Žarko Vojnović
Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Beograd
stevlovi@gmail.com
doi: 10.19090/cit.2018.33.55-62
No. 33 (November 2018), p. 55-62
Copying Activity in Monasteries on the Territory of the Metropolitanate of Karlovci in the 18th Century
Summary
Although it was not typical for the rest of Europe in the 18th century, copying was still present in Serbian monasteries
of that time, including those on the territory of the Metropolitanate of Karlovci. This was caused by the lack of a
stable market in the fi eld of printed books, the content shortcomings of new Russian books, and the lack of fi nancial
resources. It was not rare that due to that fact even books of theology, which were imported from Russia massively,
especially in the fi rst half of the century, were copied. Copying the services for Serbian saints that did not exist
in the new Russian books, as well as the national biographical and historiographical literature, from the biography
of Saint Sava to the Chronicles of Count Georgi Branković, was the characteristic of the Serbian monasteries. The
monks testify to their attachment to modern trends by frequently copying the works of academic Russian theology
of the 17th and 18th centuries, which represent the standard educational literature of that period. Russian culture
was also a mediator between the Serbian and West European cultures, so the books of non-Orthodox authors were
copied in Russian translations as well. The emergence of a new school system with the Serbs after the Russian model
is illustrated by the widespread practice of copying theological school textbooks, among which the most signifi cant
is Epitome by Dionysius Novaković. A large number of copied works of the Orthodox polemic anti-Catholic literature,
both Greek and Russian and Serbian, which is certainly a feature of theology of this time and the result of academic
education, should be observed in this context. As a consequence, there were numerous copies of textbooks on
nontheological subjects studied in the schools of Novi Sad and Sremski Karlovci, which shows that the monks of the
Metropolitanate of Karlovci became more and more educated. A more creative way of dealing with copying books,
as a refl ex of medieval practice, was composing personal anthologies. They were mostly compilations of texts
from Russian printed books, which contained, in addition to the works of recent Russian theology, a lot of works
from the patristic period, as well as historiographical, pedagogical, legal or literary texts. An illustrative example
of a monastery library with a high degree of content of the 18th century copies is the collection of the Grabovac
Monastery, which has got all the types of books typical for this period.
Keywords:
manuscripts, copying, monasteries, Metropolitanate of Karlovci, 18th century, monastery libraries,
manuscripts of Grabovac Monastery
Submitted: 2nd September 2018
Accepted for publication: 12th September 2018
Copying Activity in Monasteries on the Territory of the Metropolitanate of Karlovci in the 18th Century
by
Žarko Vojnović
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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