Novgorod Codex - Concealed Texts and Identity of The Owner

Concealed Texts and Identity of The Owner

One of the very first concealed texts reconstructed was an unnamed text Zaliznyak called Instruction on Forgiveness of Sins. Its introduction is written in first person by somebody who identifies himself as 'Alexander, the Areopagite of Thracia, of Laodicea on the Lycus Laodiceam origins (birth)'. The text contains a highly unorthodox prayer, reading 'we pray to thee father Alexander, forgive us our sins by your will and give us salvation and the food of paradise, amen'. In it, this Alexander therefore assumes powers usually reserved to God alone. The prayer is followed by prophecies by the same Alexander, who then calls for people to 'leave your villages and homes' and to walk the earth, spreading Alexander's message. Alexander then says 'whoever listens to me, listens to Peter'. This is followed by a highly original call following along the lines of 'leave your villages and homes', with dozens of phrases starting with 'leave your' and listing a great number of things to leave, all starting with a Slavic prefix 'raz-': разлады, раздоры, расклады, развозы, распловы, разлогы, разлеты, размеры, размолвы, and so on (troubles, strifes, positions, moving around, sailing, flying, sizes, disagreements, etc.). This highly original sequence leads Zaliznyak to believe that the text was originally composed in Church Slavonic, as it is hard to imagine that translation from a foreign language could follow such a neat Slavic pattern.

A subsequent concealed text contains the following passage: 'The world is a town in which live the Armenians and the Africans and the Thracians and the Italians and the Spanish and the Greeks'. Zaliznyak believes that an earlier allusion to Alexander, the Areopagite of Thracia is connected to the listing of Thracians early in the list.

Finally, another text that Zaliznyak calls “Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son” contains the following note “Въ лѣто ҂ѕ҃ф҃з҃ азъ мънихъ исаакии поставленъ попомъ въ соужъдали въ цръкъве свѧтаго александра арменина…” (“In 6507 I, monk Isaakiy, became a priest in Suzdal, in the church of St. Alexander the Armenian…”). The year 6507/999 reappears several times on the margins, and is the only numerical sequence identified in the text.

“Spiritual Instruction from the Father and the Mother to the Son” continues onto increasingly more gloomy analysis of the state of the world, showing that the writer identifies with people excluded from the official church for believing unorthodox teachings.

Zaliznyak therefore postulates that the writer was this monk Isaakiy, who followed a previously unknown schismatic teaching of a self-proclaimed prophet Alexander, an Armenian by birth, and that Alexander himself was based in Thracia, and Isaakiy was sent to spread Alexander's word in Suzdal. The 'church of St. Alexander', according to Zaliznyak, does not mean a physical church building, but rather a church in the sense of teachings or doctrine. As there were no monasteries anywhere in Rus during the time these texts were written, Zaliznyak believes that Isaakiy was taught outside of Rus, and became a monk elsewhere. He was likely a witness to the Christianization of Kievan Rus' in 988, and operated in a still largely pagan Rus of the early 11th century. The concealed texts contain a conversion prayer, which in first person singular and plural (I and we) denies idolatry and accepts Christianity, so it is likely Isaakiy himself converted pagan Slavs.

The teachings of Alexander the Armenian were likely an early form of Bogomilism. Interestingly, the Nikonian Chronicle contains a mention of a schismatic monk Andreyan jailed for disagreeing with the official church in 1004, during the timeframe the codex texts were written. According to Evgeniy Golubinskiy, this Andreyan was a Bogomil. So the Novgorod Bogomil codex being found in the vicinity of a courthouse in the early 11th century therefore leads to some interesting theories.

Finally, an interesting feature of the texts is common allusions to the city of Laodicea, without any direct references to any events there. Zaliznyak believes that Laodicea was a sort of a secret word among the Bogomils, which identified a Bogomil teaching to other believers, without making anything apparent to outsiders. In this context, the strange title of a schismatic work written 500 years later by a heretic Fedor Kuritzyn, The Message of Laodicea, takes on a new light.