Sergey Yurievich Akishin,
Candidate of Theology, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary, Yekaterinburg, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Principles of Corrections of the Texts of the Pentecostarion by Professor A.A. Dmitrievsky
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-3-7
The article studies the principles and strategies used by the outstanding Russian scholar Professor A.A. Dmitrievsky while editing the text of the Pentecostarion. The study is based on a copy of the Pentecostarion (St. Petersburg Theological Academy, inv. no. 75265), which belonged to A. A. Dmitrievsky and was discovered by the author of the article in the library of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy in 2019. This copy of the Festal Triodion contains a number of pencil marks in the scholar’s own handwriting. It has been established that the correction was carried out by A.A. Dmitrievsky in January-April 1909 during his work in the Commission for Correction of the Slavic Text of Liturgical Books and covered, mainly and with a few exceptions, the texts of the first two weeks of the period of the Easter feast. To make corrections, the scholar used a rather developed system of labelling problem places, which the author of the article has divided into six groups: 1) syntactic; 2) replacement of obscure words with orientation to the normative word usage; 3) removal of words missing in the Greek original of the Pentecostarion; 4) quoting the Greek original of the Pentecostarion to clarify the meaning of certain words and expressions; 5) Dmitrievsky’s own translation of a number of texts; 6) correction of accents in words and endings. As a result of the study of all the corrections, it has been concluded that A.A. Dmitrievsky’s revision was fragmentary and preliminary. When correcting the texts of the Pentecostarion, the scholar followed the same principles as when editing the Lenten Triodion. The transparency of the text and, at the same time, the tradition of its use in the liturgical practice of the Church was essential for the scientist and therefore the most significant and well-known texts were not subjected to correction. A comparison of the corrections made by A.A. Dmitrievsky with the proof copy of the Pentecostarion and the printed edition of this book allows one to conclude that the Commission partially accepted his corrections.
Publishing: 28/06/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 12/03/2025
How to cite: Akishin S.Yu. Principles of Corrections of the Texts of the Pentecostarion by Professor A.A. Dmitrievsky // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 3 (41), pp. 101−117. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-3-07.pdf]
Links: Issue 3 2025
Keywords: Pentecostarion; Festal Triodion; Commission for the Correction of Liturgical Books; book correction; divine service