the translation of these six texts comprising the main part of the early cycle. In this case, a certain Greek collection, which contained miracles of Dimitry, of Simeon, of Agaric and his son Basil, of the youth Nicholas, of the priest Christopher and the monk Peter, or maybe only these texts turned up somewhere in Kievan Russia where they were translated and later happened to get into the hands of some South Slavs. On the South Slavic soil these translations merged with the Slavic text of the Miracle of the Three Voivode and the double miracle of St Nicholas the Miracle-maker and St George the Conqueror. Later, as part of the protograph of the 12^th-century Torzhestvennik or a similar manuscript the Eastern Slavic translation, bearing certain Bulgarian influence, found a way to Russia again. A combination of different translations on Eastern Slavic soil was hardly possible because the version of the double miracle included in the 12^th-century Torzhestvennik does not occur in the Russian writing of the 11^th to 17^th century outside the cycle devoted to St Nicholas.