Jeremija the Presbyter and His Role in Medieval Slavic Literature

Description

This thesis analyzes the basic historical, cultural, literary, and linguistic questions concerning the reality of the existence of Presbyter Jeremija, in Slavic known as x xxxx epexxx,--a "priest of Bulgaria" at the turn of tenth century, his personal identity, the religious texts ascribed to him, and their place in Medieval Slavic literature. Traditionally dealt with as one of the most influential Bogomil religious writer of Slavic legends and apocryphal traditions, Pop Jeremya, his life, work and personality have not been sufficiently investigated by modern historiography who often confuses him with other heretical leaders of the same period.My research of Presbyter Jeremija is based on two sets of primary sources: on the historical evidence on him, his life and work, produced by the officials of the Orthodox Church; and on the still existing non-canonical apocryphal religious texts ascribed to him: "The Story of the Cross-tree" and "The Prayer against Fever," two genuine Bogomil texts providing a clear understanding of the basic tenets of the Bogomil heretical movement of the tenth-eleventh centuries. The authenticity of Jeremija's authorship of these texts was tested by a thematic analysis of the extant variants of the two apocrypha. The reconstructed base form of Jeremija's apocrypha was compared with related legends in non-Slavic languages in order to ascertain the extent to which Jeremija was an independent writer.Our analysis has shown that Jeremija the Presbyter was a historical personality of Medieval Slavic world, by the end of the tenth century a charismatic leader of an Eastern South Slavic religious province and a prolific translator of the Byzantine Greek apocryphal literature into Church Slavonic. By the end of the tenth century he very probably was an orthodox priest and an eclectic popular thinker whom we credit for the formulation of a moderate dualistic heretical teaching. During the period of his activity he was known as "the priest of Bulgaria", as his name is recorded in contemporary chronicles.The most probable place of Jeremija the Presbyter's activity during a later period of his life, very probably after the beginning of the eleventh century, characterized by a much stronger emphasis on Bogomil heretical teaching, must have been Medieval Bosnia in the Western part of the South Slavic linguistic area, where at the time the Bogomil movement began growing by putting out roots in the vernacular tradition. In our thesis, this proposition is corroborated by linguistic evidence in Jeremija the Presbvter's apocrypha, the "Story of the Crosstree" and the "Prayer against Fever", whose preserved texts exhibit a number of early Western South Slavic dialectical features.