Byzantine studiesfEtudes Byzantines, Vols. 8, 1l & 12 (l9gl, 1984 & 1985), 2si-64.

ROBERT MATHIESEN (Providence, RI, U.S.A.)

AN IMPORTANT EARLYSLAVIC TEXT OF

THE APOSTLES'CREED

constantine and Methodius were not the first to translate christian textsinto Slavic. That honor belongs to Western missionaries, who had already beenat their work among the South and West Slavs for about a century when Con-stantine and Methodius first came to Great Moravia. In all likelihood, theseearly Western missionaries translated only a few brief texts, perhaps no morethan the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, which Carolingian missionarypractice required every candidate for baptism to learn by heart in his own ver-nacular language as well as in Latin.l

Such brief texts hardly merit comparison with the lengthy translations andthe original cornpositions through whicl.r constantine and Methodius and theirdisciples created the first Slavic standard language, Church Slavic. They donot belong to the history of Church Slavic (or even Old Church Slavic), butonly to its prehistory and to the environment in which it was created. Buteven so, they would be of great interest to specialists in church slavic if theywere still extant, or could be recovered.

These early translations of the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' creed mayhave been written down from time to time, but since they had to be memorizedby all candidates for baptism, they must have been transmitted primarilyby word of mouth. Having been transmitted in this fashion for about a cen-tury, they must have been widely known in Moravia and Pannonia by thetime when Constantine and Methodius began their work in these lands. Onecan hardly escape the conclusion that Constantine and Methodius soon be-came aware of these early western translations and the slavic christian ter-minology which they contained.

1. A. P. Ylasto, The Entry o.f the Slovs into Christendoz (Cambridge: Univ. Prcrss,1970), ch. 2 (esp. p. 16); cl. A. V. Isa6cnko. "K nonpocy o6 upnaHgcrofi nuccllrl y ua-HHoHcKI,tx Il MopaBcKr.rx cnanxa," Bonpocbt cnaaflHcKoeo n3dKosvaHutr, T (1963). \43-72. For non-Slavic references, see J. N. D. Kclly, Early Christian Creeds,3rd ed. (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1972), ch. 1 3 (esp. pp. 420-26); and P. Wolff, Western LanguagesA.D. 100-1500, trans. Frances Partridge (New York & Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 197i), pp.114-21.

258 BYZANTINE STUDIES/ETUDES BYZANTINES

The Old Church Slavic form of the proper name Pontius Pilate can serve todemonstrate this point. In the New Testament he is usually named just by hiscognomen, Pilate. The fuller form of his name, Pontius Pilate, occurs onlyfour times in the New Testament (Mt.27.2, L. 3.1, A.4.27 ,I T. 6.13), but ithas a prominent place in certain early Christian creeds, including the Apostles'Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The word Pontius is a Ro-mainomen, and indicates that Pilate belonged to the Romangens of the Pon-tii. Therefore the expected Old Church Slavic form of this proper name isPontii (or Pontt) Pilatz. This form, however, seems not to occur in any OldChurch Slavic text; the attested form isPg/askyi (u Pgntdskyi or Pontoskyi)Pilata, where the nomen Pontius has been mistranslated as if it were an ethno-nymic adjective meaning '?ontic."2 Such a misinterpretation of the wordPontius is occasionally found in Latin and Greek commentaries on the NewTestament or on a creed, but nevertheless it is an elementary mistake which a

highly educated Byzantine theologian like Constantine or a competent By'zantine jurist like Methodius could hardly have made.3 They must have foundthis mistranslation already in use in Moravia and Pannonia;moreover, it musthave been so widely in use that they did not choose to risk correcting it. Onlythe wide use of an earlier Slavic translation of some creed-in all likelihood,the Apostles' Creed-could have lent such currency to this mistranslation ofthe name Pontius Pilate.

