Public relations in ancient Rus'. Old Russian writing

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Chobitko P.P. Alphabet of Old Russian writing. Charter, semi-titer, cursive, ligature. SPb. – Moscow, 2008.

After Peter I finally approved the civil type by 1710, writing in Russia began to be taught mainly according to Western models and methods. Starting from the 19th century, almost no manuals on Old Russian writing were published in Russia. Over time, the rules and principles of writing the Old Russian letter with a wide-nib pen were lost.<…>

The proposed edition of the "ABC" appeared on the basis of many years in various universities. In recent years, the number of hours in curricula in font has been drastically reduced, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand and master this important area of ​​Russian written culture. Our craftsmen organically intertwined the WORD into Architecture, into the interiors of temples and dwellings in the form of mosaics, paintings, carvings on stone and wood. The ligature girded bells, dishes with its decor; it was used in sewing shrouds, church decoration, jewelry, and icon painting.

Today, temples and architectural monuments are being restored, iconostases and icons are being restored, arts and crafts are actively developing, and it is difficult for a modern master to do without an appropriate guide or manual.

If the Old Russian language is taught in minimal doses in the departments of philology, then Old Russian writing is not studied anywhere, even in theological seminaries and the Theological Academy. To date, there are practically no teachers in this subject and there are no educational institutions where this course is taught. All modern prescriptions for Old Russian and Church Slavonic writing do not correspond to their name, since they do not give an idea of ​​​​how the letter should be written, and thereby detract from the writing process itself. IT IS UNACCEPTABLE TO WRITE AN OLD RUSSIAN LETTER WITH A BALLPOINT PEN, which deadens living body letters, distorts the rules of its writing, deprives the letter of its true image.

At the International Christmas Readings for Moscow, the task was repeatedly set to recreate the conditions for teaching the Church Slavonic language and writing and to train teachers and mentors in these subjects. This also requires manuals that could be used not only in Orthodox schools and gymnasiums, but also in general education institutions. In Church Slavonic, N.P. Sablina’s “Slavonic Letter” and B. Pivovarov’s “Orthodox Culture of Russia” have already proven themselves. This "ABC Book" is the first manual on the basics of Old Russian writing and is intended for practical training of schoolchildren and students in studying the main forms of Old Russian writing - charter and semi-charter.

Download djvu: YaDisk 21.5 Mb - 300 dpi - 115s. color illustrations, table of contents Download pdf: YaDisk 45.7 Mb - 300 dpi - 115 c., color illustrations, table of contents Source: http://www.docme.ru/doc/61492/chobit._ko-p.-p.- --azbukovnik---2008

ABC. Charter - 2. Troparion is equal to app. Cyril and Methodius - 6.

• How to work with ABC - 8

Introduction - 10

• Notes - 12
• Literature - 13

1. Workplace. Tools - 14
2. Watching a letter - 16
3. Through exercise to skill - 16
4. Copying letters - 17
5. Activities of a teacher or mentors - 18
6. Rules for the student - 18

Superscripts and titles - 20. About serifs - 21. Placement of text on a sheet - 21. Scheme for constructing charter elements - 22. Scheme for constructing semi-charter elements - 23. Charter - 26

Az 26. ABC 27. Yes 28. WHERE 29. Zelo 30. ZhSZ 31. Kako 32. IIK 33. Think 34. LMN 35. Rtsy 36. ODA 37. Firmly 38. STOU 39. Fert 40. UHF 41. Tsy 42 WѾTs 43. Worm 44. ChShSh 45. L 46. Bs 47. Yu 48. Yus 49. Ksi 50. Ѫ Ѧ 51. Vzhitsa 52. V Ѱ Ѳ 53.

Alphabet prayer from the book of V. Kulin 1885 - 54. Semi-status - 56

Az 58. ABC 59. Yes 60. WHERE 61. Zelo 62. ZhSZ 63. Kako 64. IIK 65. Think 66. LMN 67. Rtsy 68. ODA 69. Firmly 70. STO 71. Fert 72. UHF 73. Tsy 74 WѾTs 75. Worm 76. ChShShch 77. L 78. Bs 79. Xi 80. V Ѧ 81. Yu 82. YuѢYa 83. Vzhitsa 84. V Ѱ Ѳ 85.

Alphabet prayer of Konstantin Preslavsky IX century - 86. Copying as a method of studying Old Russian writing - 88. Dictionary - 103. Acknowledgment 110

Lesson 9. Topic: "Old Russian writing: charter, semi-charter, cursive, ligature"

Purpose: to fix in the memory of children the names and spelling of these fonts.

Lesson equipment: for students - notebooks or albums, pens; for the teacher, photocopies are required (each type of letter).

Guidelines: if possible, show a printed book with these fonts. You can use fairy tales with illustrations by I. Ya. Bilibin (ligature). Children have albums or notebooks on their tables in which they can try writing in different fonts. Distribute photocopies to children "statute", "semi-status", "cursive script", "ligature". Children write down the names of the lesson and stick photocopies in their notebooks.

Information for the teacher. In Russian handwritten books and in non-book writing there were three types of writing: charter, semi-charter, cursive, ligature.

Charter - oldest form Cyrillic, characteristic of the manuscripts of the XI-XIII centuries. The letters were distinguished by their straightforwardness and thoroughness of writing. One letter was written separately from another, without dividing the text into separate words. The shape of the letters approached a square. There were no abbreviations or superscripts. The pen with which they wrote was broad-ended. It is an early form of the Cyrillic alphabet. The change in shape depended on the instrument with which they wrote. Cane or feather (goose, swan, peacock). Charter, as a special handwriting, dominated for several centuries, gradually he moved from parchment to paper.

Semiustav is a new form of the Cyrillic alphabet that developed in the 15th century. At this time, the need for books increases and professional scribes, cherishing time, wrote faster and neater. The handwriting is smaller and rounder. There is no such thoroughness, the execution of letters, which was inherent in the charter: the correct distance between the letters is violated, since the semi-charter was written faster and somewhat more sweepingly. Merged letters (ligatures) and superscripts appeared - titles, which denoted abbreviated words. According to the Greek model, stress marks were used - "forces".

Cursive. This type of writing became widespread from the middle of the 14th century, gradually replacing the semi-ustav. The cursive was distinguished by the diverse styles of the same letters. The ends of the letters are extended beyond the line. Speeding up writing was also achieved by shortening words and placing letters above the line. Cursive writing is found mainly in documents and letters.

Elm is a special decorative letter, common in the 15th century. Elm wrote the names of the manuscripts. Distinctive features of the tie are various combinations of letters, abbreviations and ornamental decorations, decorative writing in which a line is connected into a uniform continuous ornament. The letters of the tie are different in height, often connected, the words are abbreviated and merged. The title of the book (fairy tale) was written with elm. The main task is to place beautifully a certain amount of words in the space of one line. Elm was a favorite decorative look Cyrillic in Rus', it was very widely used in arts and crafts. Elm is also found on household items, in sewing, in icon painting, on the walls of temples.

Lesson 10

Purpose: to tell children about the emergence of monasteries in Rus' and their role in cultural education.

Lesson equipment: for students - albums and pens; for the teacher - photocopies (the image of the monks in the scriptorium), albums with views of the monasteries.

What monasteries do they know? What do monks do in monasteries? Why were monasteries built? Distribute photocopies to the children so that they paste them in a notebook or albums, and only then begin to tell the story of Russian monasteries.

Information for the teacher. Under Yaroslav the Wise, monasticism arose in Rus', the first monasteries appeared. The monks were very educated for those times. They taught children literacy and various subjects. Monasteries played the role of universities. Books were needed to educate children. Books were written in monasteries, translated from different languages, and books were rewritten so that there were more of them. They compiled chronicles, collections, philosophical treatises, etc. In Kyiv, there is the first large temple of Sophia, on the territory of which a monument to Yaroslav the Wise is erected, who stands with a book in his hand.

Text from chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years": "In the summer of 1037, Yaroslav laid the great city, at the same city the Golden Gate. He also founded the church of St. Sophia ... And he was attached to books, reading them often both night and day. And he gathered many scribes, and they translated from Greek into Slavic, and they wrote off a lot of books, faithful people are taught by them ... Yaroslav, having written many books, put them in the church of St. Sophia, which he created himself.

The monasteries had a special room where the monks worked on the creation of books. latin word"scriptor" - scribe, clerk, copyist. There was a great need for books. The monks were also helped by the laity. Scribes, translators, bookbinders, editors, artists, parchment craftsmen, and jewelers worked on the book.

The monks found an opportunity to bring books from other countries and translate them into Russian. Church and secular books: chronicles, historical novels, collections of sayings, philosophical and legal treatises.

Work in scriptoria was considered a charitable and honorable deed. " There is goodness, brethren, bookish reverence ... Beauty is a weapon for a warrior, sails for a ship, and bookish reverence for a righteous man. The art of the handwritten book in the Middle Ages reached high excellence. Many of the manuscripts are of great value as works of art, writing and illustration. Until the 12th century, manuscripts were written on parchment. After the advent of paper, this new material, cheaper, began to be used, which contributed to the reduction in the cost of books and books. increase their production. But paper has not completely replaced parchment. Many books, especially church service books, were decorated with special luxury; they continued to be written on parchment. Books were written on paper, intended for wide circulation and for long-term storage. In most handwritten books, the text was arranged in two columns. The columns were framed with thin rulers drawn in pale paint (pink or blue). The rulers of the lines were drawn with a sharp instrument, or drawn with the same pale paint. The width of the margins was subject to the strict requirements of the composition of the entire spread. The scribes were free to choose the font design. Their personal taste and talent were shown. The fonts of handwritten books amaze with the variety and consistency of drawings in a certain style.

What fonts do kids know? The books were kept in the deacon's room of the church (at the northern gate) or in the sacristy, where the liturgical utensils were kept. There was no special equipment in the bookkeeper (library). An archaic "ark" was used. They used "boxes", the manufacture of which Novgorod was famous for. They used chests and wall shelves to store books.

The term "library" was established only from the 18th century. Before that, there was a Russian word " bookkeeper." The founders of the libraries of ancient Russian monasteries were their founders.

A contemporary of St. Sergius of Radonezh told how St. Sergius, together with the first monks, wrote books on birch bark. Because of poverty, they did not have parchment. The monastic charter approved the position of a librarian who kept books, monitored the issuance of books and replenishment of the bookkeeper. According to the Charter, the book keeper was supposed to gather the monks on days free from work and give them books to read on a blow to the beater. In the evening, also on a signal, the monks had to return books taken by appointment. Extradition was officially prescribed by the monastic rules. The organization of book lending prompted appropriate methods and recommendations. The idea of ​​soul-beneficial reading, which permeated the everyday and literary practice of old Rus', bore the features of a generally recognized norm. Reader's order form; the book was requested and issued from the vault through the usual negotiations with the librarian. And in those ancient times there was a question about the inaccuracy of readers. In the statute: "Whoever hesitates to return the book, let him undergo penance". Reader dishonesty: the borrowed books were not returned. The book fund was divided into books to be issued and not to be issued. When a book is lost, it is natural to replace it with a doublet. However, this method is extremely rare. More often there is a compensation for the loss of another book. The methods of punishment are also typical. Deprivation of food, dry eating, shameful public standing at a common dinner.

