THE MOSCOW DONSKOY MONASTERY LIBRARY IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY

The article is devoted to a little-studied period in the history of the Moscow Donskoy Monastery library. The original inventory books of the stolnik Ivan Andreevich Bolshoi Dashkov, compiled during the description of the church and monastery property according to the personal decree of Peter I of January 31, 1701, have not survived (or have not yet been discovered). However, the four lists identified by the author make it possible to correctly introduce one of the early inventories of the book collection of the Donskoy Monastery into scientific circulation. The author substantiates the feasibility of searching, studying and carefully dating the surviving lists, as well as analyzing the discrepancies in them. The study determines the exact date of the inspection of the library by the stolnik I. A. Dashkov (August 12, 1702), and also traces the further fate of its inventory until its receipt on March 2, 1703 in the Monastery Prikaz as a part of the inventory books of the Donskoy Monastery, confirmed by the diak Efim Zotov’s note. The article publishes information based on new sources on the chronology of descriptions of the library of the Donskoy Monastery in the last quarter of the 17th century — first third of the 18th century. An attempt is made to reconstruct the composition of the book collection in 1705. On the basis of the comparison of the 1702 inventory, which has recently been brought into the scientific circulation, with the currently known descriptions of 1678, 1683, 1721, 1724, 1725, 1729 and the 1705 reconstruction, the article outlines both the continuity in the basic principles of the compilation of the monastery library inventories and the elements of variability, which at many significant moments were determined by circumstances external to the Donskoy Monastery itself.