The Front Chronicle of Tsar Ivan the Terrible - The Source of Truth. The facial vault of Ivan IV The facial annalistic vault is a source of truth

FACE CHRONICLES - Russian chronicles, decorated with illustrations, conveying the content of the ist. events not only with the help of words, but also by means of fine arts. Using the opportunity to convey a detailed narrative with sparing lines and colors, medieval scribes and chroniclers often considered the image to be equivalent to the text. The traditions of the chronicle writing of the 11th-16th centuries are established on the basis of three manuscripts that have survived to our time: the Tver list of the Chronicle of Georgy Amartol (begun in 1304-1307, completed in 1368-1377), the Radzivilovskaya, or Königsberg Chronicle (90s of the 15th century) and The front chronicle. Each of the aforementioned monuments of facial annals bears traces of the most ancient illustrated annals that have not survived to our time. In the monuments of the facial annals, a deep correspondence is found between the style of the text and the miniatures illustrating it. The conventional language of the miniaturist is subordinated to the main goal: to clearly show where, when and how a given event took place. The need to tell about various events, to convey the socio-historical ideas of medieval Russia brought to life a harmonious iconographic system that has developed over several centuries. An iconographic scheme was established for depicting the gift or reception of an investiture, the beginning of the reign of a great or specific prince, taking an oath (kissing the cross), concluding agreements, sending or receiving embassies, images of rati, etc. Historical symbols were used in the obverse chronicle (for example, a raised sword or a saber is a sign of a military threat, a ciborium is a sign of the sanctity of a place). The attributes of royal and princely dignity are preserved. The complex "feudal table of rank" is strictly observed, first of all, when depicting clothes, headdresses, the shape of thrones, etc. Front Chronicle The 2nd half of the 16th century can be regarded as a kind of climax in the addition of the iconography of historical illustration. Subsequent obverse annals - the Kungur Chronicle and numerous copies of the "Kazan History" - follow the general tradition of historical illustration.

O. I. Podobedova. Moscow.

Soviet historical encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 8, KOSHALA - MALTA. 1965.

Literature:

Presnyakov A. E., Royal book, its composition and origin, St. Petersburg, 1893; his own, Mosk. ist. encyclopedia of the 16th century, "Izv. ORYAS", St. Petersburg, 1900, v. 5, book. 3; Artsikhovsky A.V., Old Russian. miniatures as ist. source, M., 1944; Alshits D.N., Ivan the Terrible and additions to the front vaults of his time, "FROM", vol. 23, 1947; his, Origin and features of sources telling about the boyar rebellion of 1553, ibid., vol. 25; Schmidt S. O., Miniatures of the Royal Book as a source for the history of Moscow. uprisings of 1547, "PI", vol. 5, M., 1956; Podobedova O.I., Miniatures rus. historical manuscripts. To the history of Russian facial chronicle writing, M., 1965.

The year 2010 was marked by a very important event for specialists studying Ancient Russia and just lovers of history: the Illuminated Chronicle Code (popularly called the Tsar Book) was posted on the Internet for open access. It was scanned and placed on the worldwide network by representatives of the Society of Lovers of Ancient Literature.

What is the importance of this event?

Agree that the most important thing in the work of every historian is the primary sources: written, works of art, architecture, household items and other artifacts. Unfortunately, in our time, not many researchers of the past turn to them. Often they study and cite the works of other historians, and those third, and so on. As a result, if you start to understand, then most of these scientists have never used primary sources, and created all their works on the basis of other people's words and opinions. It turns out that these works can be compared with a bad copy of a copy of some "blockbuster". If you open and read what is written in an ancient document, and compare the information with what modern historians write, you can often find not only minor inaccuracies, but sometimes completely opposite facts. So it is, and it happens all the time.

Ancient artifacts of Russia

Unfortunately, not as many authentic primary sources have survived to this day as we would like. If we consider architectural monuments, then there are very few of them left, and besides, most of them belong to the 18-19 centuries, because in Russia the main building material is wood, and regular wars and fires do not spare such structures. If we take household items and jewelry, then everything is not so simple: what we managed to save are all artifacts of the 15th-19th centuries. And this is also quite understandable, because precious metals and stones have always been the goal of various kinds of profit lovers and black archaeologists. Almost all ancient burial places (mounds, etc.) on the territory of our country were plundered during the time of Catherine II.

Oral traditions

The most complete historical information about the history of our land has been preserved in the memory of the people - these are legends, traditions, fairy tales, epics, etc. However, scientists categorically deny the possibility of considering oral creativity as a source of information, at least in relation to what is connected with the past Russia, although they are ready to fully accept the legends of, say, the Scandinavian or British peoples. But in our fairy tales and legends, many interesting facts have been preserved, a certain interpretation of which confirms one of the popular modern theories (A. Sklyarov “Inhabited Island Earth”). For example, we all know about such a fabulous curiosity as a magic saucer with a pouring apple, in which the whole world is visible - why is it not an iPhone with its logo - a bitten fruit? And carpets-airplanes, and boots-walkers? Is there anything else...

However, we have digressed a lot, it's time to return to the main topic of our article, and this, we recall, is the Facial Vault of Tsar Ivan (iv) the Terrible.

