Khlebnikov Codex

The Khlebnikov Codex was unexpectedly discovered in the summer of 1809.[3] It is named after one of its previous owners, Pyotr Khlebnikov (Russian: Пётр Хлебников), a merchant from Kolomna, Russia.[4] The codex is currently preserved in the National Library of Russia with registration number "F.IV.230".[4]

Boris Kloss (2007) concluded that the whole text was copied by the same person.[5] He identified the filigree – variants of a wild boar – with the no. 3661 type dated to 1560 by Edmund Laucevičius (1967), leading Kloss to the conclusion that 'the main part of the manuscript was written in the 1560s'.[6] Aleksey Shakhmatov (1908) identified the text's language as "southern Rus', with very typical local features".[6] Several notes on the final folio's verso confirm this southwestern provenance, with one note praising a certain "logothete Vitolt Maroc of the Moldavian land".[5][7] This "Vitolt Maroc" (Romanian: Vitold Mărăţeanul) was identified as the codex' owner,[8] but the next note under it claims Vitold the logothete "stole" this book from "father governor of Ustia" in the town of "Krosnyk".[8] Oleksiy Tolochko (2007) reported that Vitold Maroc served under Constantin Movilă, hospodar (prince) of Moldavia (r. 1607–1611), his brother Jeremiah, Jeremiah's widow in 1615, and Constantin's widow Domna, who lived in Ustia.[8]

The Khlebnikov Codex or a closely related copy may have been present or known in the city of Kiev in the early 1620s, because a marginal note in chapter four of Palinodia (1621), which may or may not have been added by author Zacharias Kopystensky himself, mentions a "chronicle of Nestor".[8] Although the word the word нестера ("of Nestor"?) in the opening lines of the Khlebnikov Codex is known to be a later interpolation because it is not found in any other of the five main textual witnesses of the Primary Chronicle (PVL), and therefore not evidence of Nestorian authorship,[9] the Khlebnikov Codex is the oldest-known extant manuscript to claim that a person named "Nestor" wrote it.[9] Therefore, it is possible that the marginal note in Palinodia refers to the Khlebnikov PVL copy or a closely related copy that Kopystensky or a later reader of his work was familiar with.[8]

Several pages from the original Khlebnikov Codex were lost in the 17th century, while a couple of other pages were inserted out of order.[10] To make up for the lost pages, new pages were copied from a different Hypatian-type text, namely folios 130, 131, 182, 224, 225, 332, and 333 (with a filigree dating to 1641–1646); new folio 182 was unnessarily copied, because the original was not lost, but reinserted in the wrong place as folio 186.[10] Shakhmatov discovered that corrections in vermilion (red) ink in the first few pages of the Khlebnikov Codex were based on one of the Tver Compilation copies; Kloss analysed that these corrections could not have been done earlier than the 1640s.[10]

Kloss further observed that the bookbinding must have taken place in the late 1750s, as the binding paper has a 1756 filigree of the coat of arms of Yaroslavl, inserted pages carry the watermark of the Mosolov paper factory from the 1750s, and there are 'many notes in black ink concerning the year 1756, partly cut off near the binding. Therefore the binding must have been done soon after the year 1756.'[5]

The codex contains the Khlebnikov manuscript[11] (also spelt Xlebnikov,[2] abbreviated Xle,[12] X,[2] Х,[13] or Kh[14]) which is one of the six main manuscripts preserving the Primary Chronicle (PVL) which scholars study for the purpose of textual criticism.[13] The Khlebnikov text of the PVL is closely related to the older Hypatian Codex (c. 1425),[2] with whom it shares a common ancestor.[15] But during the process of transmission, Khlebnikov has been "contaminated" by a Radziwiłł/Academic-type copy.[15] Gippius (2014) considered the Hypatian/Khlebnikov copies to represent the "southern, Kievan branch" of the PVL, as opposed to the other four (Laurentian, Trinity, Radziwiłł, Academic) being of the "Vladimir-Suzdal branch".[16]

The Khlebnikov Codex also contains a copy of the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle (GVC), for which it is considered a more reliable source text than the textual witness found in the Hypatian Codex.[11] While the 1843, 1908 and 1962 editions of the GVC published in the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles (PSRL) and the 1871 Archaeographical Commission edition were still primarily based on the Hypatian text and only included Khlebnikov for variant readings, A. Klevanov's 1871 Russian paraphrase was the first work to take the Khlebnikov text as the foundation for reconstructing the GVC.[17]

• "ОР F.IV.230 Хлебниковский список Ипатьевской летописи" [OR F.IV.230. Khlebnikov Codex of the Hypatian Chronicle.]. Website National Library of Russia (in Russian). Retrieved 24 May 2023.