THE IOSIFO-VOLOKOLAMSKII MONASTERY’S 1545 INVENTORY OF BOOKS: SOURCE CRITICAL ISSUES AND AN ATTEMPT AT ITS RECONSTRUCTION

The 1545 inventory of books of the Iosifo-Volokolamskii Monastery is known due to its 1911 publication by V. T. Georgievskii. The incompleteness of this publication and the subsequent loss of the original of the inventory pose many problems for scholars. For example, nothing is known about the chronological stages of the formation of this monastery’s manuscript collection or about the donations of books to the monastery by various individuals. To address these questions, the author of this article compares Georgievskii’s 1911 publication with Nicolai Shchukin’s 1910 work on the history of the manuscript collection of the Iosifo- Volokolamskii Monastery, which included a study of the original inventory. This comparison allows us to answer many controversial questions concerning the time and the stages of the composition of the inventory and the peculiar features of its formation and structure. The conclusions of this study can be used for the reconstruction of the original of the 1545 inventory of books and contribute significantly to the study of the Iosifo-Volokolamskii Monastery’s book culture in the sixteenth century.