On the usus verborum of Maximus the Greek and the Method for Its Investigation

The Lexicon Related to Monastic Services in the Poslanie moskovskomu velikomu knjazju Vasiliju III ob afonskich monastyrjach

Abstract

In studies on Maximus the Greek's lexical use in his works composed in Church Slavonic, one can notice a constant focus on the Greek language, including its lexicon. In this context, a group of lemmas (borrowings from Greek and their equivalents in Church Slavonic) is of interest which appear in Poslanie moskovskomu velikomu knjazju Vasiliju III ob afonskich monastyrjach (Letter to the Grand Prince of Moscow Vasilij III on the monasteries of Mount Athos) and which define the eight main monastic services that regulate the lives of the cenobites on the Holy Mountain.

The paper aims primarily to contextualise the presence of the aforementioned words within a more general use of Greek elements in the author's writings in Slavonic, and to investigate the circulation of the nouns and phrases defining the monks' tasks in various Church Slavonic texts prior to Maximus’ works. By doing so we try to understand whether the appearance of the lexical elements in question is to be considered innovative and to establish whether they survived in texts from the period between mid-16th and mid-18th centuries. Particular attention is given to the presence of such elements is the so-called azbukovniki (abecedaries) of mid- to late-16th century, which makes it possible to reassert Maximus’ contribution to the lexical enrichment of Slavonic.

Another aim of this research is to methodologically improve the analysis of Maximus’ lexicon, also by testing the usefulness of the portal oldlexicons.ru (http://oldlexicons.ru), where one can find abecedaries which were written in the same period as Maximus’ texts, or shortly after that, and which played a fundamental role in the development of Muscovite lexicography in the 16th century and beyond.