- The Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584 CE) was alleged to have been a collection of Lost Works from Classical Literature, written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and also Chinese texts from the second century CE.
- The Library was reputedly saved from the Imperial Library of Constantinople, and even included Works saved from the Great Library of Alexandria.
Link with Constantinople
- In 1472 CE, The Russian Grand Prince Ivan III married Princess Sophia Paleologue, who’s uncle was the last Emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
- Part of her Dowry seems to have been a collection of Works from the Imperial Library of Constantinople, rescued from the Ottoman Invasion of 1453 CE.
- Ivan the Terrible (1530-84 CE), his grandson, is known to have amassed a huge Library of Works from the Classical Age.
Sources
- Only two accounts confirm the existence of this Library:
- In 1606 CE, Vasili Ivanovitch (Czar Vasili IV 1606-10 CE) requested that the Patriarch of Constantinople send a scribe to translate some ancient Greek works into Russian. A monk, Maxim the Greek, was sent from the monastery in Mount Athos and claimed to have seen the Library whilst he translated several of the works.
- The other account was by Johann Wettermann, a German priest from Livonia, who visited Moscow and made a catalogue of 800 books, apparently only a small part of the collection he had seen.
- In 1822 CE, the Catalogue was apparently found by Professor Dabelov of Tartu University, but later lost again.
- In the 1930’s, a Russian Archeologist, Ignaty Stelletsky, claimed the Lost Library was located in the tunnels under the Kremlin in Moscow, but although he searched for it, he was unable to find its location. He also claimed to have found the Catalogue written by Johann Wettermann.
Kremlin, Moscow