Cyrillic Old-Printed Books of the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia: Review of Eeditions and Peculiarities of Copies of the Funds of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

The book monuments originating from the territory of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia are a relatively small but extremely interesting and original part of the Cyrillic old-time printed books collection of the VNLU. Many of them also show close connections between the Ukrainian and Romanian culture of the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite its small amount, the Romanian old-printed books collection of the NBUV isrepresentative and gives an idea of some of the general features of the typographic heritage of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia of that time. In the language it is a gradual transition from the purely Church Slavonic language of liturgical editions over a peculiar bilingualism when the Church Slavonic remained in the liturgical texts while the reading of the Holy Scripture was already given in Romanian, to the Romanian as the only liturgical language. Liturgical literature predominates in the VNLU funds, but there are also a small number of didactic books available. The art of design of the Romanian old-printed books is interesting. In addition to the common features in the design of Cyrillic editions, as the use of cinnabar, the standard repertoire of the elements of decoration, the eye catches also such peculiar traits, as the use of the letter «ї» in the centre of the compositions of foundry ornaments, the active using of the engraved frames of the capital letters along with the traditional initials. The stylistics of the engraved elements demonstrates the development from archaic ornaments to complicated baroque motifs, combining local tradition with Venetian, Greek and Ukrainian influences. Considering the content and artistic design of the analyzed monuments, it is worthnoting that the collection of Romanian old-printed books from the VNLU funds deserves further study and single copies scientific cataloging.