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83-474: Digenes Akritas ( Latinised as Acritas ; Greek : Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας ) is a medieval Greek romantic epic that emerged in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire . It is the lengthiest and most famous of the acritic songs ; Byzantine folk poems celebrating the lives and exploits of the Akritai , the inhabitants and frontier guards of the empire's eastern Anatolian provinces . The acritic songs represented

166-561: A Corinthian plate depicts Digenes wooing the Amazon Maximo, while a fragment of a plate from the Ancient Agora of Athens depicts the sword-bearing warrior next to the dragon that has been slain with five darts ( Greek : πέντε κοντάρια , pente kontaria ; a popular theme in the acritic ballads with no counterpart in the epic). 35 of the plates depict the hero wearing a pleated kilt, known as the podea , and 26 have him killing

249-468: A common pool of folk material. Those songs that appear closer to the surviving versions of the epic are more likely to have been influenced by it. The acritic saga appears to loosely draw on four bodies of Greek myth ; Heracles , the Argonauts , Thebes , and Troy . The fusion of folklore with Christian tradition is also a typical motif in the works of the acritic cycle. Some recurrent elements include

332-499: A considerable number of features of its oral origins. The common core of the two versions preserved in the Esc and Gro manuscripts goes back to the twelfth century. The two manuscripts differ greatly, with the Gro version being more well-organized, while the Esc version is closer to the language of everyday speech with several gaps and metric irregularities. The text of Esc appears to be closer to

415-468: A daughter. When their daughter Eirene was born, the soothsayers foretold that she would one day be carried away from the empire by an Arabian emir . From a young age Eirene was put in a palace and grew surrounded by a company of guards and nursemaids. One day when her father was away at an expedition, Eirene left the palace with her maids and went for a picnic in the countryside. At the time, a young prince of Syria named Mousour who had invaded Cappadocia found

498-671: A first-person point of view, his struggles and acts of heroism on the Byzantine borders. Allusions to Greek mythological elements, including the Hercules -like childhood of Basil, and his affair with the Amazon warrior Maximo, also appear throughout the text. Though a legendary figure, it has been suggested that inspiration for the hero may have derived from the 11th century Cappadocian general and emperor Romanos Diogenes . The epic of Digenes Akritas continued to be read and passed down in

581-504: A later period than the Song of Armouris (11th century), in which the features of oral epic composition also appear more marked. The most possible date of its composition is the 12th century during the revival of interest in ancient Greek romance which, in turn, gave rise to the genre of Byzantine romance . During this time, there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to use classical literary genres as objects of imitation ( mimesis ), with

664-638: A number of archaicisms preserved until the early 20th century (the articulation of yat as / æ / in Boboshticë , Drenovë , around Thessaloniki, Razlog , the Rhodopes and Thrace and of yery as / ɨ / around Castoria and the Rhodopes, the presence of decomposed nasalisms around Castoria and Thessaloniki, etc.), the dialect is posited to have been part of a macrodialect extending from the Adriatic to

747-765: A playful element of punning. Such names could be a cover for humble social origins. The title of the " Wilhelmus ", national anthem of the Netherlands , preserves a Latinised form of the name of William the Silent . In English, place names often appear in Latinised form. This is a result of many early text books mentioning the places being written in Latin. Because of this, the English language often uses Latinised forms of foreign place names instead of anglicised forms or

830-649: A result of earlier alternations between short and long vowels in roots in Proto-Indo-European , Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Slavic times, and of the fronting of vowels after palatalized consonants, the following vowel alternations are attested in OCS: /ь/ : /i/;  /ъ/ : /y/ : /u/; /e/ : /ě/ : /i/; /o/ : /a/; /o/ : /e/; /ě/ : /a/; /ъ/ : /ь/; /y/ : /i/; /ě/ : /i/; /y/ : /ę/. Vowel:∅ alternations sometimes occurred as

