The Chronicle about the Bishops of Rostov and “The Note about the Life” of Dimitry of Rostov

Abstract

The article discusses the first hagiographic work dedicated to St. Dimitry of Rostov — “The Note about the Life” of the saint. The “Note” is a part of the Chronicle about the Bishops of Rostov, compiled by Dimitry of Rostov himself. This means that the “Note” is based on an autobiographical text. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, scribes made various additions and changes to the biographies of the bishops of Rostov and, as a result, several branches of the manuscript tradition of the Chronicle developed. The article describes and analyzes the changes in St. Dimitry’s biography in different redactions of the Chronicle. The most similarity to “The Note about the Life” of St. Dimitry is found in the redaction compiled by the Suzdalian priest Anania Fedorov in 1757. This redaction of the Chronicle is preserved in a single manuscript, now located in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg (Titov collection, no. 3641). Probably the additional information about Dimitry of Rostov in the Chronicle by Anania Fedorov was taken from another, now lost, chronicle concerning the bishops of Rostov. However, the information about Dimitry from this source was used not only by Anania Fedorov: in 1756, even before Anania compiled his redaction of the Chronicle, Ambrose Sertis-Kamensky, then the archbishop of Pereslavl and Dmitrov, forwarded it to the Holy Synod upon request. In this way, the “Note” became a separate text. Moreover, it is the first hagiographic work about Dimitry of Rostov that was compiled before his official canonization and later acquired an abundant manuscript tradition.