‘Life of St. Alexander Svirsky’ in the Collections of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the Moscow Theological Academy

Abstract

The article is of a general nature. Its purpose is to establish continuity between the texts of the Life of St. Alexander Svirsky in manuscripts from the collection of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the Moscow Theological Academy. The material of the article was the manuscripts from these collections containing the Life. Today it is twelve manuscripts. They can be divided into two groups: early, the third quarter of the 16th century, and the second quarter of the 17th century. Early lists contain the text of the Menaine edition of the Life, which has become widespread, accompanied by one of the rst sets of miracles. The text of the 1st Prologue edition, probably written for the canonization of 1547 and having a limited distribution, is presented in one list - the Troits. 629. The three early lists are preceded by a service. Of course, it cannot be argued that all of them ended up in the Sergius Monastery or were copied in it at that time. It is likely that this refers to the Troits. 629, 632, 633, 804, 692. In this case, all the texts about the saint that existed at that time were presented in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Also, in the manuscript of the Troits. 804 contains the original texts, possibly a draft for the Life, but not included in the nal version. The situation changed in the 17th century: the collection was not replenished from the outside with new modern texts about the saint, the existing lists were copied in the monastery. In the main collection of the library of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, to date, not a single manuscript of the 17th century has been preserved, which would include stories about new miracles of the monk (they appear in the lists of the beginning of the 17th century), «The Legend of the Finding of Relics» and a complex of texts, with associated with this event, «Eulogy» and «Vision to Abbot Herodion». There is also no new stylistic edition of the Life of the 18th century. The well-known Trinity compilers of the Menaion of the Chetyah choose different sources. Hieromonk German Tulupov refers to the Miraculous Menaion, borrowing from them the text of the Life, the priest John Milyutin, on the contrary, is very likely working with an early manuscript of the Troits. 629, copying its text along with the prologue (the lists of such composition with readings explaining the errors in Milyutin’s Menaia are more unknown).