"The vita of Lazar of Murom" as a historical source of Fyodor Glinka's poem "Karelia"

The article proves that one of sources of Fyodor Glinka's poem Karelia was the legend describing ˆe Vita of Lazar of Murom — a Greek monk who founded the Murom Monastery of St. Assumption on the southeastern shore of Onega Lake in the middle of the 14th century. Œis fact has not been mentioned yet in any of the literature studies devoted to Glinka's works. It is believed that ˆe Vita of Lazar of Murom was created during the period between the late 14th and early 15th century. At the end of the 18th century this manuscript's copy was owned by a high rank Petrozavodsk oŽcial I.A. Pykhtin. In 1805, he introduced his copy of ˆe Vita of Lazar of Murom to well-known Petrozavodsk historian T.V. Balandin, who made another copy of it. Soon T.V. Balandin transferred his copy to a famous Orthodox church historian Evgenii (Bolkhovotinov), who in turn published this copy in 1813 in the 5th volume of his work ˆe History of Russian Hierarchy. In 1826–1830, poet Fyodor Glinka sent to exile in Petrozavodsk for participating in the Decembrist movement. He met T.V. Balandin, read the text of ˆe Vita of Lazar of Murom and included a story about a monk who moved from Greece to Russia into his poem Karelia, published in 1830. Besides, the name of Saint Lazar is mentioned in the main text of the poem and twice in its footnotes. Glinka had a great intuitive feel for a language and noticed correlation between style and authenticity of the legend about Lazar's life. So, ˆe Vita of Lazar of Murom became one of the sources which inspired 122 А. М. Пашков Fyodor Glinka to create his poem Karelia poem and to certain extent determined its content.