Scribes of ancient Ukrainian Vienna Octoechos: towards actualization of issue

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify the scribes who worked on the creation of the Old Ukrainian Codex of Vienna (kept in the Austrian National Library, Vindob. Slav. 37). The methodological foundations of the study are based on the principles of historicism, scientific objectivity, and systematicity; the applied codicological, paleographic, and linguistic methods and a special methodology for analysing marginal records helped to obtain the latest data and critically analyse the previously obtained data, and allowed to systematically present information about the scribes of the Vienna Octoechos and the texts they wrote. The novelty of the work is due to the systematic multidisciplinary identification of the scribes of the Vienna Octoechos. For the first time, based on the results of a codicological and paleographic study of the writing, spelling, and language of the main part of the manuscript, marginal texts, and 121 records, nine scribes, the boundaries of their work, and, with a certain probability, the names of individuals havebeen identified. The correctness of the attribution of the texts written by the scribes has been proved, which made it possible to clarify the dating of various parts of the codex. Conclusions. The Vienna Octoechos — a prominent ancient Ukrainian (Galician-Volyn) monument from the princely period — is a special convolute codex of the late 12th — early 15th centuries. The problem of the need for a new identification of the scribes of the Vienna Octoechos has not been raised before due to the established opinion in science that the manuscript was mainly worked on by two anonymous scribes. Our newest data show that different generations of scribes, probably nine scribes, were involved in the creation of the codex: five scribes worked on the main text — two scribes of the late 12th and early 13th centuries (most of the text was probably written by Petro) and three scribes who later supplemented the texts of the lost notebooks; three scribes worked on the texts in the margins (one of them is probably Polkoo), and another scribe wrote the title of the book and the text on the insert. Further research in this direction will contribute to a greater argument about the number of scribes of the codex.