An Index of Chemical Substances and Plants in the Military Book of 1607

Abstract

The article presents an annotated publication of a fragment from the Military Book of 1607, the earliest Russian translation of a European military treatise. This translation was based on the second volume of the German compendium Kriegsbuch, published in 1573 by Leonhard von Fronsperger. At the end of their work, the translators Mikhail Yuriev and Ivan Fomin, employed at the Ambassadorial Chancery, placed an index of the mentioned mineral and organic substances and compounds as well as plants used to produce gunpowder and other fuels. The introduction to the publication deals with how and why the index was compiled, what entries belong to it, and what are its linguistic features. The article describes a previously unknown manuscript of the Military Book. Some suggestions are made concerning the strategies used by the translators while working with the German and Russian text and also concerning supplementary materials they used, primarily, Russian manuscript translations of European medical treatises and advice given by foreign medical staff. In the appendix, the index is edited in full with alternative readings according to the two surviving manuscripts. The commentary identifies the mentioned substances and plants with their names in the German original of the Military Book, its later version completed by Anisim Mikhailov-Radishevsky in 1620 and other Russian writings of the 16th and 17th centuries.