Genre nature of church canonical catechism by the patriarch of constantinople nicholas iii grammatikos

Introduction. The paper examines the genre genealogy of church canonical questions and answers by Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas III Grammatikos. Genre determination of Byzantine catechism literature is a very important aspect of studying of the entire textual corpus in format of a series of question and answers. Although the rhetorical format of catechism was widespread in Byzantium in the 11th-15th cc., unfortunately, this topic is poorly studied. In addition, the literature in this format does not constitute a homogeneous corpus of texts. That is why genre nature of questions and answers is subtle. Methods. Therefore, it necessitates a differentiated approach to every collection of catechism since the very solution of the problem is in the research of their content. Solution by means of method of text structural and compositional features' analysis allows sheding light on genre nature of other catechism collections. Analysis and results. Canonical catechism by Nicholas Grammatikos has a complex manuscript tradition: there are seven editions of various Greek versions of the text available at the moment at our disposal. Considering this the total number of question-and-answer' units reaches 27. Based on analysis of the text structure, its content particularities and stylistics, the author comes to conclusion of the epistolary genesis of the monument. This finding should be taken into consideration in the further study of the Byzantine catechism.