913-858: A result of sporadic loss of weak yer , which later occurred in almost all Slavic dialects. The phonetic value of the corresponding vocalized strong jer is dialect-specific. As an ancient Indo-European language, OCS has a highly inflective morphology. Inflected forms are divided in two groups, nominals and verbs. Nominals are further divided into nouns, adjectives and pronouns. Numerals inflect either as nouns or pronouns, with 1–4 showing gender agreement as well. Nominals can be declined in three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), three numbers (singular, plural, dual ) and seven cases : nominative , vocative , accusative , instrumental , dative , genitive , and locative . There are five basic inflectional classes for nouns: o/jo -stems, a/ja -stems, i -stems, u -stems, and consonant stems. Forms throughout

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996-602: A symbol of the struggle between the Christian Greek population and its Muslim masters during the Turkish conquests of Byzantines lands. Episodes from the Acritic cycle, as well as the epic of Digenes Akritas appear on more than 100 ceramic plates that have been found in various locations, from Contantinople and Thessalonica , to Athens and Corinth ; the oldest of those dating back to the 12th century. A painting on

1079-573: A variant of the angular Glagolitic alphabet was preserved in Croatia . See Early Cyrillic alphabet for a detailed description of the script and information about the sounds it originally expressed. For Old Church Slavonic, the following segments are reconstructible. A few sounds are given in Slavic transliterated form rather than in IPA, as the exact realisation is uncertain and often differs depending on

1162-488: Is also likely to have preserved an extremely archaic type of accentuation (probably close to the Chakavian dialect of modern Serbo-Croatian ), but unfortunately, no accent marks appear in the written manuscripts. The South Slavic and Eastern South Slavic nature of the language is evident from the following variations: Old Church Slavonic also shares the following phonetic features only with Bulgarian : Over time,

1245-619: Is carefully balanced. The poem flows, is cadential, with no cacophonies, and very scarce sound repetitions. Below is an excerpt from the translation of the Escorial manuscript, lines 32-55, by E. M. Jeffreys (pp. 240–3): The story of Digenes Akritas has left scattered signs of influence outside of the Byzantine world, including in Arabic and Slavic literature, but Its greater impact has been in modern Greek culture . The protagonist, variously known as simply 'Digenis' or 'Akritas', became

1328-468: Is divided into two halves; the first half, epic in tone, details the lives and encounter of Basil's parents; his mother, a Byzantine noblewoman from the Doukas family named Eirene, and his father, an Arab emir named Mousour who, after abducting Eirene in a raid, converted to Christianity and married her. The second half, in a more romantic atmosphere, discusses Basil's early childhood and later, often from

1411-401: Is given in the table below. Autocephaly recognized by some autocephalous Churches de jure : Autocephaly and canonicity recognized by Constantinople and 3 other autocephalous Churches: Spiritual independence recognized by Georgian Orthodox Church: Semi-Autonomous: Written evidence of Old Church Slavonic survives in a relatively small body of manuscripts , most of them written in

1494-562: Is known to this day as Petra Tou Romiou ("Rock of the Greek"). The text of Digenes Akritas is one of the earliest examples of Byzantine folk literature and is generally regarded as the starting point of modern Greek literature . It is written in a vernacular form of medieval Greek that is more familiar to modern-day speakers, compared to the more conservative language of the Byzantine ecclesiastical litterateurs and chroniclers. The text includes many features that are in line with developments in

1577-406: Is occasionally used by Western scholars in a regional context. According to Slavist Henrik Birnbaum , the term was introduced mostly by Macedonian scholars and it is anachronistic because there was no separate Macedonian language, distinguished from early Bulgarian, in the ninth century. The obsolete term Old Slovenian was used by early 19th-century scholars who conjectured that the language

1660-563: Is sometimes called Old Slavic , which may be confused with the distinct Proto-Slavic language . Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, Slovene and Slovak linguists have claimed Old Church Slavonic; thus OCS has also been variously called Old Bulgarian , Old Croatian , Old Macedonian or Old Serbian, or even Old Slovak , Old Slovenian . The commonly accepted terms in modern English-language Slavic studies are Old Church Slavonic and Old Church Slavic . The term Old Bulgarian ( Bulgarian : старобългарски , German : Altbulgarisch )

