Book Collection Inventories of the Church Parish of the Village Usolye on Volga as a Historical and Book Source of the XVII Century

Abstract

Book collections of parish churches represent a special phenomenon of the Russian book culture. Despite of the fact that these collections were, as a rule, small and performed a purely liturgical function, their careful study expands our ideas about the culture and life of the Orthodox population, about the ways of distributing handwritten and printed books. This topic is of particular importance for the analysis of the ethno-confessional policy of the Russian state in the XVI–XVII centuries in the annexed territories of the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia. The sources for the study of parish libraries in the period under review are not only the books themselves, but also the records of management materials. Within the study of the book culture of the Middle Volga region of the XVII century, we have identified previously unpublished lists of books in two inventories of the church parish of the village of Usolye. It was established at the south-eastern borders of the Russian state. (The village currently belongs to the Shigonsky district of the Samara region.) These documents are the only currently known inventories of the church library of the XVII century on the territory of the Samara Volga region. The purpose of this article is to introduce the identified book lists into scientific circulation as a result of their reading and analysis. Of scientific relevance is the discovery of new regional historical and book sources, as well as the consideration of the mechanisms of formation of parish book collections, the study of their repertoire. Formally, the collection in Usolye is a typical book collection, but for a border village of the XVII century it is unique with a large number of books and the predominance of printed copies in it.