2. Evangeliarum Assemani,92b7-8,138a14-15, ed. J. Vajs & J' Kurz, 2 vols. (Praha:Sumptibus Academie Scientiarum et Artium Bohemicae, 1929-55),II, 183, 277;SavvinaKniga,98vl5-16, ed.[.N.Shchepkin(St.Petersburg,1903),p.89;QuatruorEvangeliorumCodex Glagoliticus olimZographensis,T}aT-8,140b9-10,ed.V. Jagi6 (Berlin: Weidmann,1879), pp. 42,86; Codex Marianus, 39b9, 83b8, ef. V. Jagi6 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1883),pp. 105, 201;Euchologium Situiticum,4gal6, ed. R. Nahtigal,2 vols. (Ljubljana, 1941),II, 118; Codex Suprasliensrs, 8Sa5,ed. S. Sever'ianov (St. Petersburg: , Hag. Hvn. AH,1904), p. 173. The genuine Greek and Latin adjective meaning "Pontic" (llowwde ,Ponticus) occurs at A. 18:2, where it is translated by the substantive PontEninz in Cqd91.christ.inopolitanus, ed. E. Kaluzniacki (wien, 1896), p. 42; cf . also in John the Exarch's-Hexaerneron,

Codex Mosquensis Synodalis no. 345, f. 179c28d1, Ponta,sko more "lheSea of Pontius," ed. R. Aitzet*iilgt f .9!t.I9gr.-AkademischeDruck-u. Verlagsansalt,195&75), V,77-80). See also A. Gezen [= Heesen] , Ilcropua cnaenHcKo?o nepeeoda:cutt@noa eepor (St. Petersburg, 1884), p. 35.

3. I am able to cite two eleventh-century commentatorsto thateffect: the Latin Brunoof Wiirzburg's Commentarius in symbolum apostolicum (PL,CXLll' cols. 559{l) andthe Greek Theophylact of Ohrid's Commentarius in Matthacum (PG, CXXIII, cols. 459-60). The same statement is found in the brief Church Slavic commentary on the Niceno'Constantinopolitan Creed (antedating the thirteenth century) published by Gezen, pp.127-25, and V. Jagi6, Psalterium Bononiense (Wicn, Berlin, and St. Petersburg: Wr:id-mann, 1907), pp. 848-51.

AN IMPORTANT EARLY SLAVIC TEXT OF THE APOSTLES'CREED 259

The Lord's Prayer occurs twice in the New Testament (Mt. 6.9-13, L. 11.2-4), and at least one of the two passages was in the Gospel Lectionary whichConstantine and Methodius translated during the 860s. Doubtless they couldsimply have transiated the Greek text of the Lord's Prayer, just as they trans-lated the rest of the Lectionary from Greek, but the translation which the ex-tant manuscripts contain is not in all respects a straight-forward and naturaltranslation of the Greek text of the Lord's Prayer. In particular, the phraseOtdie naio, iie esi na nebesoxa seems closer to the Latin Pater noster, quies in coelis than to the Greek lTarep i11tdt b tv roic obpavolc (which couldwell have been translated Otaie naio na nebesuxo). We may therefore supposethat Constantine and Methodius accommodated their translation of the Greektext of the Lord's Prayer in the Gospel Lectionary to an earlier translation ofthat prayer from the Latin which they found already in use in Moravia andPannonia. Indeed, they may have made few if any changesin that earlier trans-lation: only the word nasgitanyi-if that was their reading is closer to theGreek form tnouotou than to the Latin supersubstantialem.In any event, thetrdnslation of Constantine and Methodius would have been in competitionwith'the earlier transiation from the Latin (insofar as the two translations dif-fered), and the earlier translation could hardly be expected to have survivedin its purity, although it might have ieft traces olits existence in the form ofa few deviant readings in individual manuscripts of Constantine and Methodius'stranslation of the Gospel Lectionary: perhaps some of the variant readingsdonevanyi, nadanevanyi, nastavbflaego dbne, nastoeitaego done (instead of ra-sgitanyi) have this origin, inasmuch as they reflect the Latin variant quo-tidionum (instead of supersub stantialem).4

The fate of an early Western translation of the Latin Apostles'Creed intoSlavic would have been different from the fate of such a translbtion of theLord's Prayer, because there would have been no translation from the Greekto be in competition with it. The Apostles' Creed is a text of Western origin,and is not used in Byzantine worship. (Even in Western rites, it is used prin-cipally in the order of Baptism;in the order of the Mass the Niceno{onstantin-opolitan Creed is used instead.5) An early western translation of the Apostles'Creed from Latin into Slavic could therefore have survived in its pure formmuch longer than a similar translation of the Lord's Prayer. Whatever contami-nation it might have undergone would have come not from some other trans-

4. Cf. J. Cibulka, "Erariorce -nasgitanyi-qtotidianus-vezdej{i," S:lavia, 25 (1956).406-15; Isaienko, pp. 67-681 D. G. Huntley, "Is Old Church Slavonic 'Lead us not intotemptation . . .' a Latinism2 ," Slavia,35 ( I 966), 4 31-35 ; H. Wissemann, "Die altkirchen-slavischen Versionen der vierten Bitte des Vaterunsers,"Die llelt der Slaven,14 (1969),393405.

