Activities of committees tasked with division of post-monastery libraries in the north-western governorate of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the November Uprising

Abstract

The tsar’s ukase of 1832 ordering the dissolution of monasteries had a huge impact on the destruction of monastic libraries. Under administrative directives, special committees were set up in all Russian governorates to analyse and distribute books from libraries taken over by the secular authorities. In 1840-1849 three committees - in Grodno, Vilnius, and Minsk - established in the respective north-western governorates of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, catalogued the collections of 50 libraries of dissolved monasteries. The available sources show that by 1850 the committees distributed over 15,000 books among religious and secular institutions, schools and new provincial libraries. Over 12,000 books were given to the religious authorities and nearly 3,000 - to secular institutions. During the distribution of the collections the existing censorship provisions had to be taken into account. What also mattered was the material value of the monastic libraries. By 1850 the Department of Religious Denominations in Saint Petersburg received a report and lists of catalogued books only from the three committees. In vain did it wait for reports from the Governorates of Vitebsk and Mogilev. In the 1860s, in view of further dissolutions after the January Uprising, the tsar’s administration again focused on the distribution of former monastic collections. The resulting book transfers irreparably weakened the structure of historic collections of books from Roman Catholic monasteries in the analysed territories.-