St. John Chrysostom’s Sermon on the Nativity “Now Is for My Nature” in the Manuscripts of the 15th–19th Centuries

The article is devoted to a review of Old Russian manuscripts of the homily on the Nativity of Christ (incipit “Now is for dilapidation of my nature renewal is coming”) attributed to St. John Chrysostom. The homily is based on John Chrysostom’s 6th Discourse on the Gospel of Matthew and his Sermon on the Beating of the Infants in Bethlehem. The Homily textually influenced the creation of the interpolated version of the “Tale of Aphroditian”, the insertions in the Slavonic version of Josephus Flavius’ “Jewish War”, the Old Russian sermon for Christmas (incipit “Lord Jesus is born”), and others. We have identified 103 manuscripts containing this monument, 79 of which are being used for the first time. The sermon is part of the stable content of Panegyrica of the I and II types according to the classification of T.V. Chertoritskaya and was regularly transcribed until the beginning of the 20th century. The “Sermon on the Epiphany of the Lord” by Julian of Tavium, a homily of the 5th century, the Greek original of which has not discovered yet, is regularly found in the same cycle with this monument. The convoy, the prevalence of the homily and its connections with other works suggest that the Sermon “Now is for my nature” is a Byzantine work of oratorical art, represented only in Slavonic manuscripts.