Names and Attributes of the Mother of God. For a Church Slavonic-Russian-Italian <em>Lexicon</em> of Religious Terms

Abstract

In direct continuity with a previous essay on the study of a selection of attributes referred to the Christian God (Ferro, Romoli 2013), the authors analyze a number of epithets and attributes addressed to the Mother of God or defining her qualities. These words are frequently used in medieval Eastern Slavic literature, they are usually stated in the most authoritative dictionaries of Old and Church Slavonic languages, and remain generally unchanged in modern Russian.
Within the project of a trilingual (Church Slavonic-Russian-Italian) lexicon, the essay aims to show how the translation of religious terms goes beyond linguistics, as the question of correspondence or lack of correspondence in concepts and contexts of reference often arises. Since general dictionaries frequently fail to provide satisfactory solutions, it is necessary to go back to the origins, semantics and use of the terms through the systematic use of different types of dictionaries. In addition, in order to provide a proper Italian translation, the use of dictionaries of the Italian language is also fundamental.