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Realization vs. Standard: Commemorative Meals in the Iosif Volotskii Monastery in 1566/67
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Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 231–49. Realization vs. Standard: Commemorative Meals in the Iosif Volotskii Monastery in 1566/67 Ludwig Steindorff Those who work on the history of the Iosif Volotskii monastery 75 miles northwest of Moscow know the Eparkhial’noe sobranie (the Diocesan Col-‐‑ lection) in the manuscript depository of the State Historical Museum at Mos-‐‑ cow as one of the most important collections of relevant sources since it forms a part of the former library of that monastery, which was founded by Iosif Sanin in 1479.1 Beside readings from the Bible, liturgical books, and patristic literature, we find a number of memorial registers (sinodiki), Donation Books (Vkladnye knigi), and Books of Feasts (Kormovye knigi), i.e., those sources which refer to the role of the monastery as a receiver of donations and center of litur-‐‑ gical commemoration.2 While some of these manuscripts were frequently used by researchers, one of them has hardly been taken into account so far.3 Manuscript no. 417 (683) is described as “Rule for meals and the commemo-‐‑ ration of the living and the dead, 1565, 80 (15 cm x 10 cm), Russian cursive uncial. 38 folios. The ending is lost” (“Ustav o trapeze i pominanii zhivykh i umershikh, 1565 g., 80 (15x10), russkii beglyi ustav. 38 l. Okonchanie utra-‐‑ cheno”).4 The description of the contents is limited to the remark that feasts 1 The latest monograph on the history of the monastery is by Tom E. Dykstra, Russian Monastic Culture: “Josephism” and the Iosifo-‐‑Volokolamsk Monastery 1947–1607 (Munich: Otto Sagner, 2006 [=Slavistische Beiträge 450]). A table of all known monks from the monastery was published by him: “Inocheskie imena v Moskovskoi Rusi i problemy identifikatsii ikh obladatelei (na materiale istochnikov Iosifo-‐‑Volokolamskogo monas-‐‑ tyria, 1479–1607),” in Imenoslov: Istoricheskaia semantika imeni. Vypusk 2, ed. Fedor Uspenskii (Moscow: Indrik, 2007), 238–98. 2 For the typology of the whole complex of sources, see Ludwig Steindorff, “Com-‐‑ memoration and Administrative Techniques in Muscovite Monasteries,” Russian His-‐‑ tory/Histoire Russe 22: 4 (1995): 433–54; L. Shtaindorf [Ludwig Steindorff], “Sravnenie istochnikov ob organizatsii pominaniia usopshikh v Iosifo-‐‑Volokolamskom i v Troitse-‐‑ Sergievom monastyriakh v XVI v.,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1996 god (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 65–78, esp. 67–69. 3 Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei, Eparkhial’noe sobranie [hereafter GIM, Eparkh. sobr.], no. 417 (683). 4 T. V. Dianova, L. M. Kostiukhina, and I. V. Pozdeeva, “Opisanie rukopisei biblioteki Iosifo-‐‑Volokolamskogo monastyria,” Knizhnye tsentry Drevnei Rusi: Iosifo-‐‑Volokolamskii 232 LUDWIG STEINDORFF and donations are enumerated in the order of the calendar, beginning from September 1. As pointed out in the description, all persons mentioned in the entries are closely linked to the monastery, and the entries offer information about the food. So at first glance it looks as if the manuscript was an early variant of the extant Kormovaia kniga from the Iosif Volotskii monastery, which was com-‐‑ posed in about 1581, and which, in the form of a calendar, indicates the dates of kormy (festive meals in memory of donors or their relatives), registers the donations on the basis of which the kormy were established, and contains in-‐‑ structions about food and beverage. The annual commemoration by a korm was normally bound to the donation of at least 100 rubles or corresponding real estate or movable goods.5 But a more detailed analysis of the manuscript will prove that it is a unique example of a new source type, previously un-‐‑ known, which supplies new information about the memorial practice in the monastery. The book starts on folio 2:6 “In the year 7075, on September 1, on the Feast of St. Semion, which fell on a Sunday. In the trapeze [refectory], the following food was served…” (“Leta 7000 sem’desiatogo piatogo mesiatsa sentiabria v 1, pamiat’ prepodobna ottsa Semiona, prilochilos’7 v nedeliu. V trapeze estva…”). A description of the food served for lunch follows: bread, pirogi, shchi, eggs, but, as explicitly noted, no kolachi. The brethren drank kvas which had been prepared from grain. Even from this short quotation it is obvious that the organization of the text is different from that of a Book of Feasts (Kor-‐‑ movaia kniga). The Book of Feasts is a normative text; it is not bound to a cer-‐‑ tain year, but it indicates the dates...
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