I did not imagine that the Old Believers in Chelyabinsk still exist today, they managed to survive all the attacks and persecution. I never thought that in the Old Believer library, or rather in the prayer house of the Old Believers, ancient books and icons were collected. This is the only officially registered Chelyabinsk Old Believer Pomor community of the Old Orthodox Pomor Church.
As fans of the history of the Fatherland know, in 1666 the Russian Orthodox Church split in two, largely due to the efforts of the then Patriarch of All Rus' Nikon. One branch, where new laws and regulations were adopted, in particular, to be baptized with three fingers, became official. And the Old Believers (dvoedany, dvuhperstniki) became outcasts-heretics, were forced to hide in taiga hermitages - in Pomorie, in the Urals, in Siberia. Let us recall, for example, the life of the disgraced, frantic adherent of the old, canonical views of Archpriest Avvakum. He was killed "for heresy" in Siberian exile.
They persecuted the Old Believers, bringing them to collective self-immolation in sketes, prayer houses, they also persecuted ancient books that the Old Believers managed to save. If in the old days the Dvoedans were persecuted unheard of for their beliefs, then in modern history, in the days of Bolshevism, and even more so ...
I always have before my eyes a stunning painting by Surikov “Boyar Morozova”. As a child, of course, I didn’t understand why the noblewoman, who was very richly dressed, was “chained in glands”, which means her proud two-fingered gesture, why the beggar holy fool sitting in the snow answers her with the same two-fingered ...
I did not imagine that the Old Believers in Chelyabinsk still exist today, they managed to survive all the attacks and persecution. I never thought that in the Old Believer library, or rather in the prayer house of the Old Believers, ancient books and icons were collected. This is the only officially registered Chelyabinsk Old Believer Pomor community of the Old Orthodox Pomor Church, its council is headed by Dmitry Anfimovich Kargapolov. Himself, although not a deep old man, but with a solid broad beard.
Together with Dmitry Anfimovich, the journalist, under his supervision, was allowed into the prayer house to look at unique folios. There are also manuscripts in leather bindings with clasps, charred in some places, which are under four hundred years old! I can’t imagine how many trials fell on their fate, people from burning sketes and temples endured them at the cost of their own lives.
Dmitry Anfimovich told me something about the centuries-old history of saving ancient tomes:
- The persecution of the old book, which began with Nikon's reforms, gave it special significance. These persecutions contributed to the fact that the old book from the temples moved to the private homes of adherents of antiquity. They tried in every possible way, sparing no effort, no time, no money, to acquire the persecuted books. Hide them and save! And almost all Russian early printed and written literature spread extremely quickly among the Russian people, mainly among the lower classes. This phenomenon is of extraordinary importance for history. It means that almost all monastic and church libraries entered into free circulation among the masses.
- By orders of the authorities, the old books were ordered to be replaced with new ones. In rich monasteries and parish churches, with secret displeasure and sadness, old books, before being sent to Moscow to the Printing House, were demolished and hidden in basements and attics. And new ones were issued from Moscow for pure silver and copper money. In shabby monasteries and poor parishes, this novelty was introduced with a hitch: there were not enough funds to buy new books and send old ones to Moscow. Adherents of antiquity simply bought up old books or exchanged them for new ones.
- The very first and most important consequence of the introduction of new books was that the old book passed to the people. And this book, which ended up in private homes, in miserable huts, quickly led to almost complete literacy of the entire Old Believers. There was a purely popular, spontaneous spread of literacy. According to the Old Believer acts of the end of the 17th century, only 20-30 years after the beginning of the schism, it can be judged that even then the Old Believers had a lot of books and were literate. In the 18th century, in its first quarter, the Old Believers even felt a lack of books, especially those of an instructive and religious and everyday nature. Help came from the famous Vygovsky monastery, where a scriptorium was organized. Not only the monuments of Old Russian literature were copied, but also the works of Old Believer authors. Handwritten Vygov books were distributed throughout Russia, especially along the Volga, Don, and Urals. A special workshop for copying books organized in the convent on the Leksa River played a special role in this. This census workshop replaced a real printing house and produced more books than the then Moscow Patriarchal Printing House, the only one in all of Russia.
