Discovering the Slavonic tradition of Gregory of Nazianzus: Greek and old Russian homilies of the

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330 - c. 390), one of the Cappadocian Fathers, received the title “the Theologian”, or Θεολόγος in Greek in Orthodox Church. He is venerated as one of the “Church Teachers” both by Catholic and Orthodox Christians for his explanations on the different and highly disputable questions of the ecclesiastical doctrine. During his life he was also recognised as a great preacher who displayed his orations for multiple devotees. The circle of his admirers joined the simple as well as highly sophisticated learned persons. His orations were circulated in a great number of copies and in the course of centuries formed the different type of collections. The complete collection of Gregory’s sermons included 45 (or rather 44) writings and was copied in all parts of Byzantine Empire, however the greater popularity received the so called “liturgical collection”. From the ninth century, sixteen of selected sermons were used in church services for public reading on various holy days. Gregory’s orations were translated into Latin and many languages of the Byzantine Oikumene such as Armenian, Syrian, Georgian, Coptic, Slavonic etc. These translations are wildly used by researchers in the investigations of the Greek collections’ history and in the reconstruction of the texts’ archetype. The only exemption is Old Slavonic tradition centered on the liturgical collection of Sixteen sermons (16 Slov in Russian). The common scholarly opinion considers Slavonic translations as secondary and unuseful for study of the Greek texts. The foundations of that situation we should see in the low level of the Slavistic studies of the Gregorian texts in Old Slavonic. For two centuries neither the full description of the manuscripts nor the systematic textual, paleographic and codicological were done. However the great and perhaps heroic job to “rediscover” Slavonic Gregory “the Theologist” was done in the last two decades by Italian researcher Alessandro Maria Bruni.