Old Church Slavonic Online

Lesson 9

Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum

One popular type of eccesiastical literature was the Saint's Life. This was a story focusing on the life of a particular saint, giving biographical information useful for presenting an example of the righteous manner of living. Such Lives are often found in what is termed a menology, a collection of Saints' Lives and homilies appropriate for celebration of Church festivals.

Reading and Textual Analysis

Among the earliest of the Saints' Lives is that of Good King Wencelaus. This text is of paramount importance for two major reasons. Firstly, at a cultural level this text shows the emergence of a true Slavonic spiritual identity. No longer is the ecclesiastical corpus relegated to stories from neighboring cultures. With the story of Wencelaus, who is both king and saint, the Slavonic culture asserts its legitimacy in contradistinction to the territorial influence of both the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium. Second, on a linguistic level the native Slavic subject matter ensures that there is no Greek or Latin original to be sought. The linguist may therefore use this as a starting point to assess native OCS syntax. Syntactical studies are on shaky ground when taking Gospel translations as source material; these have a tendency to follow Greek syntax exceptionally closely. However, the story of Good King Wencelaus provides a sample of natively-generated narrative, and is therefore a useful benchmark by which to test conceptions of OCS syntax.

Below is an extract from the beginning of the Life of Good King Wenceslaus.

Translation

(1) Behold, now the prophetic word, which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke himself, was fulfilled: (2) 'For it will happen', he said, 'in the final days, which we believe to be now, brother shall rise against his own brother and son against his father, and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.' (3) For men will be unpitying to one another, and God will dispense according to their deeds. (4) But there was a certain prince in the Czech Lands, Bratislav by name, and his wife was called Dragomira. (5) And having produced their first-born son, they christened him and gave him the name Venceslav. (6) And as he grew so big as to tonsure him, his father Bratislav invited to this tonsure a certain bishop, Notar by name, and his clerics with him. (7) And when they celebrated the mass for him in the Church of the Holy Maria, the bishop took up the boy, placed him on the top step before the altar, and blessed him, saying: (8) 'Lord God, Jesus Christ, bless this boy, as you have blessed all yours who are just.' (9) And so with a blessing he was tonsured. (10) And by this we believe that, with the blessing of that just bishop and by his prayers, the boy began to grow, protected by God's grace. (11) He learned well the Slavonic and Latin letters. (12) And when his father Bratislav died, the Czechs established Venceslav as prince upon his grandfather's throne. (13) And Boleslav, his brother, grew alongside him; both were still young. (14) But their mother Dragomira ruled the land, and adminstered to the people, while Venceslav was growing up; and when he was grown, he began himself to administer to his people. (15) But by the grace of God, prince Venceslav truly learned well not only letters, but was also filled by faith. (16) He would perform good deeds among all the poor, clothe the naked, nourish the hungry, take in strangers according to the word of the evangel. (17) He would not permit a widow to be disgraced -- he showed mercy to all people, rich or poor; he served those who served God, and adorned many churches with gold.

Grammar

41 The Fourth Conjugation

The fourth conjugation
contains those verbs whose present stem is augmented by the suffix -i. The infinitive stem ends in either -i or -ě, sometimes -a. In certain forms, the stem suffix -i changed to -j before a vowel. In the first person singular of the present tense, the ending -ǫ is always preceded by j, resulting in palatalization of any stem-final consonant. The third person plural ending is -ętŭ rather than -ǫtŭ. All other present tense forms show the suffix -i- between root and ending. Other than the first person singular, the present stem shows no palatalization of root-final consonants, except for the usual velar palatalization before the front vowels -i and -ę.

In addition
to the first person singular of the present tense, other forms showing -j palatalization are the imperfect, the past active participle, and the past passive participle. The following are examples of the possible changes.

Note the imperative forms
виждь of the verb видѣти, as well as the two forms видимъ and видомъ of the present passive participle.

42 The Conjugation of хотѣти

The verb хотѣти 'to wish'
belongs to the fourth conjugation only in the third person plural of the present and in the present active participle. The present is formed with a stem in -ѥ-, the imperfect and aorist from the stem хот-.

Present

Singular

Dual

Plural

1

хоштѫ

хоштєвѣ

хоштємъ

2

хоштєши

хоштєта

хоштєтє

хоштє

3

хоштєтъ

хоштєтє

хотѧтъ

Imperative

хошти

Pres. Act. Part.

Masc./Neut. N

хотѧ

Fem. N

хотѧшти

Imperfect

хотѣахъ

Aorist

хотѣхъ

Past Act. Part.

