Late 19th — early 20th century Russian periodicals as a source of research on everyday life of pilgrims

Abstract

Late 19th — early 20th century Russian periodicals as a source of research on everyday life of pilgrims The Library of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society is considered to be a valuable part of the Research Library of the State Museum of the History of Religion. Among the many books and booklets on pilgrimage, it holds a large collection of newspaper and magazine clippings, each one (or several clippings from various publications, united by one theme) consisting of one or three sheets (sometimes with turnovers) and having a red paperback. All booklets reviewed by the author of this paper included the ex-librīs of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society. The studied materials allow us to assume that the staff of the Library of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society tried to gather as much information as possible about the pilgrimage to Palestine and the activities of Russian pilgrimage organizations. Most of the newspaper clippings preserved in the Library of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society date back to 1882–1905, however there are also clippings of an earlier period: the beginning of 1870-s. We can assume that these few clippings originally belonged to another collection and ended up in this one as they are thematically similar, they share the same negative attitude towards “informal pilgrimage”, show what temptation can trap those who go on a pilgrimage without proper escort. The newspaper articles collected by the librarians of the Palestinian society greatly facilitate the description of the Russian Orthodox pilgrims’ everyday life and are an extremely valuable part of the library collection stored at the State Museum of the History of Religion. Refs 13.