New list of Russian liturgical “Actions” of the 16th–17th centuries. Proceedings of the VIII Archaeological Congress in Moscow 1890. Volume 2.

One of the outstanding features of the unique Moscow culture of the 16th - 17th centuries. One should recognize the special attachment of the Muscovites of that time to ritual and the unusually magnificent development of this ritual, not only in the sphere of church and liturgical services, but also in the sphere of social relations and household use. This development occurred under the influence of various reasons, among which Byzantine influence plays a major role, especially in the sphere of church and liturgical services. Church rituals of that time, at least in the main centers of church life and especially in Moscow, were so abundant that they sometimes went beyond the usual church charter, complicated by such actions that constituted a kind of luxury, and not an urgent need. The nature of these complications was often such that churches were cramped and inconvenient for them: it was necessary to go out to perform them in squares and streets, where they already entered the category of facts related to religious, everyday and public rituals. A particularly prominent position among this kind of facts, at the same time liturgical and everyday and mostly belonging to the category of processions, is occupied by the so-called “Actions,” namely: 1) the so-called “Cave Action”, performed on St. departed before R. Chr. or on St. Sunday forefather and, representing the miraculous deliverance of three Jewish youths from the fiery furnace. 2) “The action on the week of Vaiy”, which clearly depicted the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and 3) “The action of the Last Judgment”, which took place on the week of meat-eating and depicted the sermon of Jesus Christ about the Last Judgment, which was to take place at His last coming. The execution of these actions in the XVIII century. it was furnished so solemnly that foreigners who visited Moscow were always very interested in them, as a remarkable feature of everyday life, and considered it necessary to dwell on them in great detail in their memoirs. These actions are actually quite remarkable. And in our country, church historians, everyday and civil historians, and even literary historians have long paid attention to them. The latter paid attention to them especially because in these Actions the presence of a dramatic element is noticeable to a fairly significant extent - a fact that once again confirms the generally accepted position about the original relationship between dramatic art and liturgical ritual. In the above-mentioned Actions we find the rudimentary elements of a dramatic nature, not only in actions or in the reproduction of remembered actions and movements, but also in dialogues, which are introduced here sometimes from the sacred text, and sometimes in addition to it. These are especially the dialogues in “The Cave Action.” However, when we talk about Actions, this is not what we mean. We are referring to bibliographical and historical-archaeological questions concerning the origin and original edition of the Actions. These questions have not yet been completely resolved. The new list of Actions we found in the Sofia Library, in our opinion, can to some extent contribute to this decision. This prompted me to draw the attention of the venerable scientific assembly to it. We found a new list of Actions in one of the manuscripts of the library of the St. Sophia or Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral, now the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, where it is stored under No. 1100. RKP. in 8 d., on 267 sheets, almost all of it was written in half-rut of the 16th century; only the last 7 sheets were written in cursive from the early 17th century. RKP. this is something other than the bishop's Obikhodnik, or Official, containing a description of the features of the bishop's service in the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral. Here are the rites for the Celebration of Summer, for the Exaltation of the Cross; then the Cave Action, entitled: “The Rite of When an Angel is Descended.” Next are the rites: the consecration of the antimensions, the consecration of the water for Epiphany, the rites of the Last Judgment and the procession on the donkey or “on the flower week over the willow,” the consecration of oil, the washing of St. meals, foot washing, services on Fridays and Saturdays of Holy Week, Easter week; then various regulations for initiation into church positions, teachings to newly ordained ones; giving prayers for health and some others. At the end, in cursive writing, there is a teaching from the great lord, the Right Reverend Isidore, Metropolitan of Novgorod, by the newly installed priest. We find chronological indications here in two places: 1) in the prayer for the health of the Tsar, where there is a list of Novgorod archbishops. Here the last to be placed were Varlaam, Isidore and Macarius; the last two names were attributed by a later hand. This is an indication of the end of the 16th century. In the rank of “when an angel is sent down.” Here in two places the longevity of Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich is laid down: “God grant that the Tsar and Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich of All Rus', autocrat for many years, be healthy.” This is an indication of the beginning of the 16th century. This last instruction is especially important for us. Although, in view of his disagreement with the first indication, it cannot be considered the indisputable date of writing the manuscript, in any case it accurately determines the date of the edition of the Cave Action contained in the manuscript, as well as other Actions and rites, apparently copied from the same original. So this is arch. The Official of the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral of the oldest edition, superior to the previously known edition by almost 150 years, since the hitherto known Official of the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral, containing the ranks of the Actions that interest us, was compiled around the half of the 17th century, and not earlier than the second quarter of it. In particular, as for the Actions, they were hitherto known partly from this Official, partly from others lists, but all these lists of the 17th century, and as the very nature of their presentation shows, belong to the later widespread edition. The same is confirmed by comparing them with the newly found list. Compared to the hitherto known edition, the presentation of the new list is extremely brief. The action of the Last Judgment is briefly described. The action of the procession on the donkey is described in more detail, but still briefly: there are no dialogues here; the procession on a donkey takes place in both directions, and not in one, as was later and as required by the gospel narrative; The donkey is led by the governor of Novgorod and the metropolitan butler, although the possibility of the presence of the tsar and princes is assumed. The cave action is described in great detail. There are also dialogues here, although of a more primitive and brief form. For example, the presentation of a new list: “and the Chaldean said to another: there were three, but there were four, and the other answered: the fourth is formidable, become like the Son of God.” Exposition of the 17th century: "And the first Chaldean calls: comrade, and the other Chaldean answers: what. And the first Chaldean says: Do you see? And the other Chaldean doubles: I see. And the first Chaldean said: there