Unlocking Two Marginalia in Old Permic Script in a Fifteenth-Century Slavonic Manuscript (Russian State Library, Volok. 437) with Athanasius' Orations Against the Arians
Abstract
This study examines two marginal notes made in Old Permic script (also known as Abur) in a fifteenth-century manuscript that contains the Old Slavonic translation of Athanasius' Orations Against the Arians. It begins with a brief discussion of the Old Permic script within the alphabetic systems of Late-Medieval Europe and explains the current state of research.
After this, the authors explore the content and meaning of the marginal notes by studying the text of the Orations where these notes appear, the scribal peculiarities of the person who recorded them, and the religious context in which they were composed. The article raises the question of why the scribe chose to write these notes and draws a parallel between him and another Slavonic scribe, Vasily Mamyrev, from whom we have the first precisely dated case of Abur notes in Slavonic along with Greek inscriptions.