On the handwritten tradition of the Slavic version of Matthew Blastares’s Syntagma in the principality of moldavia in the 15th–17th centuries

Abstract

The article analyses the relationship of the copies of the Slavic version of Matthew Blastares’s Syntagma made in the 15th – 17th centuries in the Principality of Moldavia. The author studied haplographies (line omissions) in eight of the eleven surviving copies de visu and by photocopies to determine that, in addition to the monastery of Neamc, Suceava, and Romanesque metropolitans, there was another most important center for copying the Syntagma in the Principality of Moldavia of the 15th-17th centuries in the Putna Monastery, where three direct copies of each subsequent copy from the previous one were created, starting with the original Copy of 1472 (Bucharest, Library of the Academy of Romania, Nr. 131). These are the following manuscripts: Copy of 1474 (Moscow, Russian State Library, Fund 98, Nr. 742); Copy of the early 16th century (Moscow, Russian State Library, Fund 98, Nr. 65); Copy of the last quarter of the 16th century (Moscow, Russian State Library, Fund 178, Nr. 4293). The information about the number of Slavic copies of Matthew Blastares’s Syntagma in the Principality in the 15th – 17th centuries has been adjusted upwards, since some of the surviving copies can be traced back to their Slavic manuscript protographic originals, which have not yet been found in the world depositories or not survived to this day.