1743-574: Is the designation used by most Bulgarian-language writers. It was used in numerous 19th-century sources, e.g. by August Schleicher , Martin Hattala , Leopold Geitler and August Leskien , who noted similarities between the first literary Slavic works and the modern Bulgarian language. For similar reasons, Russian linguist Aleksandr Vostokov used the term Slav-Bulgarian . The term is still used by some writers but nowadays normally avoided in favor of Old Church Slavonic . The term Old Macedonian

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1826-430: The akritai –, and then defeats their three leaders in single combat. Growing up, Digenes falls in love and elopes with Eudocia ( Ευδοκία ), the daughter of a Byzantine general and, after he manages to defeat his persecutors –Eudocia's brothers and their soldiers– he marries her. Living with his new family on the borders of the empire, he pacifies the region by hunting down bandits. His strength became notorious throughout

1909-594: The Black Sea , and covering southern Albania, northern Greece and the southernmost parts of Bulgaria. Because of the very short time between Rastislav 's request and the actual mission, it has been widely suggested that both the Glagolitic alphabet and the translations had been "in the works" for some time, probably for a planned mission to the Bulgaria . The language and the Glagolitic alphabet, as taught at

1992-585: The Common Slavic period, such as intrasyllabic synharmony and the law of open syllables . For consonant and vowel clusters and sequences of a consonant and a vowel, the following constraints can be ascertained: As a result of the first and the second Slavic palatalizations, velars alternate with dentals and palatals. In addition, as a result of a process usually termed iotation (or iodization ), velars and dentals alternate with palatals in various inflected forms and in word formation. In some forms

2075-655: The Cyrillic script developed early on at the Preslav Literary School, where it superseded Glagolitic as official in Bulgaria in 893. The texts written during this era exhibit certain linguistic features of the vernaculars of the First Bulgarian Empire . Old Church Slavonic spread to other South-Eastern, Central, and Eastern European Slavic territories, most notably Croatia , Serbia , Bohemia , Lesser Poland , and principalities of

2158-539: The Demotic Greek language and are characteristic of popular speech, including elision , aphaeresis , crasis , and synizesis . From an overall impression, the text appears to be of modern syntax , while by contrast its morphology remains quite traditional, with modern variations observed mainly in verb endings. Digenes Akritas is an epic poem , although it is not in a pure epic-heroic style. A hybrid of oral epic and literary romance , it comprises two parts;

2241-651: The Devgenievo deianie , but this title is not found in manuscripts. It contains both straightforward translation and free retelling of the Greek version in the Grottaferrata manuscript. It was produced in a bilingual Greek– South Slavic milieu, probably in Macedonia under the Serbian Empire (14th century) or its successors. It has features suggestive of oral-formulaic composition . The existence of

2324-593: The First Bulgarian Empire during the late 10th and the early 11th centuries. The language has an Eastern South Slavic basis in the Bulgarian-Macedonian dialectal area, with an admixture of Western Slavic (Moravian) features inherited during the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia (863–885). The only well-preserved manuscript of the Moravian recension, the Kiev Missal , or

2407-563: The Kievan Rus' – while retaining characteristically Eastern South Slavic linguistic features. Later texts written in each of those territories began to take on characteristics of the local Slavic vernaculars, and by the mid-11th century Old Church Slavonic had diversified into a number of regional varieties (known as recensions ). These local varieties are collectively known as the Church Slavonic language . Apart from use in

2490-501: The 18th and 19th century, but their location remains unknown. Those include a now lost manuscript once seen at the Xeropotamou monastery of Athos in the 18th century. The oldest two are the 'El Escorial' and 'Grottaferrata' versions, from the names of the libraries in which the respective manuscripts are held. While the form (or forms) in which the text has survived is not the product of oral composition, it has nevertheless retained

