“The printed word is truly a relic ..”

March 1 is a date significant for Russian culture. On this day in 1564, the work on the first dated printed book in Rus’ “The Acts of Holy Apostles, written off by the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke” was completed. Briefly liturgical books of this content are called "Apostles". 

The “Apostle” of 1564 was not the first book created by Russian printers — various anonymous editions emerged before, but they were imperfect in quality.

In contrast to Western Europe, where, thanks to Johannes Guttenberg’s invention of moving letters, typography developed rapidly, the situation with book publishing was complicated in Russia during the time of Ivan the Terrible. Here is what the historian and philologist A. S. Petrushevich wrote in 1883 in his work Ivan Fyodorov the Russian First Printer, available on the Presidential Library’s portal: “The tsar was troubled by the fact that church manuscript books often encountered errors made by scribes of books, for this he, under Metropolitan Macarius at a council in Moscow in 1551, discussing the correction of church books, suggested, among other things, “so that St. books are righteous and unflappable and without a doubt to every Orthodox"".

This could only be achieved by printing books. The tsar ordered the printer Hans Missenheim from Denmark, who in 1553 opened a printing house, bringing equipment from abroad. Several books by unknown authors have been released. According to A. S. Petrushevich "The first assistants to Missenheim were the Russian people, deacon from Nikola Gostunsky, Ivan Fyodorov, and his friend Pyotr Timofeev Mstislavets...". It was they who later became the creators of the first dated and signed Russian printed book.

Academician A. S. Orlov, the author of the article and the editor of the collection Ivan Fyodorov, the first printer presented on the Presidential Library’s portal, describes this event as follows: “As for the first-printed Apostle, it follows from his Epilogue that Ivan the Terrible had a thought, this idea was approved by Metropolitan Macarius as a gift descending from above, and then Ivan Fyodorov and Pyotr Timofeev, one Moskvitin, another Mstislavets, one deacon, and the other unknown, completed this work”.

Ivan Fyodorov Moskvitin (as he himself signed) was born between 1510 and 1530. He studied at the University of Krakow, served as a deacon in the Kremlin Church of Nicholas Gostunsky. In 1563 he headed the printing house built on the orders of Ivan the Terrible - the Moscow Printing House - and began work on the publication of the Apostle, which lasted about a year.

The “Apostle” was chosen for printing, as it was used for teaching the clergy, and it was believed that it was translated into Slavic by Cyril and Methodius themselves. Metropolitan Macarius supervised the preparation of the text for publication, “service” materials were removed from it, the language was updated, and old forms and words were cleared.

The publication itself was innovative. The book did not yet have a title page, but an afterword written by the publisher itself appeared - quite secular, containing the output of the book, the history of its release, and even some information about the publisher. Fyodorov introduced spaces between words, and the original font used by him, close to the handwritten half-order, was considered exemplary in the state for half a century. In the video lecture “450th Anniversary of the Beginning of Printing in Russia”, posted on the Presidential Librar’s portal, senior researcher of the RSL E. Yemelyanova emphasizes that “thanks to the publication of Ivan Fyodorov in 1564, a model for printing of the Apostle was established for many years in Moscow", and not only a model for printing was established in the Moscow state.

After the publication of the Apostle, Ivan Fyodorov and Pyotr Timofeev continued to work, publishing more and more perfect books, but strangely enough, the emergence of printed books was hostilely encountered by clergymen, especially the copy-monks, who worked slowly and who considered their competitor a “soulless” printing press - "unclean". The burning of the printing house and other troubles forced the printers to move to Lithuania, and then to Lviv and continue their work there.

The book by the historian L. I. Denisov The First Printers Johannes Gutenberg and Ivan Fyodorov, an electronic copy of which is available on the Presidential Library’s portal, spotlights interesting details of the life of two great first printers - German and Russian.