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Document Details :

Title: Old Georgian Sources Concerning Maximus the Confessor's Life
Author(s): KHOPERIA, L.
Journal: Le Muséon
Volume: 116    Issue: 3-4   Date: 2003   
Pages: 395-414
DOI: 10.2143/MUS.116.3.503670

Abstract :
The article deals with three Georgian biographical documents on Maximus the Confessor: an extensive Life of Maximus, the short synaxarian Life, and a metaphrastic version of Theodore Spudaeus' Hypomnesticon by John Xyphilinos. All three documents have been translated from Greek in the Xth-XIIth centuries. However, these texts at many points significantly differ from the known Greek versions of the Vita Maximi and provide some pieces of information which are otherwise unknown. The metaphrastic version of the Hypomnesticon has been preserved only in its Georgian translation; its Greek model has been lost (consequently, this translation attains the importance of a primary source). Therefore, Georgian sources contribute to our understanding of the Greek textual tradition of the Vita and shed new light on some moments of Maximus' biography and on the church history of his time. The paper gives a comparative analysis of the extant Greek and Georgian sources. Based on this analysis an attempt is made to determine their interrelation, to put the information, interpolated into the Georgian sources, into historical contexts and determine its authenticity and scientific value.

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