Aneta Dimitrova (Universitet im. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia)
Zlatostruy (“Golden Stream”) is a renowned collection of sermons translated from Greek into Old Church Slavonic in Bulgaria in the 10th century. It is believed that the Bulgarian Tsar Symeon (893–927) himself selected the texts to be translated – he singled out some of the best sermons from the works of St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) on topics such as sin and penitence, good and evil, prayer, vigilance, almsgiving, etc. After that (anonymous) translators and editors rendered the sermons into Old Church Slavonic and grouped them more or less thematically. Several generations of professionally trained scribes copied and sometimes edited the translations. The Zlatostruy Collection was widely spread among the Slavs and was modified according to its audience – the sermons were sometimes revised, rearranged, or abridged. This was the path of many literary works in the medieval Slavonic literature – selection, translation, adaptation to the audience.
In my lecture I will present the Zlatostruy Collection as one of the best examples of translated patristic literature in medieval Bulgaria. I will discuss briefly its history, contents, and its most interesting features, and I will try to answer the following questions: What was interesting and what was unfamiliar to the Slavonic audience? How did the original texts change due to revisions and mistakes? What was Zlatostruy’s influence in the following centuries? The most interesting cases of adaptation and incorrectly translated passages in Zlatostruy will be given as illustration.