There was no classification of the book fund. There was a single order to record books in the inventory. When arranging, a "serf" (fixed) arrangement of books was used. This method "attaches" a book permanently to one permanent place in storage. The library classification, combined according to several criteria, originated in the Russian state hardly earlier than the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries. Contents of libraries:

liturgical books,
edifying creations of the fathers and teachers of the church and books for private reading,
secular books,
hagiographic literature presented in menaias, prologues, patericons, collections and separate lists,
collections of edifying tales from the life of Christian ascetics,
historical literature,
natural science,
applied literature,
legal collections (texts of "Russian Truth").

Lesson 11

Purpose: to explain to children why chronicles were written, and who wrote them.

Lesson equipment: for students - a notebook and pens; for the teacher - photocopies ("scribe"). Book "The Tale of Bygone Years". "Song of the Prophetic Oleg" A. S. Pushkin.

Methodological recommendations: write down the topic in a notebook and the following words: "summer" - in - Old Russian "year";"records by year", i.e. "records by years", both words "year" and "years" are preserved in Russian.

Ask students how they will tell their age? What does the entry "In the summer of 1037" mean, that is, "In the year 1037." Read with children "The Tale of the Prophetic Oleg" and compare with the work of A.S. Pushkin "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg".

Information for the teacher. Each entry in the annals began with these words: "In the summer ...". Chronicles are special literary works of Ancient Rus' that tell about the events of Russian history year after year. In Rus', chronicles were kept from the 11th - 13th centuries. Until the XIV century, the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, chronicles were the main type historical narrative. Chronicles were compiled in monasteries, at the courts of princes, kings, in the offices of metropolitans. The chroniclers carried out instructions or orders from spiritual or secular rulers, and reflected the interests of certain groups of people. That is why the chronicles contradicted each other. By their structure, they represented weather articles. They wrote about every event that happened. Sometimes there was brief information or a literary form of presentation. Even in the weather records, the chroniclers included the appeals of the princes, their dialogues. Chronicles are not only the main sources on political events, but also monuments of ancient Russian secular literature. Chronicles are different. Some contain only a few lines of text. There are chronicle Codes, consisting of several folios, covering five, six or seven centuries of Russian history. For example, the Facial Code, which, in addition to texts, has over 16,000 colorful miniatures. This Chronicle Code was compiled under Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Records by years - chronicles were kept in the Middle Ages and in other countries.

But Russian chronicles are a unique phenomenon in world culture. Chronicles began to be compiled in the first years after the Baptism of Rus'. The first of the most famous chronicles is called "The Tale of Bygone Years", compiled in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. The monk Nestor began to write this chronicle. Compiling the Code, Nestor, first of all, took care to get his hands on the works of his predecessors: historical documents, treaties, messages, testaments of princes, historical stories, lives of Russian saints... all available material, Nestor put everything together in a consistent presentation over the years. The document was placed under the year to which it belonged, the life of the saint - under the year of his death, the historical story, if it covered several years, was divided by years, and each part was placed under its own year. The construction of the annalistic presentation by years was convenient. In the work on the annals, it was sometimes necessary to eliminate contradictions, sometimes to carry out complex chronological research in order to place each event under its own year. Based on his political ideas, the chronicler sometimes skipped this or that event, occasionally accompanied them with his own brief political comments, but did not compose new news.

Having finished his work as a "pairer", the chronicler supplemented this material with his own records of the events of recent years. This chronicle is encyclopedic in nature. It includes geographical and ethnographic information, excerpts from songs that have not come down to us, epics, tales and legends. The chronicles of Nestor, his contemporaries and followers have not come down to us. They were destroyed during the Mongol-Tatar invasion in the XIII century. In the fourth grade, children probably already know about this invasion and can tell something themselves. At that time, many Russian cities, monasteries, churches, princely courts. But the chronicle did not stop. The scribes of subsequent centuries continued the work of the Kyiv chroniclers. With reverence for the word written by their predecessors, they included in the works compiled by them the text of The Tale of Bygone Years. They did not consider themselves the authors of the text. The chronicle could not have an author, because it, the chronicle, was compiled for centuries. "So that the memory of our parents and ours does not cease, and the candle would not go out", - as the Moscow prince Simeon the Proud wrote in his spiritual will. Most of the Russian chroniclers were monks. The writing of the chronicle was for them a monastic obedience, or, to put it another way, their spiritual feat.

After the story about the annals, you can read in " Tale of Bygone Years" "The Tale of the Prophetic Oleg"(as Nestor wrote it). And then read "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg" A. S. Pushkin and ask the children what they liked best.

riddle-confusion. Ancient Rus'. XII century. Several people are sitting in the cell of monk Gabriel, and they are copying books. Monk Gabriel dipped a quill pen into an elegant porcelain inkwell and drew a beautiful initial letter in blue ink on a papyrus leaf. As soon as the book is finished, monk. Gabriel will decorate it with illustrations. Then the sheets are rolled up into a scroll and taken to the library.

Books for children:

1. Petrova N.G. Introduction to history. - M .: Russian Word, 1998. - 192 p.
2. Stories of the Primary Russian Chronicle. - M .: Det. lit., 1982.– 149 p. Malov V. Book.– M.: Slovo, 2002.– 48 p.
3. Remneva M.L. Az, Buki, Vedi. - M .: Moskovsky worker, 1985. - 133 p.
4. Shchepkin V.N. Russian paleography. - M .: ASPECT Press, 1999. - 270 p.

Books for the teacher:

1. Glukhov A.G. World art culture. At the hearth of Russian writing from Yaroslav the Wise to Andrei Bogolyubsky. Issue. 1.– M.: International Union of Book Lovers, 2001.– 158 p.
2. Glukhov A.G. Book Rus. - M .: Sov. Russia, 1979.– 222 p.
3. Glukhov A.G. Wise scribes of Ancient Rus'. From Yaroslav the Wise to Ivan Fedorov. - M .: Ex-libris-Press, 1997. - 256 p.
4. Stolyarova L.V. From the history of the book culture of the Russian medieval city (XI-XVII centuries). - M .: Ros. humanit. un-t, 1999.– 174 p.
5. Ukhvatova E.V. At the origins of Russian writing. - M .: Izd. House "Ant", 1998.– 235 p.
6. Voronetsky B., Kuznetsov E. Font. - L .: Artist of the RSFSR, 1975. - 103 p.
7. Ptahova I. The simple beauty of a letter. - S.-P.: Russian graphics, 1997. - 288 p.

Hypothesis about pre-Christian writing in Rus'

A significant group of researchers believe that the Slavs were literate before the adoption of Christianity. This opinion was shared by Soviet researchers Istrin V.A., Obnorsky S.P., Yakubinsky L.P., Lvov A.P. and others. A number of sources were used as evidence:

1. "About the Letters" Chernorizets Brave
2. "Lives of Constantine and Methodius"
3. Texts by Arabic author Ibn Fadlan
4. "The book of painting news about scientists and the names of the books they composed" An-Nadima
5. Treaties of Rus' with the Greeks $911, $945

Sometimes the so-called "Book of Veles" is cited as evidence, although it has been proven that this is a forgery of the $XX$ century. The most competent source in this matter can be considered the legend of Chernorizets the Brave "On the Letters":

“Before, the Slavs did not have letters, but they read by features and cuts, they guessed by them, being filthy.”

Remark 1

However, at the moment there is no solid evidence in science for the existence of a pre-Christian Slavic writing.

Missionaries Cyril and Methodius

The authors of the Slavic alphabet, Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius, were on a mission in Moravia: the ruler of this state turned to the Byzantine emperor Michael $III$ with a request to send teachers. Moravia was baptized, but did not have its own written language, which made the process of Christianization difficult. The conditional date of the creation of the Slavic alphabet, therefore, is considered to be $863$ - the beginning of the educational mission of Cyril and Methodius in Moravia.

Remark 2

In science, it is considered proven that Methodius and Cyril created the so-called "glagolitic" . The alphabet in the usual form - "Cyrillic" - created by a student of Cyril, Kliment Ohridsky, based on the Glagolitic alphabet and the Greek alphabet.

Cyril and Methodius were actually teachers of the southern Slavs, while the eastern ones were not included in their activities. But at the same time, monk brothers are considered enlighteners in Rus', the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius has become very popular. The fact is that the Bulgarian sources, which describe the activities of the monks, were among the first books in Rus' and were widely distributed.

The spread of writing in Rus' after the adoption of Christianity

On a national scale, Slavic writing in Rus' began to spread with the adoption of Christianity.

But since it is known that a small number of Christians lived in Rus' during the pagan period, it can be assumed that they used the Slavic alphabet.

Example 1

Archaeological finds confirm this fact, for example, the “Gnezdovo inscription” on a clay jug.

With the adoption of Christianity, Slavic writing began to spread throughout the Old Russian state. The reason for this was the need to study religious literature and conduct worship services precisely on mother tongue because only in this way the process of Christianization was easier. Slavic writing came to Rus' from Bulgaria, since the language of the Bulgarians at that time was as close as possible. In addition, Bulgaria had adopted Christianity a century earlier and already had an impressive volume of translated theological literature. In the process of the spread of writing in Rus', the Cyrillic alphabet significantly prevailed, although it is known that the Glagolitic was also used.

Example 2

An example of the use of the Glagolitic alphabet is “Kyiv Leaflets”, a recording of an excerpt from the liturgy. The appearance of the Glagolitic alphabet seems to be very complex, which is probably why the Cyrillic alphabet replaced it.

There is an opinion according to which the Glagolitic, due to its complexity, was used as a cipher, a secret letter. However, it is important to emphasize that Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets almost coincided in terms of letter composition: $40$ letters in the Glagolitic alphabet, $43$ letters in the Cyrillic alphabet of the $11th century.

The generally accepted date for the emergence of writing among the Slavs is 863, but some researchers argue that they knew how to write in Rus' before.

Closed topic

The topic of pre-Christian writing in Ancient Rus' was considered in Soviet science, if not forbidden, then quite closed. Only in recent decades, a number of works devoted to this problem have appeared.

For example, in the fundamental monograph "History of Writing" N. A. Pavlenko offers six hypotheses for the origin of the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets, moreover, he argues that both the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets were among the Slavs in pre-Christian times.

Myth or reality

Historian Lev Prozorov is sure that there is more than enough evidence of the existence of writing before the appearance of the Cyrillic alphabet in Rus'. He argues that our distant ancestors could not only write individual words, but also draw up legal documents.

As an example, Prozorov draws attention to the conclusion of an agreement with Byzantium by Oleg the Prophet. The document deals with the consequences of the death of a Russian merchant in Constantinople: if the merchant dies, then one should “treat with his property as he wrote in his will.” True, in what language such wills were written is not specified.

