Slavic

Abstract

The chapter surveys the vast corpus of Slavonic texts translated from Greek, a corpus which may not be regarded as a footprint of Byzantine literature. The Slavs mostly disregarded secular genres, with the exception of chronicles; they valued liturgical and hagiographic writings higher than theological and mystical ones, preferring Apocrypha above all. Sometimes, the texts that barely attracted the attention of the Byzantines themselves enjoyed high popularity in the Slavic world; on other occasions, literary pieces, when translated, circulated in genre frameworks, drastically different from the Byzantine ones. From the point of view of Byzantine literature, Slavic literature is important evidence of the scope and character of Byzantium’s cultural influence and offers a reservoir of texts that did not survive in their originals, or survived as Slavonic copies or redactions, more ample and ancient than the existing Greek versions.