December 18, 2008, saw the 425th anniversary of the death of Ivan Fedorov (Fedorovych), an outstanding 16th-century printer. This date would have been a cause for celebrations in the Soviet era. For the endeavors of Fedorov could be willfully interpreted as a brilliant manifestation of cultural ties between the “consanguineous” Eastern Slav peoples — Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. It would not be a very good idea to speak about such ties in the current political and cultural context: even Russia and Belarus are not emphasizing them. Fedorov seems to be no longer needed as a symbol of the “Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian friendship.” So nobody is exactly rushing to mark his anniversary. On the one hand, it is good. Fedorov’s name is no more used for advancing extremely ideologized theories. It is therefore possible to give this figure a more sober and impartial look. But, on the other hand, “forgetting” Fedorov is a nasty thing. For this person did very much indeed on the cultural field and undoubtedly deserves to be duly honored.
“Ivan, son of Fedor, from Moscow,” an ethnic Russian often referred to as Fedorovych in 16th-century Ukrainian documents, is high on the list of prominent Ukrainian culture figures in the late 16th century. Owing to his high erudition, diplomatic and literary talent, and self-denying work, this outstanding enlightener was often in the service of the powers that be. He mingled with those who shaped the destiny of contemporary Europe, such as Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible, Polish kings Sigismund Augustus and Stefan Batory, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II Hapsburg, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth magnates Grzegorz Chodkiewicz and Konstanty Wasyl Ostrozki. And although neither the Russians, nor the Belarusians, nor the Ukrainians can consider him the founder of book printing, this does not diminish his merits to Eastern Slav peoples. He was really the first in many fields of Cyrillic printing. Suffice it to recall that his books remained a model for most of other Cyrillic-type publications for as long as two centuries.
We know more or less well about the works he published in Moscow, Zabludow, Lviv, and Ostrih, but it is far more difficult to reproduce Ivan Fedorov’s complete life story. Yet even the now available facts are quite weighty. Judging by the printer‘s own reminiscences in his publications and by his patronymic, he came from Moscow and was the son of a certain Fedor. It remains a puzzle why the young Russian found himself in the Polish Kingdom. It was proved recently that he had lived in Piotrkowice, Krakow region. At the turn of the 1530s, this town was owned by Stanislaw Stadnicki, a highly-educated nobleman, whose son Stalislaw Macej was member of the Krakow society of humanists in the 1540s.
In 1529 Ivan Fedorov moved from Piotrkowice to Krakow, where he entered Jagiellonian University and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in 1532. It was the time when this well-known European educational institution was in the prime of life. In particular, they resumed teaching ancient Greek and Roman literature, the Greek and Hebrew languages. So the young Russian had an opportunity to get a sound philological education here, which came in handy a quarter of a century later in his career of a publisher.
Documents prove that this student stayed at the university’s Jerusalem fraternity for the next two years. This place was famous for hosting not only ethnic Poles but also a lot of other nationals. Some researchers suggest that Fedorov may have worked at Krakow’s Latin and Polish print shops. He may have also acquainted himself with the products of the first Ukrainian book printer Schweipolt Fiol, an ethnic German. On the initiative of the Przemysl voivodeship, the latter published a series of Cyrillic liturgical books in Krakow in 1491-1493 for the population of Galicia.
Ii is not known when and where for Ivan Fedorov left Krakow. We do not know exactly where he spent the next twenty years — whether he was improving his mastery in a Polish print shop or taught somewhere in Belarus or Ukraine.
The first Russian print shop was founded in about 1553 in Moscow, apparently, on the initiative of Sylvester, a priest at Moscow’s Annunciation Cathedral. For the still unknown reasons, its publications say nothing about when and from where its masters graduated. Luckily, two 1556 documents tell us the name of Marusha Nefediev, Russia’s first “book printing master.”
Fedorov may have worked with him at first. In any case, it is known for sure that he later organized a similar enterprise. The initiative came from Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible himself, but what in fact prompted the establishment of both print shops was the seizure of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates by Russia in 1552 and 1556, respectively, and, hence, an urgent requirement for a large number of liturgical books to be used in newly-built churches in order to Christianize the conquered peoples.
What became Russia’s first printed book with an imprint was Apostle that came out on March 1, 1564, at the Moscow-based state-run print shop. It was printed by Ivan Fedorov, a deacon at Moscow’s St. Nicholas Gostunsky Church at the time, and Petro Tymofiyovych, a Belarusian from Mstislavets. The next year they published two editions of Horologion. This book was in great demand among the newly-converted Orthodox people for learning basic prayers and psalms.
The introduction of the Oprichnina (a policy of mass repressions and public executions under Ivan the Terrible — Ed.) and the onslaught of reaction forced the printers to leave Russia. As Fedorov reminisced in the afterword to the Lviv-published Apostle, he had been accused of heresy. There were perhaps some formal reasons for this.
The printers apparently chose a roundabout but safe way across the Sweden-occupied Estonia and Latvia and thence to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The were received there by King Sigismund Augustus and the highest governmental officials. Obviously, those overlords were preoccupied with political situation in the neighboring Muscovite state rather than with the problems of Cyrillic book publishing. Approximately at the same time, there was a meeting with Symon Budny, a prominent Belarusian book printer and reformer, which discussed publication of canonical Christian texts.
The Lithuanian Hetman, a well-known Orthodox political figure, Grzegorz Chodkiewicz (Hryhorii Khodkevych) invited the printers to his estate at Zabludow (now in Poland), supposedly on the ethnic Belarusian territory, although in reality it is a Ukrainian-Belarusian ethnic borderland. As for the Chodkiewicz family, they were of Kyiv boyar descent and were culturally tied with Ukraine, particularly, Kyiv and the Kyivan Cave Monastery.
