Dear Friends!

Take a trip to our virtual museum during your coffee or tea break and make your #quarantinediscoveries!

Admire unique cultural assets of the Museum Fund of Ukraine!

The commemoration books of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra occupy an important place in the valuable documentary collection of the Preserve. A commemoration book or a death-bill is a book in which the names of the believers are inscribed in order to pray for them in church. Usually, commemoration books contained the names of donators. The volume of the donation to the monastery was not determined and depended on the financial soundness of the supporter. The entered names were read during the services while praying for deceased.

The preserved commemoration books of Lavra are dating from the late 15th to the early 20th century. These are books from the Dormition Cathedral, the Presentation Church in the Near Caves, the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, the Trinity Hospital Monastery, and other Lavra churches. The Preserve collection includes more than twenty commemoration books with thousands of family records. This is the largest collection of death-bills currently known in Ukraine. They contain references to a large number of well-known princely, noble, and later - Hetman families, which is evidence of the powerful spiritual authority of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. At the same time, the names of representatives of all social classes were entered in the commemoration books: clergy, townspeople, Cossacks, peasants, etc. The geography of the records covers not only Ukrainian lands but also Polish and Lithuanian territories as well as settlements of the Russian Empire.

Commemoration books of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra are large in size and volume and have a characteristic design. They are mostly decorated with engraved headpieces and a similar outline of each page.

Legend: Pages from the commemoration book of the Presentation Church in the Near Caves of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (second half of the 17th century).  

Let’s #stayathome and discover the beauties of the Preserve’s collection together!

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