The mystery of the location of the library of Ivan the Terrible has been haunted by many researchers and scientists not only in Russia, but also in foreign countries for several hundred years.
Legends say that Ivan IV collected a huge library of the oldest papyrus scrolls, as well as many parchment books. This library was named Liberia. The content of the books was different: these were church books and spiritual literature, as well as scientific treatises and poems of ancient poets. By order of the king, this priceless storehouse of information was stored with special care in underground storage facilities. Access to these vaults was allowed only to the most loyal and loyal people included in the circle closest to Ivan the Terrible.
It is surprising that with the death of the king, all traces of the mysterious shelter of books disappeared. After all, not only he knew where the store was? And although there were very few eyewitnesses who were lucky enough to see this library during the life of the king, none of them indicated the place of storage. Their memories are unclear, vague, and not credible. But the desire to find a library does not disappear. There are enthusiasts all the time who are ready to devote their lives to finding Libereya!
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Ivan the Terrible received a good education. He loved to read books. The archives contain some letters that the tsar personally wrote and they testify that the Russian autocrat was a fairly erudite person. At that time, only a very rich person could afford to have a large library, since the cost of any book was comparable to the price for a large village together with the inhabitants. The books were handwritten and cost a lot, so a collection of two dozen books was considered significant.
It is estimated that there were several hundred unique books in Libereya. The library was based on the books brought by the Byzantine princess Sophia Palaeologus as a dowry to her fiance Ivan III. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the family of the former emperor Thomas Palaeologus (father of Sophia) found refuge at the court of the Pope. At the age of ten, Sophia became an orphan, so Cardinal Vissarius of Nicea was involved in her upbringing. Pope Paul II understood that in the person of Sophia, he had a huge political trump card, since any European ruler would not refuse to marry a girl, the heiress of the great Byzantine emperors.
In 1467, the young wife of the Great Moscow Prince Ivan III unexpectedly dies. The Pope considered that this was a unique opportunity to remove the differences between the Orthodox and Catholic churches and offered Sophia as wife to Ivan III. A portrait of a girl is sent to Moscow. But the Russian tsar did not care what the bride and her dowry offered by the pope looked like. Much more important is the fact that the blood of the emperors of the Byzantine Empire flows in her veins. The orphan's only dowry was a collection of ancient scrolls and books, which was collected by several generations of Byzantine Caesars.
The wedding took place in Moscow in 1472. Sophia quickly realized that she could not be a Russian queen without converting to Orthodoxy. She abandoned Catholicism and adopted the Orthodox faith, thereby depriving her of the leverage over the husband of the new Pope Sixtus IV.
Priceless books and manuscripts arrived in Moscow with Princess Sophia. She took great care of her inheritance: the books were safely stored in a cache of the Kremlin dungeon. At that time in Moscow all buildings were wooden and there were frequent fires. To preserve the books, Sophia Palaeologus ordered a talented architect from Italy to build a stone cache under the Kremlin for her "dowry". She also insisted that the Kremlin be rebuilt. Since the 15th century, the Kremlin has become white-stone, and gradually all of Moscow.
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The son of Sophia Palaeologus and Ivan III, the sovereign of all Russia, Visilius III, continued the formation of the mother's library, adding Greek books to the collection. For this he invited the famous Athos monk Maxim the Greek to Russia. But the life of the famous chronicler in Russia did not work out - he was accused of heresy and locked up in a monastery.
Under Ivan the Terrible (son of Vasily III), pastor Johann Vatterman was invited to translate books to Moscow. But he was afraid that the fate of Maxim the Greek would befall him, refused to work as a translator and made only a list of the books available in Liberea.
Many believed that Sophia Palaeologus possessed magical abilities and protected her library by imposing the "curse of the pharaohs" on it, which she could learn about from the scrolls that were with Libereya. The essence of the curse is that as soon as someone approached the solution to the mysterious library of Ivan the Terrible, the ruler died or a destructive war began.
In the 19th century, an interesting list of ancient books was found in the archives of the city of Pärnu. The list contains several hundred Latin and ancient Greek manuscripts. Scientists have assumed that the list refers to the library of Ivan the Terrible. From numerous military campaigns, the Russian tsar brought many manuscripts, so the scrolls from the time of the conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates could be kept in Libereya.
Rumors about Liberey leaked to the West, and representatives of the Vatican, who had repeatedly visited Russia during the life of Ivan the Terrible, also became interested in it. But the visitors could not then get access to the library of the Russian tsar.