5 . Cf. Kelly, pp. .344-57 , 398434 .

260 BYZANTINE STUDIES/ETUDES BYZANTINES

lation of the Apostles'Creed, but rather from translations of other creeds, es-pecially the Niceno{onstantinopolitan Creed.6

Keeping all these considerations in mind,let us examine a remarkable textof the Apostles' Creed which is found in a Church Slavic translation of theRoman Order of Baptism. I cite it below from the first edition of the ChurchSlavic Missal, printed in Glagolitic io 1483.7 This is not the oldest extant copyof the Apostles' Creed in Church Slavic. There are seventeen earlier manu-scripts (and a number of fragments) of the Church Slavic Missal, and as manyas seven of these manuscripts Qontain the Roman Order of Baptism, or at leastthe Apostles' Creed.8 But the oldest of the seven, hince Novakb Missal of1368, is the very manuscript from which the fust edition of 1483 was ratheraccurately printed.g The text given below may thus be one of the most ar-chaic Church Slavic texts of the Apostles' Creed now extant. I give it in paral-lel with the received Latin text.l0

6. Gezen has shown that the earliest extant Church Slavic version of the Niceno{on-stantinopolitan Creed was the work of Constantine and Methodius; he fulthel observes(pp.32-35) that thisversion contains one obviousLatinism: the phrase v'aplz,itu,io se ot'ttiito"so Duxa iz Marig dEvicA (with the preposition rZ) is cloier to the Latin incarna-tus est de Spiritu sancto ex Marit virgine (with the preposition ex) than to the Greekoapx<,s1Cwa bx flveiparos bllou xai Mapias ric tap\dvou (rvith the conjunction xcr).From this he concludes that Constantine and Methodius had been influenced by theLatin text of the Creed. V. Jagi6, reviewing Gezen's work (Archiv fiir shvische Philologie,8 t18851 ,6l0-12),goes beyond Gezen and posits the existence of a Slavic translation ofa Latin creed before the time of Constantine and Methodius. Both scholars suppose thatthe Latin creed in question was the Niceno{onstantinopolitan Creed; but in fact thesame influence could have been exerted by the Apostles'Creed, which also contains thephrases de Spbiru sancto . . . ex Maria virgine, and-as noted above-an early Slavic trans-tation of the Apostles' Creed is much more tikely to have been made, in view of Western.missionary practice, than one of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.. 7. I use the recent facsimile edition,Misal po Zakonu Rimskoga Dvora 1483 (Zagreb,1971), where the Order of Baptism is on pp. 405-1 3.

8. J. Vajs, Naistariii hrvatskoglagolski misal (Zagteb: Jugoslavenska Akadernde Zna-nosti i Umjetnosti, 1948), pp. 11, 13, 19-20,26,38,42,43.

9. Marija Pante1i6, "Prvotisak glagoljskog misala iz 1483 prema misalu kneza Novakaiz 1368," Radovi Staroslovenskog Instituta,6 (1967\,5-108; she indicates no substantialvariants in the text of the Apostles' Creed. I leglet that I have not been able to consult.Missale Hervoiae ducis Spalatensis croatico'glagoliticum (Graz, 1973), where the text ofPrince Hrvoj's fifteenth-century Missal is given with variants from Prince Novak'sMissaland the fourteenth-century Missals of Ro[ and of the Vatican (Illiico No. 4). The firstthree of these Missals, but not the fourth, are among the seven known to contain a text

" ff.ffi;i1';rtiliX. orr-rr; Kelly, p. 36e. r transliterate the Glagolitic text, expandingabbreviated words within angle brackets O and restoring the 6mitted initial letter withinsquare brackets []; I tmnsliterate the letters- corresponding to Old Church Slavic u (a)and s'r by an apostrophe (') and by i, respectively (therefore also oputenie in line 18..where the I was surely read as /5t/ or /Ii/).

AN IMPORTANT EARLY SLAVIC TEXT OF THE APOSTLES'CREED 261

1 ryl6ruju v b(og)a o(Oca v(e)mogu6agotvorca n(e)bu i z(e)mlii v i(srls x(risOa sina ego edinogog(ospod)a n(d5ego.

