Copies of the Slavic Sources for Cyril and Methodius and their Disciples in the Library of the Solovetsky Monastery (RAS)

The article pays attention to the transcripts of Slavic sources about Cyril and Methodius, created or at least preserved in the library of the Solovetsky Monastery. The monastery is believed to have been founded in 1436. The copy of the Inventory of the Solovetsky Library from 1514, discovered by M. V. Kukushkina, testifies that the books from the time of its first trustees constituted its original core. Abbot Dositey, who commissioned the copying of 24 manuscripts in Novgorod, has exceptional merits in the filling of the library. In 1514, the library already had 127 manuscripts, and by the end of the century – 481 manuscripts and 38 printed books. In the following centuries, the book wealth of the monastery gradually increased. Among its books there were many transcripts of Slavic sources about Cyril and Methodius and their disciples – according to the latest data there are 30. Their composition is quite diverse: here we find transcripts of the Long Lives of Cyril and Methodius, the Encomium for Cyril and Methodius, the Prologue of John the Exarch to the translation of John Damascene's Theology, Chernorizets Hrabar's treatise “On the Letters”, Tudor Doksov's note on the translation of Anastasius of Alexandria’s “Four Words Against the Arians”, The Prologue Lives of Cyril and Methodius. The study of the transcripts of the Slavic sources about Cyril and Methodius preserved in the library of the Solovetsky Monastery shows that the earliest of them belong to the earliest layer of manuscripts, which marked the beginning of the library, fixing different manuscript traditions regarding the composition of the manuscripts. A previously unpublished transcript of the Encomium for Cyril and Methodius in a Reading Menaion of October No 501/520 of 1562–1569 is published as an appendix.