The first books in Russia appeared before the appearance of the famous book printers from Moravia - Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius. The prerequisites for the development of book publishing on Russian lands were their high economic and cultural development. An important role in the formation of such a level of development of Russia was played by its political and geographical position - on the oldest trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks", which ensured constant productive cultural exchange with countries of Western and Eastern Europe. The appearance of books, in turn, gave impetus to the emergence and development of libraries in Russia. In the 9-13 centuries this process began in connection with the spread of Christianity in the Russian lands.
Contribution of Vladimir Krasno Sunny to the literacy of the population of Kievan Rus
When did the first libraries appear in Russia? Almost when the great Russian princes attended to the enlightenment of their people.
Historians believe that the first books in Russia appeared in the 9-10 centuries. They were handwritten. At that time they wrote texts on parchment - well-made calfskin. Covers were decorated with gold, pearls, precious stones. Therefore, the cost of handwritten Old Russian books was very high.
Introduction to reading books began in noble families. Even the Kiev prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich, taking the throne and "baptizing Russia" in Orthodoxy, paid special attention to improving literacy and the formation of close associates. He ordered children from noble families to be sent to study at schools opened by his decree, where one of the subjects was reading books. Basically, this literature had a church content or included historical and philosophical information. Vladimir ordered books to decorate the interior of the erected Church of the Tithe.
Despite the fact that the term “library” was not yet used at that time, in fact, collections of Greek, Slavic, and Russian books for literacy could already be considered as such.
By the 12th century, collections of books already existed in the capitals of the major principalities of Russia: Vladimir-Suzdal, Ryazan, Chernihiv, etc. It should be noted that the book was an object of luxury and wealth in Ancient Russia. Only noble people and clergy could own it. Gradually, there was an increase in the number of private libraries belonging primarily to princely and boyar houses.
Library of Yaroslav the Wise
During the reign of the Kiev prince Yaroslav the Wise, for the first time, by his decree, they began to massively rewrite books of both foreign and domestic origin. The copied volumes were stored in St. Sophia Cathedral. The library of Yaroslav the Wise consisted of about five hundred books and contained works of church, historical, and natural science content (including descriptions of fantastic animals), geography, and grammar. There were collections of folklore.
This library was badly damaged during the sack of Kiev by Prince Mstislav Andreevich Bogolyubsky. He brought a large number of books to his place in Moscow. The surviving fund was gradually replenished with new volumes, but at the beginning of the 13th century it was again plundered by Russian princes and Polovtsy, who made joint raids on Kiev. Perhaps Yaroslav the Wise is the one who created the first library in Russia.
Disappeared library
We are talking about the legendary library of the Russian Tsar John Vasilyevich the Terrible, one of the first in Russia. The funds of this collection consisted of three sources:
- gifts of the great princes;
- acquisitions in the East;
- introductions from Greek churchmen arriving in Ancient Russia with the goal of establishing Orthodoxy here.
There is also a legendary version that a large part of the collection was made up of a small fraction of the famous library of Constantinople, brought to the Russian lands by the wife of Ivan III Zoya Paleolog, the niece of the emperor of Byzantium. It was these books that formed the basis of the collection of literature in Greek, Latin and Jewish. After the accession of the Kazan Khanate, the Arabic library was also brought into the royal library.
It is believed that the books were kept in Kremlin cellars. Three main reasons are given as an argument:
- a large number of fires could destroy books if they were left on the surface;
- there were too many hunters from Europe behind these values;
- John the Terrible was very suspicious and did not trust the book to anyone or only particularly close, but in connection with his sudden death it turned out that they all may have been executed earlier.
After the sudden death of the tsar, the secret of the library of Ivan the Terrible remained unsolved. And still no one knows her whereabouts. Perhaps the tsar prudently took it out and hid it outside Moscow. After all, there is evidence that Grozny often left the capital with a wagon train closed to prying eyes with a lot of milk.
Search for the lost
Regarding the mystery of the library of Ivan the Terrible, there are still many versions. So, in 1933, A. F. Ivanov published an article in the famous journal “Science and Life” stating that a secret passage leads through the dungeon under the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to the Kremlin pantries to the disappeared library of Grozny. However, to this day, all searches for the library are futile, and multiple hypotheses are not confirmed.
