A “New” Economic Document of the 15th Century from the Archive of the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius: Dating and Attribution

A previously overlooked economic document from the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius, initially dated to the 16th century, has been reattributed to the 15th century through toponymic localization and paleographic analysis. The 'inset' document, found during restoration of an act, describes peasant payments linked to the settlement of Priseki in the Bezhetsk Upland, aligning with a 1440 grant to the monastery. Its archaic terminology ('dezha', 'kerb’') reflects mid-15th-century vocabulary from the upper Volga and Novgorod regions, placing it within a broader circle of birch bark manuscripts and state cadastral practices. This reattribution provides new insights into the economic organization of the Lavra's estate and early Russian land documentation.

Frolov, A. (2017). A “New” Economic Document of the 15th Century from the Archive of the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius: Dating and Attribution. Quaestio Rossica, (4), 1093–1106. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2017.4.269