Electronic edition of Ambrose Optinskiy's letters

An electronic collection of letters based on materials of epistolary heritage of Saint Ambrose (Grenkov), an elder of Kozelsk Vvedenskay Optina Pustyn, a prominent church figure and a spiritual writer of the XIX century, is prepared. The purpose of the present scientific research is to create a full text resource of letters written by Ambrose Optinskiy. A distinctive feature of the present electronic collection of letters lies in the fact that it is compiled according to the hand-written originals, unlike all previous book editions of the middle XX - the beginning of the XXI centuries. Surnames of addressees and persons mentioned in correspondence were restored. We succeeded in establishing the names of a number of unknown addressees of the Optina elder Ambrose. They are archimandrite Moisey Krasilnikov, abbot Mark Chebykin, Makariya Somova and Maria Tuchkov’s abbesses, the nuns Anna Shmatova, Maria Polivanova, Cherub Kvitnitskiy, Mitrofaniya Bernatskaya, a niece of St. Macarius (Ivanov), a nun Melaniya Kuznetsova, a managing director of the office of the Sacred Synod, valid councilor of state Peter Salomon with the spouse, a brother-in-law of St. Macarius (Ivanov) Nikolay Glebov, a doctor of medicine Ivan Rozhdestvenskiy, prototypes of the novel of Ivan Shmelev, an engineer of the railroads Victor Veydengammer and Darya Koroleva, Nikifor Stepanov, Ivan Evstafeev, Praskoviya Tchernikova. As of today, our electronic edition is the only edition and the most complete collection of letters written by the Optina elder Ambrose.