Monographic hagiographic collection dedicated to Nil Stolobenskii in Russian literature of the XVII and XVIII centuries

During the XVII and XVIII centuries, the fame of a new wonderworker, Saint Nil Stolobenskii (f1554), a hermit and ascetic, was mainly spread through monographic collections containing texts of various genres about the saint. These collections, produced at the monastery on Stolobnoe Island in Seliger Lake where the saint performed his feats, were studied through codicological and paleographic analysis to characterize the traditions of book writing at the Nil Stolobenskii’s Hermitage. The study also revealed the relationship between the episodes of editing “The Life of Nil Stolobenskii” and other literary works about him and the repeated revision of the whole collection. This article examines a monographic hagiographic collection dedicated to Nil Stolobenskii and its typical features at each stage of its development. The research material included around 30 manuscripts dating from the late XVII to early XIX centuries, some of which are presented to the scholarly community for the first time.