Ancient prints-anniversaries. 300 years of "Grammar" by Meletius Smotrytsky

In the collection of the Chernihiv Historical Museum named after VV. Tarnowski kept a textbook of the XVIII century. - "Grammar" by Meletius Smotrytsky (Інв. № Al-440) issued in 1721 year.

Meletiy Smotrytsky is a polemicist writer, church and public figure, son of the Orthodox writer Gerasim Smotrytsky, the first rector of the Ostroh Academy, who was actively involved in the preparation of the Ostroh Bible.

"The grammar of Slavs is correct Svntaґma"[1] Meletius Smotrytsky was first published in 1619 year in. Yes[2] near Vilna (this edition is exhibited in the 3rd hall of the permanent historical exposition of the museum). The textbook was based on the text of the Ostroh Bible. Until then, book writers wrote without certain fixed grammatical rules, in addition, there were many unintentional errors in the books, therefore, they could not be the basis for the implementation of spelling rules and their approval. Writers were involved in the preparation and publication of the Bible, translators and editors, who performed a huge philological work, performing a comparative analysis, translation and editing of various sacred texts in different languages.

"Grammar" had a great influence on the development of linguistics in all Slavic peoples, it significantly expanded Slavic linguistic terminology. Many of the rules listed in the textbook are still valid today. So, eg, Meletiy Smotrytsky introduced the letter "g" to denote a sonorous consonant, capitalization, gave the rules for using the hyphen, punctuation marks, presented a system of cases and more. The book consists of four chapters: orthography, etymology, syntax, prosody[3].

"Grammar" has withstood many reprints, remaining for a long time the main textbook on the Church Slavonic language.

Publication 1721 year from the collection of old prints of the Chernihiv Historical Museum. VV. Tarnowski differs in format from the book 1619 year, it is slightly smaller in size. The textbook was prepared for publication by the director of the Moscow Printing House Fedor Polikarpov-Orlov and contains its foreword, in which he points to the reasons for the publication of "Grammar". Firstly, this is the need for textbooks for schools, he also speaks of the need for translators to have a grammatical basis for a correct understanding of texts, especially church. He calls grammar "the foundation of all sciences". In addition to the main text of Meletius Smotrytsky F.. Polikarpov placed in the textbook a special section called "Chin Technologies", containing grammatical analysis of the text of the prayer "Our Father".

"Grammar" is decorated with screensavers and endings. A record with information about her past location has been preserved in the book: "Z library of the Bishop's Cathedral of Chernigov".

On the sheet 4 record: "John Tychonoff".

At the end of the book is uninformative, however, no less interesting record "Try the pen». Such "findings" in old books are not uncommon, after all, before you write something important on the pages, the man wanted to check the quality of the pen, how well it is sharpened, because it was important to make the right slit at its tip to drain the ink.

The book in a leather frame of the XVIII century. Previously stored in the library of the Chernihiv Theological Seminary, as evidenced by the seal of the latter with the inventory number. During the Second World War, along with other exhibits was evacuated to the city. Ufa.

Researcher of the museum,

Candidate of Theology Miroslav May-Boroda

[1] Syntagma - from the Greek Συντάγματο - is built together, connected.

[2] The modern city of Vievis, Lithuania.

[3] Prosody is a branch of poetry, a set of rules of poetry.