In the "Lives of Methodius and Cyril", compiled in the Middle Ages, it is written about how Cyril visited Chersonesos and saw there the Holy Books written in "Russian letters". However, many researchers tend to be critical of this source. For example, Viktor Istrin believes that the word "Russian" should be understood as "Sour" - that is, Syriac scripts.

However, there is other evidence confirming that the pagan Slavs still had a written language. This can be read in the chronicles of Western authors - Helmold from Bosau, Titmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, who, when describing the shrines of the Baltic and Polabian Slavs, mention inscriptions on the bases of the statues of the Gods.

The Arab chronicler Ibn-Fodlan wrote that he saw with his own eyes the burial of the Rus and how a memorial mark was placed on his grave - a wooden pillar on which the name of the deceased himself and the name of the king of the Rus were carved.

Archeology

Indirectly, the presence of writing among the ancient Slavs is confirmed by the excavations of Novgorod. On the site of the old settlement, writings were found - rods with which the inscription was applied to wood, clay or plaster. The finds date back to the middle of the 10th century, despite the fact that Christianity penetrated Novgorod only at the end of the 10th century.

The same writing was found in Gnezdovo during the excavations of ancient Smolensk, moreover, there is archaeological evidence of the use of rods for writing. In a mound of the middle of the 10th century, archaeologists unearthed a fragment of an amphora, where they read the inscription made in Cyrillic: “Pea dog”.

Ethnographers believe that "Pea" is a protective name that was given by our ancestors so that "grief is not attached."

Also among archaeological finds ancient Slavic settlements, the remains of swords appear, on the blades of which blacksmiths engraved their name. For example, on one of the swords found near the village of Foshchevata, one can read the name "Ludot".

"Features and cuts"

If the appearance of samples of Cyrillic writing in pre-Christian times can still be disputed, in particular, explained by the incorrect dating of the find, then writing with “features and cuts” is a sign of more ancient culture. This method of writing, still popular among the Slavs even after being baptized, was mentioned in his treatise “On Letters” (beginning of the 10th century) by the Bulgarian monk Chernorizets Brave.

Under "features and cuts", according to scientists, they most likely meant a kind of pictographic-tamga and counting writing, also known among other peoples in the early stages of their development.

Attempts to decipher the inscriptions made according to the type of "features and cuts" were made by the Russian amateur decryptor Gennady Grinevich. In total, he examined about 150 inscriptions found in the territory of the settlement of the Eastern and Western Slavs (4th-10th centuries AD). Upon careful study of the inscriptions, the researcher identified 74 basic signs, which, in his opinion, formed the basis of the ancient Slavic syllabic writing.

Grinevich also suggested that some samples of the Proto-Slavic syllabary were made with the help of pictorial signs - pictograms. For example, the image of a horse, dog or spear means that you need to use the first syllables of these words - “lo”, “so” and “ko”.
With the advent of the Cyrillic alphabet, the syllabary, according to the researcher, did not disappear, but began to be used as a secret script. So, on the cast-iron fence of the Sloboda Palace in Moscow (now the building of the Moscow State Technical University named after Bauman), Grinevich read how "the Hasid Domenico Gilardi has the cook Nicholas I in his power."

"Slavic runes"

A number of researchers have an opinion that the Old Slavic writing is an analogue of the Scandinavian runic writing, which allegedly confirms the so-called "Kiev Letter" (a document dating from the 10th century), issued to Yaakov Ben Hanukkah by the Jewish community of Kiev. The text of the document is written in Hebrew, and the signature is made in runic characters that have not yet been able to read.
The German historian Konrad Schurzfleisch writes about the existence of runic writing among the Slavs. His thesis of 1670 refers to the schools of the Germanic Slavs, where children were taught the runes. As proof, the historian cited a sample of the Slavic runic alphabet, similar to the Danish runes of the 13th-16th centuries.

Writing as a Witness to Migration

Grinevich, mentioned above, believes that with the help of the Old Slavic syllabic alphabet one can also read the Cretan inscriptions of the XX-XIII centuries. BC, Etruscan inscriptions of the 8th-2nd centuries. BC, Germanic runes and ancient inscriptions from Siberia and Mongolia.
In particular, according to Grinevich, he was able to read the text of the famous "Phaistos Disc" (Crete Island, XVII century BC), which tells about the Slavs who found a new home in Crete. However, the bold conclusions of the researcher cause serious objection from the academic community.

Grinevich is not alone in his research. Back in the first half of the 19th century, the Russian historian E. I. Klassen wrote that “the Slavic Russians, as a people educated earlier than the Romans and Greeks, left many monuments in all parts of the Old World, testifying to their stay there and to the ancient writing.”

The Italian philologist Sebastiano Ciampi showed in practice that between ancient Slavic and European cultures there was a certain connection.

To decipher the Etruscan language, the scientist decided to try to rely not on Greek and Latin, but on one of the Slavic languages, which he was fluent in - Polish. Imagine the surprise of the Italian researcher when some Etruscan texts began to lend themselves to translation.

The progenitor of all Slavic languages: eastern (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian), western (Polish, Czech, Slovak) and southern (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian) is the Proto-Slavic language (about five thousand years ago it stood out from the common Indo-European base language) . The progenitor of the language of the ancient Eastern Slavs was the common Eastern Slavic (or Old Russian) language, which about one and a half thousand years ago stood out from the Proto-Slavic language. This language is called Old Russian because the Eastern Slavs, having created an independent state - Kievan Rus, formed a single Old Russian nationality. From it, approximately in the XIV-XV centuries, three nationalities stood out: Russian (or Great Russian), Ukrainian and Belarusian. So, the Russian language belongs to the East Slavic group Slavic branch Indo-European family of languages.

In the history of the Russian language, two periods can be conditionally distinguished: prehistoric or pre-literate (before the 11th century) and historical (from the 11th century to the present day). The 11th century is considered to be the watershed between the pre-literate and historical periods of the development of the language, because the first monuments of eastern Slavic writing. The historical period in the development of the Russian language can be schematically represented as follows:

• - Common East Slavic (Old Russian) language (written period, from the 11th to the 14th centuries);
• - the language of the Great Russian (Russian) people (XV-XVI centuries);
• - the formation and development of Russian national language(XVII-beginning of the XIX century);
• - modern Russian language (from Pushkin to the present day).

The main sources in the study of the history of the Russian language are its ancient written monuments. The question of the time of the emergence of writing in Rus' has not yet been finally resolved. It is traditionally believed that writing in Rus' arose with the adoption of Christianity, that is, in the 10th century. (However, there are documents confirming that the Eastern Slavs knew the letter even before the baptism of Rus' and that the Old Russian script was alphabetic.) After baptism, handwritten books appeared in Rus', written in the Old Church Slavonic language, brought here from Byzantium and Bulgaria. Then Old Russian books began to be created, written according to Old Slavonic models, and later Russian people began to use the alphabet taken from the southern Slavs in business correspondence.

Slavic writing had two alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. The name Glagolitic comes from the Slavic word verbal - to speak. The second alphabet was named Cyrillic after one of the two brothers - Slavic enlighteners who lived in the 9th century on the territory of present-day Bulgaria, the compilers of the first Slavic alphabet.

Cyril (his secular name is Konstantin) and Methodius were monks (you can learn more about them here). To write church books, they (mainly Cyril) created an alphabetic system of thirty-eight letters based on the signs of the Greek alphabet. The letters were supposed to reflect the finest nuances of Slavic sounds. This system became known as the Glagolitic. It is assumed that the work on the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet was completed in 863. After their death, the brothers were canonized and on the icon, as you can see here, they are always depicted together. In Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, there is a monument to Cyril and Methodius, it is installed in front of the building of the National Library, which bears their name. In Moscow, there is also a monument to the great Slavic enlighteners, erected in 1992. The sculptural composition (the work of the sculptor V.M. Klykov) is located in the center of Moscow on Slavyanskaya Square(at the beginning of Ilyinsky Square, which leads to the Polytechnic Museum and the monument to the heroes of Plevna). The Day of Slavic Literature and Culture is celebrated in Russia on May 24.

At the end of the 9th and beginning of the 10th centuries, the followers of the Slavic enlighteners created a new Slavic alphabet based on Greek; to convey the phonetic features of the Slavic language, it was supplemented with letters borrowed from the Glagolitic. The letters of the new alphabet required less effort when writing, had clearer outlines. This alphabet, which was widely spread among the Eastern and Southern Slavs, later received the name of the Cyrillic alphabet in honor of Cyril (Konstantin) - the creator of the first Slavic alphabet.

In Ancient Rus', both alphabets were known, but the Cyrillic alphabet was mainly used, and the monuments of the Old Russian language were written in Cyrillic. Cyrillic letters denoted not only speech sounds, but also numbers. Only under Peter I, Arabic numerals were introduced to denote numbers.

The Cyrillic alphabet gradually changed: the number of letters decreased, their style was simplified. Yusy (large and small), xi, psi, fita, izhitsa, zelo, yat were eliminated from the alphabet. But they introduced the letters e, d, i into the alphabet. The Russian alphabet was gradually created (from initial letters Old Slavic alphabet - az, beeches) or alphabet (names of two Greek letters - alpha, vita). At present, there are 33 letters in our alphabet (of which 10 are used to designate vowels, 21 - consonants and 2 characters - ъ and ь).

In Cyrillic writing, capital letters were used only at the beginning of a paragraph. A large capital letter was intricately painted, so the first line of a paragraph was called red (that is, a beautiful line). Old Russian handwritten books are works of art, they are so beautifully and skillfully decorated: bright multi-colored initial letters (capital letters at the beginning of a paragraph), brown columns of text on pinkish-yellow parchment ... Emeralds and rubies were ground into the finest powder, and paints were prepared from them , which still do not wash off and do not fade. The initial letter was not only decorated, its very outline conveyed certain meaning. In the initial letters you can see the bend of the wing, the tread of the beast, the plexus of roots, the meanders of the river, the contours of two twins - the sun and the heart. Each letter is individual, unique...

In the collection we have, there are initial letters of the North Russian ornament of the XII-XIV centuries. The samples were stylized by the artist N. Vinogradova [Moscow, ed. art", 1984]. Apparently, in the XII-XIV centuries, the red lines of the manuscript pages of the book were decorated like this.

Another element of decoration of handwritten books were illustrations. The State Historical Museum in Moscow has a collection of miniature illustrations from handwritten books of the 15th-17th centuries. So, in Karion Istomin's "Primer" of 1693 (the first illustrated Russian textbook), each letter of the alphabet was accompanied by drawings. Here, for example, is the page dedicated to the letter "H". In the upper left corner there is a letter symbol in the form of two warriors holding hands. To the right, different styles of the letter "H" are shown. Below are objects whose names begin with this letter: bore (stretcher), nose, knife, nights (trough for storing flour or bread), leg, bat (bat). [Old Russian miniature in the State Historical Museum, Issue 3, "Science and Education". Moscow, ed. "Fine Arts", 1980]. Now let's take a look at this page.

