THE VISION OF ST PAUL THE APOSTLE IN A SERBIAN COPY DATING FROM THE LAST QUARTER OF THE 15TH CENTURY, PRESERVED IN THE NIKOLJAC MONASTERY COLLECTION.

Among the apocryphal visions of heaven, The Vision of St Paul the Apostle, also known as The Apocalypse of St Paul, stands out due to its scope and the picturesqueness of its fantastic scenes, in particular those of hell. This apocryphal text was translated from Greek into Old Church Slavic as early as the Ohrid-Preslav period. There exist several versions of the Serbian copy of The Vision of St Paul the Apostle. The complete version exists in two incomplete copies from the 15^th century. Other Serbian copies contain a mixed version, encountered in the form of two subvariants, the longer and the shorter one. In addition to the above, there also exist two excerpts from this apocryphal document, mainly containing isolated scenes of the parting of the soul and the body. The Nikoljac Monastery copy N° 52, which is the subject of this paper, belongs to the shorter mixed variant. It was written in the Serbian-Slavic language, characterised by the inconsistent use of the Resava orthography and a few features derived from the folk speech of the day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]