Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073)

Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073). Manuscript written in the ustav script consisting of 266 two-column, illustrated parchment folios. It was discovered in 1807 by K. Kalaidovich in the Resurrection Monastery of the New Jerusalem near Moscow and is preserved at the Moscow Historical Museum. A unique theological compendium, it contains excerpts from the works of the Fathers of the Church, a chronology, a survey of poetic figures and tropes, articles on grammar, logic, and philosophy, parables, riddles, and the first list of books forbidden in Ukraine. An interesting illumination of the family of Prince Sviatoslav II Yaroslavych, for whom the work was prepared, was inserted. A translation of the original Greek collection was done in Church Slavonic in eastern Bulgaria for King Simeon (893–927), to whom there is a dedication in the preface. This text was merely copied in Kyiv, and Sviatoslav's name was substituted for Simeon's. The copyists—two monks, one of whom was called ‘Ioan the Precentor’—introduced certain phonetic Ukrainianisms. A facsimile edition of the manuscript was published using phototype in 1880 with an introduction by Gennadii Karpov. One-third of the manuscript was prepared for printing with Greek and Latin texts by Osyp Bodiansky and published in 1856–66 and republished in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh in 1882. A new edition of the collection was published in Moscow in 1977. A. Rozenfeld's study of its language appeared in Russkii filologicheskii vestnik, vol 41 (1899). (See also Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1076).)

Oleksa Horbach

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]