The Verses about Sofei in the Stishnoi Prolog from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

This article is a publication, with commentary, of the text about Divine Wisdom from the Stishnoi Prolog, a Synaxarium with verses. It was conserved in the Pontifical Oriental institute in Rome (Slavo 5), now in the Vatican Library; the manuscript dates from the beginning of the 16th century, and it originates from Novgorod or Pskov. This codex is well known among Slavists, who have expressed various contradictory judgments about its content. A series of texts—the verses and the lives of saints—have no analogues in other manuscripts. The source also contains some strange errors, even absurdities. On fol. 185 the prayer verses are entered without a title; in other words, they have no relation to any specic event of the Church calendar.The prayer consists mainly of quotations. The first part, which is the beginning ofthe Great Doxology, does not glorify the Trinity but rather it glorifies Sophia, using the Novgorod masculine form Sofei.