New materials for the study of early versions of "The legend of Boris and Gleb"

The article aims to introduсe unknown manuscripts of «the Legend of Boris and Gleb» from the Siberian collections to its textual tradition and then aims to compare the texts with the earliest known manuscripts from the Uspensky Sbornik of the XII-XIII centuries. The unknown texts of the manuscript are from two sources: the compilation from Tikhomirov’s collection № 296 held at the Subdivision of rare books and manuscripts SPSL SB RAS originating in the late XV-early XVI century and an Old-believers manuscript of the late XV - early XVI century found by E. I. Dergacheva-Skop. These texts allow an analysis of the earlier Uspensky manuscript and offer a critical examination of previous assumptions about the version of the Legrend and its archetype. The text of the Legend was analyzed completely, except the insertion of «The Legend of Miracles of Saints Boris and Gleb» that is absent in 183 from 226 manuscripts published by G. Revelli, 1993 and is considered an original text. The analyzed manuscripts present entirely different conceptions of the Legend and reflect different phases of the veneration of Saint Boris and Gleb. The Old-believers manuscript, although a later version, contains a text of the Legend similar to the archetypical version which was free of Svyatopolk’s ideological condemnation, abundance of additional quotations, emotional descriptions and pleonasms. This version of the Legend suggests the composition of the protograph, or earlier writing other editions of the Legend. The text from Tikhomirov’s collection № 296 is a stylistically integral version that can be characterized as moderately figurative, with rhytmically organized tirades and consistent narration. The text from the Uspensky manuscript contains an individually modified version of the Legend. Specifically, extension by means of quotations, lexical and syntactical figures and an intensification of expressional and emotive side of narration). A significant feature of the Legend from the Uspensky manuscript are the multiple author’s notes which organize the narration and mark the extensions made by the editor who worked with the text that was presumably similar to the early version of the Legend. It also reflects the conception of Svyatopolk’s condemnation that was connected with the establishment of the cult of Boris and Gleb on the national level. The earliest manuscript of the Legend, the Uspensky Sbornik contains revised and supplemented version of the old hagiographic text about Boris and Gleb, and consequently is not a representative text of an archetype of the Legend.