The first “treasure hunter” is Konon Osipov, a sexton of the Church of St. John the Baptist on Presnya. In the second half of the 17th century, he dug digs under the Taynitskaya and Sobakin towers to find two rooms filled to the top with chests of unknown contents, seen by the clerk of the Big Treasury Vasily Makaryev, not allowed in there by Princess Sofia Alekseevna. I found a covered passage near the Taynitskaya tower, but I could not get into it. Under Peter I, he also explored the course under the Sobakina Tower, but the foundation of the Zeichhaus did not give the opportunity to bring it to the end. Osipov later tried to find the library through trenches dug over the gallery he was looking for, but even this attempt was doomed to failure.
At the end of the 19th century, excavations began by Prince N. Shcherbatov. But since all the courses were filled with land and water, the work was also stopped.
Before World War II, archaeologist Ignatius Yakovlevich Stelletsky addressed this issue. He managed to find and explore part of the Makaryev Gallery, but the library of Ivan the Terrible was not found again.
Monastery libraries and librarians in Russia
The first libraries collected and preserved by ancient Russian monasteries had a huge impact on the development of librarianship.
One of the most famous libraries of the Middle Ages in Russia is rightfully considered a collection of books of the Kiev Pechersky Monastery. Books were brought here by craftsmen painting the main temple of the monastery, and were stored in its choirs.
It was in the first Russian monastery libraries that the position of a librarian was first determined, which was performed by one of the monastery's monks. The other brethren were obliged to visit the library for enlightenment through fellowship with books in the time strictly reserved for the monastery charter. The librarian was usually appointed one of the most enlightened and educated monks. His duties included the storage of books and the distribution of them to other monks for study and familiarization, as well as improving his own literacy and enlightenment. In addition, special rules were written for the librarian, which he had to strictly adhere to.
What kind of books were not in these libraries! And church folios, and historical volumes, philosophical treatises and annals, Old Russian literature and folklore, state documents ... There was even false church literature! Individual monks also had personal libraries, for example, the monk of the Kiev Pechersk Monastery Gregory. He had been collecting books all his life and had no other property.
The monastery library of that time combined three main functions:
- book storage (warehouse function);
- creation of books (creative-creative function): in monasteries books were not only created, but also copied, and a systematic annals were kept;
- the issuance of books (educational function).
The monastery libraries could start with 2-3 books belonging to the founding monk, as, for example, the library of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery began with the Gospel and the Psalter of St. Sergius of Radonezh. A total monastery library could contain from 100 to 350 volumes.
Library of Patriarch Nikon
Patriarch Nikon, who served in the Ferapontov Monastery for a long time, is considered the founder of the Patriarchal Library.
The history of the anxious relationship of Nikita Minin (that was the name of the future Moscow patriarch in the world) with books began to take shape as a child when his mother died, his father was not at home for a long time and the angry stepmother was engaged in raising the unloved stepson. It was her anger and bullying that led Nikita all the time to seek solitude and save himself by reading church texts. Having begun independent literacy, the teenager continued it in the Zheltovodsk Makaryevsky Monastery, where he was a novice from the age of 12. After the death of her beloved grandmother and an unsuccessful marriage, Nikita retires to the
Solovetsky Monastery, where she is tonsured. All the while in the monastery, he prays and reads sacred books.
The further path of Nikon to the dignity of the Moscow patriarch was complicated and thorny. As a patriarch, Nikon carried out a number of church reforms, among which was the "book": holy books were to be translated and reprinted according to Greek canons. Reforms led to a split in the Russian church, and Nikon fell into disfavor with Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and was forced to leave Moscow. After a long exile, he died of a serious illness.
Nikon was a very educated and well-read man. From books he drew experience and wisdom, which helped him and his flock in life and ministry. All his life he collected his personal collection of books. He also kept his own manuscripts. All of his property was described before the departure of the exiled patriarch to the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery. His collection consists of 43 printed books and 13 manuscripts.
Sources of the personal library of Patriarch Nikon:
- gift of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich;
- a gift from the Resurrection Monastery;
- from the mailing of printed materials of the Moscow printing house to the monastery libraries;
- Nikon's orders from the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery;
- correspondence of the patriarch.
The funds of the Nikon library can be divided into:
1. By type of publication:
2. At the place of publication:
- "Kiev";
- "Moscow" (published at the Moscow Printing House).
