Quotations from the Gospel of Matthew on the Images of Christ (Matt. 11.28– 30, 25.34) and Their Accentuation

Introduction. The analysis of accentuated inscriptions showed that repeated texts reflect both the dialectal features of the author and the traditions of accentuation of individual words. Combinations of accentuation systems in a particular monument make it possible to clarify its origin, and in some cases, narrow down its dating. Methodology. Inscriptions with quotations were selected based on the degree of preservation of accentuation, which led to the collection of photographs from various Internet publications of travelers. The text from these photographs was compared with editions of the New Testament. Materials. The study was conducted on the basis of the corpus of Byzantine accentuated texts BGAT, which contains 19 inscriptions with a quotation from the Gospel of Matthew 11.28–30 and 6 with a quotation from the same 25.34. Analysis and results. Among the first group of monuments, there are mosaics, frescoes, and icons, the latter of which belong to the Cretan school. The second group contains only icons and frescoes from the 14th to 16th centuries, mainly from Kastoria, most of which are from the Deesis scene. Both quotations use a mixed system of accentuation. The accentuation of diphthongs varies: often the first element is marked, as in the Alexandrian system; sometimes this is explained by the consonantization of the second element. In cases where the author is unsure of the accentuation of a diphthong, the stress could be either on both elements or between them. Some words have their traditional accentuation; for example, the conjunction “κὰι” is often written with a grave accent on the first element of the diphthong. Some stress shifts in this selection can be explained by paleography, such as the acute accent over nu; others cannot. In cases where a vowel is lengthened or shortened due to an orthographic error, the authors changed the circumflex to a grave accent or vice versa, according to the assumed length. The abbreviations in the second quotation present a logical system of accentuation. This accentuation, combined with spelling errors in less frequent words, indicates that the authors wrote the quotations from memory. This fact is also indicated by a comparison with editions of the New Testament text that do not present such spelling variations, and those that do occur are not reflected in the analyzed quotations.