TheEnina Apostle orEnina Apostolos (scholarly abbreviationEnin) is an 11th-centuryOld Church SlavonicCyrillic manuscript. Discovered in a poor condition in 1960 during restoration work in the centralBulgarian village ofEnina, the partially preservedparchment manuscript is housed in theSS. Cyril and Methodius National Library inSofia. It is the oldest Cyrillic manuscript currently held by any Bulgarian collection.
The Enina Apostle was discovered in 1960 during the restoration of the oldChurch of Saint Paraskeva in the village ofEnina.[1] The village lies in south central Bulgaria, north ofKazanlăk, and is administratively part ofStara Zagora Province. The manuscript was initially in a very poor condition, with only 39 leaves and parts of leaves extant, and hardly a single leaf preserved in its entirety.[1]
From its discovery to 1964 the Enina Apostle was housed in the Kazanlăk Museum. In 1964, the manuscript was transferred to theSS. Cyril and Methodius National Library in the capitalSofia, where it has been housed ever since as MS №1144.[1] The Enina Apostle is part of the library′s collection of 1,500 Slavic manuscripts.[2] Among these, it is of utmost importance because of its antiquity, as well as itspalaeographic andlinguistic features.[3] In December 2010, acommemorative plaque dedicated to the Enina Apostle was installed in the courtyard of the Church of Saint Paraskeva in honour of the 50th anniversary of the manuscript′s discovery.[4]
The Enina Apostle is a shortApostoloslectionary, written onparchment in the second half of the 11th century,[5] which makes it the oldest Cyrillic manuscript currently part of a Bulgarian collection.[6] The leaves are 19.5 by 15.5 centimetres (7.7 in × 6.1 in) in size, and the written area 13.5 by 10.5 centimetres (5.3 in × 4.1 in). It was written by a single scribe in a slopinguncial using dark brown ink. Ff.6r and 38r feature decorative headpieces of geometric and floral design. Additional decoration includes 18initials, which are mostly geometric, though sometimes floral or interlaced. An initial on f.3 depicts a bird′s head, while ff.28v and 36v both have aGlagolitic letter Ⰱ as the initial letter of a reading.
The Enina Apostle is thought to have originally consisted of circa 215–220 leaves, of which only 39 have been at least partially preserved. Both the beginning and the end of the manuscript are missing, and there are no survivingmarginal notes. The surviving text of the manuscript consists of readings from the Acts and Epistles for Saturdays and Sundays from the 35th Sunday afterPentecost untilGreat Saturday and for selected feasts from 1 September until 3 October, the feast day ofDionysius the Areopagite.[1][3] The language of the text is classified as eitherOld Church Slavonic or as belonging to a category that chronologically immediately follows Old Church Slavonic.[7]