Sofia Kotzabassi (editor) - Myriobiblos: Essays on Byzantine Literature and Culture

Alexander Alexakis wishes to thank Prof. G. Ioakeimidou, a Philologist and researcher of the Pontic dialect, for her help with a number of particularities of the Pontic dialect and with relevant bibliography.

In a joint publication of ours that appeared a few years ago, Giannis Mavromatis and I announced our intention to publish an edition together with a detailed Introduction and Commentary of the Acts of the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner of Vazelon (or Zaboulon) in Trebizond on the basis of two extant manuscripts. This project is based on the preliminary editorial work found in the unpublished remnants of the library of the late Professor Nikolaos M. Panagiotakis, part of which has been entrusted to Giannis Mavromatis.

For a contribution to a volume honoring Professor Athanasios Markopoulos, one of the preeminent students and worthy successors of Nikolaos Panagiotakis, any topic related to the work of our common teacher seems rather fitting. For this reason we decided to further delve into this collection of Acta and focus on the first ten documents found in these two manuscripts.

More specifically: These two manuscripts contain the surviving part of the Acts of Vazelon, which was originally preserved in the form of a cartulary (). This earlier cartulary was a collection of copies of original deeds or charters, the majority of which substantiate the acquisition on the part of the monastery of a number of lands and estates, but they also record other transactions of private law between the Monastery and various individuals. The manuscripts in question are:

L = St. Petersburg, Rossiiskaya Nazionalnaya Biblioteka Gr. 743 (15th/16th c. with later additions). In its ff. 1-120v are preserved 187 acta dating from the period between 1245 (and ca. 1245) and 1704.

A = This is a manuscript that was in the possession of the Greek Philological Society of Constantinople and now belongs to the Library of Trk Tarih Kurumu in Ankara (no other information is available, but the dates of the latest documents preserved in it, push its compilation into the early nineteenth century). In its ff. 1-101v

Furthermore, two editions of the Acta have already been published:

1) One partial made by A. I. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, which comprised 20 documents copied from two manuscripts. The fate of the first of these two manuscripts is not known today, but the second was in all probability the manuscript L, and,

2) The edition made by Th. Uspensky and V. Beneshevich, which also included, with some alterations, the documents published by Papadopoulos-Kerameus and all the documents preserved by L. which will be thoroughly discussed in our forthcoming edition of the full corpus. This edition was based exclusively on L and the ten documents transmitted only by A are missing.

A long time has passed since the publications of the venerable scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and their editions are now dated and leave much to be desired. Moreover, monastic Acta have been given particular attention and more systematic treatment starting from 1945 with the series Archives de lAthos . In view of all these developments our intention is to bring the Acts of Vazelon as close as possible to modern standards.

In the diplomatic edition we are following the order of the documents as it has already been laid out in our earlier publication, which is faithful to the sequence preserved by L. Needless to say, the present edition, using two manuscripts instead of one, presents a more complete text than that provided by the previous editions.

ABBREVIATIONS

1
ACT OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF DONATION

The Monastery of Vazelon wishes Ioannes panhypersebastos and his family heavenly reward for his unspecified donation (= Certification of perpetual commemoration of Ioannes and his family for the unspecified donation?).

MANUSCRIPT: L: f. 1r.

EDITION: UB 1, p. 1 (UBG, p. 185).

TEXT: The copy of this act belongs to the second of the four different hands identified by Uspenskij. The page is torn on its right-hand side and letters or words have been lost. It also seems to have sustained some damage from humidity. The conjunctive , the suffix , and the substantives and are abbreviated. The initial distinctive elements of the document, such as the signature of the abbot of the Monastery and an invocation of the Holy Trinity are missing.The name of the person who drafted the document is also missing.

COMMENTARY:

General Remarks : In PLP this document is termed as Bittgebett,

It may possibly be (although no explicit statement of this kind is included here) a certification of the obligation of the Monastery for perpetual commemoration of the name of Ioannes and his family in exchange of this unspecified donation. Judging by the relationship between documents 7 below and UB 185 (no. 128 in our edition, see below, Appendix), there should have been another act of donation proper, to which the present document was issued as the response of the Monastery. In its format and content this act is similar to acta 11, UB 185 (our edition 128), UB 150 (our edition 162), UB 154 (166), UB 155 (167), UB 158 (171), UB 160 (173) UB 166 (181), UB 169 (184), UB 172 (187), UB 175 (190), UB 180 (122). As is evident, in the present and all the above documents the formulaic expression of ones liturgical commemoration is present ( ... etc.).

Outline of Events: The donor Ioannes panhypersebastos is not known from any other source and the crucial passage in which the nature of the donation is described is corrupt. The word (l. 11, custody? upkeep?) does not allow for any further speculation as is. Perhaps, combined with the reference to famine (l. 12, ) one might suggest the ceding of a piece of arable land, the produce of which might help with the food provisioning of the monastery. Alternatively, this might refer to a flock of herd-animals which again could provide sustenance for the monks of the monastery and, perhaps for the peasants who in one way or another depended upon the monastery. The reference to raises a number of questions that cannot be adequately answered. The historical sources for the period are poor with regard to such information. However, the contest between Ioannes IV Komnenos and his father Alexios IV Komnenos for the throne and the assassination of the latter by followers of the former in 1429 may have offered the circumstances for a temporary disintegration of rural life in the area, notwithstanding the raids of the Turkmen people that continuously devastated the country.

PROSOPOGRAPHY: PLP 8662 Ioannes panhypersebastos . Not known otherwise. Still the title panhypersebastos suggests the idea that he was a member of the nobility.

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