2573-664: The 9th and 11th century in Great Moravia and the First Bulgarian Empire. The language was standardized for the first time by the mission of the two apostles to Great Moravia from 863. The manuscripts of the Moravian recension are therefore the earliest dated of the OCS recensions. The recension takes its name from the Slavic state of Great Moravia which existed in Central Europe during the 9th century on

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2656-689: The 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and undertaking the task of translating the Gospels and necessary liturgical books into it as part of the Christianization of the Slavs . It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th-century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica (in present-day Greece ). Old Church Slavonic played an important role in

2739-447: The Byzantine aristocracy. The Byzantine acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic tradition that appears to predate the epic of Digenes itself. The songs have been subjected to the transformation of up to a thousand years old oral transmission making the identification of historical events and individuals only presumptive. The similarities between the songs and the epic are likely to have arisen as both drew inspiration from

2822-643: The Byzantine missionary contingent in 886. Exiled students of the two apostles then brought the Glagolitic alphabet to the Bulgarian Empire , being at least some of them Bulgarians themselves. Boris I of Bulgaria ( r.  852–889 ) received and officially accepted them; he established the Preslav Literary School and the Ohrid Literary School . Both schools originally used the Glagolitic alphabet, though

2905-721: The East it had a status analogous to that of Latin in Western Europe , but had the advantage of being substantially less divergent from the vernacular tongues of average parishioners. Some Orthodox churches, such as the Bulgarian Orthodox Church , Russian Orthodox Church , Serbian Orthodox Church , Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric , as well as several Eastern Catholic Churches, still use Church Slavonic in their services and chants. Initially Old Church Slavonic

2988-626: The Great Moravian Academy ( Slovak : Veľkomoravské učilište ), were used for government and religious documents and books in Great Moravia between 863 and 885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the West Slavic vernaculars in Great Moravia. In 885 Pope Stephen V prohibited the use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia in favour of Latin . King Svatopluk I of Great Moravia expelled

3071-575: The Greek-speaking world representing heroes of folk-songs that are particularly popular in Crete , Cyprus , and Asia Minor. Before the discovery of the manuscripts, the protagonist of the epic was only known through the Acritic songs ; narrative vernacular songs or ballads typically in political verse that originated from the Byzantine period and reflected episodes and characters associated with

3154-650: The Kiev Folia, is characterised by the replacement of some South Slavic phonetic and lexical features with Western Slavic ones. Manuscripts written in the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185–1396) have, on the other hand, few Western Slavic features. Though South Slavic in phonology and morphology, Old Church Slavonic was influenced by Byzantine Greek in syntax and style, and is characterized by complex subordinate sentence structures and participial constructions. A large body of complex, polymorphemic words

3237-707: The Pentadaktylos ("Five Fingers") mountain range was said to represent the imprint of Digenes' hand, while his footprint was said to be visible on the Psiloritis mountain in Crete. According to another legend, Digenes once threw a large rock across Cyprus in order to keep off the invading Saracen ships. The rock, that was hurled from the Troodos mountains , landed in Paphos at the site of Aphrodite's birthplace , that

3320-633: The Slavic countries, Old Church Slavonic served as a liturgical language in the Romanian Orthodox Church , and also as a literary and official language of the princedoms of Wallachia and Moldavia (see Old Church Slavonic in Romania ), before gradually being replaced by Romanian during the 16th to 17th centuries. Church Slavonic maintained a prestigious status, particularly in Russia , for many centuries – among Slavs in

3403-498: The alternations of /c/ with /č/ and of /dz/ with /ž/ occur, in which the corresponding velar is missing. The dental alternants of velars occur regularly before /ě/ and /i/ in the declension and in the imperative, and somewhat less regularly in various forms after /i/, /ę/, /ь/ and /r /. The palatal alternants of velars occur before front vowels in all other environments, where dental alternants do not occur, as well as in various places in inflection and word formation described below. As

