The Short and Full Inventories of the Property of Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery in 1621: Circumstances of Emergence
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines two manuscripts that reflect the results of the 1621 description of the property of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery – OR RNB Kir.-Bel. 73/1312 (Short Inventory) and 74/1313 (Full Inventory). According to Z. V. Dmitrieva, the texts of the descriptions of monastic property in these manuscripts differ significantly: the first contains textual references to the inventory of 1615 carried out on the initiative of the monastic authorities. In the latter, there is a tendency to follow the text of the ‘official’ inventory of 1601, carried out under the direction of a royal official. The aim of the study, which was carried out as part of the preparation of the scholarly publication of the materials of the 1621 inventory, is to determine the functionality of these two versions of the 1621 inventory and the nature of their links. To solve this problem, the author carries out a codicological study of both manuscripts, which includes the study of the structure of the paper block, watermarks, changes in writing and ink throughout the text, quire numbering, security records, comments and edits. The study of the Short Inventory shows that, despite the almost complete absence of edits, the presence of signatures and security records, the process of creating it was not a simple correspondence of the finished text but involved the addition of new material to an already prepared block. In contrast to the Short Inventory, the text of the Full Inventory bears many traces of editing, including a large number of edits to descriptions, and at the same time there are no signatures. In addition, the author makes a textual comparison of the descriptions of the objects edited in the Full Inventory. The results of this comparison are ambiguous: in most cases, the text of the Short Inventory corresponds either to the text of the Full Inventory after editing, or to the text of the Full Inventory before editing, or to neither, and in all the three cases, it is close to the earlier inventories. Nevertheless, there are cases where the text of the Short Inventory corresponds to the text of the Full Inventory after editing, and there are no descriptions in the earlier inventories of 1601 and 1615.The Short and Full Inventories appear to be the result of two parallel efforts to describe the monastery’s property. The Full Inventory reflects the desire to understand how different the situation of the monastery was in 1621 from the time of the previous inventory, which was carried out with the participation of royal representatives. The Short Inventory is the result of work on the creation of a new relevant document.
Source: Quaestio Rossica
Author: Evgeny Lyakhovitskiy
Institution: Saint-Petersburg Institute of History
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4402689507