In 1455-1456, Mainz-based German craftsman Johann Guttenberg printed a Bible. In all probability, he could not fully fathom the greatness of his discovery. Book printing quickly gained wide currency in Western Europe, where almost all large cities had print shops in the late fifteenth century. For example, there were 150 private print shops in Venice and 160 print workers in Lyons in the 1460s-1490s.
Unfortunately, book printing came quite belatedly to Ukraine and the other Slavic Orthodox countries. The first Cyrillic-type books were printed in 1491 in Krakow by Szwajpolt Fiol — perhaps at the request of Halychyna’s Orthodox Ukrainians.
In 1517-1519, Francysk Skoryna published a number of bibles in Prague. He also printed The Apostle and A Brief Travel Guide in Vilnius in 1525. Some of those books came out in Old Church Slavonic and others in what was then called “Ruthenian,” a language close to the vernacular of Ukraine and Belarus. It was not until the 1560s that Cyrillic book printing became relatively systematic. In 1562, Calvinist Simon Budny published two Cyrillic books, Catechism and On Absolving a Sinful Human in the Eyes of God, at Nesvizh, Belarus. In about 1570, Vasyl Tiapinsky printed a Gospel perhaps in Belarus.
In 1564-1565, Ivan Fedorovych (Fedorov) attempted to establish book printing in Moscow. He printed The Apostle and Horologium there but, persecuted by the conservatively minded Orthodox clergy, had to leave Muscovy. Similar things had also occurred in Western Europe at the dawn of book printing because printers stood in the way of book copiers who tried to beat off the rivals by hook or by crook.
In 1569-1570, Ivan Fedorovych printed A Teacher’s Gospel, Psalter and Horologium in Zabludov (Belarus). However, his patron, Hetman Khodkevych, at first enthusiastic about book printing, soon lost interest.
In 1572 Ivan Fedorovych moved to Lviv, where he published The Apostle in 1574. He brought this publication to Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn of Ostroh who invited the former to serve him. The first printer was appointed Prior of the Derman Monastery and began to print books in 1575 at Derman and Ostroh. It is here that book printing assumed a permanent nature in Ukraine as well as in the whole Slavic Orthodox area.
A number of different-type publications saw the light of day here at the turn of the seventeenth century, including, first of all, such biblical books as The New Testament and Psalter (1580); The Book of Tymofiy Mykhailovych, a commentary to the New Testament (1580); A Psalter with Comments (1598); the liturgical books Horologium (1598), The Book of Needs (1606); writings of the Church Fathers, such as A Book of Fasting by Basil the Great (1594) and Margarit by St. John Chrysostom (1595); primers (1578, the 1580s, 1598); poetic works Chronology by A. Rymsha (1581) and The Lamentations of the Princes of Ostroh... (1603); and polemic writings A Key to the Kingdom of Heaven by Herasym Smotrytsky (1587), Answers to the Letters of Ipaty of Volodymyr and the Bishop of Berest (1598), Apocrisis by Khrystofor Filalet (1598-1599), et al.
It should be noted that some of the publications might not have survived to our day. A part of the works prepared at the Ostroh cultural center either came out in other places (the print shops of Oleksiy Rodetsky, the Vilnius Brotherhood, the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves) or remained in manuscript.
Out of the publications that did appear, the Ostroh Bible (1581) was the most valuable. Although the book is quite a comprehensive publication, it does not look large owing to a masterly small-character typeset. This folio contains a 1,256-page text printed in two columns and two colors. The first page has 50 lines. The printers used six (four Cyrillic and two Greek) specially-prepared types different in size and graphics.
The book was laid out in a restrained, well-thought-out, and tasteful manner, with 81 headpieces from sixteen galleys, 70 tailpieces from seventeen galleys, 1384 engraved initials, as well as many cast decoration compositions. On the other hand, the Bible had almost no illustrations except for an engraved framework on the title page, the coat-of-arms of Vasyl-Kostiantyn of Ostroh on back of the title page, and Ivan Fedorovych’s (Fedorov’s) personal seal at the end of the book. Formerly, when the Ostroh Bible was in question, researchers (especially Soviet ones) emphasized the personality of Ivan Fedorov. Indeed, he played a very important role in getting this book published. It should not be forgotten that he was primarily in charge of the technical work. But this publication would not have appeared unless a colossal effort in research and translation had been made. Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn helped set up a research center at Ostroh, which in fact addressed these problems. The center was probably headed by Herasym Smotrytsky, the first rector of the Ostroh Academy and author of the foreword.
