Catherine Mary MacRobert, M.A., D.Phil.
Former University Lecturer in Russian Philology and Comparative Slavonic Philology, Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College.

Research

Starting from my doctoral dissertation on the history of Bulgarian syntax, my research has focused primarily on the delimitation and interaction of various Slavonic vernaculars and the medieval literary language, Church Slavonic.  My primary data are drawn from the various translations of the Psalter produced up to the fifteenth century, and my investigations touch on the origins of Old Church Slavonic, medieval translation technique, evidence for prosodic and morphosyntactic developments (e.g. in clitic use, word division, tense distinctions, mood and verbal aspect), the principles and practice of textual criticism in application to Church Slavonic material, the palaeography of Cyrillic and Glagolitic manuscripts, and Church Slavonic hymnographical traditions.

Publications

‘The multiple-author catena on the Psalms translated into Church Slavonic by Maximus Triboles’,  in: Research on Psalter Catenae: Current Trends and Recent Developments, ed. C. Bandt, R. Ceulemans (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 197) (Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 119-135.

‘A reappraisal of the Radomir Psalter’, in: Radomirov psaltir. Paleografski i tekstologičen analiz. Naborno izdanie, ed. Ieromonax Atanasij, trans. E. Dikova (Zographou Monastery, 2022), 54-127.

‘The Church Slavonic translation of the calendrical stichera and kanon by Christopher of Mitylene in MS Zographou 115 (1392): Edition of the Text’, in: Byzantinoslavica, lxxix:1-2 (2021), 196-237.

Psalterium Demetrii Sinaitici Bd. 2: monasterii sanctae Catharinae codex slav. 3/N, adiectis foliis medicinalibus, ed. H. Miklas, C. M. MacRobert, A. N. Sobolev et al. (Vienna: Holzhausen, 2021).

‘The Greek Source of Maksim Grek’s Church Slavonic catena on the Psalms’, in: Trudy Instituta russkogo jazyka im. V. V. Vinogradova, No.1, Lingvističeskoe istočnikovedenie i istorija russkogo jazyka, 2021, 223-232.

‘Present events: the interaction of verbal aspect and non-past tense in early Church Slavonic’, in: Medieval Temporalities. The Experience of Time in Medieval Europe, ed. A. Suerbaum, A. Sutherland (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2021), 159-82.

‘Observations on the Liturgical Psalter in MS Canon. Liturg. 172 (Bodleian Library, Oxford)’, Slovo, lxx (2019), 77-91.

‘A Church Slavonic adaptation of the calendar in stichera by Christopher of Mitylene’, Byzantinoslavica, lxxvii:1-2 (2019), 76-98.

‘Methodological implications of Nahtigal's remarks on the Acrostich Prayer’, in: Rajko Nahtigal in 100 let slavistike na Universi v Ljubljani, ed. P. Stankovska, A. Derganc, A. Šivic-Dular (Slavica Slovenica, 5) (Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, 2019), 111-123.

‘Re-evaluating the Psalterium Sinaiticum: the limitations of internal reconstruction as a text-critical method’, in: Habent sua fata libelli, Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne, xiv (2018), 149-67.  

‘Maksim Greek in linguistic context’, in: Latinitas in the Slavic World, ed. V. S. Tomelleri, I. V. Verner (Specimina Philologiae Slavicae, 192) (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018), 173-205.

‘The enigmatic Athens Psalter (Greek National Library, MS 1797)’, in: “Slova i zolota vjaz′”. Sbornik statej pamjati V. M. Zagrebina (1942-2004), ed. Ž. Levšina et al., (St Petersburg: Rossijskaja Nacional′naja Biblioteka, 2016), 273-81. (athens_psalter.pdf)

‘The place of the Mihanović Psalter in the fourteenth-century revised versions of the Church Slavonic Psalter’, Studia Ceranea, vi (2016), 75-99.

'The place of Dimitri's Psalter (MS Sinai 3N) in the early transmission of the Church Slavonic Psalter’, in: The Bible in the Slavic Tradition, ed. Svetlina Nikolova et al. (Studia Judaeoslavica, 9), (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2016), 89-106.

'Maximos the Greek: Imprisoned in Polemic', in: Polemic. Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse, ed. A. Suerbaum, G. Southcombe, B. Thompson (Ashgate, 2015), 165-80.

