Masliichuk, Volodymyr. Zdobutky ta iliuzii: osvitni initsiatyvy na Livoberezhnii ta Slobidskii Ukraini druhoi polovyny XVIII — pochatku XIX st. (Kharkiv: Kharkivska derzhavna akademiia kultury, 2018), 544 s.

Bielikova, Halyna. Yavlennia. Pamiatky Kyivskoho Bratskoho monastyria»: albom-kataloh (Kyiv: Natsionalnyi khudozhnii muzei Ukrainy; Kyiv: Maister knyh, 2019), 304 s.; il.

Kotliarov, Petro. Humanist i reformator: osvitni, relihiini ta sotsialno-politychni praktyky Filipa Melankhtona (Kyiv, Vinnytsia: TOV «Nilan-LTD», 2017), 360 s.

The article examines the socio-cultural aspects of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Library functioning in the 1770–80s. The focus is on acquiring the books as a purposeful way to form a collection of books that best demonstrated the monastery’s needs for books, interests and reading tastes of the fraternity. The author attempts to reconstruct the network of «book agents»: people who assisted in books acquisition; determine who was the initiator and who was the implementer of procurement; specify the needs in the printed books, as well as whether printed books completely displaced the manuscripts at the end of the 18th century.The author discovers the interest of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in replenishing the book collection not only to meet the readers’ needs of the fraternity but also based on the understanding of the importance of a well-stocked library to confirm the status of the monastery. It has been established that the «book agents» were the Lavra attorneys in Moscow and St. Petersburg, who carried out various assignments of the monastery; former Lavra monks transferred to other dioceses; or persons loyal to Lavra, specifically involved for this purpose. There is interest in translated literature, periodicals, new publications, and activity in the purchase of printed materials, which generally signals changes in the reading practices of the monastic corporation. The analysis of the repertoire of purchased books confirmed the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the growing demand for secular and educational books on science and nature. The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, while remaining quite traditional in the segment of theological literature, where Latin continued to dominate, demonstrated openness to new trends in book culture of the second half of the 18th century.

Ukrainian historiography has not properly determined the problems of Volynian cities’ secretariats and development of burghers’ literacy in particular. The goal of the article is to research some aspects of these problems by the means of testaments; specifically, to highlight the role of city secretaries in the process of writing down citizens’ testaments and facts that testify about development of urban literacy in cities of Volynia of the 17th century.The municipal registry record analysis implies that executing posthumous inventories, settlement deeds, and especially testaments influenced the development of pragmatic urban literacy. Among the analyzed group of testators, several people wrote down their testaments by themselves. Then city clerks had no option but to accept prepared documents post factum for saving records in town council registers, which in some extent is evidence of the literacy culture development in the Volynian cities in the early modern times. However, the predominant majority of testators were illiterate and in order to approve their act of last will, they signed it with a criss-cross (“X”); the conclusion of the act required specialized assistance from municipal clerks.At those times, testaments were normally written down in the house of a dying person in the presence of municipal officers who provided the document according to an appropriate form and legal validity, and eye-witnesses; or it could be written down at the city hall before the court. City secretaries had a significant role in this procedure, but their level of proficiency was not always appropriate.As in the majority of Central-East European cities of that time, in Volynian cities substantial amounts of acts of last will were given by verbal directions and were not recorded in municipal registers. This fact explains such a small amount of saved documents in comparison with Western European cities. They were not set aside into a separate register series as in bigger crown cities, but the acts were recorded into the current municipal registers in response to citizens’ demand.

The article depicts the peculiarities of Kyiv Theological Academy students’ nutrition in the years of 1834–1863. The investigation uses documents from the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv. These are mainly monthly and annual economic reports which inform about the filling of the student’s menu during the year and logs of behavior, where the inspector recorded deviations from the rules by students. Archival documents help to illuminate aspects connected to the nutrition of students of Kyiv Theological Academy. The ego-documents of graduates, notes, instructions of rectors, economists, and inspectors of the educational institution are extremely important.Attention is paid to regulatory requirements on food that are in the “Statut” of the theological academies. The Nutrition of students in Kyiv Theological Academy depended on many aspects and did not remain stable during 1819–1869. The students could diversify their diet at their own expense. The student menu was considered, and an attempt was made to analyze the changes that occurred with the filling of the student menu during these years. Also the paper describes how the diet changed depending on the period of the liturgical year. The traditions of informal students’ meetings and the use of prohibited (alcohol) and permitted (tea) drinks by the students are considered.Special attention is paid to the question of the diet and nutrition value of products for students. Сalculations are approximate, but there are reasons to conclude that the food energy value was enough for the students’ nutrition in the Academy at least on ferias.