An extremely interesting collection of handwritten and early printed books can be found on the website of the Ural State University. The ancient repository of the University has twenty-seven book collections, almost every collection contains both handwritten and early printed books. For example, having visited the Kirov Assembly, you can see and learn about how and when the printed edition of the Gospel of 1569 was found (printers Ivan Fedorov and Peter Mstislavets) - a fragment of the Gospel is shown on the right. Interesting handwritten and early printed books are presented in the Collection of Philologists. From the materials collected by philologists in the Perm region, the collection of the Ural University began to be created. In the Collection of Philologists (more than fifty manuscripts and thirty-four early printed books were found in total) there is a handwritten book with pictures called "The Passion of Christ". This is a list (text reproduced from the original) of the second half of XIX century. The Dalmatian Collection has a handwritten collection of instructive instructions and short stories"Bee" 1713 in leather binding (on the left - a fragment of the collection).

The ancient Bulgarian writer, who called himself Chernorizet Khrabr, writes in his essay “On Letters” that before Cyril and Methodius invented the alphabet for the Slavs, the Slavs used “features and cuts” to mark something - lines and notches on wooden sticks. So it was in Rus'. It was also when Bulgarians and Serbs, Czechs and Macedonians were already writing in Slavonic.

More than a hundred years have passed since the Thessalonica brothers (they lived in the Greek city of Thessalonica) - the Slavic primary teachers Constantine-Cyril and Methodius - taught the Slavs to read and write. It took more than a century for books written in Slavonic to finally appear in Rus'. This happened simultaneously with the baptism of Rus', in 988. Rus', having adopted Christianity, could no longer do without books - liturgical and other, that is, intended for reading, and not for worship. Chet books usually contained the lives of the saints, various teachings, stories about Christian ascetics. But the first books in Slavonic, or, as this language is usually called, Church Slavonic, which appeared in Rus', were written not in Kiev, Chernigov, Polotsk, Veliky Novgorod, or in any other Russian city, but among the southern Slavs: Bulgarians, Macedonians and possibly Serbs.

In ancient times, the creation of a book was a very time-consuming and long process. Before the invention of printing, books were copied by hand by specially trained scribes who spent several months on this work. They wrote with feathers. One scribe specifically notes that he wrote the book with a peacock feather, but usually, of course, goose feathers were used.

They wrote books on parchment - calfskin, as a rule, the skin, which was treated in a special way for this: soaked, stretched, dried, rubbed with pumice and chalk, and so on. Good quality parchment is white and smooth, there are no large holes on such parchment, small tears are neatly sewn up with thin linen threads. Looking at the darkish parchment of poor quality, sometimes you can determine what color the calf was. Sheets of such parchment may have uneven edges and a rough surface. Durable parchment books have served people for centuries.

In Rus', parchment was called haratya, and parchment manuscripts were called charate books. Parchment was such an expensive material that it was sometimes reused. Unnecessary for some reason, the text was washed away or scraped off, and then written on a sheet of parchment again. A manuscript written on such parchment is called a palimpsest, from the Greek words meaning "again" and "scrape". Sometimes scientists manage to read the remnants of the former, washed away, text.

From the finished parchment they made notebooks (from the Greek "four") - these are four large sheets of parchment folded in half and sewn together along the fold line. The notebooks were lined, scratching thin lines with a sharp instrument, and after the text was written, the notebooks were bound - sewn together and the resulting block of the book was enclosed between two wooden boards that served as a cover. A person who read the book in its entirety was said to have read the book from board to board (in this case we say: from cover to cover).

Obviously, immediately after the baptism of Rus', there were not only Russian scribes of books, but also masters - manufacturers of parchment. And there were probably not so many people who could read Slavonic. In order for "their own" books to appear in Rus', it was first necessary to teach people to read and write. But more on that ahead.

The first Slavic books brought to Rus' were quite simple. We know about this because one such book written by a South Slavic scribe has survived to our time. The book, or rather, this little book, is quite small. It is a third smaller than a school notebook, but thicker: it has 166 sheets (according to tradition, in handwritten books, the number of sheets, not pages, is determined; if a book has 166 sheets, then it has twice as many pages - 332). This nondescript book is considered the oldest surviving Cyrillic manuscript. Cyrillic - the alphabet, to which our alphabet goes back - is similar to the early medieval Greek letter and is named after St. Cyril, but Cyril and Methodius did not come up with it, but another alphabet - Glagolitic. It was in the Glagolitic alphabet that the most ancient Slavic books were written in the 9th century (although only manuscripts of the late 10th - early 11th centuries have survived to this day). Nobody has been using the Glagolitic alphabet for a long time, although back in the 18th century a variety of the Glagolitic alphabet was used in Bosnia. And in Rus', they probably knew the Glagolitic alphabet in ancient times, but they preferred to write it in the more convenient Cyrillic alphabet, which was created by the students of the Slavic first teachers.

Many wonderful ancient manuscripts have their own proper names. Manuscripts were often named after the place of discovery or place of writing: the Onega Psalter was found in a monastery in the Onega district of the Arkhangelsk province, and the Galician Gospel was written in the southern Russian city of Galich. The manuscripts were named after the person who ordered the book: the Gospel of Vladimir Andreevich the Brave was written for the prince of Serpukhov and Borovsk, a participant in the Battle of Kulikovo, a cousin of Dmitry Donskoy, and the Psalter of John Alexander was written for the Bulgarian tsar, who lived in the middle of the XIV century. Some manuscripts are called by the name of the scribe-scribe - the Yavilov Gospel, the Ladder of Metropolitan Cyprian. As you can see, the rewriting of books was an occupation that even the metropolitans did not neglect.

The book we are talking about was probably written at the end of the 10th century. It is called "Savva's book", because at the bottom of one of the sheets was found the entry: "priest Savva wrote." The scribe of this manuscript of the Gospel left us his name. Savvin's book is written in a handwriting called charter. This is a clear and even handwriting, similar to our "printed" letter; he wrote most of the parchment Slavic books.

But how do we know that this manuscript ended up in Rus' so long ago?

You have probably noticed that books that are read a lot and often (your textbooks, for example) deteriorate. The cover is torn off, the corners are worn out, which are taken when turning the pages, the sheets fall out (usually at the beginning and at the end of the book). Ancient parchment manuscripts were also dilapidated. In addition, they were threatened by gluttonous insects that made passages in the thickness of book pages, and rodents - mice and rats - were not averse to tasting parchment (sometimes even dripped with tallow candles!) to taste. They say that the famous library of Ivan the Terrible was eaten. True, not mice, but besieged in the Kremlin in early XVII centuries by hungry Poles.

The manuscript of Savva's book was read so actively that the last sheets were lost already at the end of the 11th century! But caring readers rewrote the lost sheets. By the manner of writing, by the handwriting and peculiarities of the language, we can determine that the manuscript was "repaired" in Rus'. And when, after another century and a half, the initial pages of Savva's Book were worn out, they were also replaced with new ones. In this form (from the middle of the XIII century) the book has survived to this day, and we can now restore the history of her life. No wonder the ancient Romans said that books have their own destiny!

In the initial Russian chronicle, under the year 988, it is reported that Prince Volodimer Svyatoslavich of Kiev "began to take children from noble people and give them to book learning," reasoning, of course, that it is easier to teach children book wisdom than adults. The same chronicler testifies to how new a thing book learning was, saying that "the mothers of these children wept for them ... as for the dead." A little later, the son of Prince Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, establishes schools in Novgorod.

Probably, at first the teachers were South Slavic scribes, but rather soon their own teachers appeared in Rus'. Yes, and the case, so unfamiliar before, has become quite common with time. Chronicles no longer tell us almost anything about schools, about weeping mothers, which means that mothers were comforted, and schools became something ordinary. So that the chroniclers stopped paying attention to it. But after all, we will not specifically report about our city or our country, that children study here in schools. For what? After all, otherwise, as it seems to us, it does not happen. And there is not a word in the annals about the fact that children do not study. This means that our ancestors perfectly understood that learning, the ability to read and write is a very important thing, and one should study under any circumstances.

All of you probably remember your first book you read on your own. And, probably, remember that you learned to write after you began to read. And to write correctly - and even later. So it was in ancient Rus'.

First they taught to correctly name the letters, then put the letters into syllables, and then read the words in warehouses. Only there were no special children's books, primers and textbooks then, and the Book of Hours and the Psalter became the first books. Back in the 18th century, such training must have been quite common. Remember? In D.I. Fonvizin’s comedy “Undergrowth”, deacon Kuteikin teaches the overgrown ignoramus Mitrofanushka to read from the Book of Hours and the Psalter.

About how people learned to write in ancient times, we were told by the old Russian school "notebooks" found in Novgorod during archaeological sites. True, these notebooks are not like ours with you. We already know that in Ancient Rus' they wrote on parchment. But parchment was an expensive material, and, of course, it was not used for schoolwork. The "notebooks" found by archaeologists are the bottom of an old birch bark, strips and pieces of birch bark, on which letters were scratched with a sharp tool. On one of the pieces of birch bark, we see the Cyrillic alphabet, scrawled by an inept hand:

As you can see, it is noticeably different from the alphabet that we are taught in school. In addition, some letters are missing - the student did not yet firmly know the alphabet. At the bottom of the tueska is also an alphabet, but more complete, without gaps, and a whole exercise follows the alphabet. A boy who lived in the middle of the 13th century writes out the syllables: "ba, va, ha ..." and so on until "shcha", then: "be, ve, ge ...". There was only enough space on the birch bark to reach the syllable "si". But we already understood that Onfim - on the back the boy scratched a drawing and wrote his name - is learning to write out syllables. Archaeologists have found several drawings of Onfim on birch bark mixed with school exercises.

Looking at the inept scribbles, you understand how much birch bark had to be torn off the unfortunate birches in order to teach at least one boy to write.

But it turns out that for school exercises they also used more convenient "notebooks" - ceres. Cera is a small wooden board with a recess on one side into which wax was poured. Children learned to write letters on wax, from which it was easy to erase an unsuccessful inscription or make room for a new exercise. Such notebooks are also found among archaeological finds. Cers were used not only by the Slavs, but also by the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks. The interconnected ceres were called the codex.

You undoubtedly know the word style, but you may not realize that originally this was the name of a bone or metal instrument, pointed at one end and wide at the other, with which they wrote on wax. "Turn your style more often," the Greek teachers advised their students, and the students obediently erased what they had written with the blunt end of their writing instrument. In Rus', such a "pen" was called writing. She could draw letters on wax, scratch on birch bark. And some gladly demonstrated their mastery of writing on the walls of churches. The inscriptions scratched on the walls are called graffiti. In the Kiev and Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedrals - and these are one of the most ancient stone buildings in Rus' - a lot of graffiti of various contents was found, indicating both that there were many literate people in Rus' already in the 11th century, and that they they did not always choose the right place and time for their exercises in the art of writing.