Ostroh managed to collect a host of various biblical books. Particular hopes were placed on the manuscript of the so-called Bible of Gennady received with great difficulty from Tsar Ivan the Terrible (who removed Gennady as archbishop of Novgorod in 1503 —Ed.). This manuscript, quite an ample collection of biblical books, was drawn up under supervision of Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod in 1499. Researchers often claim that the Ostroh Bible is based precisely on the Bible of Gennady. This is far from true. The Gennady Bible abounded in errors and inaccuracies which the Ostroh printers did not leave unnoticed, for they used various Old Church Slavonic biblical texts, including some received from the Southern Slavs (Bulgarians and Serbs). They also used Czech and Polish biblical manuscripts as well as Protestant and Catholic publications.
The Ostroh Bible’s Old Testament text was based on the Septuagint, a Hebrew-Greek translation made in Hellenistic Egypt in the third century BC. All the collected Hebrew biblical texts were compared and brought into line with the Septuagint. This provoked criticism from some researchers, such as Ivan Ohiyenko. For there are certain differences between the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament text. Yet, one must remember that the Septuagint was treated in the Orthodox world at the time as a virtually indisputable authority and a source inspired by God. This makes it clear why the Ostroh scribes turned to precisely this source.
The analysis of the Ostroh Bible’s language allows one to conclude that some of its books were translated from the texts of different times and countries. The wide use of South Slavonic manuscripts reflected on the translation’s orthography and grammar. Some of the Ostroh Bible books were translated directly from the Septuagint, while the Book of Ezra, missing from the Greek text, was rendered directly from the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible. On the whole, the Ostroh scribes made tremendous efforts in textual research.
Although there had been a certain tradition of translating the Holy Writ into spoken Ukrainian by the end of the sixteenth century (the Peresopnytsk Gospel, etc.), the Ostroh Bible used the Old Church Slavonic language. This was due to a number of circumstances, especially that the Slav Orthodox cultural area was not yet sufficiently filled with biblical and liturgical literature at the time.
Western experience showed that the first printed literature had been published in a sacral (Latin) language. It was not until such literature gained wide currency that biblical books began to come out in the vernacular. In this sense, the publication of biblical books in the Ruthenian language by F. Skoryna was rather premature. It should be also noted that the Eastern and Southern Slavic Orthodox Church felt very sensitive about any diminution of the Old Church Slavonic language’s influence. The cause was not only this institution’s conservatism. At the time, Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims brought intense pressure to bear on Orthodox believers. This attack of these religious rivals was also aimed at downgrading Old Church Slavonic. It is also noteworthy that Old Church Slavonic, which had emerged only in the ninth century, remained close and understandable for many Slavic peoples. Moreover, there were no high quality translations of biblical books into Slavic vernaculars at the time.
The Ostroh Bible’s Old Church Slavonic language was by no means the least important reason why this book went far beyond Ukraine. It was published in about 1,500 copies, quite a large print run for the time. Almost 300 copies have survived to our day and are stored in the libraries of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Great Britain.
Thanks to its high quality of translation, the Ostroh Bible was long unrivaled in Slavic Orthodoxy and in fact considered a canonical text. When Muscovite Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich decided to publish a Bible exactly translated from the Greek original, Moscow scribes failed to accomplish it, and it was decided to republish the Ostroh Bible after correcting some spelling errors and substituting Russian stresses for the Ukrainian ones. The Moscow book was even furnished with a preface patterned after that of the Ostroh Bible, with the phrase “Ruthenian people” replaced by “all-Russian people.” Thus was born the Moscow Bible of 1663, called the first to be printed in Russia. The latter had not altered its text until 1712, when Peter I ordered Feofilakt Lopatynsky, an ethnic Ukrainian from Volyn, to bring it into conformity with the Greek text. But the Bible corrected by this scribe was never printed. Later, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna commissioned two Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professors, Varlaam Lashchevsky and Gedeon Slonimsky, to do the correction. The text they updated was approved by the Russian Orthodox Church Synod.
This produced the Elizabeth Bible of 1751, still based on the Ostroh text. This canonical Orthodox Bible has been often reprinted until this day. Therefore, the Ostroh Bible’s text (with some alterations) still serves today’s Orthodox world.