- But the vygovtsy were not limited only to the correspondence of books. A special place is occupied by the literary heritage of the spiritual leaders, the monks from the Hermitage - they created hundreds of original works, including the famous "Pomor Answers" by Andrey Denisov: a set of rules on theology, church archeology and paleography, in defense of the old faith from the attacks of synodal missionaries. As modern researcher Elena Yukhimenko notes, “the works of this circle were designed for a high level of literacy of readers, they are characterized by a special style dating back to the Old Russian style of “weaving words”, a variety of rhetorical devices, a complex and sometimes archaic language.”
- In 1857, the authorities confiscated a library of 286 books on Vyga. In 1862, the remains of this library were transferred to Petrozavodsk and transferred to the cathedral. Some of the books were stolen by officials who were lovers of antiquities, another part of the books was distributed throughout Zaonezhye, many manuscripts were lost. At present, only 1,450 manuscripts of the “Pomorian writing” are stored in the ancient repository of the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg.
... At the prayer house of the Dvoedans, we were also met by an admirer of the Old Believers, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Pyotr Vasilyevich Terentyev. He is eighty years old, but strong dvoedan, strong! They allowed me to see the iconostasis of the most ancient icons, to bow to books from the sixteenth century. With respect and understanding in the hands of such a value and rare rarity managed to hold. Touch the ancient pages.
One misfortune, the microclimate in the old hut - the prayer house - is not the same, because of the plumbing failures it is too humid.
5 (100%) 3 votes Not so long ago I came across information that among the Old Believers during the Great Lent it was customary to read the book "The Passion of Christ". Soon this book, reprinted on excellent paper with marvelous illustrations, miraculously caught my eye in the shop of the Tver Old Believer community in Moscow, near the Belorusskaya metro station. There was only one copy on the bookshelf. IN...
4.8 (96.52%) 23 votes HAPPY HOLIDAYS! We congratulate all our readers on the upcoming highly solemn Feast: the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. On this occasion, we share our verified report from Rogozhsky a few years ago. There is nothing more pleasant than stability in a vain world: this year everything will be the same Thank God, even if the ranks of grandmothers objectively line up... Holiday 2016 I managed to visit the temple both in the morning and in the evening on Saturday. In the morning...
5 (100%) 3 votes Today's holiday mentally takes us to the difficult last days of the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ. The next day after the miraculous resurrection of his friend Lazarus from the dead, the Lord Jesus Christ left Bethany for Jerusalem. Numerous crowds of people followed Christ and went to meet Him. On the Mount of Olives, in front of the entrance to the city, He stopped and sent two...
5 (100%) 1 vote Great Lent is coming to an end, and we are on the eve of passionate days. At the beginning of Lent, speaking about its meaning and significance, we thought that Lent should be a time for us when we limit ourselves in everything that prompts us to sin, in order to stand in repentance in the face of our conscience, the truth of man and God. Our limitation of ourselves in everything...
5 (100%) 4 votes April 17 (April 4 O.S.) The Orthodox Church honors the memory of our reverend and God-bearing father Joseph, hymnographer and creator of canons (883) (4). Saint Joseph the Songwriter was born in Sicily into a pious Christian family. The lad was brought up in good book learning and good manners, and already in his childhood customs one could see an indication that, having become a husband, he ...
4.6 (92%) 5 votes On April 16, the Orthodox Old Believer Church will commemorate the Holy Hieromartyr Paul, Bishop of Kolomna, for the ancient piety of the victim. This year marks 363 years since the tragic death of the saint. On the eve of this mournful anniversary, we present an extremely informative article by our writer Dimitri Urushev, published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The works of Demetrius are a rigorous study and synthesis of a number of sources that have come down ...
Digital Collections
Old Believer Collection of the Rare Fund of the ISU Scientific Library
Old Believer literacy is an important part of traditional Orthodox culture. The book is a system-forming and broadcasting component that allows us to judge not only the foundations of this tradition, but also the forms of its existence and development among the Old Believers from different regions of Russia and abroad. Of great interest in this context are the book collections available in the regional state libraries, which have absorbed the literature of the local Old Believer communities.
