Towards a Critical Edition of Peter Mohyla’s <i>The Book of the Soul Called Gold</i>
Articles
Ana Kirejeva
Vilnius University image/svg+xml
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9948-4465
Published 2026-08-03
https://doi.org/10.15388/SlavViln.2026.71(1).4
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Keywords

Peter Mohyla
medieval manuscript
Ruthenian translation
Ruthenian language
The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis
scholarly edition
The Book of the Soul Called Gold

How to Cite

Kirejeva, A. (2026) “Towards a Critical Edition of Peter Mohyla’s The Book of the Soul Called Gold”, Slavistica Vilnensis, 71(1), pp. 48–54. doi:10.15388/SlavViln.2026.71(1).4.

Abstract

This article examines The Book of the Soul Called Gold, a Ruthenian translation of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis attributed to Peter Mohyla. It survives only in a handwritten copy dated 1661. The text is believed to derive from a Polish printed edition of 1608 or 1616. The manuscript has not been subjected to detailed linguistic analysis and lacks a scholarly edition. Building on previous studies of the manuscript, the author plans to conduct a detailed comparison of the Ruthenian text with its Polish source and the Latin original and to prepare a critical edition of The Book of the Soul Called Gold. The study will pay particular attention to spiritual and religious lexical correspondences, as well as to problematic readings, including omissions and scribal errors, and will also examine the linguistic features of the Ruthenian text in relation to its sources. Furthermore, the study will include a transcription and an English translation of the text, thereby making the manuscript accessible for further research and facilitating its use in comparative and linguistic studies. In doing so, it aims to establish a foundation for further study of the Ruthenian translation of The Imitation of Christ and its historical and linguistic context.

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