THE 19th CENTURY EDITIONS OF THE LIFE OF ALEXANDER OSHEVENSKY

This article is devoted to a classic of the 16th-century north Russian hagiography ? The Life of Alexander Oshevensky, which is preserved as a large number of various copies and editions. The 19th-century materials recently found in the Russian archives enabled researchers to raise a question of the late period in the literary history of this Life. Three editions of this piece of writing created in the 1820’s and 1830’s by Tikhvin Monastery’s Archimandrite Hilarion (Kirillov), Alexander Svirsky Monastery’s Archimandrite Barsanuphius (Morev) and Archbishop of Olonets Ignatius (Semyonov) are in the focus of this paper. The new editions were written with the intention to be published to glorify St. Alexander across Russia, though respective petitions to the Most Holy Synod were not approved. This article detects sources of these editions and shows the pattern of processing of the initial texts. As the text analysis has shown, the 19th-century editions primarily developed the topoi of book learning and relationships between St. Alexander and his family. The Life used to be revised stylistically and compositionally, as well as supplemented with historical information. The published material is of interest for the research in poetics and topics of the Liеves of the Saints and their perception by the church writers of the 19th century.