Monitoring the state of libraries in theological seminaries by educational committee under...

The issues of monitoring activities of the Holy Synod’s Educational Committee are currently an extremely interesting challenge for research. The article analyzes the state of libraries of secondary theological educational institutions in the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th centuries in the context of monitoring the book content by the central government. The main source is the materials of revisions of theological educational institutions, stored in the funds of the Educational Committee in the Russian State Historical Archive (F. 802). The history of the development of libraries in regional theological schools has so far been and remains a relevant topic for research, while monitoring their activities by higher church authorities has not been the subject of detailed study and characterization. The purpose of this study is to determine the role of auditors in the formation of funds of seminary libraries and, hence, in the formation of a reading culture of students of theological schools. The conclusion states that during the period indicated, problems arose in theological seminaries regarding the proper development of a principle of extracurricular reading of students, because the content of the libraries of secondary theological schools did not correspond to the reading interests of students almost everywhere. For their part, the auditors of the Educational Committee were unable to significantly influence this situation, but along with that, they proposed helpful recommendations to the inspection to settle the problem in question.