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3486-451: The archetype of the ideal medieval Greek hero; the character frequently appears in traditional Greek folk-songs , is often represented in art , and is commonly used in modern literature as a symbol of medieval Hellenism and Byzantine heroism. The tale of Digenes continued to be read and enjoyed in later centuries, as the text survives in various versions dating to as late as the 17th century. The epic tale of Digenes corresponds in many ways to

3569-412: The area that a text originated from. For English equivalents and narrow transcriptions of sounds, see Old Church Slavonic Pronunciation on Wiktionary . For English equivalents and narrow transcriptions of sounds, see Old Church Slavonic Pronunciation on Wiktionary . Several notable constraints on the distribution of the phonemes can be identified, mostly resulting from the tendencies occurring within

3652-427: The arts, and the literature. The epic of Digenes Akritas is most commonly thought to have been first compiled around the 12th century AD building on earlier material which was primarily derived from oral sources. The existence of the epic during this time is referenced at a Ptochoprodromic poem to emperor Manuel I Komnenos under the name "New Akrites". During the 19th and 20th centuries, a total of six manuscripts of

3735-469: The battle scenes and austerity of style. The epic descriptions of the mounted knights and battles are marked by drama, a swift pace and lively visual detail. There exists an Old Slavonic version of Digenis Akritas under the title Deeds of the Brave Men of Old (Дѣяніе прежнихъ временъ храбрыхъ человѣкъ), which is adapted from a line in the Grottaferrata manuscript. The Slavonic version is often called

3818-651: The borders, Digenes builds a luxurious palace by the Euphrates where he ends his days peacefully. Historically, the island of Cyprus served the Byzantine Empire as a stronghold during the Islamic expansion and had a key role as a border between Christian and Islamic cultures. The island's geographic location turned it into an important center of production and revision of Byzantine heroic songs. Cypriot heroic folk songs have had significant impact in preserving

3901-414: The cycle of much shorter acritic songs, particularly from Anatolia, Cyprus and Crete, some of which survive until the present day. In the later tradition, Digenes is eventually defeated only by Death in the figure of Thanatos / Charon , who had reportedly already wrestled with Heracles , after a fierce single combat on "the marble threshing floors". The story of Digenes Akritas defeated by Death personally

3984-784: The development of Slavonic liturgy. As part of preparations for the mission, in 862/863, the missionaries developed the Glagolitic alphabet and translated the most important prayers and liturgical books , including the Aprakos Evangeliar , the Psalter , and the Acts of the Apostles , allegedly basing the language on the Slavic dialect spoken in the hinterland of their hometown, Thessaloniki , in present-day Greece . Based on

4067-480: The discovery of several manuscripts. An extensive narrative text, it is often thought of as the only surviving Byzantine work truly qualifying as epic poetry. Written in a form of vernacular Greek, it is regarded as one of its earliest examples, as well as the starting point of Modern Greek literature . The epic details the life of the eponymous hero, Basil, whose epithet Digenes Akritas ("two-blood border lord") alludes to his mixed Greek and Arab descent. The text

4150-487: The dragon. Some of those iconographic elements, like the outfit of the warrior and the heroic deeds, were also attributed to other lesser known akritai of the folk ballads and, as such, the identification of a depicted hero as Digenes may at times be presumptive. A much more recognizable scene from the epic of Akritas is found at a relief from saint Cathrine's in Thessalonica showing an armoured figure tearing apart

4233-631: The early 19th century, Europe had largely abandoned Latin as a scholarly language (most scientific studies and scholarly publications are printed in English), but a variety of fields still use Latin terminology as the norm. By tradition, it is still common in some fields to name new discoveries in Latin. And because Western science became dominant during the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of Latin names in many scholarly fields has gained worldwide acceptance, at least when European languages are being used for communication. Old Slavonic Historians credit

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4316-477: The empire. The Byzantine emperor himself pays a visit to Digenes in order to witness his accomplishments and physical strength. Digenes narrates in first-person of his previous adventures, including an instance where he rescued his bride from a dragon . In his duel with the amazingly strong Amazon warrior Maximο, Digenes defeats his opponent, but she eventually gets him to engage with her in an extramarital affair. Having defeated all his enemies and brought peace to