In Eastern Siberia, which for a long time was part of the Irkutsk General Government (with the Baikal and Transbaikalia in its composition), a large number of Old Believers lived. Basically, they were represented by those exiled at different times (including the Nerchinsk penal servitude) and their descendants. It is characteristic at the same time that the first Old Believer exiled to Nerchinsk was Archpriest Avvakum himself. After him, this road will be followed by thousands of Old Believers who disagree with the policies of the government and the church. The largest influx was the bringing in the second half of the 18th century to Western Transbaikalia (mainly on the territory of the Verkhneudinsky district) of several thousand followers of ancient piety, who had previously settled on the territory of the Commonwealth, and were called “Semeisky” in the region. From that moment on, the Old Believers became a significant part of the local population and began to have a serious influence on the nature of the development of the culture of the region. Throughout the subsequent period, the Old Believers were exiled in small groups and singly, while sometimes they were added to the family. Sometimes they were settled outside the Semey enclave on the territory of Eastern Transbaikalia. At a later time, namely at the beginning of the 20th century, free migrants from different provinces of the European part of the country began to move to the region, especially to its western part - the Baikal region. The exiled and freely arrived Old Believers brought their books with them, established contacts to ensure the supply of books from printing centers, and created a local tradition of rewriting and designing them.
The church authorities, whose functions included the fight against the "schism", periodically confiscated the literature of the Old Believers. Part of it ended up in the library of the Irkutsk Theological Seminary, which not only taught "schismology", but also held regional missionary congresses. In 1920, these books, along with other materials, were nationalized and transferred to the emerging library of the Irkutsk State University. The library also received books from collectors and donors. The most famous of them was N. S. Romanov, whose collection materials replenished the library funds in the 1920s. Throughout the subsequent period, the handwritten and printed collection of the old tradition was replenished due to uneven in time and composition of receipts.
The funds of the ISU Scientific Library contain 269 early printed books, of which 18 were identified as Old Believer. The earliest edition is the Catechism, published in Grodno at the Printing House of the King of Poland in 1783. The latest is the Moscow Printed Bible, which was published in 1914. Chronologically, the early printed texts were distributed as follows. Dated to the second half of the 18th century. There are 5 books, the first half of the XIX century. - 7, second half of the 19th century. - 3 and the beginning of the XX century. - 3 books. It is characteristic that among these editions there is one printed convolute of the first half of the 19th century, which includes lengthy handwritten inserts.
The species diversity of early printed books is represented mainly by liturgical and instructive texts. These are the Bible, the Psalter, the Book of Hours, the Clockworker, the Apostle, the Catechism, the Charter, the Saints, the Canon Book, the Eldership, as well as various collections. At the same time, there are Old Believer historical and polemical works. These are, included in one collection, the texts “On the Fathers and Sufferers of the Solovetsky”, “The Tale of Our Holy Fathers, the Archpriest Avvakum and the Holy Priest Lazar and the Monk Epiphanius”, “The Debate of the Hierodeacon Theodore with the Metropolitan”, as well as the separately published “Truth of the Old Believer Hierarchy against the accusations raised against her, ”the famous figure of the Belokrinitsky consent of Bishop Arseny (O. V. Shvetsov).
As for the geography of origin of early printed books, those of them that have imprint and other direct indications of origin were issued in the printing houses of Grodno, Vilna, Moscow, Klintsy, Suprasl, Pochaevskaya and others. In particular, these are such printing houses as: “ Printing House of the King of Poland" (Grodno), "Printing House Vilenskaya", "Printing House Dm. and Yak. Zheleznyakov" (Klintsy), "Supral Printing House", "Pochaev Printing House", "Printing House of Manuilovsky Nikolsky Monastery", "Printing House Permitted by the Supreme Power (Old Believer)", "Old Believer Printing House", "Printing House at the Preobrazhensky Almshouse", "Printing House of fellow believers ". At the same time, most of all there are books (3 copies each) issued by the Pochaev and Supral printing houses.
The collection of manuscripts [Old Russian tradition] of the Scientific Library of ISU is 100 items. Of these, 25 were previously indicated as Old Believers (Igumnova, 1995). In addition to this list, 17 more manuscripts related to the Old Believer tradition have now been identified. Their volume ranges from 12 ("Instruction ..." of the first half of the 19th century) to 362 (Psalter of the first half of the 19th century) sheets. The most ancient book that existed among the local Old Believers can be considered the Psalter of the beginning of the 16th century. with handwritten Old Believer inserts of the 19th century, confiscated by the Nerchinsk factory police (as a result of which the book has a corresponding seal). The latest manuscript is the Znamenny ("Hook") Liturgy, dated at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. At the same time, chronologically, the manuscripts are distributed as follows. Dated to the first half of the 18th century. there is - 2, the second half of the XVIII century. - 8, the first half of the XIX century. - 21, the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. - 11 manuscripts. It is characteristic that in this collection, along with the actual manuscripts, there is one hectograph of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The predominance of books dating from the first half of the 19th century. most likely a consequence of the tightening of policy towards the Old Believers during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, when the secular and church authorities actively fought against the Old Believers and carried out mass confiscations.
