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The
principle written testimonies to
Clement's
life are his hagiography known as Comprehensive, by Archbishop Theophilact of
Ohrid, written at the end of the 11th century, and the Prologue by Demetrius Chomatius an Ohrid archbishop of the 13th century. Both are written in
Ecclesiastical Greek. As to the life of Naum, Clement's companion and brother in
faith, it is most thoroughly, though still scantly, dealt with in his two
Slavonic Hagiographies which remained unknown until the end of the last century.
According to the written documents, the faithful disciples of St. Cyril and
Methodius, the godly and righteous Clement, Naum, Gorazd, Angelatius and Sava,
were of equal learning and maturity as apostles. Methodius had been preparing
Gorazd to be his successor, but destiny decided otherwise. Clement and the rest
of the exiles, following the Danube via Singinidum (Belgrad) reached Pliska and
the court of the Bulgarian Prince Boris-Michael. Having a long wished for his
own clerical elite, the latter gave the exhausted newcomers a warm welcome.
After a few months Clement was appointed to Ohrid, Devol, Glavenica to preach
the gospel and introduce the Slavonic alphabet to the flock there. Naum stayed
in the Monastery of Pantelejmon near Preslav teaching the monks and introducing
them in the Gospel.
Seven years later in 893, after the
coronation of Simeon, Clement was summoned to Kutmičevica and to the new
capital, Preslav.
Simeon - one of the most educated spirits of the time, "a child of the
Great School" - immediately summoned a council at which Clement was
probably also present. It was expected that Clement would be given the position
of the prince's royal counselor and assistant. This, however, did not happen.
The reformation of the alphabet and the introduction of the Cyrillic letters,
apparently attenuated the relationship between the Ohrid apostle and the prince,
who was later to become a Bulgarian Tzar. Clement was appointed to a peripheral
province of the state, the Velička bishopric. This appointment somewhat
resembles a "reproach", a distancing. The disagreement on the painful
issue of the alphabet and Clement's opposition to the new "hellenized"
alphabet appear to be the reasons for the alienation between Clement and the
Prince Simeon over the cultural policy of the state.
The benefits were manifold. The apostolic
work continued in Ohrid. Clement was joined by Naum. The Ohrid region became the
center of the first Slavonic University. The alphabet used was the Glagolitic.
The tradition of Cyril and Methodius was preserved and continued. Ohrid was
thenceforth a spring of new water, a fast-flowing stream which flowed and
unchecked though Macedonia and merged, as a constituent part, into the vast sea
of Slavonic and Byzantine culture.
The role by the founders of the first
schooling in the Balkans was immense. Legends speak 3000 students. Theophilact
says that Clement preached "...in a few words...about the ecclesiastical
life, the memory of the saints, the enlightenment of the soul..." He
translated continuously: chants, psalms, festal fragments from the Bible,
moralities... Thus Slavonic liturgy was beginning to be created.
In their beloved Clement and Naum built
their churches on opposite sides of the lake. In the town itself Clement
dedicated a shrine to the holy healer Pantelejmon. At the same time, towards the
end of the 9th century, by the springs of the Crni Drim river, Naum erected a
monument to the archangels of the bodiless army, Gabriel and Michael. Both
Clement and Naum were buried in the tombs which they themselves had built in the
churches they requested: Naum in the year 910 in the Monastery St.Naum and six
years later Clement in 916. The belief that St.Naum in his monastery heals
mentally ill and those possessed by demons survives to this very day. A small
portion of literature in Glagolitic translation, created in the scriptoriums of
the Ohrid Literary School and dispersed throughout the world, such as
Evangelarium Assemani (Codex Vaticanus) and the Zograph and the Gospel of Mary
and the Sinai Psalter and Prayer Book have been preserved.
The manuscripts from Clement's language
tradition, with their illuminations, vignettes and initials and their linguistic
structure undoubtedly originate tradition of Cyril and Methodius. A comparison
of the philological and stylistic features of the translations into Old Church
Slavonic or Old Macedonian with the original texts in Ecclesiastical Greek point
to the fact that the first translator or translators, begin very well acquainted
with the culture of speech, formed a district literary type and a language with
its own phraseology, syntax and patterns. In some gospels, for instance, the
stylistic and rhythmical qualities of the translation are more effective than
those of the original Greek text. The precise expression of the mystical
tripartite Christian creative principle (the Holy Trinity), as well as the
impeccable literary organization, especially in the manuscripts of the Assemani
and Zograph Gospel, show their author as a unifier of the crowing achievements
of linguistic values. The Zograph four Gospels, named after the Mount Athos
(Sveta Gora) monastery to which it belonged - written on 303 parchment sheets -
is the most substantial manuscript in the Glagolitic alphabet. Ever since 1376
when Joseph Assemani, an orientalist and librarian, took the Ohrid manuscript -
aprakos (or gospel selections), with its 158 parchment sheets, from Jerusalem to
the Vatican library, the document has carried the name of its discoverer. The
manuscript includes at the end the oldest Slavonic calendar, these saints' days
are recorded for the first time: Cyril (14th February), Methodius (6th
April), Clement (27th July), Erazmus of Ohrid (2nd June) and the Fifteen Martyrs
of Strumica (29th August). As for the Gospel of Mary it was first round on
Mt. Athos (Sveta Gora) and the 137 psalms of the Psalter and the oldest Slavonic
Prayer Book (Euchologion) were found in the ancient monastery St. Catherine on
Mt. Sinai.
Slavonic
philologist are unanimous as far as the dating and the origin of these texts are
concerned: the manuscripts are morphologically and lexically closely related,
composed in Ohrid either at the end of the 10th century or the beginning of the
11th century and based on models dating from Clement's time. Recently scholarly
discoveries have also added fourteen of the presumed five hundreds pages of the
Codex retrieved from the library of Count Cloz (Glagolita Clozianus) to the
Ohrid Glagolitic collection. Only four fragments from the Lenten Triodion, those
for Passion week, have survived from Cloz's collection of sermont's of praise.
The most interesting of these four is the second sermon, the Anonymous Homily,
which has been proved to be a transcript of an original work by Methodius. This
is supported by the similar, and sometimes even identical, terminology used in
the Homily and the Zakon Sudni (Law of Judgment), the first Slavonic legal code,
the backbone of Methodius Nomocanon.
Time has preserved a small number of
Glagolithic epigraphic monuments. On the southern pillar in the narthex of St.
Naum's monastery, the only Glagolitihc in the four graffiti written one above
the other is the signature "Nikula pop" (Nikula the priest). On the
Krupiste site, in the Bregalnica region, letters and drawings engraved in
unglazed clay and fired brick have been discovered. The titles, all 34 of them,
were obviously incorporated into the slavonicised churches without a discernible
significance. The letters, which originate from different cultures, also include
Glagolitihc ones. |
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