4399-443: The epic became available, with the oldest surviving piece dating back to the late 1200s–early 1300s. Each of the surviving manuscripts constituted a different version of the same medieval story. Comparative evidence suggests that word-for-word precision was a rare instance in the Byzantine period and it was typical for copies of literary works to involve some degree of variation. The existence of more manuscripts has been attested in

4482-490: The epic of Digenes Akritas remained unknown prior to the second half of the 19th century when most of the manuscripts were discovered and published. Until then, the hero –variously referred to as Digenes, Constantine, or Giannis (John)– was only known through the songs and ballads of the Acritic Cycle that had been preserved in the oral tradition of the Greek-speaking world and had been collected and published around

4565-457: The epic-romance of Digenes Akritas. Collected primarily from 19th century oral sources, the best of those songs were found on the fringes of Asia Minor, like Pontus , and Cyprus. In the acritic tradition, the warriors are presented as paragons of elegance and nobility ( Greek : λεβεντιά ); they reside in luxurious houses typically on the edges of the Christian world, and sometimes bear names of

4648-478: The exploits of an emperor in truly Homeric style. The work comprises two parts; the first part, the "Lay of the Emir", bears more obviously the characteristics of epic poetry and narrates the story of Digenes' parents. In the historical region of Cappadocia of the Byzantine Empire ( Greek : Ῥωμανία , Rhomanía ), a certain Doukas prince named Andronikos and his wife Anna, who already had five sons, prayed for

4731-497: The exploits of particularly endowed warriors, or a speaking bird usually bringing about the desired closure to a troubling story. Fine examples of the Acritic songs that feature prominent Anatolian elements include The Song of Armouris , The Son of Andronikos , Porphyris , The Bridge of Arta , and more. The most famous episodes of Digenes' life that appear in the acritic songs include the abduction of his future bride ( Greek : Η απαγωγή της κόρης του στρατηγού ; "The abduction of

4814-410: The first one is epic in tone, while the second has the atmosphere of a romance. It is an extensive narrative text composed in fifteen syllable blank verse , henceforth the standard metre of Greek poetry, now with predominantly iambic rhythm. The poem does not diverge from the standard political verse of popular Byzantine literature and rhyming occurs rarely. Each line holds its own and every hemistich

4897-436: The frontier regions of the imperial territory from external enemies and freebooting adventurers who operated on the fringes of the empire. Each of the surviving versions give an insight into the lives of the wealthy frontier guards of this period. The first half of the epic reflects personalities and events from 9th and 10th century Byzantine history, including references to aristocratic families like Doukas and Kinnamos , while

4980-412: The general's daughter"), the building of his house ( Ο Ακρίτης κάστρον έχτιζεν ; "Acritas built a castle"), his encounter with the beast ( Ο δράκος ; "The dragon"), and his death ( Ο χάρος μαύρα εφόρεσεν ; " Charon dressed in black"). The hero's dramatic battle with Charon, an element that features prominently in the acritic songs, does not occur earlier in the epic. Politis has interpreted this theme as

5063-423: The history of the Slavic languages and served as a basis and model for later Church Slavonic traditions, and some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches use this later Church Slavonic as a liturgical language to this day. As the oldest attested Slavic language, OCS provides important evidence for the features of Proto-Slavic , the reconstructed common ancestor of all Slavic languages. The name of

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5146-572: The inflectional paradigm usually exhibit morphophonemic alternations. Fronting of vowels after palatals and j yielded dual inflectional class o  : jo and a  : ja , whereas palatalizations affected stem as a synchronic process (N sg. vlьkъ , V sg. vlьče ; L sg. vlьcě ). Productive classes are o/jo- , a/ja- , and i -stems. Sample paradigms are given in the table below: Adjectives are inflected as o/jo -stems (masculine and neuter) and a/ja -stems (feminine), in three genders. They could have short (indefinite) or long (definite) variants,

