Slavonic printings of the 16th – 18th centuries in Bessarabia

Abstract

For more than a century, the Slavonic manuscript and printed book collections have attracted attention of numerous Romanian and foreign specialists in the field of philology, history and other adjacent disciplines. The article presents some key points in the history of research of the old Slavonic book from the Bessarabian public collections. In introduction to this study we considered it appropriate to highlight the efforts of the specialists oriented towards common activity of putting various Slavonic manuscript and printed book collections of our country in the scientific circuit and description. The study is based on the collection of Slavonic books published in Lviv, Ostrog, Vilno, Grodno, Kyiv, kept by the National Library of the Republic of Moldova. In this research, the history and provenance of this collection is traced and some aspects related to their circulation in Bessarabia are explained. The presence in the Bessarabian space of the Slavonic books printed in Ukraine, Russia or Belarus confesses cross-cultural relations that existed between our country and those countries from which they came. Today this treasure is interesting to international Slavists and Byzantinologists, since some of these books are based on the translation of the Greek originals.