In direct continuity with a previous essay, devoted to 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 terms’
origins, semantics and use 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 too is
fundamental
