A few remarks about ideological treatments in church Slavic translations of Caesar Baronius’ Church Annals

Abstract

This article discusses the adaptation of Baronius Caesar’s Church Annals translations into Church Slavonic. The first translation of Church Annals was made from the Polish version by Peter Skarga, Polish cultural figure, in 1678. The text of the essay has a pronounced polemical character: it protects the foundations of the Catholic faith, which could not be fully reflected in Russian translations. In the context of religious controversy, it was necessary to adapt the realities of the source language to the realities of the Orthodox faith. This redirection of the foreign language culture elements is reflected in the following techniques: omitting fragments, eliminating ideologically incorrect formulations, introducing well-known borrowings from the Greek language into the translation text. This article discusses omissions and lexical substitutions. For example, katcholicki – prawowierny – православенъ – правоверный – католицкий. Despite the fact that the texts employ different translation strategies (the MDA translation, f. 173.3, no. 82, is more modernized, while the Russian State Library translation, f. 256, no. 15, is more formalized), both translations share common adaptation techniques, primarily stylistic archaization. We assume that the translator of MDA, f. 173.3, no. 82, intentionally brought the translation style closer to the literary tradition. This is confirmed by the examples with such lexemes as hegemon, riza, and krin. However, this tendency was not reflected in lexemes that had recently come into widespread use: the translator was receptive to new words and consistently used them in the translation.