07 — Recensions and Modern Use

There is no single Synodikon. Some forty Greek manuscripts fall into three principal recensions; the text was translated into Georgian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian, each version developing further; and what a parish hears today is almost always an abridgement. This section reports what the textual scholarship establishes and flags, repeatedly and explicitly, what it cannot.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Contents

File Description
greek-slavic-and-other-recensions.md Gouillard’s recensions M, C, and P and the criteria that subdivide them; the recognized limitations of the 1967 edition and the new critical text of the Synodikon of Alexios Studites; the neglected London manuscript and what it does not contain; Boril’s Synodikon (Tărnovo, 11 February 1211) and the later Bulgarian redactions; the Georgian, Serbian, and Russian versions named but not examined; and the contested 1583 appendix
what-is-actually-proclaimed-today.md The abridged form as the norm, with an honest refusal to generalize further; the forward-looking clause of 920 and the two ways it is read; the modern additions — the ROCOR anathema of 1983 and the expanded lists circulated by particular hierarchs and communities — reported with their provenance and reception; the criterion the tradition itself supplies; and what is lost when the anathemas are simply omitted

Where Uncertainty Is Flagged

This section carries more [Disputed: …] notes than any other in the collection, deliberately. The recension question, the Russian textual history, the authenticity of the 1583 Sigillion, and the actual current practice of particular jurisdictions are all matters this collection could not settle from the sources available to it. In each case the file names the edition or archive that would settle it and declines to guess. The critical works repeatedly named — Gouillard, Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967), and the six editions in The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches, vol. I (Brepols, 2016) — are the route onward for a reader who needs more than this collection can give.

See Also