A Copy of the Akathists by Francis Skorina at the University of Wrocław and the Fragments of His Other Publications: Recent Data

Nadežda Morozova (The Institute of the Lithuanian Language) / Aliaksandr Parshankou (Charles University)

The library of the University of Wrocław (Poland) holds several fragments of Francis Scorina’s Samuel and Kings. The fragments of six other editions, also found in Wrocław, are known to have been destroyed during World War II.

This library also holds a unique copy of Skorina’s Akathists (1522/1523). The book has preserved the book block and, above all, the original 16th-century binding. In 1978, Yuri Labyntsev (Moscow; Юрий Лабынцев) identified this Wrocław copy and placed it in scholarly circulation. Since then, this copy has been frequently mentioned in the scientific literature (J. Nemirovskii, A. Naumow, G. Golenchenko, I. Lemeshkin etc.); however, it has not yet been subjected to a comprehensive codicological scientific analysis, and moreover, some of the provenances have been misread and misinterpreted, or not decpicted at all.

The authors’ research suggests that the Wrocław copy probably belonged to the book collection of Daniel Prinz von Buchau (1546-1608), the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to the court of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Грозный) in Moscow. Prinz was interested in the doctrine of the Orthodox Church and wrote several polemical texts on the subject. One of his interests was Scorina’s Little Book of Travels, part of which (the Akathists) he acquired or received as a gift probably in Vilnius. A study of Skorina’s legacy in Wrocław leads to new and unexpected conclusions. The research of the Wrocław copy indirectly confirms the Vilnius origin of the Little Travel Book.