The Tale of the appearance of the Icon of Our Lady of Korsun’ in Yur’yevets Povol’sky is an Early Modern historical and literary monument that has been overlooked in the bibliography. We have found its only manuscript in a Moscow bibliophile collection. It is of great value, largely due to the proximity of the date of its compilation, the late 17th century, to the miraculous events described in it. The Tale of the Appearance of the Korsun’ Icon contributes to the history of the revered objects in Yur’yevets, which became famous in the 17th century. Yur’yevets is a key place on the map of history and literature and is connected to the names of Simon of Yur’yevets, protopope Avvakum and icon painter Kirill Ulanov. The Tale is typologically similar to some other works of the 17th century, and each of them is unique in its own way and closely linked to local hierotopies and histories. The memory of the Yur’yevets icon has been lost and only left a trace in the manuscript in question. The 17th-century wooden church, where the miraculous appearance of the Korsun’ Icon took place in 1695, has not been preserved, but the 19th-century Orthodox church with the same dedication stands on its place. All this allows for a more tangible representation of what is described in the Tale. Yur’yevets is also unique due to the presence here of another especially revered icon of the Mother of God, a replica of a wonderworking Jerusalem icon by Kirill Ulanov, who lived in the neighbouring Krivoyezerskaya desert. Yur’yevets is nowadays devoid of almost all its sacral objects, and the manuscript of the Tale helps to shed light on one of them. The anonymity of this text gives a perspective for further research.

The circle of zealots of piety, or “Bogolyubtsy”, had a key infl uence on the schism of the Church and the entire Russian society, as well as on the conduct of book correction and the development of church institutions. Among other things, its representatives formed the core of book scholarship of that time. Notes in books belonging to these outstanding figures of Russian book culture and church history of the 17th century are an important historical source. This article introduces previously unknown inscriptions into scholarly circulation, preserved mainly on copies of old printed Cyrillic editions. They belong both to individuals who were part of the zealots of old piety and to some people directly associated with this circle. The author deals with donation and ownership notes in books that once belonged to Grigoriy Neronov, the czar’s confessor Stefan Vnifant’iev (Vonifat’iev), Reverend Dionysius (Zobninovskiy), and Bishop Alexander of Vyatka. The notes examined in the article were mostly identified in recently described state and little-known private collections and were not previously listed in bibliographies. The largest number of discovered copies belongs to the collection of Stefan Vnifant’iev; all were printed at the Moscow Print Yard in the early 1650s and contain the owner’s handwritten autograph notes. No less interesting is the fate of the book donation by Bishop Alexander of Vyatka to the Koryazhma Monastery: the preserved and described book is traced through the monastery’s documentation of the 17th century. A significant addition to the known historiographical corpus of preserved book donations by Reverend Dionysius (Zobninovskiy) are the two old printed editions discovered, which became donations in memory of the recently deceased donor. Furthermore, the article provides a note made on behalf of Grigoriy Neronov, another key participant in the church history events of the mid-17th century, who was well acquainted with Reverend Dionysius, Bishop Alexander and Stefan Vnifant’iev.