The mystery of the library of Ivan the Terrible has been stirring the minds for many centuries. Finding a library is almost the cherished dream of all treasure hunters in our country. However, they are opposed by skeptics who are sure: the search for the library is a hopeless business, there is simply no dungeon with hundreds of chests of unique books. And yet … It is known that Ivan IV was an educated person and owned an extensive, valuable library
Books from the times of Ivan the Terrible, including those with his own handwritten notes, are available in Russian museums and libraries. Often, when they talk about the "library of Ivan the Terrible" (and it is sometimes called "Liberia" in the old fashion), they mean two different collections of books.
First, there was a congregation created by the king himself. Secondly, there is information that the Byzantine princess Sophia Palaeologus brought a collection of rare editions with her as a dowry to the Moscow Tsar Ivan III. The most enthusiastic optimists believe that among the books delivered by Sophia were the works of ancient authors, considered lost or completely unknown to modern researchers.
Let's start with the second version. Sophia, of course, was an educated woman and most likely she really had books. Sophia's arrival in Moscow is mentioned in Russian chronicles. It is mentioned that with her there was a caravan of 70 carts. Treasure hunters prefer to think that they were all filled with books. But is it in such fantastic quantities? Constantinople, where the library of the Byzantine emperors was kept, was captured by the Turks in 1453. Sophia was then 12-13 years old. And in the Moscow principality, she appeared only in 1472. For almost 20 years, the princess lived under the supervision of the Pope. Sophia's father was the younger brother of the last Byzantine emperor.
7 years after the fall of Constantinople, he himself moved to Rome, where he lived on funds allocated to him by the college of cardinals. He died in 1465, and Sophia continued to live in the care of the Pope.
Sophia, who received a new name in Rome - Zoya, was known as a poor dowry. They tried to marry her three times. If the princess were the owner of the most valuable library, it is doubtful that she lived in poverty and was considered a dowry. Indeed, in pre-press times, books were very rare, they were very expensive, and first of all, not even because of their literary or historical value, but because their bindings were decorated with precious metals and stones.
Skeptics also refer to the testimony of the Vatican emissary in Moscow, Peter Arcudia, who came to Russia in 1600, 128 years after Sophia. He was persistently interested in what Greek and Latin manuscripts are kept in the capital and whether they might be of interest to the Vatican. Not finding the slightest trace of the "library of the Byzantine emperors", he wrote to Rome that such a library had never been here, and there could not be any valuable collections of books in Moscow, "since the Russian princes were distinguished by their lack of education."
Optimists believe that this evidence is reliable evidence that the library was already well hidden by that time, and only the initiates knew about its location.
There is no smoke without fire
Yet Rome's interest was based on something. The source cited by the researchers is the testimony of Maxim the Greek, who came to Moscow in 1518 to translate some church books. It is believed that Vasily III, the son of Ivan III and Sophia Palaeologus, unexpectedly found out about the existence of a cache with his mother's books. He allegedly came across a stone underground safe with "dead books" - mostly in Greek, which he did not know. Maxim Grek was invited for translation. Maxim the Greek made an inventory of the found books on behalf of Vasily III, but he managed to translate very little. Having fallen out of favor with Vasily III, he was imprisoned, and the library was again walled up as unnecessary. However, shortly before his death, Maxim the Greek revealed the secret of the library to young Ivan the Terrible. An attempt was again made to find an interpreter,who could translate books into Russian. Ivan the Terrible wanted to entrust the translation of the library to Pastor Vetterman, who moved from the conquered Dorpat to Moscow, who was reputed to be an educated, pious man who knew several languages, including Greek. But Witterman refused. And the library was walled up again.
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The existence of the library was also confirmed by the clerk Makariev. On the instructions of Princess Sophia, he examined the underground passages of the Kremlin and saw in the tunnel leading from the Taynitskaya Tower through the entire Kremlin under the Arsenalnaya, in one of the chambers through a small window above the iron door, a large number of forged chests.
Makariev allegedly kept this secret until his death, and on his deathbed he opened it to the bell ringer from Presnya Konon Osipov, who tried to find a cache, using the moment when workers, on the orders of Peter I, were digging ditches for the foundation of the future Arsenal. And he even stumbled upon the overlap of this cache. Tsar Peter became interested in the treasure and ordered to find it. But soon Peter died. Ten years later, Osipov again turned to the Senate, asking for money and 20 prison workers. But it turned out that the sexton, who concealed the fact of the first excavations, was stealing in his church and hoped to cover the shortfall with state money. Excavations were banned, and Osipov was punished.
Dabelov's List
And at the beginning of the 19th century, a certain "Dabelov's list" appeared. In 1822, a professor of Roman law, Christian Dabelov, announced that in the archives of the city of Pärnu he had found a manuscript catalog of the library of a certain Russian tsar. The catalog said about 800 books. Moreover, the list included completely unique works that European lovers of antiquity could only dream of - unknown works of Titus Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, Virgil … The testimonies of Maxim the Greek and Witterman themselves are not questioned, although, strictly speaking, they only Tsars Vasily III and Ivan IV books in Greek, and not at all the legendary library of the Byzantine emperors. As for the "Dabelov's list", unfortunately, it is now quite clear that this is an ordinary fake. This was finally proven in the 20th century.
At the end of the 19th century, excavations in the Kremlin were carried out by the German philologist Eduard Tremere and the director of the Historical Museum, Prince Shcherbatov. In 1933, speleologist and local historian Ignatius Stelletsky, with Stalin's personal permission, conducted his own excavations. In 1999, businessman German Sterligov was going to undertake excavations in the Kremlin, but the real work never came to fruition.
All searches ended in failure.
Liberia was never found.
60 cache addresses
They were looking for the library of Ivan the Terrible not only in Moscow. About 60 points are described - both in the capital and in other Russian cities, where, in the opinion of enthusiasts, there may be a cache.
Serious searches, even with the participation of psychics, were undertaken in Aleksandrov. After all, it was here in 1564-1581. was the oprichnina capital. The oprichnik G. Staden wrote to Germany that there is a lot of money and goodness in the Alexandrova Sloboda, which the tsar captured in different cities (Tver, Kazan, Torzhok, Novgorod, Pskov) and 300 monasteries around them. The inventory of the tsar's archives indicates that Ivan the Terrible personally selected and took some books to the Alexandrov Sloboda. Here, in a settlement, the English merchant Dezhrom Gorsey in the summer of 1581 received from Grozny the Ostrozhen Bible, extracted from the storehouse, which is now in the London Museum.
There are many legends and "most reliable testimonies" about the undergrounds of the city of Alexandrov, as well as about the undergrounds of the Moscow Kremlin. However, so far all searches there also ended in nothing.
Is the library unassigned?
Meanwhile, historians believe that everything is much more prosaic and that it is necessary to look much closer. Ivan the Terrible certainly had a library. And probably quite rich. These are mainly Orthodox books of spiritual content and historical annals. As a single book collection, the library did not survive and later turned out to be dispersed among different depositories in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
For example, the director for scientific work of the State Historical Museum, Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Yegorov is sure that Ivan the Terrible's library is kept in the Historical Museum.
One of the volumes with the handwritten notes of Tsar Ivan IV was bought by the writer Ivan Yegorovich Zabelin at the Smolensk market. Another was donated to the museum by a rich merchant, the third - by someone else … The conclusion suggests itself: during the Troubles and the intervention of the 17th century. the library was simply taken apart across Moscow and ceased to exist as a single collection.
In the meantime, the search for the royal library ends with a resounding success only in art books, of which many have been written on this topic. But that's what it is and the Big Mystery, to excite the minds.