The Oxford Serbian Psalter is a manuscript

psalter A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters we ...

written on parchment in the late 14th century in

Church Slavonic Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...

of the Serbian recension. It is well preserved, missing only one leaf, which contained Psalm 118:108–21, and now it has 219 leaves. Practically devoid of illuminations, it is written "in a hand which is clear and careful but not elegant". The Oxford Serbian Psalter is a representative of the revised version of the Church Slavonic psalter text which came into use in the early 14th century. Compared with the previous psalter texts, this version is a closer translation of the Greek original into Church Slavonic. The text of the manuscript was corrected in a number of places, and some of the erased words are still partly legible. They have been shown to be readings of the older version. There are also five such readings which were left uncorrected. The scribe who wrote the manuscript also made the corrections. Some readings coincide with those of the Russian redaction of the psalter text. The

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...

in Oxford received the Serbian psalter in 1688 from Thomas Smith, Fellow of

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

. It is unknown when and where Smith acquired the manuscript. He was an

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

clergyman and one of the Non-Jurors, who sought at the end of the 17th century to unite the Anglican and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Notes

References

* *{{Citation, last=MacRobert, first=Catherine Mary, year=1994, title=The Textual Tradition of the Oxford Serbian Psalter MS e Mus.184, journal=Polata Knigopisnaia: An Information Bulletin Devoted to the Study of Early Slavic Books, Texts and Literatures, volume=25–26, publisher=Slavisch Seminarium, University of Amsterdam, hdl=1811/24763, place=Amsterdam, issn=0165-1862, url=http://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/24763, mode=cs1

External links

MS. e Mus. 184
in the Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries Serbian manuscripts Psalters 14th-century biblical manuscripts Bodleian Library collection 14th century in Serbia History of the Serbian Orthodox Church Cyrillic manuscripts Serbian Cyrillic texts

See also

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References

External links