OLD BELIEVERS.

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The Life of Basil the New by Gregorios His Pupil, and the Visions of St Theodora. A "hybrid book", blending a printed edition of the Life of St Basil and the visions of St Gregory and St Theodora, with 82 hand-drawn and hand-coloured miniature scenes illustrating the narrative, with what appear to be signs of censorship."Old Believer book culture inherited and developed an ancient tradition that had already manifested itself in the first century of Russian book production: the aesthetic perception of the book as a synthesis of the arts - verbal, visual, and sometimes musical" (Medvedeva, p. 70). As here, Old Believers' books typically blended the biblical, the hagiographic, and the didactic, canonical and traditional motifs, as well as scriptural, apocryphal, and popular sources. In particular, through the illustration of traditional eschatological motifs, such as the Afterlife, and exemplary saints' lives as guidance for a virtuous life, Old Believers "taught young people how to behave in this world and how to value their faith", while creating "a connection with Ancient Russia" (Medvedeva, p. 72).As Old Believers saw printing itself "as a symbol of detested Tsarist authority" (Carey, p. 207), it is interesting and infrequent to find such hybrid books with both printed and manuscript material. The text was printed at the press of the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra Monastery, in present-day Ukraine. It was established in 1730 for the Basilian monastic order, and published hundr

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