FROM THE HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY OF THE TRIFONOV-PECHENGSKY MONASTERY (THE EARLY 17TH-CENTURY MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GORYUSHKINS)

When the Trifonov-Pechengsky Monastery, which is located north of the Arctic Circle, was rebuilt after its devastation by the Swedes in 1589, members of the Goryushkin family, who presumably were from Zaonezhye, replenished the library of this monastery. In 1604–1605, Yakov Goryushkin copied the September and October volumes of the Great Menaion Reader. The Goryushkins probably intended to make copies of all the volumes of the Menaion Reader. The volumes for April and May were part of this collection, but we know about them only from the catalogue of the library of the Pechengsky Monastery. The October volume lacks the Areopagitic corpus due to the large size of this group of texts. A separate copy of the Areopagitic corpus was made for the Pechengsky Monastery in Novgorod in 1610. Iosif Goryushkin commissioned and deposited this book, and the subdeacon Simeon was the scribe. Simeon’s copy was likely based on the October volume of the Great Menaion Reader that belonged to the library of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Novgorod. The editing of Simeons copy was performed by another scribe at Iosif Goryushkin’s orders.