Digital Methods of Comparative Manuscript Research: The Martyrdom of St. Febronia

Abstract

The Martyrdom of St Febronia, a nun persecuted, tortured and killed under Emperor Diocletian for not renouncing her faith, has been recorded in Georgian in several manuscripts, four of which are introduced and analysed in the present article: Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, georg. 6 (nuskhuri script, dated to the 10th c.), Tbilisi, Korneli Kekelidze National Centre of Manuscripts, A-95 (nuskhuri script, datable to the 10th c.), Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Georg. b. 1 (nuskhuri script, datable to the 11th c.) and Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, georg. NF 84+90 (double palimpsest, asomtavruli script; the Martyrdom of St Febronia contained in its middle layer is datable to the 9th–10th cc.). The analysis focuses on the comparison of these four versions concerning differences and their types (additions, grammatical and lexical variations, word order), including a calculation and evaluation of the differences via Levenshtein distances and their visualisation.