The 15th-century Synodal Hexameron (Shestodnevets)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the textual analysis and publication of the short Hexameron, titled Shestodnevets, which became part of the Miscellany from the Synodal collection in the State Historical museum (No. 951). An archaeographical description of the manuscript (dated to around 1460) is given; it is noted that 13 folios from it are now in the Miscellany from the V. M. Undolsky collection (RSL, col. 310, No. 562). The analysis of the Shestodnevets showed that the source for its initial part was the prototype of the Sofiisky chronograph, which had a more elaborate form compared to that conserved in manuscripts. The rest of the text is based on the Palaea Interpretata and “The Word about the Creation of Heaven and Earth”, which is a part of another brief chronograph, Parenios. An attempt to trace the history of the spread of “The Word …” in the Old Russian literature revealed its use as an introduction to the illuminated Palaea Interpretata of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the initial part of which is now largely lost. It turned out that a copy of these pages, in addition to two well-known 16th-century copies, is copied from the “Word …” in a manuscript of the Trinity-Sergius monastery, dated to the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century (RSL, сol. 304/I, No. 39). Four more copies of the same text were also identified. A version of the “Word about the Creation of Heaven and Earth” is also used in the “Word about the Existence of the Whole World”, where the story of the six days, starting with the narrative of Cain and Abel, is supplemented by the “Speech of the philosopher” from the The Tale of Bygone Years. The Synodal Shestodnevets has textual features of “The Word about the Creation of Heaven and Earth” in the Parenios version, but it also contains individual additional fragments from the Book of Enoch. In conclusion, the importance of the Shestodnevets for our knowledge about the book repertoire and the guiding principles of Old Russian authors working on Palaea compilations in the middle of the XV century is underlined. Another significant result is the acquisition of new data on the content and the terminus ante quem for the Sofiisky chronograph’s archetype, the earliest copy of which dates from the 1530s.