Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Manokhin,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Joseph Volotsky Monastic Rule in Collections of the State Historical Museum: New Findings
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2026-2-6
The author found two new copies of Joseph Volotsky Monastic Rule in the collections of the Manuscript Department of the State Historical Museum. A.I. Pliguzov’s reference to the manuscript from The Edinoverie collection No. 17 turned out to be incorrect during the inspection. There is no Monastic Rule or any Discourses from it. However, a copy of Extended Rule was found on the website among the exhibits in Collection of N.P. Vostryakov No. 840. Another copy was discovered during de visu examination of all miscellanies in the Diocesan Collection under No. 788. During text collation, it turned out that this is a new redaction of the Monastic Rule, created by a representative of the official Church at the turn of the 17th−18th centuries. Its compiler had removed all duplicate texts (the 12th Discourse and “traditions” (predaniya) from the 13th Discourse) and all digressions such as Introduction, the Table of Contents, the 10th Discourse devoted to the history of Russian monasticism and brief introduction to the 14th Discourse. This manuscript was transferred to the SHM from Alexandrov Kremlin. Previously, the manuscript from The Diocesan collection No. 851 was the only exception where the Extended Rule had been substantially reworked. Thanks to the staff of the reading room, who had provided the author with a high-intensity lamp, it was possible to narrow down the dating of this copy to the second half of the 1830s. Now the author has identified further alterations of the Extended Rule. In addition to No. 788 of the Diocesan Collection, these are two 19th − century manuscripts from the Supplementary Collection of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. All these reworks had been made independently on the basis of the medieval authorial text. This makes it extremely promising to study the latest manuscripts, which may contain new redactions and recensions of long-known medieval compositions.
Publishing: 28/04/2026
The article has been received by the editor on 25/11/2025
How to cite: Manokhin A.A. Joseph Volotsky Monastic Rule in Collections of the State Historical Museum: New Findings // Historical Courier, 2026, No. 2 (46), pp. 95−104. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2026/ISTKURIER-2026-2-06.pdf]
Links: Issue 2 2026
Keywords: Joseph Volotsky; Monastic Rule; Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius; Modern Age; State Historical Museum; codicology