THE ORTHOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF THE PROVENANCE NOTES AND BINDING INSCRIPTION OF SILOAN’S FOUR GOSPELS

Abstract

This paper presents the orthographic features of four notes of provenance in Siloan’s Four Gospels (Tetraevangelion) and the inscription embossed on its treasury binding. This Slavonic-Serbian manuscript, dated to the late 14th century, belongs to the Museum of the Old Orthodox Christian Church in Sarajevo. The notes found on the pages of the manuscript and the inscription on the lower cover of the binding originated in different periods (15th, 17th, and 18th centuries) and places, and are associated with different individuals. Research indicates that they were written according to the post-Resava orthographic conventions, while also reflecting certain Raška and Resava orthographic rules. This is best illustrated by how the clusters /ya/ and /ye/ were written, the writing of /ɪyɪ/ and the long i, and the usage of the debelo jer <x> and the tanko jer <q> graphemes. Regarding the writing of debelo jer and tanko jer, which represented a special orthographic phenomenon during the entire Slavonic Serbian period, there is a difference between their execution in the notes and the inscription, with the writers of note 2 and the binding inscription consistently using a single jer grapheme for both, in accordance with the Raška system, and those of notes 1 and 3 following the Resava orthographic rules. The đerv grapheme, which marks the early history of Serbian Cyrillic, was used for the /ʨ/ and /ʥ/ phonemes. However, in the analysed notes and inscription, it does not serve this dual function. The <N> grapheme, used in the pre-reform period, is also present in the most recent, 18th-century provenance mark in Siloan’s Four Gospels.