Old Church Slavonic - Canon of Old Church Slavonic

Canon of Old Church Slavonic

The core corpus of Old Church Slavonic manuscripts is usually referred to as canon. Manuscripts must satisfy certain linguistic, chronological and cultural criteria to be incorporated into the canon, i.e. they must not significantly depart from the language and tradition of Constantine and Methodius, usually known as the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition.

For example, the Freising Fragments, dating from the tenth century, do show some linguistic and cultural traits of Old Church Slavonic, but are usually not included in the canon as some of the phonological features of the writings appear to belong to certain Pannonian Slavic dialect of the period. Similarly, the Ostromir Gospels exhibits dialectal features that classify it as East Slavic, rather than South Slavic, so it is not included in the canon either. On the other hand, the Kiev Missal is included in the canon, even though it manifests some West Slavic features and contains Western liturgy, due to the Bulgarian linguistic layer and connection to the Moravian mission.

Manuscripts are usually classified in two groups, depending on the alphabet used, Cyrillic or Glagolitic. With the exception of the Kiev Missal and Glagolita Clozianus which exhibit West-Slavic and Croatian features respectively, all Glagolitic texts are assumed to be of the Macedonian recension:

• Kiev Missal (Ki, KM), seven folios, late tenth century
• Codex Zographensis, (Zo), 288 folios, tenth or eleventh century
• Codex Marianus (Mar), 173 folios, early eleventh century
• Codex Assemanius (Ass), 158 folios, early eleventh century
• Psalterium Sinaiticum (Pas, Ps. sin.), 177 folios, eleventh century
• Euchologium Sinaiticum (Eu, Euch), 109 folios, eleventh century
• Glagolita Clozianus (Clo, Cloz), 14 folios, eleventh century
• Ohrid Folios (Ohr), 2 folios, eleventh century
• Rila Folios (Ri, Ril), 2 folios and 5 fragments, eleventh century

All Cyrillic manuscripts are of the Bulgarian recension and date from the eleventh century, except for Zographos Fragments which is of the Macedonian recension:

• Sava's book (Sa, Sav), 126 folios
• Codex Suprasliensis, (Supr), 284 folios
• Enina Apostle (En, Enin), 39 folios
• Hilandar Folios (Hds, Hil), 2 folios
• Undol'skij's Fragments (Und), 2 folios
• Macedonian Folio (Mac), 1 folio
• Zographos Fragments (Zogr. Fr.), 2 folios
• Sluck Psalter (Ps. Sl., Sl), 5 folios