The Documents of Tzar’s and Grand Prince’s Weddings from the Library of the Romodanovsky Princes

Abstract

The research focuses on the documents concerning tzar’s and grand prince’s weddings from the archive and the library of the Romodanovsky princes. The main point of the study is related to the analysis of the manuscript BAN. 16.15.15 which contains a wedding service book (razryadnaya kniga), “The story about the princes of Vladimir”, and a service document about the wedding of tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov and Maria Il’inichna Miloslavskaya in 1648. The results of a text-historical and codicological investigation of the manuscript show that these wedding documents were copied on the order of prince V. G. Romodanovsky. Moreover, someone had prepared this copy from one of the drafts before the ceremony actually took place. This discovery throws new light on the acquisition, storage and use of this type of documents by the ruling elite of the Muscovite State. The comparison of the lists of people who took part in the wedding ceremony demonstrates that we do not have the final version of the service document: all surviving versions go back to preliminary materials. So, researchers of the 17th-century Muscovite aristocracy and politics cannot rely on any particular version of the document but should study all of them.