The species diversity of manuscripts is represented by liturgical, instructive, historical and polemical texts. There are 3 texts on "hook" notes. These are the Holidays of the end of the 18th century. (2 copies) and the Liturgy of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Along with the Psalter, the Book of Hours, the Charter, the Burial Order, Skete repentance, Canons, Feasts and liturgical collections, there are the Apocalypse of John the Theologian, Interpretation of the Apocalypse of John the Theologian, Andrew the Archbishop of Kessaria, the Flower Garden of Abba Dorotheus, and others. Old Believer works are presented in the form of such texts as: "The Book of the Antichrist", "On the cases of the last time ...", "Answers of Olonets" by Andrey Denisov, etc. There is also an interesting list of the end of the 19th century. from the work of John Verkhovsky "Schism is not a heresy and the Old Believers are not heretics", made in a good individual handwriting. As an actual Old Believer historical work, the collection has a hectograph “The Life of Ambrose, Metropolitan Belokrinitsky”.
A review of the Old Believer collection of the Scientific Library of Irkutsk State University allows us to draw some conclusions. This collection includes 62 monuments of the Old Believer culture. Of these, 20 are printed books and 42 are manuscripts. The species composition, the chronology of appearance and the approximate area of distribution provide interesting information about the nature of the development of the book culture of the Old Believers in Eastern Siberia. The presence of a large number of manuscripts suggests that, despite the fact that the Old Believers organized delivery channels from publishing centers, they had a shortage of book production until the beginning of the 20th century. Among other things, this led to the formation of a local tradition of rewriting religious texts, which did not disappear either at the beginning of the 20th century or at a later time. A large number of manuscripts dated to the end of the 18th and especially the first half of the 19th century. says that, despite the remoteness from the capital, the policy of persecution of the Old Believers, which once again unfolded during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, reached serious proportions in the region. The presence of printed publications from government-approved Old Believer printing houses of the inter-revolutionary period 1905-1917. speaks of the involvement of the local Old Believers in the all-Russian processes, whether it be the development of trade or the resettlement movement.
Ust-Tsilma. What we call the Old Believer library is a rather arbitrary concept. First of all, these are books created by the Old Believers themselves or copied by them, these are books that they used and owned.
Ust-Tsilma. What we call the Old Believer library is a rather arbitrary concept. First of all, these are books created by the Old Believers themselves or copied by them, these are books that they used and owned. In a word, everything that made up their circle of reading. The Ust-Tsilma library included almost all types and genres of the Old Russian book.
The formation of the Nizovaya Pechora book tradition went through several stages. At the initial stage, the books came here with the first settlers during the period of economic development of the region until the end of the 17th century. The next stage in the development of book culture is associated with the stage of “Old Believer colonization”. The appearance of the local Old Believers in the Pechora is associated with the migration of large peasant masses, who went into a split and were subjected to repression by the authorities. From the beginning of the XVIII century. fugitive Old Believers from Pinega, Mezen, Dvina, as well as from the central regions of Russia, settle in Ust-Tsilma. Around 1715, the Mezen Parfen Klokotov, a native of the Vygoleksinsky community, and the former Solovki elder Feofan founded the Great Pozhensky Skete, which existed until 1851. In the middle of the 18th century. Omelinsky Skete arose on the river. Tsilme.
These sketes were the main centers of local book culture; on Pizhma and Tsilma, the local manuscript tradition began to actively develop. The inhabitants of the Pizhemsky and Tsilma sketes maintained close contact with the Vygoleksinsky book center, from where handwritten collections were sent to Pechora, which were copied by Pechora scribes and distributed throughout the Pechora region.
After the closure of the Old Believer sketes, the influx of books to Pechora decreased significantly, while the need for them constantly increased. This intensified the work of the Pechora scribes from the peasants. In the second half of the XIX century. Pechora has its own talented scribes and editors of old Russian stories, bookbinders, and artists. The most famous book-writing activity of I.S. Myandin. In the last third of the XIX century. The Ust-Tsilma scribes developed a special handwriting, the so-called “Pechora semi-ustav”, the model for which was the Pomor semi-ustav created by the Vygov scribes of the 18th century. The Pechora semi-ustav, in contrast to its prototype, is characterized by greater freedom of writing, the absence of strict linearity in the line, and the squareness of the letters. It is less written out, not so slender, its letters have more curls, wide free strokes of the pen, thin lines. The Pechora semi-ustav, although in many respects inferior in beauty and clarity to the Pomeranian writing, testifies to the outstanding activity of local copyists of manuscripts who continued the best traditions of Pomeranian book writing. A special variety of the Pechora semi-ustav is the type of handwriting developed by I.S. Myandin. It is characterized by sharp extremities of letters and a peculiar inclination to the left.
