Dated Russian Manuscript Books of XVI Century in the Collections of the Russian State Library

Abstract

For the first time in historiography there is considered the composition of manuscript books of XVI century, being preserved at the Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library. The author focuses on the dated books which have special records, including the date and place of book production, scribes and customers. These records are the main source for studying the process of book production in the medieval Russia. The aim of this article is to give the information about 111 dated books written in 1500-1600 from 22 collections of manuscripts of the Russian State Library. The work includes the catalogue of dated manuscript books, which contains data on the name, size, pressmark, date and the place of book production, scribes and customers. The scientific importance of this catalogue is connected with the new data on the books from the uncharacterized collections (such as E. Egorov’s and P. Ovchinnikov’s collections). These materials are the important addition to the amount of known data on book culture of the medieval Russia.