EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Polemika i razdor' vostochne i zapadne tserkve. A collection of two texts on religious doctrines and differences between the Eastern and Western Churches, sometime part of Catherine II's Imperial Library. The hand of one of the two scribes in this manuscript is very likely the same as in the manuscript catalogue of the Imperial library produced at the turn of the 19th century, under the supervision of the chief librarian Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhkov (1754-1808). Luzhkov had the original catalogues reorganized, whereby each line was cut into a strip and pasted onto new blank volumes divided by subject. The strips on volume V, folio 374, are written in what appears to be the same hand as one of the two scribes in this manuscript (cf. Sobran'e, p. 208). The second was likely a German scribe, due to the unusual (and unnecessary) presence of diacritics in the Russian text. This could be the hand of the previous German librarian Johann Vollrath Bacmeister (1732-88) (Knigi, p. 28), author of a guide on the collections of the St Petersburg Academy of Science. Although thus stated by repute, we have not been able to ascertain whether the number '510' written on fol. 1 may be in Luzhkov's own hand. The first Russian public library, the Imperial Library (now National Library of Russia) was established by Catherine II (reigned 1762-96) in 1795. It included unique collections such as Voltaire's and Diderot's personal libraries, as well as works, like the present, useful for the Empress's p

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