5229-571: The island's Byzantine culture over time and are today a valuable resource for scholars to obtain a better understanding of the Byzantine society and folk beliefs. Digenes, whose strength was often elevated to supernatural status, was recognized in local Cypriot and Cretan traditions as the protector of the islands; legend has it that Digenes would grab hold of the Pentadaktylos mountain range north of Nicosia leaping over to Anatolia and then to Crete in pursuit of Saracen raiders. The peak of

5312-555: The jaws of a lion; a scene reminiscent of Digenes' youth in the epic. The Arab–Byzantine wars , the conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and the Arab-Muslim Caliphates that lasted from the 7th century to the early 11th century, provide the historical context for the Byzantine heroic poetry written in Medieval Greek. The Byzantine Akritai of this period were a military class responsible for safeguarding

5395-450: The language adopted more and more features from local Slavic vernaculars, producing different variants referred to as Recensions or Redactions . Modern convention differentiates between the earliest, classical form of the language, referred to as Old Church Slavonic, and later, vernacular-coloured forms, collectively designated as Church Slavonic . More specifically, Old Church Slavonic is exemplified by extant manuscripts written between

5478-554: The language in Old Church Slavonic texts was simply Slavic ( словѣ́ньскъ ѩꙁꙑ́къ , slověnĭskŭ językŭ ), derived from the word for Slavs ( словѣ́нє , slověne ), the self-designation of the compilers of the texts. This name is preserved in the modern native names of the Slovak and Slovene languages. The terms Slavic and Slavonic are interchangeable and either may be used correctly in English. The language

5561-404: The latter being formed by suffixing to the indefinite form the anaphoric third-person pronoun jь . Synthetic verbal conjugation is expressed in present, aorist and imperfect tenses while perfect, pluperfect, future and conditional tenses/moods are made by combining auxiliary verbs with participles or synthetic tense forms. Sample conjugation for the verb vesti "to lead" (underlyingly ved-ti )

5644-710: The life sciences. It goes further than romanisation , which is the transliteration of a word to the Latin alphabet from another script (e.g. Cyrillic ). For authors writing in Latin, this change allows the name to function grammatically in a sentence through declension . In a scientific context, the main purpose of Latinisation may be to produce a name which is internationally consistent. Latinisation may be carried out by: Humanist names, assumed by Renaissance humanists , were largely Latinised names, though in some cases (e.g. Melanchthon ) they invoked Ancient Greek . Latinisation in humanist names may consist of translation from vernacular European languages, sometimes involving

5727-444: The most striking revival being that of ancient romance. Though the Byzantines never stopped reading Homer , poetic composition in epic style was interrupted in the 6th century and resumed in the 10th century, though still not comprising epic subject-matter. In the first half of the 12th century, Theodore Prodromos ' panygerical hexameters to emperor John II are among the early surviving texts representing medieval attempts to celebrate

5810-512: The name Ignatios Petritzes, in 1670. The oldest surviving manuscript was found in the Greek monastery of Grottaferrata, near Frascati , in 1879 and it was published in 1892. A prose version written by Meletios Vlastos of Chios in 1632 was discovered in Andros in 1898 and it wasn't published until 1928. The incomplete Madrid version, published in 1912, was discovered in the Escorial library of Spain in 1904. The names 'Digenis' or 'Akritas' (rarely found together) have long been widespread throughout

5893-401: The original composition, while Gro represents a version that is heavily marked by learned reworking. Both texts give enchanting descriptions of the life of the martial societies of the border regions of the empire, while in the figure of Digenes are concentrated the legends that had accumulated around local heroes. The Esc version is the superior of the two in respect of the power and immediacy of

5976-691: The original names. Examples of Latinised names for countries or regions are: Latinisation is a common practice for scientific names . For example, Livistona , the name of a genus of palm trees, is a Latinisation of Livingstone . During the age of the Roman Empire , translation of names into Latin (in the West) or Greek (in the East) was common. Additionally, Latinised versions of Greek substantives , particularly proper nouns , could easily be declined by Latin speakers with minimal modification of