5 lie potet'e($t ot d(r-ilxa s(ve)taroen' iz m(drie d(E)vim(d6en' pri puntascEem' pilatEraspet' i mr't'v' pogreben'snide v' ad'

l0 i v' trti d'n' vskrse ot mrtvix'Vzide n(d n(e)b(e)sai sEdit o desnuju b(og)a o(0ca vs(e) mogu6(dgoi ottudu paki xoi(e)t priti s' sl(dvojusuditi Zivim' i mrtvim'

15 v6ruju v d(rix' (ve)tii v s(ve)tu cr'k'v k(dtolid'skuju.s(ve)tix opiinuotpu6(e)nie grEx(o)v't(6)la vskrESenie

20 v livot' v(E)Eni. Am(iln'.

1 Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem,creatorem coeli et terrae;et in Jesum Christum, filium ejus unicum,dominum nostrum,

5 qui conceptus est de Spiritu sancto,natus ex Maria virgine,passus sub Pontio Pilato,crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus,descendit ad inferna,

10 tertia die resurrexit a mortuis,ascendit ad coelos,sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis,inde venturus estjudicare vivos et mortuos;

l5 credo in Spiritum sanctum,sanctam ecclesiam catholicam,sanctorum communionem,remissionem peccatorum,carnis resurrectionem,

20 et vitam aeternam. Amen.

262 BYZANTINE STUDIES/ETUDES BYZANTINES

We may ignore the added or misplaced conjunction i (= et) inlines8, 10,12, 13, and 16, and also the added preposition v (= in) in line 16. Otherwisethe Church Slavic text is a straightforward translation of the Latin text, withthree important exceptions in lines 13 and 19-20.

In line l3 there is a clear case of contamination from the Niceno-Constan-tinopolitan Creed, in which the equivalent passage rcads'. I ottudu. pakixoiet'piti sa st@)voiu (= iterum venturus est cum gtoria).|l As a result of this con-tamination, the Church Slavic text of the Apostles' Creed has the extra wordspaki ands'sl(a)voiu, which do not correspond to anything in any Latin textof the Apostles' Creed. This may serve to show that the text as given abovewas at least revised (if not translated) after the time when the Niceno-Con-stantinopolitan Creed was first translated into Church Slavic, presumably af-ter the arrival of Constantine and Methodius in Great Moravia. This conclu-sion is borne out by the translation of qd inferna in line 9 by v' ad', where theword ad'is a borrowing from the Greek word &6nc.12

In line 19 the Latin carnisresurrectionem is translated by t(dla vskrdienie.To the best of my knowledge such a translation of Latin caro ot Greek oapl"flesh" by Church Slavic tdlo occurs nowhere else in the entire surviving massof texts from the Early and Middle periods of Church S1avic.13 As a rule,Church Slavic tdlo translates Greek oaspa or Latin corpus "body," and Greekoapl or Latin caro "flesh" is normally translated by Church Slavic p/a ta .l 4

Moreover, there seems to be no Medieval text of the Apostles' Creed whichmight attest a reading corporis resurrectionem instead of camis resunection-em.lS Therefore the use of Slavic tdlo "body" to translate Latincaro "flesh"is surely an instance of a theologically loose translation similar to that in thesixteenth-century English Book of Common Prayer, where the same phrase in

11. Cited frcm Misal 1483, p.405; also printed by Gezen, p. 50. This church Slavictext has been contaminated in its turn by the Apostles' Creed: ottudu corresponds tonothing in the Latin or Greek text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, The cyrillictext, free of this contamination, reads: i paky grgdglto sz slavoig (= xai ndl,tu Epvdpevouperri 6<i6ns) [Gezen, pp.37 ,441 .

12. Cf. V. Jagi6, Entstehungsgeschichte derkirchenslavischen sprache,2nd ed. (Berlin:Weidmann, 1913). p. 301.

13. F. Miklosich, Lexicon Palaeoslovenico-Graeco-Latinun wien: G. Braumneller,1862-65), p.LO24,givesoneinstanceof fcloglossed as anro'- odplftom a manuscriptdescribed by him (p. XIV) as "Menaeum mensium a septembri usque ad ianuarium serb.olim Vuk Stef. KaradZi(, nunc bibliothecae palatinae vindobonensis." This requires veri-fication; as is well known, Miklosich's Greek and Latin glosses in his dictionary are oftenarbitrarY.

