The Vicyn Basilian monastery library (according to the 1774 inventorymaterials)

Abstract

In this article we have characterized the inventory as an essential source of old monastic libraries holdings study; clarifi ed the history of the foundation, activity and closing of the Vicyn monastery in the early 1860s after a devastating fire. The Vicyn Basilian monastery library has been reconstructed based on the inventory deposited in the Manuscripts Department of the V. Stefanyk Lviv National Scientifi c Library, the fragment of which is published for the first time. According to this source, in 1774 the Vicyn library contained 95 books and 113 depositary units. In general at that time this library was a book collection with a predominance of the codexes in Latin characters (in Latin and Polish languages). As for the thematic content, there were the works of «Catholic learning», mainly of Western European and Polish Jesuit theologians of the XVI–XVIII centuries. Besides theological treatises, the library held secular literature as well.