The akathist hymn in the early Serbian tradition: the influence of the acrostic version on the triodia of the "evergetis" type

The paper deals with one of the early traditions in the Serbian hymnography connected with the introduction of the so-called Evergetis Typicon in Serbia in the 13th century and the following correction of all the liturgical books in order to make them to correspond to the new service type. The exact mechanism of this correction which could be different not only from book to book but also from one hymnographic text to the other has not been studied yet. Specifically for the translated text it is to be found whether the correction was made with the use of the Greek origin of the text or was based only on its Slavonic versions. Our purpose is to reveal the mechanisms of the composition of the translated hymnographic texts in the Triodion of the Evergetis type on the material of one specific hymnographic text - the Akathist hymn. The investigation was performed on the material of 2 Serbian manuscripts of Triodia of the 14th century from the collection of the National Library of Serbia (Belgrade) (NBS 644 and NBS 645), which preserve similar text of the Akathist which surely originated from one Slavonic text. The comparative analysis of the texts of the certain hymn from two Serbian Triodia under investigation with its early Church Slavonic versions reveals that the text of the Triodion of the Evergetis type was composed without the use of the Greek origin of the text by the compilation of two early Slavonic versions: the “Gimovski” one, which was used as the main source for the structure of the hymn as well as for its text, and the Acrostic one, with its elements being regularly inserted by the redactor into the text from its beginning up to the end. The composition of the new versions of the hymnographic text of the Akathist hymns performed due to the introduction of new Typicon in the 13th was made without the Greek origin on the basis of two Slavonic versions. The versions compiled were not the ones that dominated in the South Slavic region at this period, but the early ones, preserved in this way by the Serbian literature tradition. The creative and systematic work of the unknown Serbian redactor resulted in the text where he tries to unite the variants from different versions and to reconsider them in the context of the new text which differs to a large extent from its Byzantium origin. The redactor changes free enough the main constructive features of the text. However the acrostic was not used and the few “remains” of this rhetoric device show clearly enough that it was not appreciated in the certain period by the Slavic scholars. Thus the Triodion of the certain type preserves the fragments of the earliest Slavonic translation of the Akathistos Hymn which have the great scientific value. On the other hand the analysis of the mechanism of the Serbian scholar work helps to understand the preferences of the Old Church Slavonic literature and to find out the reasons of the diversity of the hymnographic traditions at the early stages of its history.