L4. ! a}i6, Ent stehungsgeschichte, pp. 309, 407, 430' 440' 441' 4 58.15. A. Hahn, Bibliothek der symbole und Glaubensregeln der Alten Kirche,2nd ed.,

(Breslau: E. Morgenstern,lST'1),pp. 13-61; Kellv, pp. 100-204, 368434.

AN IMPORTANT EARLY SLAVIC TEXT OF THE APOSTLES'CREED263

the Apostles' Creed is translated "the resurrection of the body" (this transla-tion is still commonly used by English-speaking Christians). Such theologicallaxity is not at all characteristic of the Church Slavic translations made byConstantine and Methodius or by their immediate disciples; its occurence inthe text at hand is strong evidence that the original translation ofthe Apostles'Creed into Slavic must have been made indepiende4tly of Constantine andMethodius's missionary activity in Moravia and Pannonia.

The final peculiarity of the Church Slavic text will not only confirm thisconclusion, but also permit us to determine more precisely the provenance ofthe original translation of the Apostles' Creed into Slavic. In lines 19-20 thereceived Latin text hascarnis resurrectionem et vitam aeternam with the con-junction et, but the Church Slavic text has t(Ola vskrdienie v iivot'vG)dniwith the preposition y. This is not a poor translation of the received Latintext, but a literal translation of a rare variant form of the Latin text with thepreposition in; carnis resunectionem in vitam aeternam "resurrection of theflesh unto eternal life." This variant form of the text is attested by just twowitnesses: the Bobbio Missal (a Latin text) and the St. Gall MS no. 911 (anOld High German translation from the Latin). Neither of these manuscriptsis younger than the eighth century, and only one of them (the Bobbio Missal)may be as old as the seventh century. Both manuscripts are intimately con-nected by their contents with the work of Western missionaries (almost cer-tianly from Ireland) among the Franks at that time.16 This rare variant formof the Latin text became obsolete during the reign of Charlemagne (t 814),when the presently received text became a standard imposed by imperialauthority throughout Frankish Europe. 1 7

The conclusion seems inescapable that the Church Slavic text of the ApostledCreed examined above ls not a new translation made sometime after the ar-rival of Constantine and Methodius in Great Moravia, but rather a ChurchSlavicizing revision of an earlier Slavic translation made no later than the endof the eighth century. Such an early Slavic translation from the Latin is bestregarded as the work ol Western missionaries active among the Slavs-chieflythe South Slavs-during the eighth century, parallel to the less accurate eighth-century translation of the same rare form of the Latin,text into Old High Ger-man (as preserved in the Sr. Gatl MS no. 9t D.l8

16. Hahn, pp. 38-39, 53; Kelly, pp.400-02,416-18. It is to be noted that all laterWestern Mediaeval vernacular translations, including an Old High German translationfrom the early ninth century, follorv the received text with et,notin: Hahn,pp.53-59,

17. Kelly, pp.420-26.18. Vlasto, pp. 15-17, 21-26, on missions to South and West Slavs during the eighth

oentury.

264 BYZANTINE STUDIES/ETUDES BYZANTINES

Almost a century ago V. Jagii wrote: "Es liegt nahe zu vermuten, dass beidenjenigen Slaven, welche schon vor dem Auftreten der beidenSlaven-Apostelmit dem Christentume bekannt waren, auch das christliche Glaubensbekennt-nis in irgend einer Form, jedenfalls slavisch, vorhanden war, bevor es noch einslavisches (glagolitisches, cyrillisches) Schrifttum gab. Allein uns ist es nichtmehr moglich nachzuweisefl, ob eine solche, etwa im mtindlichen Gebrauchegeliiufig gewesene Fassung bei der ersten Fixierung mit glagolitischen odercyrillischen Buchstaben, die von einem der beiden Apostel der Slaven herriihrendiirfte, irgendwelchen Einfluss ausgeiibt hat."19 Contrary to his expectation,I trust that this investigation has succeeded in proving the existence ofa Slavictranslation of the Apostles' Creed from the Latin which antedates the arrivalof Constantine and Methodius in Great Moravia, and its influence on at leastone Church Slavic liturgical text.

Brown University

L9.lagie, review of Gezen, p. 610.

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