THE INCOME AND EXPENDITURE BOOK OF THE TOBOLSK BISHOP'S HOUSE OF 1696-1697: ARTICLES NO. 4 AND 5 (COLLECTION OF THE "PESOSHNYE" AND "MERCIFUL" MONEY)
The Income and Expenditure Book of the Tobolsk Bishop's House of 1696-1697 is a unique historic source representing a cross-section of a rather large part of the Siberian eparchy life of the late 17th century. It is particularly important that the Book is the only financial document of that kind survived from that period. It consists of 9 items (of income and expenditure) and reflects the daily economic life of the Bishop's House, in fact, showing the entire structure of its life and activity. The published part of the Income and Expenditure Book of 1696-1697 enumerates the income items of the Tobolsk Bishop's House from collecting small monetary fees from clergy and churches of Siberia. Article no. 4 lists the fee of the so-called “pesoshnye” money (the term is not found in other documents), and according to the author of the article it should be correlated with the fee for living on church land, mentioned in other eparchies of the time. Article no. 5 refers to the “merciful“ money, which began to be collected “in aid of the Moscow almshouse for the sake of beggars” as soon as the Monastic Department was liquidated in 1678. The Income and Expenditure Book of 1696-167 is known in 2 copies from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Moscow). The text of the two income items from the Income and Expenditure Book of the Tobolsk Bishop's House of 1696-1697 has been published according to the rules for publishing of written sources of the 2-nd half of the 16th-17th centuries. The publication is based on the A-Copy text created in the Treasury Office in Tobolsk and signed by an official. The B-Copy, created in the Siberian Office of Moscow as a duplicate, allows restoring the losses and detecting discrepancies.