The Free Economic Society, created under Catherine II, was fully in line with the enlightenment intentions of the Empress and her desire to encourage landowners to arrange their estates based on knowledge. One of the factors of its establishment was the need to accelerate the colonization of the Ukrainian southern territories, where land was received by officials and officers without economic skills. The society was to promote the foreign experience and the experience of those landowners who had achieved certain successes in growing high yields, organizing work, using machines and tillage, and building outbuildings. At the same time, it sought to study local specifics by describing and accumulating information about the demographic situation and economic potential of all territories of the Russian Empire. How did the landowners of the Ukrainian lands react to the attempts of the VET to involve them in their own activities and did its recommendations for the introduction of new agricultural technologies, which were discussed in the company’s publications, become authoritative? The author’s observations of the initial period of his activity allowed us to draw the following conclusions. In order to attract enlightened businessmen to participate in the society, the supreme power mobilized the local administration, which in turn mobilized the nobility. However, landowners were in no hurry to share their own achievements, and the company’s printed works did not become widespread and respectively did not take advantage of VET recommendations. There were insignificant successes in the natural-economic and demographic description of the provinces. The most complete were the descriptions of the Sloboda-Ukrainian province, the rest either did not take part in this project at all, or were brief.

This article is an interdisciplinary study that aims to form a comprehensive view of music and church singing both in the educational process of collegium students and outside it. Thanks to the historical sources involved, we were able to clarify the mechanism of functioning of church singing both in the collegium and at the stage of primary (preparatory) education of future students, as well as its role in the life of collegium graduates who made careers in the major vocal chapel of the Russian Empire. The preparatory stage for the future students was studying in parish schools, where an obligatory discipline was irmoloinyi singing. It is probable that in the 18th century, the teaching of singing in the collegium was carried out in the primary classes, where Church Slavonic literacy was studied at the same time, and in the first years of the 19th century musical singing was officially reflected in the name of a separate class. All students of the collegium underwent compulsory liturgical singing practice. The most gifted of the students were members of the Episcopal Cathedral Vocal Chapel. The students of the collegium were not limited to singing only in the cathedral; they also sang during the festive processions, during the begging, as well as in the parish churches during the holidays, where they also taught church singing. Among the music books, we know for sure about several Irmologions that were used in the collegium. From the memoirs of an eyewitness of the first third of the 19th century, we learn about the singing of hymns during public exams, as well as the singing of vocal concerts during the traditional holiday greetings to the Bishop, Rector, and Prefect of the seminary. It was noted that this tradition existed in the last quarter of the 18th century. Such a practice did exist at the same time in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, so this evidence seems plausible. The only evidence of the use of musical instruments among the students of the Pereyaslav Collegium comes from the descriptions of the May recreational festivities, when both vocal and instrumental ensembles from among the pupils were heard.

Tsiborovska-Rymarovych, Iryna. Drukarnia Berdychivskoho monastyria bosykh karmelitiv: istoriia ta vydavnycha diialnist. 1758–1844 (Kyiv: Akademperiodyka, 2019), 652 s., 28 s. il.

The copy of the Ostrog Bible from the collections of Vernadsky National library of Ukraine (Kyr.4476p) contains a significant number of handwritten marginalia, representing an attempt of one of its readers to comment and translate biblical concepts from the Old Church Slavonic into the prosta mova. Especially interesting are his notes on the so-called Laws from the Book of Exodus with interpretations of legal formulas.Its owner was Ioanykii Seniutovych, abbot of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery (mentioned in 1710, 1713) and Archimandrite of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (1715–1729). Though the intellectual heritage of this Kyiv hierarch has not attracted the attention of scholars so far, a collection of books he left behind, most of which are commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, is known. Lesser known is the fact that Seniutovych himself or someone from the persons close to him elaborated his copy of Ostrog Bible so that each page contained various traces of his (their) thoughtful reading. Systematic comparison of Cyrillic and much more rare Latin notes on the margins with the 16th century Catholic and Protestant editions of the Bible have brought an unexpected find. While on the whole the parallels have revealed the heavy impact of the Polish biblical translations, the main source for Ostrog Bible reader and commentator came to be the Krakow 1599 year edition of Jakub Wujek, which demonstrates literal coincidences of the texts. It seems that our reader has undertaken the difficult task of juxtaposing the Old Church Slavonic translation from the Greek Septuagint with the Polish translation from the Latin Vulgate. On the way of analyzing the texts he made both mistakes and correct conclusions regarding biblical semantics. Thus, the case study of just one fragment of this extremely interesting copy involves a lot of issues concerning the understanding of the Holy Scripture in Kyiv in the late 17th-18th centuries.