Simon’s Copy of Letopisets Vyborom

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.4.647

Keywords:

Russian chronicles, short letopisets, Simon Azaryin, Arseny Sukhanov, codicology

Abstract

Letopisets Vyborom (literally, a Chronicle Written by Compiling from Older Chronicles) is one of the most mysterious works of seventeenth-century Russian chronicle writing. Its title changes little in the manuscripts that have preserved the beginning: Chronicle Written by Compiling from Older Chronicles which Have Recently Been Created in the Muscovite State and throughout the Russian Land. Reflecting the views of Russians of the seventeenth century, the work was popular at the time but did not survive it, giving rise to a work of a different historical form in the Petrine era. However, the Letopisets was only discovered by S. O. Schmidt in the mid-twentieth century while studying the events of the sixteenth century. Since then, B. N. Morozov and I have managed to find more than 20 copies, each of which, with proper research, is of considerable interest for the history of seventeenth-century culture. The work can be found everywhere: in the folios of respectable book writers, in the collections of provincial history amateurs, in noble codices with the most important genealogical registers, and in the roll parchments of local patrimonial archives. Numerous scribes and zealous followers of Letopisets Vyborom treated the composition so creatively that almost every copy is a new authorial version, and the history of the text still defies reconstruction. For the first time, the work that belonged to the prominent administrator and scribe Simon Azaryin at the beginning of Nikon’s reforms is introduced here, reflecting both the problems of studying the text and the possibilities that codicological work opens for a better understanding of a “rebellious age”.

Author Biography

Andrey Bogdanov

Dr. Hab. (History), Leading Researcher, Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

19, Dmitry Ulyanov Str., 117292, Moscow, Russia.

ORCID 0000-0002-4593-6051

bogdanovap@mail.ru

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Published

2021-12-22

How to Cite

Bogdanov, A. (2021). Simon’s Copy of Letopisets Vyborom. Quaestio Rossica, 9(4), 1425–1439. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.4.647

Issue

Section

Disputatio