At the beginning of the XX century. in the development of the manuscript tradition in Pechora, a turning point occurs - it begins to fade, which was largely due to the appearance here of a large number of printed products of Old Believer printing houses. The printed book quickly replaced many handwritten books from peasant use. Corresponding continued only those books that were in great demand in the Pechora, but were not published, for example, apocrypha, spiritual poems, conspiracies.
However, despite all the changes in the social and cultural life of the region, the manuscript tradition in the Pechora proved to be very stable. Manuscripts here, even after the distribution of the printed book throughout the territory of the Pechora Territory, continued to be read, copied and carefully preserved until the end of the 20th century.
The basically Old Believer culture of the Pechora people largely determined the nature and content of local writing. A large place is occupied in it by the works of Old Believer writers of the 17th century. - Avvakum, deacon Fyodor, priest Lazar, Spiridon Potemkin, Gerasim Firsov, and others, works by anonymous writers of the 18th century. about the founders of the Old Believers, as well as the works of Vygov writers of almost all genres, in which Pomeranians tried their literary strength. Their messages, words, teachings, stories, and lives were copied on the Pechora. The autographs of Vygov writers, as well as older lists of their works, have come down as part of the Ust-Tsilma handwritten books. Very popular in Ust-Tsilma were short moral and ethical teachings of the Old Believers, from which the Pechora scribes formed entire collections of edifying character. Reworkings of folk-tale stories, collections of short sayings such as the Bee, extracts from various chroniclers, chronographs, the Book of Powers, digit books, essays reflecting the history of heretical movements in Rus', spiritual poems of the most diverse subjects were widespread here.
The peasants of the Nizovaya Pechora showed great interest in ancient Russian literary and historical works of various genres and in the works of Russian writers of the 11th-18th centuries. The Ust-Tsilems rewrote many stories and tales. Teachings, samples of Russian church-historical literature, apocryphal works. They also showed great interest in transcendental literature: in handwritten collections there are many extracts from the Great Mirror, the Most Bright Star, the Skete Paterik, Izmaragd, Zlatostruy, Solemn and other books.
But the Ust-Tsilma scribes not only copied from the old collections that fell on the Pechora, original and reprinted ancient Russian works. But they themselves were compilers and editors of literary, historical and journalistic works. They came as part of local manuscript collections and are of particular value for studying the worldview and mentality of the Pechora peasantry. In these works, diverse in genres, the themes that first of all excited ordinary Ust-Tsilems sound with particular force: mostly honest labor, the theme of marital fidelity, the problem of the people's tsar, etc.
The handwritten tradition of the Pechora brought to us interesting materials on the history of the region - local synodics, lists of books of the Pizhemsky Skete, letters from peasants.
The study of all this huge and multi-genre material, successfully carried out by V.I. Malyshev and other researchers, is far from being completed. Most of the book heritage of Ust-Tsilma was saved thanks to the many years of work of the famous archaeographer V.I. Malyshev, archaeologists of Syktyvkar University. The main repositories of the Pechora Old Believer Library are now located: IRLI (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (V.I. Malyshev Ancient Storage) and the Rare Book Department of the Scientific Library of Syktyvkar University.
Literature and sources:
Malyshev V.I. Ust-Tsilemsky manuscript collections of the 16th-20th centuries. Syktyvkar, 1960;
Gagarin Yu.V. History of religion and atheism of the Komi people. M., 1978;
Bernshtam T.A. On the problem of the formation of the Russian population in the Pechora basin // Materials on the ethnic history of the European North-East. Syktyvkar, 1985, p. 138;
Monuments of writing in the vaults of the Komi ASSR. Catalog guide. Part 1. Handwritten books. Issue 1. Syktyvkar, 1989;
From the diary of a Vologda diocesan missionary for 1903 // Vologda Diocesan Gazette. 1904.N15. Additions.
A.N. Vlasov http://www.komi.com/