The history of the formation of the library accounting system
Until now, the system of organizing funds and catalogs of ancient Russian monastery libraries remains incomprehensible, since a huge number of collections and documents were destroyed during the years of wars and invasions, during the Soviet period, died in fires that were frequent in Russia.
The composition of the book fund was formed gradually and was traditionally divided into three main parts, but a fourth could be distinguished among them:
- for conducting church services;
- for compulsory collective reading;
- for personal reading (including secular literature);
- for education ("Herbalists", "Healers", etc.).
The first library inventories appeared at the end of the 15th century and represented a systematic list of books stored in the library. Thanks to ancient inventories, one can trace the history of the formation of library collections and their replenishment. And also to define thematic groups of essays, which can already be considered the forerunner of library catalogs. When studying such inventories, it was revealed that over time in the old Russian libraries there was a process of "washing out" of older editions and the process of their decay.
The formation of funds in the monastery libraries was due to the rewriting of manuscripts from book collections of other monasteries. This became possible in connection with the establishment of close cultural ties between ancient Russian monasteries. The process of exchanging books took place by depositing a book that was similar in value both in terms of money price and in terms of its spiritual significance and content. A similar exchange was carried out not only between Russian monasteries, but also with the monastery libraries of other countries.
In addition, these funds were accumulated thanks to donations from parishioners who donated books from personal collections to the monastery.
The meaning and formation of the term
Literally, the term "library" is translated from Greek as a combination of its two parts: "biblion" - a book, and "teka" - a repository. Dictionaries give us an ambiguous interpretation of the concept. First of all, a library is a repository of books, which corresponds to a direct translation of a word. This is also the name of an institution intended for the storage and distribution of books for reading to a wide range of people. In addition, a collection of books for reading is often called a library. As well as a series of books similar in type or subject or intended for a specific group of readers. Sometimes the word "library" is even called an office designed for classes, which contains many books necessary for this.
In Russia, the term "library" began to be applied only to the 18th century. Until that time, libraries were called "book keepers." However, there is mention of libraries and chronicles of the 15th century, but marked "book house". There are cases when such names as “book-maker”, “book depository”, “book-keeping treasury” or “book treasury” were used. In any case, the meaning of the name came down to the place where the books were put and where they were stored under certain conditions.
Storage conditions for books in ancient Russian libraries
Books were stored in rooms that are usual from a household point of view, but with the mandatory fulfillment of several conditions:
- there should be locks on the door, bars on the windows;
- the room should be “hidden” from the public eye, in a remote and inaccessible corner of the monastery;
- it was possible to get into the room only through tangled passages and stairs;
- books were stored in special boxes, caskets or chests, at a later time - on shelves in vertical cabinets, which made them much less spoiled than from the horizontal storage method, and easier to get;
- arranged according to the themes: church, historical, legal, etc. (in that order they were arranged on shelves);
- the so-called “false” books were separated into a special group (it was strictly forbidden to read them);
- the roots of the books were not signed, and all notes were made on the first sheet or on the outside of the cover, sometimes at the end of the book;
- used for marking books special “clips” - long phrases that pass from page to page from the beginning to the end of the book, from which in the margins, at the edge or spine was written only by word or syllable;
- later they began to use labels glued to the cover or spine.
Finds of the XX century: birch bark library
The first copies of this collection were collected from Novgorod at the end of the 19th century by Vasily Stepanovich Peredolsky. They became the basis of the collection of the museum of birch bark letters, opened by Peredolsky in Novgorod. But since no one could read them, the authorities closed the museum, and the collection was lost.
However, a century later, during archaeological excavations at the Nerevsky excavation site, an ancient birch bark letter was found. In the same season, nine more letters were found. And now the collection already has more than a thousand copies, the oldest of which dates back to the 10th century and was found at the Trinity excavation site.
Four groups of birch bark letters can be distinguished:
- business correspondence;
- love messages;
- threatening messages from God's judgment;
- with obscene language.
There were also found ancient manuscript books, which were wooden boards with a depression in the center, covered with wax. For writing letters, a special writing was used, one of the ends of which was sharp, and the other resembled a spatula - to level the wax. Such books, "notebooks" were used for literacy. Books were made in the same way, combining tablets with texts.
The extraction and replenishment of a unique library continues to this day. It will take about a millennium to fully extract it.