THE OLD BELIEVERS AND "LITHUANIAN" BOOKS ("LITOVSKIE" KNIGI)
The opponents of the liturgical reforms imposed by Patriarch Nikon appealed to Russian manuscripts and printed books of the Moscow Printing Yard to prove the illegality of changes in the rites and liturgical practices of the Russian Church. There was gradually formed a system of authoritative books of the Old Belief, made up of books that also were signiﬁcant for the opponents. This circle includes miscellanies “Kirill’s Book” (“Kirillova kniga”) and “Book about Faith” (“Kniga o vere”), which were printed in Moscow but composed of the writings of Ukrainian and Belarusian Orthodox authors in the late XVI - early XVII centuries. The next generation of the Old Believers also appealed to the original texts, namely, so-called “Lithuanian” (“Litovskiye”) books printed on the territory of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Old Believers used them to look for ideas and arguments to support their position. In the ﬁrst quarter of the XVIII century these books were included in the circle of reputable sources. The article describes one of the methods used by Old Believers in order to give importance to “Lithuanian” (“Litovskiye”) books. Thus a large number of arguments in the “Pomorian answers” (“Pomorskiye otvety”) were references to editions printed by Orthodox printing houses of Kiev Metropoly, which were allocated into a special section titled “Belarusian” or “belorossiyskie” books. Vygovtsy used this term obviously guided by 1620 Decree which labeled the Orthodox population of the related Metropoly as “Belorustsy”. Patriarch Filaret called to treat them with great caution, as the living conditions in the heterodox environment contributed to some deviations from the true faith, while for the Old Believers in the early XVIII century the term “belorossiyskie” became synonymous with “Orthodox”, “true”, “right”.