Masc./Neut. N

хотѣвъ

Fem. N

хотѣвъши

Resultative Part.

Masc. N

хотѣлъ

Verbal Noun

хотѣньѥ

43 The Instrumental Case

The instrumental case
denotes agent or accompaniment, both figuratively and concretely. It agrees nicely with the English word 'with' in all its various senses: 'with a hammer', 'with my friends', 'with sympathy', etc. The following are some examples: бѣжємариѣпомазавъшиѣгосподамъіромь 'Mary was the one having anointed the Lord with myrrh'; гласомьвєлиємьвъзъва 'He cried out in a loud voice'; идѫ... корабл҄ѥмь 'they went... by boat'; искѹшаѥмъсотоноѭ 'being tempted by Satan'; јависѧинѣмьобразомь 'he appeared in another form'. The instrumental sometimes has the sense 'with respect to': блажєнииништиидѹхомь 'blessed are the poor in spirit'.

Some verbs
regularly take the instrumental. For example, some verbs of ruling have an instrumental complement: тиобладаѭтъзємл҄ѥѭ 'they rule the earth'. Similarly the verb пєштисѧ 'to worry about' takes the instrumental: нєпьцѣтєсѧдѹшєѭвашєѭ 'take no thought for your soul'.

The instrumental
is sometimes used instead of the nominative for the predicate with verbs of being and becoming. One finds дѣвоѭбобѣєѵа 'for Eve was a virgin'; нєбѫдиникътожєиюдоѭ 'let no one be a Judas'.

20, 30, ..., 90. The tens
are expressed by phrases of the form 'four tens', 'five (of) tens', etc., where the unit is followed by the corresponding form of дєсѧть. The phrase as a whole then governs a noun in the genitive plural.

20.дъвадєсѧти, G. дъвоюдєсѧтѹ

30.тріѥдєсѧтє or тридєсѧти, G. триидєсѧтъ

40.чєтъірєдєсѧтє or чєтъіридєсѧти, G. чєтъірьдєсѧтъ

50.пѧтьдєсѧтъ, G. пѧтидєсѧтъ, where дєсѧтъ remains in the G. pl.

60.шєстьдєсѧтъ, G. шєстидєсѧтъ

70.сєдмьдєсѧтъ, G. сєдмидєсѧтъ

80.осмьдєсѧтъ, G. осмидєсѧтъ

90.дєвѧтьдєсѧтъ, G. дєвѧтидєсѧтъ

100.съто.
This is a noun and declines as a neuter hard o-stem. The thing enumerated is in the genitive plural.

10,000.дєсѧтьтъісѧшть,
with тъісѧшть a genitive plural, or тъма 'darkness, myriad', which is declined as a feminine a-stem.

The conjunction и
is used to string together digits, e.g. сътоипѧтьдєсѧтъитри 'one hundred fifty-three'.

45 Verb Use

45.1 The Present Tense

The present tense
does not specify time. Imperfective presents denote action contemporaneous with the utterance, or contemporaneous with a past or future action when context dictates. They also indicate statements of general validity, or of repeated action. Perfective presents, by their nature, cannot indicate ongoing actions. They refer to the completion of an action, either in the near past or near future, as context dictates. These too may indicate statements of general validity; in contrast to imperfective presents, the perfective forms refer to the general action in its state of completion. For example, сльньцѹвъсходѧштѹсъкръіѥтъсѧстѣн҄ь 'when the sun rises, the shadow hides itself'. Imperfective and perfective presents are contrasted in the following general statement: аштєктоходитъвъдьнєнєпотъкнєтъсѧ ... аштєктоходитъноштип\потъкнєтъсѧ 'if someone walks (imperfective) during the day he does not stumble (perfective)... if someone walks at night he stumbles'.

45.2 The Future Tense

Future time is most often expressed
by the present tense, usually with perfective verbs. The future of 'to be' is given by the forms of бѫдѫ, бѫдєши, etc. The verbs хотѣти 'want' and начѧти, въчѧти 'begin' may be used in the present with an infinitive to denote future time. More prevalent are present forms of имѣти, имамь, имаши 'have to' used with the infinitive. The collocation may have the literal meaning 'have to', indicating obligation; but more often the verb is used in the sense 'is to', 'is destined to'. For example, азъбрашьноимамьѣстиєгожєвъінєвѣстє 'I have meant to eat that ye know not of'; ѣконєиматълипритивъпраздьникъ '... that he will not come to the feast, will he?' Past tense forms of хотѣти and имѣти denote an event in the future relative to some point in the past.