But Vladimir and his son Yaroslav the Wise organized schools not for literate people to leave their autographs on plaster. And we know that already during the reign of Yaroslav there were books written in Rus' by Russian scribes. True, the Russian manuscripts of that time did not reach us, but the name of one of the scribes was preserved in a later copy list. In 1047 the Book of the Prophets was rewritten by a man who signed: "Priest Ghoul Dashing". Of course, this was not his Christian name.

The first surviving dated book written in Rus' is the so-called Ostromir Gospel, which the deacon Gregory copied in 1056 for the Novgorod mayor Ostromir. The posadnik, the most important figure in ancient Novgorod, was apparently a very wealthy man. This Gospel is written on large sheets of excellent white parchment in a very beautiful clear and large handwriting. It is decorated with colorful initials (large capital letters), ornamental headpieces and miniatures - images of the evangelists. The best artists of the 11th century did not spare expensive paints and created (dissolved, specially prepared as paint) gold to decorate the manuscript. At the beginning of the 12th century, a manuscript similar in beauty was created by order of Prince Mstislav the Great. And to top it off, this manuscript was also decorated with a salary, or, as they said in ancient times, fettered - chased silver gilded plates decorated with precious stones and pearls. But Ostromir and Mstislav the Great ordered such luxurious or, as they say, solemn manuscripts not for themselves, but in order to donate them to some temple or monastery, where such manuscripts were used only on the biggest holidays.

Ordinary liturgical books were simpler, and sometimes even almost inconspicuous. Often they were decorated not by special artists, but by the scribes themselves. And instead of many colors, they used only cinnabar - a bright red paint of mineral origin. Cinnabar was used to write a title at the beginning of a new chapter in a book - they started with a red line. But it happened that both headings and initials were made with the same ink that was used to write the main text.

In addition to liturgical books, already in the 11th century, several books began to be copied. Often these were all kinds of collections, compiled from fragments of works different authors. Kiev Prince Svyatoslav also orders such a book for himself. In 1073, the Izbornik was rewritten and luxuriously decorated for him, the content of which is the same as that of the first Christian king of Bulgaria - Simeon. We also know that in ancient times there were lovers of reading in Rus' from a letter found in which one person asks his friend or relative to send him a good reading. One must think that this friend could have his own library. And it is known for certain that the libraries were in the monasteries. There the monks learned book wisdom: they copied books and read them.

True, not everyone read books diligently. The ancient author draws us a lazy monk who leafs through the book, counts the notebooks from which it is composed, examines the initials and miniatures, looks out the window, rubs his eyes, tries to read again, and finally, having closed the book, sleeps until dinner. Not everyone copied books diligently. Often scribes in the afterword ask for forgiveness for mistakes they might have made out of folly, either while speaking with a friend or in thought. And in one manuscript we find a postscript of the following content: "Oh, a book, a book... I'm already sick of you..." But when the book is finally completed, the scribe sighs with relief. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, as the hare rejoices, having avoided the net, as the helmsman rejoices, having brought the ship to the pier, so the book scribe rejoices when he sees the last leaf,” wrote one scribe of the chronicle in the last quarter of the 14th century.

The scribe's name was Lavrenty, and he copied, probably, the most famous Russian chronicle, which is named after him - Lavrentievskaya. This chronicle is remarkable in that it contains the most ancient Russian chronicle code, the so-called "Tale of Bygone Years".

Every Christian nation necessarily feels itself involved in history, in the events that the books of the Old and New Testaments tell about, and in the history of the Christian time that continues them. The most striking expression of this involvement is the annals, or chronicles, -- special compositions, which tells about the past time, consistently talks about what happened in the city, country and world. And so year after year. The chronicler writes about what he himself saw, and about what he knows from other people's words, and about what he only guesses. Therefore, in the annals one can find quite short stories and, conversely, lengthy and detailed stories. Whether there was a fire, whether there was a drought, whether there was a battle - all this and many, many other things can be read in the annals. For a historian, chronicles are an indispensable source of information about people's lives. It is only necessary to remember that a Muscovite and, for example, a Novgorodian could have very different information about the same historical event, not to mention opinions.

Often, though by no means always, chronicles begin with a story about how this or that people is connected with biblical events. "Where did the Russian land come from" - with this begins the oldest chronicle that has survived to this day, which at the very beginning of the XII century was compiled by a monk of Kyiv Caves Monastery Nestor is one of the most remarkable ancient Russian writers. Only later, other, often nameless ancient Russian scribes, each continued, as best he could, the chronicle of Nestor. Later, in different regions and principalities of Rus', their own special stories about the rapidly changing time were compiled. But they all go back to the "Tale of Bygone Years" by Nestor the chronicler.

But Nestor was not only the author of chronicles. The first Russian lives also belong to him. It is Nestor who is the author of The Tale of the Life and Destruction of Boris and Gleb and the Life of Theodosius of the Caves. The sons of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, St. Boris and Gleb (in baptism - Roman and David), treacherously killed by their half-brother Svyatopolk, became the first Russian saints. It so happened that excerpts from Nestor's story under the heading "Reading from Genesis" in ancient times were even included in the Paremiinik - a book of readings from the Old Testament - this sad story of Nestor was so highly valued. Not worse known ancient Russian people bright and full of lively details is a story about the life and deeds of one of the founders of the Kyiv Caves Monastery, hegumen Theodosius, which also served as a model for later ancient Russian hagiographers - compilers of lives.

Note, however, that Nestor was not the first Russian writer known to us. Approximately half a century before him, the priest Hilarion was monastic in Kyiv, about whom the ancient author reports that he was "a good man, a scribe and a faster." It is usually believed that Hilarion was one of those scribes whom, according to the chronicle, Prince Yaroslav the Wise gathered in Kyiv to translate and copy books. This Hilarion in 1051 was appointed by the Council of Russian Bishops as Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus' - he becomes the first Russian Metropolitan! Indeed, before that, from the very moment of the baptism of Rus', all the metropolitans to Rus' were sent only from Byzantium. We do not know much about the life of Hilarion, but we know for sure that even after becoming a metropolitan, he did not leave his book studies and became the author of one of the most famous ancient Russian church teachings - “The Sermon on Law and Grace”.

We began this chapter with the fact that the Christian people cannot live without history. But he cannot live without the constant preaching of Christianity. It is the preaching of Christianity, the participation of the new Christian people - the Russian people - in the Christian world that the Word of Metropolitan Hilarion is dedicated to. This work is perfect in form and betrays in the author a remarkable education and knowledge of the best examples of Byzantine Christian literature. The “Word of Law and Grace” was also the first Word created in Ancient Rus', the first Russian work in Church Slavonic, designed to be spoken aloud.

But you probably know better about another Word - "The Word about Igor's Campaign". The person who created late XII centuries, the dramatic narrative of the campaign of the Novgorod-Seversky prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the Polovtsy remained nameless. The fate of the work was also dramatic. It so happened that the only handwritten copy of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" is a list found by Count A.I. Musin-Pushkin in the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in Yaroslavl, burned down in the Moscow fire of 1812. Only a copy made for Empress Catherine II and an 1800 edition remain. But the printed edition is not a manuscript. There are a lot of incomprehensible, or, as they say, dark places in the text of the work. And for almost 200 years now, from time to time, disputes have arisen about whether the Tale of Igor's Campaign is really a monument of ancient Russian literature or is it a skillful forgery created in late XVIII century. And at that time they were very fond of forging antiquities, but we will talk about this in more detail later.

The Tale of Igor's Campaign is not very similar to ancient Russian military stories, nor is it very similar to other works of ancient Russian literature. There is almost no comparison with the "Word of Law and Grace". We will find in the Tale of Igor's Campaign the names of the pagan Slavic gods: Dazhdbog and Stribog and others, but only hints of Christianity. But more than a hundred years have passed since Metropolitan Hilarion's sermon, and almost two hundred years have passed since the baptism of Rus'! Obviously, it was just accepted in the princely environment, which had not yet completely forgotten its Varangian origin. But after all, we do not consider A.S. Pushkin a pagan because his hero became a rich heir "by the supreme will of Zeus."

As you can see, ancient Russian literature from the very beginning of its existence was distinguished by its diversity and almost incredible richness, of which far from everything has survived to our time. They wrote in Rus' a lot and willingly. They wrote the lives of saints and military stories, chronicles and teachings. They described pilgrimages to holy places and all sorts of miracles. Rewrote liturgical and other books. They copied Russian compositions and works of South Slavic authors. They translated from Greek, Latin and even Hebrew.

But there was another kind of writing.

In addition to literature in the sense familiar to you and me, everyday writing was also developed in Ancient Rus' - writing that was not associated with high culture, writing adapted for everyday human needs. This is not only graffiti on the walls of churches, not only school exercises.

Try to answer the question, who and why were taught in ancient Russian schools?

Maybe the schools trained copyists of books and special princely scribes-notaries? For a long time, historians believed that only priests and deacons, employees of princely "offices" and some rich people were literate in Rus' - not so many people in total. This was believed until 1951, when during archaeological excavations in Novgorod the first birch-bark writing was found. Then more and more.

Now more than a thousand birch bark letters of the 11th-15th centuries have already been extracted from the earth. Letters were found not only in Novgorod, but also in Pskov, Moscow, Tver, Torzhok, Zvenigorod of Galich in Ukraine and in Old Ryazan, a city burned by the Horde in the 13th century. It may seem that a thousand letters is quite a bit. But after all, this is a small part of what can still be found, and an insignificantly small part of what was, but burned down in fires or decayed in the ground, was burned or torn into small pieces even in antiquity. Those letters that archaeologists find were thrown away and preserved in damp soil, in urban street dirt, which, as we know, is sometimes impassable even now.

At first, scientists believed that birch bark letters were illiterate. It was written very differently from how ancient Russian books were written. Later, however, it was found out that birch-bark letters were written according to special rules, simpler, but no less strict than the rules of book writing.

So, it turns out that literacy in Ancient Rus' was quite high, a literate person was not at all uncommon. This, of course, does not mean that anyone could copy books or keep a chronicle, but write business letter, a request, many could make a list of debtors. And indeed, among the finds there are complaints from boyars against clerks, reports from tax collectors, letters to relatives, business requests and orders. In all the variety of letters, only greeting cards were not found.

There are memorial notes to the church - they were also written on birch bark, there is an urgent report on military operations on the border with Sweden, there are notes for the memory of the icon painter - do not forget which saints the customer wants to see on the icon. A monk writes to a friend of a monk, a son writes to his parents and invites him to come to his place, a sister writes to his brother, the customer demands a finished product from the blacksmith. There are also Love letters. Otherwise, what is mail without them! "I wrote to you three times" - this is how the girl begins a letter full of reproaches to her beloved. "Come to the rye field on Saturday," reads the young man's note. People change little over time.

We find on small pieces of birch bark an offer to marry, and evidence of domestic quarrels, and conspiracies from diseases. All life, about which the chroniclers do not consider it necessary to write, appears before our mind's eye. Even a small birch bark book, the size of a matchbox, was found, in which someone wrote down the words of church hymns by ear. Maybe a chanter's "cheat sheet"?

