[RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH]

The austere binding reprises the design and structural elements of those produced for liturgical books at the Monastery of the Trinity and St Sergius in Zagorsk, c.50 miles north-east of Moscow, which set a standard for the genre from the 1560s (Klepikov, Russian Bookbinding to 1750 , 417-18).

An intensely but carefully used copy of the first part of the Okhtaich (or Okhtoich or _______, _____ ____________ or ______, ____________ ) published in Moscow in 1638 by the Pechatnyj Dvor the printing house where the first book in Cyrillic movable type was produced in 1564. The second part was printed separately in the same year and usually bound separately. Derived from the Greek Ochtoecos , the Okhtaich was a liturgical text of the Russian Orthodox rite. It features pieces to be sung at services each day of the week. The number eight in the title refers to the subdivision into eight sections of which this volume includes the first four; each identified by a letter ( a to _ ) corresponding to the glas (musical mode) in which the songs were sung, as Russian liturgical chant constructed melodies around individual tones. Part I contains modes 1 to 4 ( a to _ ). The texts for daily vespers or matins include stichiry (in psalmodic hexameters, some attributed to John of Damascus), antiphons, kanoni (odes with a more complex verse structure), pesni (songs) and troparia (hymns on the liturgical theme of the day). At the end is additional material often found in the Okhtaich , including Resurrectional Exaposteilaria and the Gospel Stichiry, and troparia for the Trinity and by Gregory of Sinai In this copy, there are two additional ms. leaves containing four kondiaki (modes a to _ ) short hymns with a main body and a refrain ( ikos ) celebrating the Resurrection and sung at the Sunday morning service. This edition of the Okhtaich does not contain the kondiaki , as sometimes happened when they were very similar to the tropar for the same day. Kondiaki for the Resurrection were used for the Paschal service and the owner of this copy probably wished to have them readily available.