Bilgorod Metropolitans and «Cherkasy Customs»: Book and School

The church history of the Russian-Ukrainian border is a significant area for research, in particular in the issue of the meeting of the Moscow Orthodox Church, which was intensively reformed, and the church structure of numerous immigrants to Slobodа Ukraine from the Kyiv Metropolis («Cherkasy» (Ukrainians)). The main ecclesiastical administrative formation in Sloboda Ukraine was the Bilgorod diocese, ruled by metropolitans in 1667–1721. In this case, the important features of the border are the presence of non-Moscow printing books and the emergence of schools.Already the first Bilgorod Metropolitan Theodosius brought 150 liturgical books to the center of the diocese from Moscow. But according to later data, Moscow books did not dominate in this space: a significant part of the books was from Kyiv, Lviv, and even Ostroh printing houses. The register of books of the Kuryazh monastery, published before the beginning of the 18th century, and other available registers testify to the coexistence of books of various printings in monastery book collections and churches.The «school tradition» of the establishment of schools at churches, similar to the Kyiv Metropolitanate, was also characteristic. The Bilgorod metropolitans did not bring their teachers from Moscow and apparently did not control the «cherkasy schools». These examples once again emphasize the heterogeneity of the borderline and the multiplicity of identities.