Our Notes & References

Lovely, small-format illustrated Old Believers’ almanac, probably from an important, known monastery whose scriptorium mostly employed women – possibly one of its last productions while being banned by the Russian government.

With fresh contemporary colours and gilt.

Commonly named Sviattsy, these short daily indications remind worshipers when to commemorate the broadest range of different saints or the canonised and other important dates in Christianity. The longer title is “Posledovanie tserkovnago peniia i vseletniago sobraniia ot mesiatsa sentiabria do mesiatsa avgusta…” [“The arrangement of the church singing and the all-year assembly, from the month of September to the month of August, according to the statutes of the holy Jerusalem Lavra of our Venerable and God-bearing father Sabbas the Sanctified”], a Cappadocian Greek monk whose guidelines helped structure the Orthodox divine services. These daily instructions are followed by Paskhaliia, a table for determining the dates of Easter and other movable feasts, from 1856 to 1919 (here as the years 7364 to 7427 from the creation of the world, in Slavonic numerals), and Paskhaliia azbuchnaia zriachaia for determining days of fasting, and then the schedule of Lunar phases for the entire cycle of 19 years.

In its style of decorations with abundant gold and floral compositions, the manuscript resembles 19-century Sviattsys from the important and influential Vygovskii monastery in the Karelia region, “the largest centre of the Priestless Old Believers [bespopovtsy]” (Iukhimenko, our translation here and elsewhere), who are also known as Pomortsy. “The creative development of Old Russian traditions which prompted the highest advancement of [pomortsys’] own style in diverse art mediums allow us to speak of the Vygovskii heritage as a unique phenomenon in Russian culture of the 18th-19th centuries” (Iukhimenko, our underlining). The monastery was “one of the first and the largest […] centre of the priestless Old Believers (bespopovtsy) […] In terms of beauty, quality of materials and craftsmanship, the Vygovskii manuscripts rightfully rank first among the majority of manuscripts of the Slavic-Russian tradition created after the Russian Church schism [in the mid-17th century]” (Gudkov, our underlining).

The monastery became also famous for its scribes and artists: “A somewhat unusual circumstance for that time was that the majority of the Vygovskii monastery scribes [and artists] were women — residents of the Leksa monastery” (Gudkov, our underlining).

In the 1820s and 1830s, such miniature Sviattsy became especially popular as a gift on special occasions to the Vygovskii monastery’s benefactors, among whom were many city merchants (Smirnov). “The artistic tastes of the merchant community had by this time been strongly influenced by urban bourgeois culture, and the works created for such wealthy customers had to meet their aesthetic needs […] Gradually stylised flowers, common in the early Vygovskii ornamentation, turned into quite realistic tulips, roses, and forget-me-nots” (Smirnov). In this manuscript, charming small flowers alternate with little trees and curious abstract patterns filling empty spaces in the headpieces.

The rule of tsar Nicholas I brought an end to the Vygovskii community. In 1838, the government banned the monastery from copying and distributing books. Over the next decades, the monastery’s property was expropriated, the inhabitants were evicted, and by 1855, the monastery ceased to exist. In 1856-57, the last chapels were shut down, and in 1862, the remaining property was moved to Petrozavodsk (Iukhimenko). “The monastery’s tradition of gifting books to benefactors remained unchanged [at least until the 1840s]” (Smirnov), and this copy might be one of the very last examples of the Vygovskii production; otherwise it could have been created earlier ‘for the future use’, by the monastery scribes after their relocation to a new place, or possibly by those who were directly inspired by them.

Bibliography

Smirnov, Viktor. Knijnica, 2023-2024; Iukhimenko, Elena. “Vygoleksinskoe obshchezhitelstvo”, Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopediia; Gudkov A. G. “Staroobriadcheskie knigopisnye shkoly kontsa XVII – nachala XX veka i ikh khudozhestvennye osobennosti”. Obrazovatelnyi portal Slovo.