An Ancient Protograph in the Hands of a Copyist: On the Vocabulary of an Aprakos Gospel from the Beginning of the 15th Century

Abstract

The unique manuscript from the collection of the Library of the Moscow State University contains an incredible amount of errors and distortions of the sacred text. A significant part of them depends on the fact that the scribe was not familiar with Church Slavonic vocabulary or did not understand the meaning of some lexemes. It became possible in 15th century Russia – the period of the Second South Slavic Influence when a deliberate distance between the literary (Church-Slavonic) and dialectal languages dramatically increased.