From the History of Publications of Pilgrim Accounts in the Nineteenth Century: According to the Correspondence between Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin) and A. F. Bychkov
Since the early 1870s Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin) was busy searching, studying, publishing, and writing comments on Russian pilgrim accounts from the Middle Ages and the early modern period. His correspondence with Academician A. F. Bychkov, then director of the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg, allows us to examine the process of this work. The letters are found in the Bychkov fonds preserved by the National Library of Russia and the Archimandrite Leonid (Kavelin) fonds in the Russian State Library. The letters cover the period from 1876 to 1889. They show that Archimandrite Leonid got significant assistance from A. F. Bychkov, who was helping him with copying manuscripts, checking copies against original manuscripts, and commenting on their codicological and textual features. The correspondence reveals the process of the search for pilgrim accounts and the preparation for the first publication of such texts as Peregrination by Hippolytus Vishensky and the full text of Khozhdenie by Jonah the Little. The article also analyzes the publishing principles of Archimandrite Leonid and his mistakes.