IAKOVLEV, Ioann, & Pëtr Aleksandrov.

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Genealogy of the Romanov tsars from Adam and Eve. A rare, decorated genealogy of the Romanov tsars to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great. Manuscript genealogies of the Russian rulers are rare on the market and uncommon institutionally: the catalogue of the National Library of Russia records fewer than ten comparable examples from the 18th and 19th centuries, while Cleminson lists none.The title is signed by the priest Ioann Iakovlev, likely the compiler of the manuscript, and again in 1770 by the priest Pëtr Aleksandrov, who refers to a Church of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, perhaps that in Moscow, where support for the Romanovs was especially strong.Genealogical trees of the Russian tsars were largely a Romanov innovation, developing only in the mid-17th century, far later than equivalent traditions in Western Europe, China, or Central Asia. As Sirenov observes, "the paradox is that a new Romanov dynasty was then on the Russian throne, and the family trees had to prove its continuity with the Rurik dynasty, which did not correspond to reality". Their structure drew on Western European models transmitted through genealogical manuscripts and printed title pages produced at the Kiev Monastery of the Caves in the 1660s. Like many early modern dynastic pedigrees, they combined biblical, classical, and pseudo-historical ancestry to assert antiquity and legitimacy.The first half of the manuscript is devoted to scriptural genealogy, including the Patriarchs, th

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