Abstract:
This article is devoted to the study of sources transmitting the Sermon to the Coenobitic
Monastic Brotherhood and its spheres of influence. The article determines authentic
copies of this text and considers several elements: charters of the founders of several
Russian monasteries and lectures to the brotherhood of the coenobitic monasteries
and to their new members. Authors of Old Russian disciplinary charters were guided
by apostolic and patristic texts; these sources were used not in their original language
but in translation. Quotations from these authoritative compositions were often
incorporated into charters through other texts, both translated and Russian. In their
borrowings, the authors of these charters also used material that had been borrowed
by their predecessors, who relied on their own authoritative texts. The Sermon to the
Coenobitic Monastic Brotherhood is known in the Russian manuscript tradition from
the beginning of the 15th century. Among its sources, there are compositions by
Basil of Caesarea, Ephrem the Syrian, and a certain anonymous author. The Sermon
influenced the Charter of Cornelius of Komel and some texts from the starchestvo
tradition. The Sermon to the Coenobitic Monastic Brotherhood functioned as a link, a
bridge between the Byzantine and Russian tradition of the monastic disciplinary
charter.