The most ancient birch bark letters date back to the time close to the time of the baptism of Rus', which means that Rus' was just waiting to move from "features and cuts" to writing, in order to express on fragile birch bark everything that occupied people in their Everyday life. For this, first of all, the already familiar boy Onfim studied at school.

What required long-term storage, such as laws, was still written on parchment.

That is, at first the laws were not written. Before the advent of writing, there were, so to speak, unwritten laws. There was no need to look into the book to decide who to recognize as the defendant, who would pay the viru (fine), what to do in this or that case. This was determined by the way of life that has developed over the centuries. Experts call this customary law.

By order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, who reigned, if you have not forgotten, in the 11th century, these unwritten laws were written down and called "Russian Truth". Until our time, the oldest list of Russian Truth has not been preserved. She came to us in the list of the XIII century as part of a book called Pilot. The helmsman's book is a collection of secular and ecclesiastical laws that govern a person's life in the sea of ​​life, just like an experienced helmsman controls his ship.

Documents that required long-term storage were also written on parchment. And to be more precise, we can say that those documents were written on parchment that seemed so important to the inhabitants of Ancient Rus' that they did not feel sorry for such expensive writing material as parchment. It is clear that the affairs of princes and simply rich people most often turned out to be important. Many of these documents have survived to this day.

Letters are known from peace treaties princes, or, as they were called in Ancient Rus', endings. These letters necessarily list the duties and rights of each of the contracting parties and explain in detail along which rivers, streams, hills, forest edges, between which villages and villages the border of princely possessions passes. Has it ever occurred to you that the names of many districts of Moscow, not even too far from the center, are known to historians as villages and villages that belonged to the Moscow grand dukes as early as the beginning of the 14th century?

In addition to contractual letters, there are spiritual letters, or wills. They list in detail not only land holdings, but also expensive household items, such as silverware and, for example, feather pillows and feather beds, highly valued as a sign of wealth. In addition, to confirm the authenticity of the will, the witnesses who were present at its preparation must be named.

But the oldest of the Russian letters is not a contract and not a testament, but a donation, or, as they say otherwise, a contribution. This is a letter from the already mentioned Kyiv prince of the beginning of the 12th century Mstislav the Great and his son, Prince of Novgorod Vsevolod, the famous Novgorod Yuriev Monastery. It begins, like most similar letters, with the words: "I, Mstislav, the son of Volodimer..." a dish that he gives to the monastery. One prince confirms the rights of the monastery to the land, and both make sure that their names are not forgotten by their descendants, so that the inhabitants of the monastery know whom to remember in their prayers.

But not only certificates are deposited.

Deposit notes are much more common - inscriptions on objects donated to monasteries and churches: ink - in a book, chased - on silver items.

Sometimes it also happens that large records of the donation of land to a monastery or temple are written on the wide lower margins of parchment manuscripts. As a rule, such records can be found in the altar gospels, especially those originating from the temples and monasteries of Western Rus' (this is the territory modern Ukraine and Belarus). In one Gospel of the 14th century, lengthy records of the 15th-16th centuries about donations to the monastery of John the Baptist in the city of Polotsk are found on almost every sheet. Who dares to assert that a village, a water meadow, a river full of fish, a forest do not belong to a monastery, if it is so written in the Gospel?!

Insert notes in the margins of manuscripts, in addition to everything already said, mean that the book in Ancient Rus' gradually became not just an ordinary thing, but an everyday phenomenon. And most clearly this process was reflected in the style of the design of the manuscripts.

Although writing was brought to Rus' from the southern Slavs, the creators of the first Russian manuscripts tried not to imitate Bulgarian, Serbian or Macedonian models, but their common source - Greek manuscripts. Not only Russian scribes were guided by Byzantine manuscripts, but also scribes from other Christian countries neighboring Byzantium, for example, scribes from Georgia or Armenia.

This colorful style, borrowed from Byzantium, combining a variety of geometric and floral forms, gold and bright colors - blue, yellow, red and green (including those mixed with white), in science was called Byzantine or Old Byzantine. But in pure form such an ornament is found only in a few luxurious books of the 11th and 12th centuries. We will no longer find gold in simpler manuscripts, the colors are becoming poorer. And over time - by the end of the XIII century - only individual elements of the ornament remind us of the ornament of the old Byzantine style.

In provincial manuscripts written in small towns or in insignificant and poor monasteries, the artist, decorating the book, often tries from memory to depict something reminiscent of an old Byzantine ornament he had ever seen. At the same time, he adds innumerable motifs of folk ornament, characteristic of his native area, to the drawing of initials. It has been noticed that in manuscripts decorated with such a "home" ornament, as a rule, there are quite a lot of linguistic irregularities. Where else can you find the Gospel of Ivan or Matthew? And the miniatures painted by a self-taught artist in Galich Kostroma, terribly far (by ancient Russian standards) from the princely capitals, will be clumsy and touching, like the drawings of a serious child.

And at the end of the 13th century, in the capital cities - primarily in Southwestern Russia, and then in Novgorod, Pskov, Tver, Moscow, Rostov Veliky - manuscripts appear that are decorated in a completely different way: they are depicted on a sheet with an ink or cinnabar outline. white parchment, winged snakes or birds with long serpentine tails, unseen monsters devouring each other or biting their own tails. All this forms a bizarre and dense interweaving of white unpainted lines on a dark blue background, occasionally tinted with yellow paint. Such an ornament, which probably came from Western Europe, scientists call the monstrous style, animal or teratological (from the Greek word for "monster") ornament.

This style exists in many variants, the background can be green and even red, fictional animals alternate with pictures of ancient Russian life. Two fishermen pull a net with fish from both sides - the initial "M". But the hunter caught a hare by the legs - this is the initial "L". The initial "D" - the harpman plucks the strings. A man pours a jug of water over his head - this is "K". Here is the initial "B": a man is sitting by the fire, and the artist makes an explanation under the picture: "It's cold, it warms your hands." It's nothing that the image is a little like a letter - the reader will definitely guess. The artist is not limited by anything. He can draw a flower, a whole tree growing from the mouth of a beast, a man with a spade or a warrior in armor.

The teratological style was especially widespread in Novgorod. In the 19th century, scientists generally considered all manuscripts with such an ornament to be Novgorodian.

But at the end of the XIV century, a new time comes.

In fact, a new stage in the history of Russian writing begins even earlier. Already from the middle of the XIV century, the scribes of the Slavic countries (Rus, Bulgaria, Serbia) began to communicate much more actively with each other and with Byzantine writers and copyists of books. A special role in this process was played by the monasteries located on the famous Mount Athos, not far from Thessaloniki, or in the capital of Byzantium, the city of Constantinople. Monks and pilgrims from all corners of the Orthodox world aspired to these monasteries.

Russian scribes, having become acquainted with Bulgarian and Serbian book writing, noticed that it is very different from how books are written in Rus'. It turned out that over the several centuries that have passed since the appearance of writing, the bookish language in Rus' has become much more similar to the spoken language than it was at the beginning, and errors have crept into liturgical texts. From the point of view of the ancient Russian scribes, the bookish language created by Cyril and Methodius was better preserved among the southern Slavs (for us it is not so important that this was not at all the case and that the Serbs and Bulgarians saw the lost ideal of the bookish language on the contrary - in the ancient Russian manuscripts). Therefore, it was worth returning to the origins of the bookish language.

There were two possibilities for such a "return". One could recall, for example, how books were written in the era of the formation of the bookish language in Rus'. This path was chosen in the Moscow principality, which was gaining strength.

In 1380, Khan Mamai was defeated in the famous Battle of Kulikovo. But although it was still very far from standing on the Ugra, which put an end to the yoke (after all, just two years later, in 1382, Khan Tokhtamysh besieged and completely burned Moscow), it was in Moscow in the late 90s of the XIV century, under the Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich, son of Dmitry Donskoy, began to emerge a new style book writing, addressed to the glorious past of the Eastern Slavs. Moscow manuscripts of this time remind their appearance Russian manuscripts of the Kyiv period (XI-XII centuries). These books, written in a beautiful large charter, began to be decorated with an ornament, which scientists call neo- or new Byzantine, very similar, as the name implies, to the (old) Byzantine ornament already familiar to us.

In the 19th century, such a curious incident even occurred: the famous Polish writer, author of numerous historical novels J. Kraszewski published a note about a Russian manuscript he found in one of the private libraries. According to the writer, the manuscript was written in Kyiv in 1097. Subsequently, it turned out that he misread the Cyrillic numerals - the manuscript was indeed written in Kyiv, but three centuries later - in 1397.

But there was another possibility of returning to the origins of the bookish language. One could try to return to the beginning of the book language of all Slavs - to the Cyril and Methodius period of the 9th-10th centuries. In reality, this meant that, as in the time of St. Vladimir and Yaroslav the Wise, Russian scribes had to imitate the South Slavic scribes in everything.

The most noticeable, of course, was spelling - the peculiarities of spelling.

It is interesting that even now the written works of schoolchildren (and not only schoolchildren) are evaluated, first of all, on the basis of literacy, and not at all on how freely and easily a person speaks his native language. Errors in grammar and style are perceived as annoying flaws, almost not worthy of attention, but God forbid you make a spelling or punctuation mistake! The teacher will spare no red ink.

The spelling rules in Ancient Rus' were not as strict as modern ones, but their observance was never required with such persistence as at the beginning of the 15th century. "If anyone wants to rewrite this book, then let him not subtract or add a word, not a single syllable, not a letter, not a dot of any kind, not any hooks that are under the lines, but let him read and study with great attention" - he concludes with such an entry one copyist of the Psalter. Note that the spelling of the scribe himself cannot be called ideal at all.

But how different this formidable warning is from the humble entreaties of the older scribes to correct their mistakes and not to condemn the scribes for their incompetence!

Thus, another tradition of book writing was created. A special role in this was played by Metropolitan Cyprian (1380-1406), the one who personally rewrote the book beloved by many monks - the Ladder. And it is also known for certain that he copied the Psalter and the Missal. Cyprian came from a noble Bulgarian family, received a good education, knew the Greek language. Then he became a monk and lived for a long time in the monasteries of Constantinople. He comes to Rus' for the first time as an ambassador of the Ecumenical Patriarch. And when the question was being decided who to appoint as the Metropolitan of All Rus' instead of Metropolitan Alexy, who died in 1378, the choice again fell on Cyprian. It is obvious that the books copied by the Metropolitan's own hand served as role models for Russian scribes.

Bulgarian manuscripts in Rus' were sometimes imitated so carefully that it was not always easy to distinguish one from the other. For more than a hundred years, scientists considered one of the Russian books to be a Bulgarian manuscript. It never occurred to anyone that they could write like that in Rus'.

Note that already in the middle of the XIV century, the Bulgarians and Serbs quite often wrote not on parchment, but on paper. It was easier to write on paper, faster. Even a special type of handwriting was developed, which is commonly called semi-ustav. This handwriting is also clear and even, but the drawing of the letters is simplified, the scribe's pen moves more easily from one letter to the next, there are more rounded lines, and the letters themselves often get slanted towards the end of the line.

