Professor A. A. Dmitrievsky’s Lecture Course on Liturgics in the Collection of Academician K. S. Kekelidze: History of Creation, Sources, and Significance for Science

Abstract

The article examines an important source for reconstructing the lecture course on Liturgics, which was delivered by the prominent Russian liturgist A. A. Dmitrievsky in 1884–1907 to students of the Kiev Theological Academy: it is a fragment of the lectures from the collection of K. S. Kekelidze, the Academician of the Georgian SSR Academy of Sciences (No. 745). This fragment was created in typewritten form and reproduced in the early 20th century for educational purposes, as a guide for preparing for the subject’s exam. The sources for creating this fragment were the notes of A. A. Dmitrievsky’s lectures, which were probably made by students over several academic years. The manual provides answers to only 15 questions in the curriculum, which is slightly more than half of the total amount of the course. The material covers three parts of the course on Liturgics: the end of the general part (Hymnography and History of church singing); the core of the special part (History of the daily services, of the Divine Liturgy, and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, as well as History of sacraments of Baptism, Chrismation, Priesthood, and Penance); and the applied part, which includes only the history of the Typikon. Most of the topics reflected in the monument have parallels in other sources to reconstruct A. A. Dmitrievsky’s lecture course, with the exception of a small section dedicated to the history of church singing in the Latin West. The discovery of this new fragment of A. A. Dmitrievsky’s lectures on Liturgics is crucial for reconstructing the structure, content, and variability of the scholar’s educational course.