John Chrysostom’s Tale on How Michael Vanquished Satanael – a Bogomil text?

TL;DR

The paper compares two Slavic versions of the *Tale of John Chrysostom on How Michael Vanquished Satanael* with the Greek *Λόγος τοῦ ἀρχηστρατήγου Μιχαήλ* and argues that the Slavic work is not genetically related to the extant Greek text but was composed before the 13th century from a non-extant model. It concludes that the Slavic *Tale*’s Bogomil origin is doubtful, since the text underwent later “liturgization” and “folklorization” and its dualist elements belong to a broader transmission of older Gnostic and Neo-Manichaean ideas rather than an original Bogomil theology.

Key findings

• The Slavic *Tale* survives in five known copies in two versions: the older version is represented by the Savina monastery manuscript (?) and ЦИАИ no. 1161; the newer by Nikoljac monastery no. 82, the Punčo Codex, and ЦИАИ no. 232. The older texts are Serbian-recension Old Church Slavic; the newer come close to Bulgarian.
• The Greek text is preserved in Vat. Gr. 1190a, dated 1542, and is structurally close to the Slavic versions, but the paper rejects Afinogenova’s claim that the Greek is a translation of the Slavic; it suggests the Slavic *Tale* was translated/compiled in Bulgaria or Serbia no later than the end of the 12th or first decades of the 13th century from an unknown Byzantine work.
• Liturgical quotations from John Chrysostom’s anaphora appear in the Slavic *Tale* but are absent from the Greek text; the paper interprets this as evidence of later “liturgization” of the Slavic text, making it suitable for liturgical use, possibly for the Synaxis of the spiritual powers.
• The plot was visualized in sacred art, e.g. the St. Archangel Michael Church in Lesnovo, completed by 1349, and later icons from Skopje (1626) and Sarajevo (1723); folklore legends also process the motif of Satanael stealing God’s insignia, often replacing the robe, wreath, and sceptre with the sun or keys to hell.

Methods

• Comparative and typological analysis of two pseudo-canonical texts: the Slavic *Homily of John Chrysostom on How Michael Vanquished Satanael* in two versions and the Greek *Λόγος τοῦ ἀρχηστρατήγου Μιχαήλ* (BHG 1288n).
• The Slavic versions are based on editions by A. Miltenova and T. Jovanović, using ЦИАИ no. 1161, Nikoljac no. 82, the Punčo Codex, and ЦИАИ no. 232; the Greek text follows O. Afinogenova’s edition of Vat. Gr. 1190a.
• The analysis situates the texts against Judeo-Gnostic tradition, Byzantine-Slavic heretic, pseudo-canonical, and heresiological literature, and compares them with liturgical, iconographical, and folkloric material.

Limitations

• The paper states that the study does not aspire to completeness and that doubts about the time and place of the Slavic translation/compilation remain to be clarified.
• It notes that the small number of extant copies makes it impossible to determine exactly when before the 14th century the Slavic text was completed, and that the Greek text is preserved only in a late 16th-century copy.
• The paper also states that there is no unquestionable evidence proving the work stems from a heretic environment and that it cannot be determined to what extent works such as the *Tale* were used by (moderate?) Bogomil communities; the text itself is fragmentary in places, with missing passages in the compared versions.