Fedorovych's "Apostle": facsimile reprint of the oldest book of Ukraine

After almost two years of tireless research work, a facsimile reprint of the Lviv "Apostol" was published. On Thursday, February 8, the book was presented in Sofia Kyivska. It is noteworthy that these days are the 450th anniversary of the publication of the remarkable first edition.

"Apostolic Acts and Epistles", or "Apostol" for short, by Ivan Fedorovych is traditionally considered, if not the first, then certainly the oldest accurately dated book in Ukraine. The Lviv printer worked on it from February 25, 1573 to February 15, 1574 in his own printing house at the Onufriiv Monastery. Researchers believe that the circulation was quite large - in the range of 1000-12000 copies. To our time, no more than a hundred have survived in the world.

Specialists of the Ukrainian Academy of Printing and the Sheptytskyi National Museum in Lviv worked on the creation of a facsimile of "Apostol". For the reprint, scientists used copies from the collection of the Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine named after Stefanyk. The facsimile copy was based on a copy from the Onufriiv Monastery - the very one in which, in the 1970s, art critic Borys Voznytskyi discovered a record of Fedorovych's burial place, which archaeologists later managed to find.

The leather frame of the reprint contains decorative elements of the covers of the editions of the printing house of the Lviv Stavropygian brotherhood of the 17th century.

"Not a single binding of "Apostol" has survived on the territory of Ukraine. Thanks to scientific research, it was reproduced in facsimile," Ihor Zhuk, president of the "Revival of the Historical and Cultural Heritage of Ukraine named after Boris Voznytskyi" charitable foundation, said at the presentation.

Indeed, the reconstruction of the publishing framework has really become a difficult task for scientists, to which a separate article is devoted in the book.

The facsimile reprint of the Lviv Apostle is a material evidence of the duration of the Ukrainian cultural tradition and a celebration of the merits of Ivan Fedorovych, an outstanding educator and humanist.

This is the fourth reprint of the book monument, carried out as part of the project "Bringing back cultural heritage to Ukraine" with the participation of Violita. Previously, our team supported the creation of facsimile copies of the Prayer Book of Gertrude of the 11th century, Octoich of Vienna of the 13th century, and the Prayer Book of Prince Volodymyr of the 14th century, the original of which has been kept in the New York Public Library since 1994.

The founder of the project, publisher Hanna Horobets, said: "These books are the pearls of book collections in many European and American countries. We search for them, research them, then Ukrainian scientists prove that this is our heritage. After all, you know, we travel to other countries of the world and meet with surprise and misunderstanding. Slavist scientists in museums and research centers ask us: "Is this Ukrainian? And we thought it was Russian literature." And we have a red thread running through the entire project that the historical heritage of Kyivan Rus is the heritage that belongs to the modern Ukrainian state, and no one has the right to claim it."