WHO REDACTED THE TEXT OF THE ‘KNIGA PALOMNIK’ BY ANTONY OF NOVGOROD, AND WHEN?

 The text of the ‘Kniga Palomnik’, composed by the traveller Dobrynia Yadreikovich (the future archbishop Antony of Novgorod) on the turn to the 13th century, has always been of great interest for the research into Byzantine Studies and Christian Archaeology as it provides the most detailed description of Constantinople on the eve of its plunder and destruction in the fourth crusade in 1204. At the same time its authority as an authentic historical source has often been questioned. Referring to its topographically confusing description of churches and monasteries the author of the text’s first critical edition has assumed that the report, a first version of which has arguably been written before the plunder, was many years later redacted by the author after he returned to Novgorod and learned about the City’s destruction. While redacting his report, Antony presumably hasn’t been able to remember the exact location of the buildings, especially when it came to describing churches dedicated to the same saint. Two short text fragments already known by that time contained several additions to the text (particularly, the note of Constantinoplе’s pilage rendered in one of the two fragments) and thus affirmed this assumption. This is probably why the editor’s opinion, initially expressed merely as a hypothesis, has later become quite axiomatic. The analysis of the text and its history of transmission, however, has cast doubt on the established conception of both its confusion and its several redactions, particularly produced by the author himself. The paper provides the history of the transmission of the manuscript material. Against its background those fragments are being discussed which hitherto where concidered to be the representatives of the first hand redaction.