These manuscripts were decorated with characteristic headpieces, formed by an ornament of intersecting circles and straight lines, which, due to its place of origin, is called Balkan. The initials in such manuscripts are also easily recognizable. They are made, as a rule, with cinnabar, and they are called thin cinnabar.

True, by the end of the 15th century, when Moscow began to occupy an increasingly important position in Ancient Rus', neo-Byzantine ornament began to prevail. Although in fairness it must be said that the best examples of this ornament can be found in manuscripts of the late 14th or early 15th century, which were decorated by the best artists of that time - Theophan the Greek and Andrei Rublev.

Speaking about the decorations of manuscripts, one cannot fail to mention decorative writing.

Experienced book scribes, like other artisans, probably, tried not only to strictly follow the memorized methods of the craft. They brought an element of fun into their work, they tried to make the letter itself beautiful. A sheet of manuscript, written by a good craftsman, is beautiful even without colored initials.

It was possible to arrange the text on the sheet in the form of a cross or some geometric figure. And it was possible to write out the lines of neighboring letters so that they intersect at a certain angle, creating the illusion of an ornament. You can even slightly break the spelling rules and not write two letters in one word, so as not to clutter up the line between the lines.

Ligatures are especially widely used. In the simplest case, two adjacent letters seem to "stick together": the right vertical of the letter P, for example, also serves as the vertical of the letter K (you probably happened to see such a ligature on a fire hydrant cabinet). But connecting the letters T and R is already more difficult. What would you do? The Old Russian scribe would most likely have made the letter T higher, would have written its horizontal line above the line. A more sophisticated master, on the contrary, would make the letter R less high, or even leave only an element of it that looks like a small mirror letter C. And what to do, for example, with the letters E and K or K and O (it happens after all )? Here the fantasy of the master knows no bounds.

And if you connect all the letters in a string? Then you get a special type of decorative writing, which is called ligature. Elm is very different, sometimes it is almost impossible to read it.

And you can also decorate the manuscript with cryptography, encrypt a word or a whole phrase. This is not a message from one scout to another - this is a game only available to experienced scribes. No one will, of course, encrypt words from the text, but you can write your own record or your name in such a way that not everyone will guess how to read it. There are many types of secret writing. You can replace letters with symbols. And you can replace one consonant with another. There is also such a method of cryptography, in which the numerical values ​​of the Cyrillic letters are used.

The scribe writes: "A. KK. DD. KL. b". The letter K in Cyrillic means the number 20, which means that two letters are already forty, the letter M. The letter D means 4, two letters D is 8, or I. The letter L following K has a value of 30, which means, together - 50, the letter N. Guess what happens?

We mentioned above that a new writing material has appeared - paper. In the history of writing the most different peoples the advent of paper important event. Writing on paper is easier and faster. The relative cheapness of this material greatly increases the number of copyists. Now it was not necessary to teach scribes so long and carefully. Ruining paper is not as bad as parchment. However, ancient paper often does not look like modern paper, made from crushed wood fibers. After all, they learned to process wood into paper only in the 18th century.

In the 13th century, rough, thick bombicine paper appeared in Western Europe, which was brought from the East during the era of the Crusades. Sometimes it is even difficult to decide right away what is in front of you - paper or parchment. For a long time it was believed that this paper was made from cotton fibers (special studies have shown that bombycin, like later paper, was made from linen fibers). Over time, in Europe and Asia, from the same linen fibers, increasingly thinner and smoother paper began to be produced.

Flax fibers, scraps of linen fabric were boiled in boilers until a homogeneous paper mass was obtained (if you happened to chew a piece of paper for a long time, then you roughly know what it is). Then the liquid paper mass was poured in a thin and even layer onto a special wire mesh. The water drained off, the drying mass was taken out of the molds, smoothed and, in order to make the paper completely smooth, sometimes covered with a thin layer of gelatin.

The wire mesh consisted, as a rule, of pontusos located at some distance from each other and rather closely spaced verges - vertical and horizontal wires. If you look at the light, then the traces of these grids on the old paper are clearly visible - in these places the paper is a little thinner and shines through better. Soon they begin to use it: the owners of paper mills (in Russia they were called paper mills) and experienced craftsmen special wire drawings are placed at the bottom of paper forms. The imprints of these wire patterns left on the paper (watermarks, filigree) allow the buyer to find out where and who made the paper, to distinguish its quality. In the same way, a protective pattern is applied to modern banknotes - paper money.

But watermarks in our time are found not only on money or other securities. Sometimes you can find verge paper - paper on which the lines of verge and pontuso are visible. These are, as a rule, special, expensive grades of writing paper.

Wire drawings of different manufactories and different masters are not repeated, and besides, they had to be updated quite often. What kind of filigrees you will not meet! There are scissors and swords, coats of arms of different cities and gloves, bells, keys and tongs, jagged towers, a jester's head in a cap with bells. There are capricorns and unicorns, lions and horses, eagles and deer, crowns and flowers. Even an appetizingly curved sausage serves as an identification mark of some master (some, however, argue that this is not a sausage, but a sausage).

According to what sign can be seen on a sheet of a paper manuscript, experts can say with high accuracy when and where the paper was made (in Rus', their own paper began to be produced only in the 17th century). So, you can quite accurately say when the manuscript was written.

True, surprises lie in wait for the researcher here. If a large format sheet was cut in half, then only half of the filigree remains. You have to rack your brains, the back of which animal is depicted on the sheet: a bull or a tiger? And if the sheet is cut into four parts? What if it's eight? Manuscripts, especially paper ones, are very small, one might say pocket size. Even manuscripts the size of a matchbox are known!

So, from the 15th century, a new time begins in the history of Russian writing. And it's not just about paper. Interaction with the written traditions of other Slavic countries led to the emergence of special attention to their written tradition and to their bookish language.

The matter was not limited to one spelling.

Gradually, grammar also begins to attract the attention of scribes - the declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, the conjugation of verbs, the structure of sentences. Here, the South Slavic manuscripts no longer seemed worthy of imitation. Russian scribes wanted to return to the origins of the book language of the Slavs and turned to Greek texts. One of the first who began to correct the Slavic translation from the Greek original was Metropolitan Alexy of Moscow. In 1355, while in Constantinople, he corrects the Slavic text of the Gospel, trying to bring it as close as possible to the Greek original. The Slavic text then turned out to be too complicated and did not become widespread in Rus'. And the manuscript of Metropolitan Alexy disappeared without a trace during the tumultuous events of the early 20th century. Fortunately, it is known from photocopies published at the very beginning of our century by a remarkable connoisseur of Slavic writing, Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin).

New serious attempts to correct the Slavic canonical and liturgical texts according to the Greek model were made in Rus' now only in the second half of the 15th century. This was preceded by dramatic events that unfolded in the Balkans at the end of the XIV - the middle of the XV centuries. In 1393, the Turks conquer the capital of the Bulgarian kingdom, the city of Veliko Tarnovo; Bulgarian Patriarch Evfimy is captured. In 1453, Ottoman troops captured Constantinople. Rus' remains the only independent Orthodox power. But it turns out that there is still no Bible in the Slavic language. Of course, there is the New Testament, of course, many books of the Old Testament, which are used in worship, have been translated. But there is no complete Bible.

For many years, work has been going on in Novgorod to create a complete collection of the Slavic Bible. The most educated scribes of that time gather around the Novgorod archbishop Gennady: translators (interpreters), scribes, theologians. Bible books are translated from Greek, Latin and even Hebrew. Already existing translations are checked and corrected. And finally, in 1499, scribes finish work on a huge manuscript volume. Now there is a Bible in the Slavic language. In science, it is known as the Gennadiev Bible.

The scribes make handwritten copy-lists. But this is very, very little for such a huge country as Rus' was at the end of the 15th century.

Perhaps you know that in the 15th century, and even for a long time after, Rus' was not a single state. On the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and the western regions of Russia, there was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, or Lithuanian Rus, whose population spoke Slavonic and read books written in Church Slavonic in the same way as did the inhabitants of Novgorod, Moscow Rus' and East Russian principalities.

But the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was inhabited not only by Orthodox Christians. Both Catholics and Protestants lived and coexisted quite peacefully here. And the close proximity to the achievements of Western civilization led to the fact that it was in Lithuanian Rus that the first books in Church Slavonic were printed.

For Orthodox Christians, coexistence with Catholics and Protestants meant the need for special care to preserve their faith and the Church Slavonic language as one of its components. Orthodox brotherhoods, schools, printing houses are being created in Lithuanian Rus. Especially famous is the printing house created in the city of Ostrog by Prince Konstantin Ivanovich Ostrogsky. One of the richest people Lithuanian Rus, an important dignitary, he especially cares about the preservation of Orthodoxy. As before at the department of Gennady Novgorodsky, so now in Ostrog a circle of scribes and translators gathers, who prepare the first printed Slavic Bible.

A copy of the Gennadiev Bible is sent specially from Novgorod. Translators and editors (referencers) carefully check and correct the handwritten text, something is translated anew. Artists are preparing drawings of numerous headpieces, a special typographic font is being developed, similar to the best examples of Russian semi-statutory writing. Finally, in 1581, Ivan Fedorov (the same one who printed the book Apostle in Moscow in 1564) prints the so-called Ostrog Bible, the text of which became the basis for the modern text of the Slavic Bible.

But with the advent and development of printing, the rewriting of books did not stop. For a long time, people used this familiar method. The copying of books also remained a traditional monastic obedience. True, if earlier printed fonts imitated handwritten ones, now handwritten handwriting began to imitate printed ones. Books began to be rewritten block letters. And headpieces in manuscripts become like engraved book headpieces. The European Baroque style in the decoration of printed publications in handwritten books is transformed into an ornament of the early printed type, very similar to the Baroque.

As time went on, printing became more and more popular. The number of printing houses in the most different cities and even the monasteries of Rus' is growing rapidly. Especially many books are printed in Kyiv and Moscow. Already in the 17th century, so many books were being printed that some copies did not find their readers, and in our time one can find old printed books that no one has yet opened. The printed book is becoming commonplace. The existence of hundreds of completely identical books reduces the value of the word depicted on paper. Before, each book was unique, unrepeatable. It now happens that scribes decorate their books with engraved headpieces and drawings cut from printed books. And it almost never happens that the lost sheets of printed books are replenished by hand.

But printing poses new problems for scribes. After all, the printed text should be especially verified. The printed text, which exists in hundreds of copies, must be free from errors. Close attention to the language, concern for the correctness of the text leads to the need to use special language reference books - grammars.

In the countries of Western Europe, grammars were commonplace. At first, these were the grammars of the classical languages ​​- ancient Greek and Latin. Then, on the model of ancient grammars, grammars were created European languages. Medieval European and then Russian scribes believed that if there is a grammar of a language, then the language itself becomes on a par with the classical, exemplary languages ​​of Christian culture.

