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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: E-69Last update of repository: 15 March 2020Moskovskaia Dukhovnaia Akademiia (MPDA)Previous names
The Moscow Theological Academy, together with its library, was founded in 1685 as the Hellenic Greek Academy on the basis of the school at the Monastery of the Epiphany (Bogoiavlenskii monastyr'). In 1701 it became the Slavonic-Latin Academy, and in 1775 the Slavonic, Greek, and Latin Academy. In 1814 it was given its present name and moved to the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery (Sviato-Troitse-Sergieva Lavra) in Sergiev Posad. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Academy developed an extensive library, which by 1917 totaled over 300,000 printed editions and over 1,600 manuscript books with manuscript collections from a number of other Russian religious institutions, including part of the collection from the Joseph of Volokolamsk (Iosifo-Volokolamskii) Monastery. After the October Revolution, when the Theological Academy was closed down, the library was nationalized, and in October 1919 officially transferred to the control of the administration of the Rumiantsev Museum and Library (after 1924, the Lenin Public Library, now RGB—see G–1). Reorganized as the Sergiev Branch of the latter library, in 1920 it acquired the library with extensive manuscript holdings of the Vifan Theological Seminary (Vifanskaia Dukhovnaia Seminariia) and also formally accessioned the library holdings and archive of the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery itself. During the next ten years, the Sergiev Branch continued to operate and expand its valuable collections of manuscripts. Between 1930 and 1934, however, the manuscript collections, together with most of the archives were all transferred to Moscow and incorporated into the Manuscript Division of the Lenin Library itself, although the branch in Sergiev Posad (after 1930, renamed Zagorsk) retained some of its printed library collections. The Academy was opened again in 1944 as the Orthodox Theological Institute, in the Lopukhin corpus of the Novodevichii Convent. Briefly named the Moscow Theological Institute (Moskovskii bogoslovskii institut), it was subsequently renamed the Moscow Theological Academy, and in 1947 it was returned to the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery in Zagorsk. The library as presently constituted was started anew on the basis of private gifts (including the personal library of Patriarch Aleksii) and accessions from various educational establishments. In 1944, the archive was reinstated as a repository for documentary materials of the Academy. The Church-Archeological Cabinet (Tserkovno-arkheologicheskii kabinet) was founded in 1950 within the Subdepartment (kafedra) of Church Archeology. |
