On the Freising Manuscripts’ Translations

Having dealt with some things Czech, others Polish and a bit of Russian and Croatian, we decided to take a detour into the lands of Slovenia.  We begin by taking a quick look at the so-called Freising Manuscripts.

The Freising Manuscripts are Slovenian manuscripts and are the oldest Slavic-language documents written in Latin, likely created before the year 1000.  Perhaps they written by Bishop Abraham in Freising, perhaps not.  Currently, at the Bavarian State Library, they consist of three separate texts.  They are available for viewing here.

The above is the first page of the third manuscript.  We note the translation of the beginning in Slovene and in English is as follows:

Slovene (this is the modern translation of these ancient words):

“Jaz se odpovem zlodeju, in vsem njegovim delom, in vsem njegovim lepotijam.”

English:

“I renounce the devil and all his works, and all his ornaments.”

What the language actually says is the following:

“Iazze zaglagolo zlodeiu.  Iuzem iego delom.  Iuzem iego lepocam.”

Now, the first interesting thing here is that zlodeiu is interpreted as an “evil doer” reminding us of the older meaning of this word (this is correct as the “zlodei” was to be contrasted with the “dobrodei”) which now may mean something else, e.g., “thief” in Polish.

Secondly, notwithstanding the translation, there is no devil or rather the word “devil” is not used.  Just “Zlodei”.  In fact, “dei” may actually be interpreted here as a god, specifically, a bad god, i.e., a zlo dei.  It is curious whether there is a connection between the word deus and the indo-european verb to do – perhaps, as in maker or doer.

Thirdly, the quality of the writing is remarkable.  Spacing, in particular is nice, airy and altogether generous as most words are properly and exactly separated with a nice roomy, yes, space (compare that to the incredibly annoyingly chicken scratched manuscripts of Lucas from Great Kozmin).  A few words are stuck together – mostly the word “and”, i.e., “i”.  Two-letter words, however are usually separated from others.  The word “I” seemingly appears in the text once only (this is partly because of verb conjugation that does not exist in English): as in “Jaz” then “se” in the above text.  Indeed, in modern Slovenian “I am” is “Jaz sem”.  Is that what “Iazze” means?

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