Analysis and Attribution of the Manuscripts from the Library of Princes Romodanovsky (17th — 18th centuries)

The paper deals with the search and study of the manuscripts from the medieval library of the princes Romodanovsky, preserved in parts in various libraries and archives of Russia. The purpose of this research is to identify and attribute the materials from the collection of the princes Romodanovsky in the holdings of the scientific-research Department of manuscripts of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences (BAN). Russian historians M.E. Bychkova, A.L. Khoroshkevich and Y.V. Ankhimyuk made the assumptions that separate manuscripts (the genealogical book of M.G. Romodanovsky, the historical digest “The book of cases”, etc.) belonged to the library of princes Romodanovsky. However, until now, these sources in historiography were not considered in the complex, and there was no idea about the existence of the significant volume of books of ancestral library. Within the scope of investigation, the author reviewed and analysed the best part of manuscript collections of count M.G. Golovkin, count A.I. Osterman and other courtiers, seized in 1741—1742 in the result of the charges of treason. Based on the materials from the BAN holdings in the St. Petersburg branch of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the author restored the circumstances of transfer of the manuscript books from the Confiscation Commission to the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article describes that the great part of the manuscript collection of M.G. Golovkin library is made up of the medieval library of princes Romodanovsky, got there as a heritage of Ekaterina Ivanovna, the wife of count M.G. Golovkin and daughter of I.F. Romodanovsky. The study of the collections of other convicts showed that the Commission made serious mistakes in the description of the books. As a result, the significant part of the collection of M. Golovkin was attributed to the books of Osterman. Thus, in the scientific-research Department of manuscripts of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences the author identified and attributed more than 15 manuscripts of 17th — beginning of 18th century, which constituted the core of the ancestral library of princes Romodanovsky. The obtained results demonstrate the manuscript tradition of the ruling elite and its book culture in the new way. The paper used such methods as historical, comparative-historical, prosopographic, as well as a number of methods of auxiliary historical disciplines: source studies, historical bibliography, archival heuristics, archeography, palaeography and codicology.