It is no coincidence that the first, still very imperfect handwritten grammar of the Church Slavonic language is being created in the process of working on the Gennadiev Bible. It is created by an active member of the circle of Archbishop Gennady, translator Dmitry Gerasimov. Recall that Novgorod was a major European trading city, in which the cultural trends of the European Middle Ages were perceived more lively than anywhere else in Rus'.

And later, in the XVI and XVII centuries, grammars of the Church Slavonic language were created in the western regions of Rus'. Now these were also printed grammars. The grammar compiled by Melety Smotrytsky, one of the prominent figures in the circle of Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky, is especially famous. For the first time she saw the light in 1619 in the town of Evyu not far from modern Vilnius. In 1648 Smotritsky's grammar with corrections was published in Moscow. The third time the same grammar was published already in the time of Peter the Great. M.V. Lomonosov called Smotrytsky's grammar one of his teachers.

It is difficult to overestimate the influence of this work on the formation of the Church Slavonic language in the 17th century. Book on the right (editing and correcting canonical and liturgical texts), which took place throughout almost the entire 17th century, and many of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon would have been impossible without the grammar of Meletius Smotrytsky.

But, as already mentioned, with the development of printing, the manuscript tradition was not interrupted. So far, we have talked about books used in worship. But there was another kind of literature. Military stories, collections of lives and teachings, popular apocrypha (compositions not recognized by the Church as canonical), and in the 17th century, dramatic works for the court theater of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, verses (poetic compositions) of the 17th century poet Simeon of Polotsk and much, much more - All of this was handwritten.

In Muscovite Rus' in the 16th century, two remarkable and unparalleled handwritten monuments were created. These are the Great Menaion-Cheti, compiled on the initiative of the Moscow Metropolitan Macarius, and the Front Chronicle, which was created by order of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible.

The great (we would say "big") Minei-Cheti were created for 25 years. These are 12 very thick volumes (for each month of the year) of a very large format, in which, according to Metropolitan Macarius, all four books that existed in Rus' should have been included. The Great Menaion-Cheti became a kind of encyclopedia of Russian literature of the 16th century. Here we find not only the lives of the saints and edifying words and teachings, but entire collections: patericons, collections of writings by John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Nikon of Montenegro, works devoted to the structure of the universe, even some apocrypha. There are no secular works, such as chronicles, in the Makariev Menaions.

In 1568, in Alexander Sloboda, where the court of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich was then located, work began on compiling a grandiose illustrated chronicle. 10 volumes have survived to our time, about twenty thousand pages, decorated with sixteen thousand (can you imagine!) miniatures, or facial images (why the chronicle itself was called the Front). Work on the chronicle remained unfinished, some miniatures did not even have time to colorize.

Of course, letters were also written by hand in the 16th century, even if they were written for journalistic purposes and were calculated for wide circle readers. The correspondence between Tsar Ivan the Terrible and the boyar Andrei Kurbsky should probably be recognized as the most famous example of the ancient Russian epistolary genre. Kurbsky, who fled from imminent reprisal to Lithuania, turned to Ivan IV with a accusatory message in which he accused the tsar of unheard-of persecution, torment and executions of boyars and governors who were innocently declared traitors. In Grozny's response, the comparison of Kurbsky with a dog was the mildest.

Note that the works of secular literature were created not in strict Church Slavonic, but in a simplified, close to spoken or command language.

The command language is the direct successor of the language of birch bark letters, princely agreements, contributions and spiritual letters - this is the language of state office work, the language of officials. Orders in the Muscovite kingdom were what we now call ministries. The ambassadorial order, for example, is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A large state required a huge amount of official papers. Decrees and orders, treaties and sentences, reports and denunciations were written on paper ... Paper sheets of one case were glued together like sheets of papyrus once - into scrolls, which in Rus' were called columns. (By the way, the European name for paper - paper, as in English, or paper, as in French - comes precisely from the name of the ancient Egyptian writing material.) It was necessary to write quickly. For this, over time, a special type of writing is developed - cursive.

Books were copied carefully - after all, they had to be read carefully. Business documents of the 16th-17th centuries were intended for familiarization, for obtaining up-to-date information. So, it was possible to write them not so accurately. A huge number of abbreviations, special stationery words appear, some of them have survived to this day. Do you know, for example, an expression in the net? So they talk about something missing. In order lists, opposite the name of a person or the name of an object, instead of a dash, they wrote the word ntb. It was in these nets that the absent one found himself.

At the same time, the verb to torture acquires today's terrible meaning. In Old Russian, it meant only to ask.

Another cursive handwriting is almost impossible to read if you do not know what is written there. Remember? So read Winnie the Pooh. After Christopher Robin told him what was written, he too was able to read the writing above the Owl's door. Peter I wrote especially casually. He could definitely be sure that his subjects would try to make out his handwriting.

Paper is becoming an increasingly cheap writing material, which means you can learn to write on it. Birch bark is no longer used. But there were drafts. Ink in those days was not yet red, green or blue, which means that a piece of paper with scribbles, corrections and blots deservedly got its name.

A huge number of people who are accustomed to writing in cursive also influenced book handwriting. Cursive books appear. True, book cursive is still easier to read than business.

One of the most dramatic events in Russian history, the schism, is connected with the book right and the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, which took place in the 17th century. Opponents of church reforms - schismatics, or Old Believers - diligently preserved and, what is especially remarkable, still preserve in places old Russian tradition book writing. Persecuted by the authorities, the Old Believers did not want to use books that were "spoiled", as they said, by Nikon, could not organize their own printing houses, which means they were forced to rewrite books in the old fashioned way. Add to this a huge number of works by passionate Old Believer writers directed against the Nikonians and against representatives of hostile currents within the Old Believers themselves. Probably the most famous Old Believer work - The Life of Archpriest Avvakum - is an amazing monument of ancient Russian literature in terms of strength and mastery of the word. All this was eagerly copied among the schismatics. Book writing is becoming one of the most important elements of preserving the tradition, and scribes, scribes are one of the most respected people among the Old Believers.

Among what the Old Believers copy, there are not only liturgical books and polemical treatises. Compositions about the end of the world are very common, there are also chronicles that were written in the 20th century.

Of the printed books, the Old Believers recognize only those that were printed before Nikon, in the first half of the 17th century. But how they differ from later editions, the Old Believers do not always know, and cunning merchants take advantage of this, tearing out the output page of the book or correcting the date on it. If there is no trust in printed books, then ancient handwritten books begin to be of particular value to the Old Believers. They continue to live in the Old Believer environment even at a time when parchment manuscripts of the 11th-14th centuries are used for technical needs at the Moscow Printing House.

The Old Believers are restoring ancient books, making up for the losses. The appeal of the Old Believers to the past led to the emergence of professional collectors among the Old Believers, to whom we largely owe our knowledge of Old Russian writing.

There are especially many Old Believers in the north - on the White Sea, among the Pomors. There, a special style of decorating handwritten books was born - the Pomeranian ornament. A very characteristic, easily recognizable ink outline depicting stylized plants is painted in green, red and yellow colors. But the amazingly beautiful Old Believer manuscripts of the 19th century, richly decorated with gold paint, are also known. In the 20th century, the Old Believer writing tends to decline and no longer reaches the artistic heights of the past.

A completely new stage in the existence of Russian written culture begins with the era of Peter the Great's reforms. Russian writing, as one of the most important components of culture, they directly affected. Peter personally changed the alphabet, throwing out from it all the letters that were not used in the order letter. And if earlier high culture spoke in Church Slavonic, now she was ordered to use the language of officials. Of course, it took a long time - more than a century - for the language of the book to become similar to the spoken language, so that in ordinary, everyday language one could talk about divine subjects with the same ease as about the simplest things.

Orientation towards the European type of culture pushed the traditional bookishness to the periphery. The "enlightened" 18th century laughs at antiquity. Other books are on the way. Another becomes and writing. Now they are rewriting the rules of etiquette, fashionable poems taken from translated novels. And they are not rewritten into books - into notebooks and albums. Here, on album pages, poetry and prose coexist with careless watercolors or pencil drawings. It seems that these manuscripts should not outlive their owners.

And yet, in the same 18th century, a genuine interest in their past, including ancient writing, was born. It is to this interest that we owe the best finds of works of Old Russian literature and the best collections of Old Russian handwritten books. By the end of the century, collecting becomes a respectable occupation of prominent statesmen and just educated people. At first, it's just a fashion thing. The owner of a huge collection, Count F.A. Tolstoy, hardly knows what kind of manuscripts are stored on the shelves of his library. Collectors are interested in beautifully ornamented manuscripts or manuscripts associated with the names of famous historical figures. And some "collectors" collect only miniatures or initials cut from the manuscript. But since the beginning of the 19th century, one can already talk about the birth of the science of ancient Russian writing. Although for a long time after there is no idea of ​​the real value of the manuscripts. Ancient books are often sold or given away in parts.

Another type of writing is closely connected with collecting, with collecting ancient Russian books - forgeries. Especially a lot of fake Old Russian manuscripts existed at the end of the XVIII - early XIX century, when knowledge to expose fakes was still not enough. Among others, the retired lieutenant AI Sulakadzev is widely known - "Khlestakov of Russian antiquities", as the well-known literary historian A. Pypin aptly put it. According to the recollection of one of his contemporaries, in Sulakadzev’s house there was “a whole corner of heaped shards and broken bottles, which he gave out as dishes of the Tatar khans ... a piece of stone on which, according to him, Dmitry Donskoy rested after the Battle of Kulikovo; a strange pile of old papers , called by him the Novgorod runes ... ". He tried (and often successfully) to sell all this unimaginable junk to naive lovers of antiquity. His forgeries of manuscripts are uncomplicated, but they can tell a lot about how ancient Russian literature was imagined at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries.

Fakes are also more believable. A genuine manuscript is known, in which very good copies of the miniatures of the Mstislavov and Ostromirov Gospels are inserted, and the lost text was filled in on sheets of new parchment. Without careful study, it is rather difficult to say where the ancient writing ends and where the new begins.

The further history of ancient Russian writing is the history of storage, restoration and study. And this story has no end in sight.

Proto-Slavic language writing

Bibliography

Vzdornov G.I. The Art of the Book in Ancient Rus'. Handwritten book of North-Eastern Rus' XII - early XV centuries. M., 1980.

Dictionary of scribes and bookishness of Ancient Rus'. Issue I (XI - the first half of the XIV century). L., 1987. Issue 2 (second half of the 14th-16th centuries). Part 1. L., 1988. Part 2. L., 1989. Issue 3 (XVII century). Part 1. SPb., 1992. Part 2. SPb., 1993. Part 3. SPb., 1998.

Cherepnin L.V. Russian paleography. M., 1956.

Shchepkin V.N. Russian paleography. M, 1967.

Yanin V.L. I sent you a birch bark... 3rd ed., corrected and supplemented with new findings, with an afterword by A.A. Zaliznyak. M., 1998.