While the books that Fedorov and Mstislavets printed in Russia pivoted on political events, those published in Belarus were motivated by religious and educational considerations. On the initiative of Hetman Chodkiewicz, they published Didactic Gospel (1569) and collections of sermons for Sundays and the most important feasts, which were pronounced by clerics in temples or read by lay people at home.
Petro Mstislavets decided to launch a business of his own in Wilno. Aided by the Belarusian merchants Kuzma and Luka Mamonych, he set up a print shop there. Meanwhile, Ivan Fedorov turned out another Psalter and Horologian at Zabludow in 1570. Under the linguistic tradition that prevailed on Belarusian and Ukrainian lands, he named himself Ivan Fedorovych the Muscovite in both publications.
When Hetman Chodkiewicz fell seriously ill and lost interest in book publishing, the print shop ceased to exist. The not-so-young Fedorov had to leave Belarus and seek a new place to pursue his vocation.
In the fall of 1572 he sets out to Lviv, Ukraine’s largest economic and cultural center at the time. He hoped to find material and moral support for his educational efforts among the religiously discriminated Ukrainian populace. But in the same year the city’s Ukrainian community successfully persuaded the king to grant their children the right to study at higher educational institutions.
He received great help from Senko Kalenykovych, a saddle-maker by trade and an intellectual by spirit. It is he who launched book printing in Ukrainian lands, lending Ivan Fedorov 700 zlotys, a huge amount of money at the time, without demanding that he refund it. By doing so, the Ukrainian saddle-maker stood in the same line with Tsar Ivan IV and Hetman Grzegorz Chodkiewicz.
The Lviv-printed Apostle was the first printed book that saw the light of day in Ukraine on February 15, 1574. Short of time and funds to print a still unpublished large-size Church Slavonic book, Fedorov repeated the Moscow-published Apostle. Interestingly, this book bears his ex-libris for the first time. It is based on a remodeled coat of arms of the Stadnytskys, owners of the above-mentioned Piotrkowice, the town of Fedorov’s youth.
The next publication, small in size but no less important in content, was a really unique one. It is the Primer (1574), the first printed Cyrillic manual for Orthodox Slavs.
Later that year the printer moves to Volhynia, where Konstanty Wasyl Ostrozki, the biggest magnate of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, had founded the famous Ostrih Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy, the Eastern Slavs’ first higher school, and planned to publish the word’s first unabridged Bible in Old Church Slavonic.
The academy students received the Primer in 1578. To meet the requirements of a higher educational institution, the text of the Lviv-printed Primer was supplemented with the Greek alphabet and parallel prayers in Greek and Church Slavonic. To instill patriotic and Orthodox views in the students, this book included the tale On Writings by the Black Friar Khrabr, a well-known monument of Old Bulgarian literature. The latter was extremely important in the period of religious and cultural discrimination of the Orthodox, for it proved that Old Church Slavonic was equal to the “biblical” languages — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
Fedorov’s next Ostrih publication — Psalter and Horologion (1580) — was also intended for non-liturgical purposes.
The alphabetic and subject index to the New Testament, compiled by Tymofii Mykhailovych in 1580, was the first reference publication among the Eastern Slavs.
Ivan Fedorov is also associated with the first Eastern Slavic printed poetic work — a chronology of the Belarusian reformer Andrii Rymsha. This one-sheet piece with a list of months in Old Church Slavonic, Hebrew, and Ukrainian was intended for the academy’s primary grades. Each month was accompanied by a short poem on an Old Testament subject.
The Ostrih Bible of 1581 became a world-level publication. It was prepared by the contemporary Ostrih academics from both Ukraine and Greece. Not only did Fedorov print this book at the highest technological level of the time: as a successful Krakow University graduate, a good expert in Latin and Greek, he undoubtedly took part in selecting and editing texts.
The Ostrih Bible was Ivan Fedorov’s “swan song.” He came back to Lviv, trying to become an independent publisher again. As he had amassed no wealth in Ostrih, he became an unofficial representative of the well-known Lviv iron founder Daniel Koenig. Using his influential connections, the latter secures some orders for him. In Krakow, for example, Polish King Stefan Batory allotted him funds to make an ordinary cannon. In a short while Fedorov moves to Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. He offered his invention, a multi-barreled collapsible cannon to Emperor Rudolf II himself. In all probability, the emperor granted him an audience, above all, for political considerations. As the initiator of forming an anti-Turkish coalition with Russia, this most influential European politician obviously thought it important to meet a person who personally knew Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his inner circle.
Ivan Fedorov may have also had some personal professional interest in Vienna: for example, he may have seen some executives of Scharfenberg, a well-known European printing firm with which he maintained ties. But his age (he was about seventy) was making itself felt. He fell ill and had to go back to Lviv. Ivan Fedorov died here and was buried in a church of the nearby St. Onuphrius Monastery. His comrades and friends in Lviv put up a tombstone with an inscription that reflects profound respect of the contemporaries for his personality and his creative legacy:
“Ioann Fedorovych the Muscovite, a book printer, who renewed the neglected printing with his efforts.
Passed away in Lviv on December 5, 1583.
I wish he would rise from the dead,
A printer of hitherto unknown books.”
Prof. Ihor Pasichnyk, Doctor of Psychology, is Rector of the National University of Ostrih Academy. Ihor Mytsko is a Candidate of Sciences (History)