'On the headings and marginal notes in the two Glagolitic psalter manuscripts in S. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai', in: Philology Broad and Deep: In Memoriam Horace Gray Lunt, ed. Michael S. Flier, David J. Birnbaum, Cynthia M. Vakareliyska (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2014), 175-85 .

'The problem of the negated imperative in Old Church Slavonic', in: Miklosichiana Bicentennalia. Zbornik u čast dvestote godišnjice rođenja Franca Miklošiča, ed. J. Grković-Mejdžor, A. Loma (Belgrade: SANU, 2013), 277-91.

'The competing use of perfect and aorist tense in Old Church Slavonic', Slavia, lxxxii:4 (2013), 387-407.

'The linguistic peculiarities and textological importance of the Novgorod antiphonal psalters', Slovene, ii:2 (2013), 31-51.

Bosanski Psaltir iz izbornika Hvala Krstjanina, ed. Lejla Nakaš (Forum Bosnae, 60/12) (Sarajevo: Međunarodni Forum Bosna, 2013), afterword, 263-82; shorter English version: 'How well did Hval know the Psalter?', Bosanskohercegovački slavistični kongres. Zbornik radova (knjiga 1. Lingvistika) (Sarajevo: Slavistički komitet, 2012), 109-117.

'On Using P. A. Gil’tebrandt’s Spravočnyj i Ob”jasnitel’nyj Slovar’ k Psaltiri', in: Schnittpunkt Slavistik. Ost und West im wissenschaftlichen Dialog. Festgabe für Helmut Keipert zum 70. Geburtstag. Teil 1: Slavistik im Dialog – einst und jetzt, ed. I. Podtergera (Bonn: V&R unipress, Bonn University Press, 2012), 473-482.

'Slavonic Manuscripts at Sinai', in: St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai: Its Manuscripts and their Conservation. Papers given in memory of Ihor Ševčenko, ed. C. and M. Mango (Saint Catherine Foundation, 2011), 61-8.

'The textual peculiarities of the Luck Psalter of 1384 (Acquisti e Doni MS 360, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)', Ricerche Slavistiche, New Series, viii (liv) (2010), 101-25.

' "Remember me in your prayers": Reading the Church Slavonic Psalter as an act of commemoration', in Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, ed. M. Gragnolati, A. Suerbaum, Trends in Medieval Philology, ed. I. Kasten, N. Largier, M. Schnyder, vol. 18 (Berlin - New York: De Gruyter, 2010), 39-59.

'The impact of interpretation on the evolution of the Church Slavonic psalter text up to the fifteenth century', in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007, ed. A. Lemaire, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, vol. 133 (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2010), 423-440.

'A Hymnographical Curiosity: Troparia Composed for the Psalter', in Bibel, Liturgie und Frömmigkeit in der Slavia Byzantina. Festgabe für Hans Rothe zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. D. Christians, D. Stern, V. S. Tomelleri, Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe, 3 (Munich – Berlin: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2009), 243-266.

'On the role of memory and oral tradition in the early transmission of the Church Slavonic psalter text', in Xristijanska agiologija i narodni vjarvanija. Sbornik v čest na st. n. s. Elena Koceva, ed. A. Miltenova, E. Tomova, R. Stankova (Sofia: Iztok-zapad, 2008), 340-55.

'Alphabetic suspension in Glagolitic and Cyrillic manuscripts', Slovo, lvi-lvii (2007), 319-32.

'The variable treatment of clitics in 14th-century South Slavonic psalter translations', in Mnogokratnite prevodi v južnoslavjanskoto srednovekovie. Dokladi ot meždunarodnata konferencija. Sofija, 7-9 juni 2005 g., ed. L. Taseva, R. Marti, M. Jovčeva, T. Pentkovskaja (Sofia: GoreksPres, 2006), 373-96.

'On the Problems of Identifying a Preslav Redaction of the Psalter', in Studia in honorem professoris Angelinae Minčeva, ed. M. Dimitrova, P. Petkov, I. Hristova, Acta palaeoslavica, 2 (Sofia: Heron Press, 2005), 39-46.

'The compilatory Church Slavonic catena on the Psalms in three East Slavonic manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries', in CyrilloMethodiana 2005 ad honorem Zdeňka Ribarova et Ludmila Pacnerová, ed. E. Bláhová, E. Šlaufová, Slavia, lxxiv: 2-3 (Prague: Slovanský ústav AV ČR, Euroslavica, 2005), 213-38.

