Laurentian Chronicle

Laurentian Chronicle 

a parchment manuscript containing a copy of the annalistic compilation of 1305, made in 1377 by a group of copyists under the direction of the monk Lavrentii on the instructions of Prince Dmitrii Konstantinovich of Suzdal’-Nizhny Novgorod from an early-14th-century manuscript copy.

The text begins with the Primary Chronicle and continues to 1305. Information for 898–922, 1263–83, and 1288–94 is missing. The 1305 compilation is the Vladimir Principality collection, made in the period when Mikhail Iaroslavich was grand prince of Vladimir. It is based on a 1281 compilation and is supplemented (from 1282) by annals from Tver’. Lavrentii’s manuscript was written at the Blagoveshchenskii Monastery in Nizhny Novgorod or in the Vladimir Rozhdestvenskii Monastery.

A. I. Musin-Pushkin acquired the Laurentian Chronicle in 1792 and later presented it to Alexander I, who gave the manuscript to the Public Library (now the M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Library), where it is now kept. It was published in complete form in 1846 (Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, vol. 1).

PUBLICATIONS

Lavrent’evskaia letopis’, 2nd ed., fascs. 1–3. Leningrad, 1926–28.

REFERENCES

Komarovich, V. L. “Lavrent’evskaia letopis’.” In Istoriia russkoi literatury, vol. 2, part 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945.
Nasonov, A. N. Istoriia russkogo letopisaniia XI-nachala XVIII v. Moscow, 1969. Chapter 4.

S. M. KASHTANOV