On Tuesday, September 3, a meeting devoted to the translation of the Codex Suprasliensis into Polish took place at the Palace of the Commonwealth. The manuscript, dating from the 10th century, forms part of the collection of the National Library and has recently been put on permanent display at the Palace.

The meeting was attended by Ambassador Margarita Ganeva (Republic of Bulgaria), Witold Karczewski (Honorary Consul of the Republic of Bulgaria in Białystok), Fr Łukasz Koleda (Director of the Museum of the Warsaw Orthodox Metropolis) and many other distinguished guests. The participants were welcomed by Dr Tomasz Makowski (Director General of the National Library) and Fr Jarosław Jóźwik (OIKONOMOS Foundation, the co-organiser of the event). Ambassador Margarita Ganeva expressed her thanks for the extremely fruitful cultural cooperation between Bulgaria and Poland, and a letter from Łukasz Prokorym (Marshal of the Podlaskie Voivodeship) was read out wishing all those delving into the Codex Suprasliensis great spiritual enrichment.

Fr Jarosław Jóźwik: Today is the culmination of a year of events promoting the translation of the Codex Suprasliensis into Polish. Thanks to Dr Tomasz Makowski, Director General of the National Library, we can present here, in this most important place for all publishers and authors, the results of our hard work: the translation, editing and publication of the Polish translation of an extraordinary part of Slavonic and global cultural heritage, a manuscript inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Produced in the late 10th century in Bulgaria by a copyist named Retko, the Codex Suprasliensis contains the lives of the saints and teachings of the Church Fathers to be read during the liturgy in March. It was discovered in 1823 in the Uniate Basilian monastery in Supraśl by Fr Michał Bobrowski, a professor from Vilnius University. It then found its way to the Library of the Zamość Fee Tail in Warsaw, the surviving parts of which have belonged to the National Library since the end of the Second World War. The Codex Suprasliensis is one of the oldest and most valuable records of Slavonic language and writing, and an invaluable source for research into the Old Church Slavonic language. The Polish translation of the text – the world’s first complete translation of the Codex Suprasliensis into a modern language – was carried out by the OIKONOMOS Foundation in cooperation with the Łukasz Górnicki Podlaskie Library in Białystok. Nearly thirty specialists worked on the translation, including Prof. Lilia Citko, Prof. Fr Henryk Paprocki and Dr hab. Ivan N. Petrov, who spoke at the meeting about the complex process of translation and the challenges it involved. The discussion was facilitated by Prof. Dr Aleksander Naumow.

Following the meeting, Dr Tomasz Makowski gave the guests a tour of the permanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth, where the Codex Suprasliensis is displayed. The Codex Suprasliensis is also available digitally in full on polona.pl.