Written sources

The main written sources of Ancient Russia are chronicles. Since the 19th century, the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles began to be published. Anyone who wished to get acquainted with this printed edition by contacting the library. However, now work is underway within the framework of the project "Manuscript Monuments of Ancient Russia" to transfer it to digital format, and in the near future it, like the Facial Code of Ivan the Terrible, will be posted on the Internet for public use. Novice researchers should be aware that ancient manuscripts contain not only text, but also drawings. These are illustrated documents. The main one of them is the Facial vault. It consists of ten thousand sheets and seventeen thousand illustrations.

Front Chronicle

This document is the largest chronicle-chronographic code of Ancient Russia. It was created by order of the king in the period from 1568 to 1576. The front vault contains a presentation of world history from the creation of the world to the 15th century and Russian history until the year 67 of the 16th century. Amosov A.A. calculated that this ancient artifact consists of ten volumes with a total of 9745 sheets, which are decorated with 17,744 color miniatures. Historians rightly believe that the King's Book also contained the eleventh volume. Now it is lost, and this is understandable, because it dealt with the most controversial period of Russian history - until 1114.

Facial vault: content

The first three volumes contain the texts of biblical books such as the Pentateuch, the books of Judges, Joshua, Kings, as well as the books of Ruth, Esther, the prophet Daniel. In addition, they present the full texts of Alexandria, two narratives about the Trojan War (“The Tale of the Creation and Capture of Troy”, extracted from the Russian Chronograph, and “The History of the Destruction of Troy” - a translation of the novel by Guido de Columna) and the work of Josephus “ History of the Jewish War. For subsequent world events, the work “Chronographer of Illinsky and Roman” and “Russian Chronograph” served as sources of information.

The history of Russia is described by the Facial vault in 4-10 volumes, the source was mainly As researchers (for example, Kloss B. M.) say, starting from the events of 1152, additional sources are found in the document, such as the Novgorod vault (1539), Resurrection Chronicle, "The Chronicler of the Beginning of the Kingdom" and others.

ancient editing

The tsar-book has a number of edits, it is believed (there is no evidence for this, however) that they were made approximately in 1575 at the direction of Tsar Ivan the Terrible himself. The revision of the already finished text affected mainly the period from 1533 to 1568. An unknown editor made annotations in the margins of the document, some of which contain accusations against persons who were repressed and executed during the oprichnina.

Unfortunately, work on the Facial Vault was not completed: some of the miniatures were made only in ink sketches, they did not have time to color them.

conclusions

The facial vault of Ivan the Terrible is not only a monument of Russian book art, but also a very important source of historical events: miniatures, despite their conventionality and rather symbolic nature, provide rich material for researching the realities of that time. In addition, the study of the editorial changes that were made to the last volume (The King's Book) provides an opportunity to get more in-depth information about the political struggle of the post-oprichne period. They also make it possible to judge the king's changed assessments of the activity of one or another of his associates. And also about new views on the events themselves during his reign.

Finally

Thanks to the activities of the Society of Ancient History Lovers, now everyone can get acquainted with this priceless artifact. After all, earlier, in order to gain access to this document, it was necessary to make a lot of efforts, and only historians could get it. But today it is available to everyone. All that is needed is access to the World Wide Web, and you can immerse yourself in the fascinating world of studying our past. To see everything with your own eyes, to add up your opinion about certain events, and not to read ready-made stamps of historians, who, perhaps, never even opened the original source.

For the first time in the open and free access on the website of the OLDP (Society of Lovers of Ancient Literature) the legendary Front Chronicle of Tsar Ivan the Terrible appeared. The manuscript with hundreds of colorful miniatures can be downloaded from the links below.

The front annalistic code was created in the 16th century by order of the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible for the education of the royal children. The most educated person of his time, St. Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, headed the work on compiling this Code. The best scribes and icon painters of the capital worked on compiling the Code. What they have done: a collection of all reliably known sources from Holy Scripture (the text of the Septuagint) to the history of Alexander the Great and the writings of Josephus Flavius - the entire written history of mankind from the creation of the world to the 16th century inclusive. All times and all peoples that had a written language are reflected in dozens of books of this collection. Such a collection of chronicles, decorated with a huge number of highly artistic illustrations, was not created by any civilization of mankind: neither Europe, nor Asia, nor America or Africa. The fate of the Russian Tsar himself and his children was tragic. The front annalistic code was not useful to the princes. After reading the Facial Code, part of which is devoted to the period of Ivan the Terrible, it becomes clear why. Over the next hundreds of years, official historiography appeared, often opportunistic and politically biased, and therefore reliable chronicle sources were doomed to destruction or correction, that is, falsification. The front annalistic code survived these centuries due to the fact that after the death of Ivan the Terrible, during the period of unrest and timelessness, this tome became a coveted object for "enlightened" bibliophiles. Its fragments were taken to their libraries by the most influential nobles of their time: Osterman, Sheremetev, Golitsyn and others. After all, even then high-ranking collectors understood that there was no price for such a folio with sixteen thousand miniatures. And so the Code survived until the revolution and was dumped in heaps in several museums and depositories.

Already today, through the efforts of enthusiasts, disparate books and sheets were brought together from different repositories. And the revived Society of Ancient Literature Lovers made this masterpiece accessible to everyone. An unparalleled historical source, now many major educational institutions of the world, national libraries of different countries and, of course, our compatriots will be able to receive free of charge to raise children on this treasure of experience and wisdom of millennia. In such an amazing way, the work that was done for the royal children five hundred years ago went to our children, dear contemporaries, on which we congratulate you from the bottom of our hearts!

First volume

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Second volume

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Third volume