'The Linguistic Basis of Textual Segmentation in Serbian Church Slavonic Sources of the 14th-15th centuries', Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, vii (2002), 207-224. 

'The linguistic and textual peculiarities of the Glagolitic psalter auctioned at Christie’s on 3 June 1998', Palaeobulgarica, xxiv:2 (2000), 3-39.

'In search of a Canon: the dissemination in 14th-century East Slavonic manuscripts of prayers and hymns attributed to Kirill of Turov', Slavica Bergensia, ii (2000), 175-195.

'What was the izvod Svetogorski?', in Rus´ i južnye slavjane. Sbornik statej k 100-letiju so dnja roždenija V. A. Mošina (1894-1987), ed. V. M. Zagrebin (St. Petersburg, 1998), 272-83.

'The Textual Tradition of the Church Slavonic Psalter up to the Fifteenth Century', in Interpretation of the Bible, ed. J. Krašovec (Ljubljana - Sheffield, 1998), 921-42.

'Church Slavonic', in: The Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe (Oxford: Blackwells, 1998), 85-7.

'The historical significance of the Frolov Psalter (Russian National Library, F.п.I.3)’', Die Welt der Slaven, xlii (1997), 34-46.

'Kakav je bio psaltir srpskih srednjovekovnih književnika?', in Srpska književnost i Sveto pismo, ed. B. Ćorić et al., Naučni sastanak slavista u Vukove dane, 26:1 (Belgrade, 1997), 25-32.

'The classificatory importance of headings and liturgical directions in Church Slavonic psalters of the 11th-15th centuries', Byzantinoslavica, lvii (1996), 156-81.

'Problems in the study of the "Athonite" redaction of the Psalter in South Slavonic manuscripts', in Studies of Medieval South Slavic Manuscripts. Proceedings of the 3rd International Hilandar Conference held from March 28 to 30, 1989, ed. P. Ivić (Belgrade: SANU, 1995), 195-213.

'A TEI view of MS Peć 68', in Computer Processing of Medieval Slavic Manuscripts, Proceedings, First International Conference, 24-28 July, 1995, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, ed. D. J. Birnbaum et al. (Sofia: Prof. Marin Drinov Academic Publishing House, 1995), 79-88.

'Church Slavonic' and 'Old Church Slavonic', in: The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 1 ed. (Pergamom / Aberdeen University Press, 1994), ii. 554-5, v. 286-8; 2 ed. (Elsevier, 2005), ii. 417-8, ix. 21-2.

'The Textual Tradition of the Oxford Serbian Psalter MS e Mus 184', Polata k"nigopis'naja, xxi-xxii (1994), 146-54.

'Translation is Interpretation: Lexical Variation in the Translation of the Psalter from Greek into Church Slavonic up to the 15th Century', Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, liii:2 (1993), 254-84.

'A Missing Link in the Early Tradition of the Church Slavonic Psalter (the Tolstoy, Sluck, Eugenius and Vienna Psalters and MS 34 of the Moscow Synodal Typography)', Wiener slavistisches Jahrbuch, xxxix (1993), 57-81.

'‘Two Lykewake Psalters: the MSS Västerås/UUB5/UUB6 and Jaroslavl' 15482’', Scando-Slavica, xxxviii (1992), 108-127.

'What is a Faithful Translation? Changing Norms in the Church Slavonic Version of the Psalter', The Slavonic and East European Review, lxix:3 (1991), 401-17.

'The Systems of Supplementary Penitential Texts in the Psalter MSS Peć 68, Belgrade 36 and Pljevlja 80', Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series, xxiv (1991), 1-22.

'The Greek Textological Basis of the Early Redactions of the Church Slavonic Psalter', Palaeobulgarica, xiv:2 (1990), 7-15.

'Two for the Price of One: the Psalter MS Peć 68', Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series, xxii (1989), 1-33.

'Foreign, naturalized and native syntax in Old Church Slavonic', Transactions of the Philological Society, (1986), 142-66.

'Syntactic Differentiation in the Bulgarian Documents of Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Wallachia', Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series (also in: Ezik i literatura), xvi (1983), 10-32 (35-52).

'The Balkan Type of Linguistic Contact', in Papers in Slavonic Linguistics, i, ed. F.E. Knowles & J.I. Press (University of Aston, 1982), 141-62.

'The decline of the infinitive in Bulgarian' (D.Phil. dissertation, 1980), https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2ef102f6-1699-4b9e-9aa1-6d96719f0bad.