The unknown Mount Athos copy of the holy service to St. Simeon by St. Sava with the prologue life of St. Simeon

The Service to St. Simeon, written by St. Sava, has not been published yet and, despite the fact that there are only a few copies of it, its manuscript heritage has not been fully explored either. Menaion No. 11, written in the early 14th century and archived in the collection of the St. Panteleimon monastery on Mt Athos, has been selected for the purposes of this paper from several copies spanning the period from the mid-13th century to the 30s of the 17th century. This manuscript contains a very old copy of the St. Sava?s Service to St. Simeon that has been unknown to scholars to this day. The paper looks at the structure of the Service presented in the Menaion No. 11 and its place in the manuscript tradition. In terms of its structure - primarily the entire Service to Martinian and the separate canons - this work is one of the oldest versions. On the other hand, the text itself coincides with the version of the akolouthia which is considered a later-date and expanded version representing the veneration of the saint - regardless of the fact that it was preserved in the oldest manuscript dating back to the mid-13th century (SASA 361). All later-date monuments preserve the older state and the joint veneration of St. Martinian and St. Simeon. However, some ?expansions? identified in the copy of the Service from the second or third decade of the 14th century (only a few such ?expansions? are presented in the paper) indicate that this text is definitely older than the one written in the mid-13th century which was used for comparison. As the time span between all versions is not too big (at most 10 to 15 years), the microchronology of their orgin remains to be resolved. For the time being, we are quite convinced that the most widespread version (in the oldest manuscript) could not have been written before St. Sava?s second visit to Mount Athos (after 1217), and possibly before his return. What is particularly interesting about this copy is that it contains the Prologue Life of St. Simeon which does not exist in any other manuscript of the Service. For this reason, the Prologue is presented in its full form in the Appendix.