The ‘Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery Obikhodnik’ from the Ural Federal University Laboratory of Archival Research (LAR)
The paper analyzes the Cellarer’s Obikhodnik (1625-1628) from the Kirillo-Belozersky (St. Cyril’s White Lake) Monastery. Those monks who were elected to the position of a cellarer were responsible for many things. They had to remember numerous arrangements and traditions, including a lot of figures and numbers, so they used to keep obikhodniks, viz., the books where they logged the necessary information. These books have some typical common features, but each of them possesses its specific characteristics. It makes each Obikhodnik a unique source. Historiography considers 11 obikhodniks dated back to the the second half of the16th - the 30-es of the 17th centuries. Thus, the copy kept in LAR became the 12th in this batch. The article compares the LAR copy with other everyday books dated back to the late 16th century and up to the 30-es of the 17th century. The Obikhodnik section devoted to the reception of Archbishop Cornelius of Komel and Perm on January 16, 1622 characterizes the monastery relations with the neighboring diocese. Some original entries of the Obikhodnik show the definitive role of the monastery in the spiritual life of the Russian aristocracy in the early 17th century. They demonstrate the monastery having received some rules of particular high-ranking persons. The major part of the Obikhodnik is the section called “A Cellarer’s Reminder”, which contains the information about quantitative and qualitative structure of the food rationing for various purposes. The structure of entries in this section is variable. The “Reminder” section of the LAR Obikhodnik consists mostly of entries typical for all the known obikhodniks, several sections being available only in the Book of 1593-1594. The number of entries taken from the Book of 1595-1601 is significant. Some entries are original and are available only in this copy. They couldn’t be traced to older books and were not to be rewritten in the later ones. Thus while comparing the UrFU LAR Obikhodnik with the books dated back to the second half of the 16th - the 30-es of the 17th centuries, the author establishes the degree of its typological uniformity, on the one hand, and its originality, on the other, and gives its academic description. The article also provides the photocopy of the Book.