| Abstrakt: |
Paisios Ligaridis, Metropolitan of Gaza and famous theologian, died in Kyiv in 1678. All his belongings, consisting of books, manuscripts, liturgical implements and vestments, as well as of some luxury objects, were immediately inventoried by the authorities. The Tsar ordered Ligaridis' properties to be given to fund his posthumous commemoration to the Bratsky monastery in Kyiv, where the hierarch had spent his last days. However, the metropolitan's inheritance was claimed almost immediately by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Dositheus II, who objected to such a "dispersion" of properties belonging to one of his suffragan metropolitan bishops. For many years Dositheus II strove to retrieve Ligaridis' belongings and manuscripts, writing to Moscow and to Kyiv, until his representative, Archimandrite Chrysanthe, was shown some of the Metropolitan's writings while he was visiting Kyiv. The ultimate fate of Ligarides' library, still conserved in Kyiv at the end of the 17th century, remains unclear: his manuscripts and books left no traces either in the 18th-century inventories of Kyivan libraries, nor in the collections of manuscripts and books of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and of the Metochion tou Panagiou Taphou. Especially sought-after, from the times of Patriarch Dositheus until now, has been a volume purported to have contained Patriarch Photius' then unknown homilies on the 860 Rus' attack against Constantinople. The whereabouts of this rare manuscript which Ligaridis brought from Moscow to Kyiv remains unknown. However, the edition of the inventory of Païsios Ligarides' disappeared belongings conserved in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts offers valuable new information on his vanished book and manuscript collection, as well as lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
