Vol 43, No 1 (2024)

The article deals with the problem of the existence of weighted coins in Russia in the second half of the 17th century. Based on new archival data, the author comes to the conclusion, that during the second half of the 17th century the weight value of kopecks increased as their weight was lowered several times. When calculating large sums, the simultaneous circulation of coins of different weights led to their weighing and determination of value based on the value of the last mint. In smaller payments, the buyer could be given the opportunity to choose the coins that were most pro table for him, or their value could be the subject of bargaining. This practice testi es to the disorder of the monetary system of the 17th century, which was overcome as a result of the monetary reform of Peter I.

The article is devoted to the review and history of rare editions of Bibles of the late 15th - rst half of the 16th century, printed by the publishing house of Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger and Lübeck master Steffen Arndes in various European cities and then found themselves in the research department of rare books of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. It is noted that the printed Bible played an important cultural and socio-political role in the Renaissance period and directly in uenced the subsequent processes of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe.

The unpublished sermon on the verse Ezekiel 47:11 (“But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt”) by the leading intellectual of early colonial New England / Massachusetts pastor Cotton Mather (1663-1728) of Boston, stored in the Library of Congress Manuscript Department is studied in respect of the time and circumstances of its composition. This sermon seems to have been overlooked by scholars of colonial New England. The text of the sermon, possibly written and peached in late 1700s, is represented in the incomplete form, as it is found in the manuscript. The text of the sermon is peculiar in respect of Mather’s treatment of Ezekiel in his literary corpus. The topic of the sermon bears very specific New England connotations: the lack of work of the Holy Spirit within an individual soul. This issue, so destructive to personal salvation, is here viewed as a communal problem, since the multitude of the unconverted create “Miry Places” that defile the City of God and the very river of Gospel grace that does not “heal” them. While in his “Biblia Americana” Mather interprets Ezekiel’s vision as describing the eschatological future, here he reads the prophet’s text as an allegory of actual spiritual experience of the community and deals with a “Mystical, & a Spiritual Meaning” of the verse.

The article is devoted to V. N. Malov’s contribution to the study of Latin paleography, which the scientist addressed throughout his scientific activity. V. N. Malov was the first among Russian historians of paleography to determine the place of treatises on calligraphy in the development of Modern writing; introduced a part of the archive of Cardinal Boisgelin de Cuse into scientific circulation, described Latin and German letters of the XV-XV centuries much more. V N. Malov has published many works on Latin paleography. The article deals with the most important articles and monographs of the scientist from the point of view of the development of Latin writing and French paleography, in particular the XVI-XVIII centuries.