were three, but became four, and the fourth was formidable and terrible, in the image of being like the Son of God. And the other Chaldean answered: how he flew, and us too won." Despite such differences, the literal similarity of many places in both editions shows that the later is only an extension of the first, made from place to place simply through mechanical interpolations. From here you can see in part what significance a new list can have for the history of Actions and the solution of some of the rather important issues mentioned above related to this history. These questions are as follows: 1) When did these Actions appear in Moscow? Where did they come from? and 3) In what form? Regarding the first question, the following dates exist. When, under Patriarch Joachim, at the council of 1678, on the initiative of the royal authorities, the origin of the ritual of the procession on the donkey was raised, the fathers of the cathedral responded that “when, by whom and by what fault did it begin” - they know nothing, that “I was diligent about it before and then, diligent in oral testing, and in the books, not the slightest memory of that action was found." This indicates of course, for a long time, but how long this prescription is difficult to determine. The oldest evidence of the commission of “Actions” in Moscow belongs to the foreigner Fletcher and dates back to 1588. How long before Fletcher this custom appeared in Moscow, it is impossible to determine, but it was known in Novgorod earlier. From the income and expenditure books of the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral it is clear that the Actions were performed in Novgorod in 1548, and from the list we found it is obvious that they were performed there with great solemnity already at the very beginning of the 16th century, under the Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich. If it is impossible to establish the exact date of the appearance of Actions in Moscow, then is it not possible to at least establish a general position about the comparative antiquity of their use in Moscow and Novgorod, that is, determine whether they appeared simultaneously in both cities or in one of them earlier? It seems to us that this will be possible to determine to some extent if we manage to satisfactorily resolve the second question we posed: where did the Actions in question come from to Moscow? Our church rituals have always been closely dependent on the Byzantine ones. Our liturgical books were translated from Greek. When any new rites appeared in Greece, they were immediately translated into the Slavic language and introduced into Russian church practice. We did not dare to invent anything on our own in this area, except, of course, for those cases when it was necessary due to local conditions, when, for example, it was necessary to compile a service for a new Russian saint, etc. even the various variants and differences in the text of our liturgical books are in most cases explained by variants and differences in the Greek original. On this basis, it can already be argued a priori that Russian liturgical actions are of Greek origin. And this is indeed so, although not all of them are known exactly when and in what form they existed among the Greeks. But in this case, it seems rather strange that the Russian-Slavic presentation of these Actions, which was guided when performing them in the 16th - 17th centuries, has not yet found justification in any Greek original; Moreover, such a justification is unlikely to ever be found. The fact is that the Russian-Slavic presentation of the Actions is obviously of Russian and, in particular, Novgorod origin. There is, however, a Moscow edition of these Actions of the 17th century, but this edition, as Prot. Nikolsky and, as can be seen from the comparison, there is also a Novgorod one, contained in the famous Official of the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral, only corrected. If in this way in Moscow, when performing Actions, they were guided not by their own, but by someone else’s and precisely the Novgorod presentation, then this, in our opinion, is a clear indication that the custom of performing these Actions came to Moscow from Novgorod and therefore appeared later than in Novgorod. The same conclusion is led by the fact that in other cities, where in the 17th century. the mentioned Actions were carried out, for example, in Rostov and Ryazan, the same Novgorod presentation served as the guide. In the Ryazan bishop's sacristy there is a Novgorod Official, written under the Ryazan Metropolitan Joseph no later than 1682 (Read. General. I. and Others 1861, book 1, department III, p. 1). The same Official, according to the instructions of Berednikov (Zh. M. Nar. Pros. 1853, June), is available in the Rostov Assumption Cathedral. Obviously, Novgorod served as a common source in this regard, although Moscow was already the main center for the development of ritual. As for the last question we posed: in what form did the Actions initially appear in our country in Moscow, Novgorod and in Rus' in general, this question is answered to some extent by the list we indicated. It contains such an edition of the Actions, which in relation to the edition of the 17th century. can be called original. If we compare this initial edition with the short Moscow edition, printed in Novikov’s library, it turns out that they are almost identical, and that, therefore, this initial edition was known in Moscow and that Moscow adopted it from Novgorod. The actions in question were originally in this short edition; the widespread edition moved here after. This must be admitted also because the Actions took place in Moscow before the appearance of a lengthy edition and were carried out, of course, according to some kind of written statement. But if the short edition is original in relation to the lengthy one, then can it be called original at all? In the text of this edition we did not find data to resolve this issue, and there are no third-party instructions. There is, in our opinion, only one indication here that can to some extent clarify the issue of the original Russian edition of the Actions in general. This indication is that the language and phraseology expose the Russian independent exponent, and not the translator. If we add to this instruction the analogy of the bishop's cathedral Officials with the monastery Obikhodniks, which in each monastery were drawn up by the charterers in relation to local peculiarities, then it seems very likely that the Actions were learned by the Russians from the Greeks not through written presentation, but so to speak, in a visual way, that the procedure for performing them was established according to the oral instructions of someone who saw them performed in Greece, and then was written down by the Russians charterers. In addition to the Sofia short version, there could be others recorded in other places. The variety of presentation of the Act of the Last Judgment in various bishops' Officials, which we had occasion to point out in print, confirms this idea. The general conclusion regarding the meaning of the list presented to your attention should, in my opinion, be as follows. He pushes back the date of documentary knowledge in our country of the Action further to the beginning of the 16th century. and besides, it establishes the fact that their original edition was significantly shorter than the one that was in use in the 17th century. and which alone was hitherto known. This latter is obviously the result of the development that has taken place in the field of Russian ritual and liturgical writing. You might be interested in: