THE ACTS OF PAUL AND THECLA IN A DEČANI MONASTERY COPYDATING FROM THE MID-14TH CENTURY

Abstract

The text entitled The Acts of Paul and Thecla has been singled out from a broader text entitled The Acts of Paul, and as such has existed for centuries as an independent work. Acting on the basis of The Acts of Paul and Thecla, Simeon the Metaphrast compiled a related work known under the title of The Martyrdom of Thecla the Protomartyr, known until now only in the Church Slavonic Menaion for September dating from the 14th century, preserved in the manuscript collection of the Chilandar Monastery under number 816. In the studies dedicated to it so far, The Acts has mainly been classified among the apocrypha. This, however, could only partly be justified bearing in mind that characters appearing in the apocrypha have their corresponding parallels in the Bible. There exist eight known Serbian copies of The Acts. The following date from the 14th century: the Dečani Monastery copy, no 94 (D), the one preserved in Sofia at the National Museum of History, no 24 (M), once kept at the Ohrid Metropolitan Library under signature number 3, the one kept in Sofia at the National Library “Cyril and Methodius”, no 1039 (S), the one kept in Zagreb at the Archive of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, no IIIc24 (Z), and the one kept at the Cetinje Monastery, no 64 (C). The copy preserved within the Ćorović Collection of the University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade, signature no 30 (U), dates from the 15th century. The copy that is now kept at the National Library of Serbia, no 59 (N), was made between 1614 and 1625. The Chilandar Monastery copy, signature no 438 (H), dates from 1623. Based on where they were made, there exist three groups of copies: the Mount Athos group (C, H), the ones made in the region of today’s North Macedonia (M, S, U), and the Kosovo-Metohija Group (D, N, Z). Being the oldest among the Serbian copies preserved, D is similar to the other ones, deviating from them in places to a lesser or greater degree. The D copy is closest to the N copy, and to a large degree to Z. A great degree of closeness is manifested by copies C and H. Based on the differences existing between these copies, one can observe a lexical riches created by the scribes working in developed Serbian manuscript copying centres. In the appendix to this paper we enclose an edited text based on the Dečane copy.