Subscriptions to Gospels and Final Numeric Notations in Church Slavonic Editions of Bibles and New Testaments from the 16th and 17th Centuries

Abstract

This study focuses on the subscriptions to the Gospels, stichometry and final numerical notation. The research corpus comprises early printed Cyrillic editions of the Bible and the New Testament issued before 1720. In total, fourteen editions – two Bibles and twelve New Testaments – were analauthorities on the printing houses operating in Kyiv and Chernihiv.
In the surveyed editions, each Gospel concludes with: (a) subscriptions and final numerical notation, (b) subscriptions and stichometric data, or (c) subscriptions alone. A comparative analysis of these paratexts revealed numerous textual variants. Based on these findings, the analysed editions were classified into the following five groups. The first group comprises the New Testaments of Ostrog (1580), Vilnius (1596, 1623), Vievis (1622), Vilnius or Vievis (1641), and Kutein (1652), as well as the Ostrog (1581) and Moscow (1663) Bibles. The second group includes the New Testaments issued in Kyiv (1658, 1691) and Chernihiv (1717). The third group is represented by the Kyiv New Testament of 1703. The fourth group consists of the Moscow New Testament of 1702, while the fifth group includes the Saint Petersburg New Testament of 1718. This classification underscores the manifold textual traditions of Western Ruthenian publishing centres and the nascent Moscow standard.