And yet, a mystery remains - why after the death of the monarch, traces of the unique library are lost, and all information about it has gradually turned into a legend.
Under Peter I, versions appeared about the presence of secret chambers with a large number of chests in the Kremlin's dungeons. The sexton of the Church of John the Baptist spoke about this for the first time in 1718 in the Preobrazhensky order. He said that by order of Princess Sophia in 1682, the clerk-treasurer descended into the Kremlin dungeon. He walked for a long time through a secret underground tunnel, in which he saw two doors to secret chambers, the doors of which were locked and sealed. But through the lattice of small windows it was clear that the chambers were filled to the top with chests. When Princess Sophia found out about this, she ordered to be silent about the find and no longer go into the dungeon.
Peter I, having heard about the mysterious chests, ordered a search. But due to the sudden death of the emperor, the search in the Corner Tower of the arsenal stopped.
The next emperor who was looking for the library of Ivan the Terrible was Napoleon Bonaparte. He believed that he would be able to find priceless manuscripts. When the French army entered Moscow in 1812, his first order was to search for Libereya in the Kremlin dungeons. However, the French found nothing.
In 1834 a list of manuscripts was published by the German professor Walter Klossius, which is based on the "Dabelov list". A professor at the University of Dorpat, Christopher Dabelov, found in 1822 a mysterious list of ancient works. It contained a list of rare manuscripts dating back thousands of years. The professor suggested that the list refers to the library of Ivan the Terrible. But this list caused a lot of controversy: firstly, no one saw the original "Dabelov's list", and secondly, it was written in German in the 19th century.
In 1894, Prince N. Shcherbatov led the search for Libereya in the underground of the Kremlin. He concentrated his research in the underground of the Trinity Tower. A secret passage connecting the Nikolskaya and Corner arsenal towers, as well as a tunnel, into the unexpectedly found chamber at the Nikolskaya tower, was cleared of debris and earth. Excavations were stopped immediately after the death of the Russian Emperor Alexander III, and then funding for the work was suspended.
A new active search for the library of Ivan the Terrible began in 1995. Historians and diggers have participated in the exploration of numerous dungeons. The greatest interest was aroused by the Arsenal Towers and the Taynitskaya Tower, located near the Kremlin embankment. Some search engines believe that Liberia is located either under the Ivan the Great Bell Tower or under Cathedral Square.
Versions related not only to the Kremlin dungeons are also being considered. So, searches are carried out in the former royal patrimony - the Kolomenskoye reserve. Hundreds of hectares of land and numerous buildings must be carefully explored.
There is an assumption that Liberia may be hidden in the former Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda (today this place is the Vladimir region, the city of Aleksandrov). Having built the white-stone Kremlin, the Italian craftsmen arrived in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, where they built a beautiful and majestic palace for Ivan the Terrible. By analogy with the Kremlin palace, extensive underground storage facilities were also built here. According to historical records, for a short time this settlement was considered the temporary center of the Moscow state.
In the 90s of the last century, entrepreneur German Sterligov financed the search in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. He was convinced that Libereya was not in the Kremlin, since no one after Ivan the Terrible had seen her there. Hence, the library is safely hidden somewhere else. During the search, modern devices were used, and special techniques were developed. As a result, an exact plan of the entire underground part of the royal residence was prepared. But the devices did not show the presence of Libereya in them. This time the search came to a standstill. More thorough research in Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda is still ahead.
During the time of Ivan the Terrible, the northern residence of the tsar was in the city of Vologda. Here Ivan Ivan IV spent a lot of time planning to create in this place the capital of the oprichnina. So he could well have kept his treasure in this residence.
There are many versions of the location of the library of Ivan the Terrible. Everyone who is interested in the fate of Libereya is concerned about a well-grounded question - if the books are in the dungeon for a long time, what happened to them? Let's hope that the builders of the repositories used the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians who knew how to store the manuscripts, then the long storage period will not harm the Liberation manuscripts.
Archaeologist I. Stelletsky, one of the most loyal library seekers, believes that "the path to the library has already been probed … She will not go anywhere." He assumed that the Italians had come to Russia to build the Moscow Kremlin, while at the same time building a secure cache for the precious Libereya.
The Ivan the Terrible Library is one of the greatest mysteries of history. It is possible that the existence of Libereya is only a beautiful legend. There remains the hope that the search for the ancient library of Ivan the Terrible, one day, will be successfully completed and there will be one less historical riddle.