A bilingual vernacular Gospel manuscript from Macedonia
(late 18th – early 19th century)
The Konikovo Gospel (Bibl.Patr.Alex. 268)
In the winter of 2003/04, researchers from the University of Helsinki found an interesting bilingual manuscript, written in what is now Greek Macedonia in the late 18th or early 19th century. It contains a Greek evangeliarium (Gospel lectionary for Sunday services) and its Slavic translation, both written in Greek letters. What makes the manuscript unique is its bilinguality, and the fact that both the Greek and the Slavic texts represent the vernacular, not the church language. The Slavic part is the oldest known text of greater scope that directly reflects the living dialects of Southern Macedonia. It is also the oldest known Gospel translation in Modern Macedonian.
More here:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jslindst/268/
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In 2004, Victor Friedman, Professor of Slavic and Balkan Linguistics at the University of Chicago, wrote about the manuscript as follows:
The significance of the Konikovo Gospel for the study of Macedonian cannot be overestimated. At the same time, this Gospel will also contribute to the study of colloquial Modern Greek. In the case of Macedonian, the southern dialect of the Lower Vardar (or Voden-Kukuš) type represented in the manuscript is one that is in most urgent need of documentation and study. Owing to the domination of the Church Slavonic tradition on the territory where
Macedonian was spoken from the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, we have very little manuscript evidence documenting the changes that took place in the spoken language during that crucial period. Moreover, such documentation as we do have comes mostly from manuscript traditions produced in Macedonia’s southwestern periphery (Ohrid) and the northeastern region (Kratovo). The southeastern dialects of the type represented by the Konikovo Gospel are thus very important in helping us
complete our picture of the development of Macedonian. At the same time, because the Lower Vardar dialects were almost all spoken in a region which was assigned to Greece at the end of the Balkan Wars in 1913, one in which hundreds of thousands of Greek- and Turkish-speaking refugees were settled as a result of the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey 1922-23, one which was the focus of Greek attempts to create a homogenous nation-state by stamping out minority languages during the inter-war period, and one which saw the most serious fighting during the Greek Civil War and from which thousands of Macedonian-speakers fled after 1948, our data on these dialects is extremely limited. There are very few speakers of the dialect left in the region. In addition to the vicissitudes of war and persecution which reduced such data concerning these dialects as has come down to us, there is the additional complication that activists from this region who sought to promote a Macedonian ethnic and national consciousness wrote in a different dialect — the West Central (Veles-Prilep-Bitola-Brod) one — as this was, by general consensus, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, the most distinctive and at the same time most readily comprehensible to the largest number of people.
The Konikovo Gospel is thus an extremely rare and precious testimony both to Macedonian literary activity and at the same time a valuable resource for an inadequately attested but
linguistically important Macedonian dialect.
OU’T PERVO BESHE RETCHTA, I RETCHETA BESHE SOS BOGA, I BOG BESHE RETCHTA. VOA BESHE OT PERVO SOS BOGA. SITE RABOTI ZARDI NIZ LAKARDIATA SE TCHINIA, I BEZ NEGO NESATCHINE NIKOE OT KOLKU SE TCHINIA. OUT NEGO BESHE ZHIVOT – I ZHIVO
KE VIDOA GOSPODA.
I JESUS PAK MU KAZHA - MIR NA VAS - KE ME POSHTI TATKO, I JAZE POSHTAM NA VAS
I KE RETCHE VOA, DOINA NA NIH, I RETCHE ZEMAITE DUH SFETIJ
I NA KOGOTO GREHOVETAI PROSTITE, SE PROSTENI, I NA KOGO ZAPRITE SE ZAPRENI
I THOMA SE VELISHE BLIZNAK, EDNO OT DVANAISTE, NE BESHE SOS NIH, KOGA DOIDE JESUS. MU VELEA (……..) DRUZITE UTCHENITSOI – VIDOHME GOSPODA
I ON MU RETCHE - AKO NE VIDAM NA RATSETEMU NISIANITAIOT KARFIITE, I AKO NE KLADAM PRASTOTMI NA NISIANITE OT KARFIITE, I AKO NE KLADAM RAKATAMI NA REBROTOMU, NEKE VERUVAM
BOGA NIKOI NEKOI PAT NEGO VIDE - EDINORODNIOT SIN, SHTO EI OT PA ZVATA NA TATKOTO, ON GO RAZRETCHE - I VEA EI MARTURIATA NA JOANNA - KOGA POSHTIA