In 1990 Lucija Cernić published her article on the “circle” of a scribe Iov (Їωвь) who worked on manuscripts over a thirty-year period in the 14th century: “Круг писара Јова,” Arheografski prilozi 12 (1990): 129-180. Famous for her ability to recognize scribal hands, Cernić listed twenty different manuscripts that had been written solely or partially by Iov – eight of which were attributed to Iov as a result of her research. Ten of the manuscripts remain in the collection of Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos; others are found in the collections of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai, the Vatican, Dečani Monastery, Krk Monastery, and in Sofia, Novosibirsk, and Vienna.
The images below are of the scribal colophon in HM.SMS.392, a miscellany of homilies (“Zlatoust”) for the Lenten cycle, circa 1385, which forms a set with HM.SMS.388 and HM.SMS.389, two volumes of a “Zlatoust” miscellany for the Festal cycle of services, which are also attributed to Iov and circa 1385.
HM.SMS.392, f. 521v
HM.SMS.392, f. 521r
Iov mentions that when he began writing this book, Grigorii was hegumen, but when he ended the book, the head of the monastery was Hieromonk Iosif (last two lines on f. 521r). Iov’s name appears on the first line of f. 521v: Писавшааго сию книгоу, таха їωва монаха….
Image source: HM.SMS.392, f. 521r-v – from microfilm in the HRL.
Different types of inscriptions are found in medieval manuscripts – Slavic and otherwise. The scribal colophon (the who-what-where-when and sometimes why or for whom) is usually located at the end of the manuscript in the hand of a scribe who copied the main text. It is often somehow set apart from the main text – perhaps physically on a separate page or written in smaller letters. It may be written in the scribe’s colloquial language, which also serves to distinguish it from the text. In the margins of manuscripts one may find glosses, corrections, rubrics, pen testings, communicative inscriptions (i.e., meaningful statements unrelated to the main text), penmanship exercises, and cryptograms.
Slavic manuscript No. 34 of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai, is a 13th-century collection of patristic homilies, sayings, and lives of the holy fathers. There are pen testings, for example, on the inside back cover, and a Greek inscription on folia 42v-43r. On f. 36v is a later (communicative) inscription that describes the seven stages of intoxication:
Translation: “Digion says: When a man sits down at a feast, he drinks a cup to health, and a second to merriment, and a third to repletion, and fourth to madness, and a fifth to a demonic state, and a sixth to a bitter death, and a seventh to eternal torture that will not end.”
Image source: Sinai.34, f. 36v – from microfilm in the HRL.