Funeral Prayers for Monastics in Southern Slavonic Euchologia

The conversion of the Southern Slavs in the Balkans in the mid-ninth century resulted in the introduction of Byzantine liturgical practices, as the corpus of liturgical books translated from Greek into Slavonic, particularly the euchologion, reveals. Among its diverse contents, the euchologion preserves a substantial body of funeral texts, which have remained largely neglected in scholarship. One of the earliest surviving prayer books, Cod. Vat. Barb. gr. 336 (late 8th c.), already contains not only general prayers but also prayers for specific categories of the deceased, such as monks and bishops. From the eleventh century onward, distinct monastic funeral services developed, diverging from those for the laity and the secular clergy. In most cases, Southern Slavonic euchologia transmit monastic funeral prayers that were already part of the Greek tradition. Yet, in some instances, the Slavonic tradition preserves liturgical material unattested in Greek sources. Notably, from the twelfth century onwards, certain Slavonic euchologia, such as the famous palimpsest Cod. Petropol. gr. 70 (12th–13th c.), transmit a monastic funeral rite allegedly practiced at the Stoudite monastery in Constantinople. This paper explores the historical development of funeral prayers for monastics in a selected corpus of Greek and Southern Slavonic euchologia manuscripts copied between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The comparative liturgical study seeks to uncover the richness of the preserved material and to re-examine the complex interrelations between the Greek and Slavonic euchological traditions. In doing so, it aims to shed new light on the transmission and adaptation of the funeral rite within the Slavic Orthodox world.