The Autograph of Elder Bogolep (Lvov) and the Historical Context of the Tale of Venerable Nikodim

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the 17th-century manuscript collection, with the Life of St. Nikodim Kozheozersky (State Historical Museum, A. S. Uvarov Collection, no. 8 — 80). Codicological and paleographic research made it possible to date the manuscript earlier than previously thought, and attribute its handwriting to the “builder” of the Kozheozersky monastery, monk Bogolep (secular name: Boris Vasilyevich Lvov). The monk was the author of the very first essay on St. Niko­dim — a brief note based on the words of the hermit himself. Now it can be argued that this text has been preserved in the autograph of Monk Bogolep. The discovery of an auto­graph by an Old Russian writer is a rather rare phenomenon; it allows to treat all the details of the story as the most reliable and to compare them with the known historical facts concerning, in this case, the Time of Troubles, and also with biographical information about Kozheozersky elder Bogolep, the Chudov archimandrite Pafnutiy and St. Nikodim himself. The correspondence between the handwriting in The Tale of Nikodim and the writing style of the manuscripts attributed recently to elder Bogolep confirms the correctness of the method of identifying his manner of writing: the handwriting of the Kozheozero monk contains a stable set of elements, including rare ones.