6059-588: The original word. During the medieval period , after the Empire collapsed in Western Europe , the main bastion of scholarship was the Roman Catholic Church , for which Latin was the primary written language. In the early medieval period, most European scholars were priests and most educated people spoke Latin, and as a result, Latin became firmly established as the scholarly language for the West. By

6142-408: The post Byzantine period, with the most recent surviving manuscripts dating to the 17th century. The character became the archetype of the ideal medieval hero featuring in a number of folk-songs popular throughout the Greek-speaking world, most prominently in Crete , Cyprus , and Asia Minor . The epic would go on to have significant impact on the culture of modern Greece , particularly on folk music,

6225-482: The princess and her companions and carried them away. When her five brothers became aware of the incident, they left the empire in search of their sister. Outfought, the emir surrendered to the brothers and confessed his love for Eirene promising to became a Christian if they allow them to marry. Mousour was eventually baptized and, after their marriage, Eirene gave birth to their son who was named Basil ( Greek : Βασίλειος , Basileios ) Digenes Akritas. The second part of

6308-555: The remnants of an ancient epic cycle in Byzantium and, due to their long oral transmission throughout the empire, the identification of precise references to historical events may be only conjectural. Set during the Arab-Byzantine wars , the poem reflects the interactions, along with the military and cultural conflicts of the two polities. The epic consists of between 3,000 to 4,000 lines and it has been pieced together following

6391-586: The same time. The first manuscript of the epic was discovered in 1868 at the Sumela Monastery of Trebizond and it was first published in 1875. It was soon followed by the Andros manuscript which was discovered in 1878 and published in 1881. A rhymed version from the Lincoln College of Oxford was published in 1880; the version had the advantage of being signed by its writer, a monk from Chios by

6474-466: The second half appears to be visually timeless. Asia Minor is regarded as the origin place of the story. Based on details of geography and titulature, the general worldview as presented in the whole text is confirmed to predate the Turkish presence in the peninsula. The original composition of Digenes Akritas, judging by its themes, including the eventual Arab-Byzantine reconciliation, may date to

6557-415: The work begins with the development of the young hero and his superhuman feats of bravery and strength. As a boy, Digenes goes hunting with his father and, like young Hercules, learns to defeat wild animals unarmed; he kills several animals with his bare hands, including a lion and two bears. As a young man, he takes on the so-called apelatai ( ἀπελάται ), a group of freebooting bandits –sometimes enemies of

6640-406: Was based on the dialect of Pannonia . It is generally held that the language was standardized by two Byzantine missionaries, Cyril and his brother Methodius , for a mission to Great Moravia (the territory of today's eastern Czech Republic and western Slovakia; for details, see Glagolitic alphabet ). The mission took place in response to a request by Great Moravia 's ruler, Duke Rastislav for

6723-551: Was coined, first by Saint Cyril himself and then by his students at the academies in Great Moravia and the First Bulgarian Empire , to denote complex abstract and religious terms, e.g., ꙁълодѣꙗньѥ ( zъlodějanьje ) from ꙁъло ('evil') + дѣти ('do') + ньѥ (noun suffix), i.e., 'evil deed'. A significant part of them wеrе calqued directly from Greek. Old Church Slavonic is valuable to historical linguists since it preserves archaic features believed to have once been common to all Slavic languages such as: Old Church Slavonic

6806-482: Was used as a basis of a Russian bylina (a folk ballad) about Anika the Warrior . Latinisation of names Latinisation (or Latinization ) of names , also known as onomastic Latinisation , is the practice of rendering a non - Latin name in a modern Latin style. It is commonly found with historical proper names , including personal names and toponyms , and in the standard binomial nomenclature of

6889-522: Was written with the Glagolitic alphabet , but later Glagolitic was replaced by Cyrillic , which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire by a decree of Boris I of Bulgaria in the 9th century. Of the Old Church Slavonic canon , about two-thirds is written in Glagolitic. The local Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, known as Srbinčica , was preserved in Serbia and parts of Croatia , while

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