“Reliquary of Alexander Nevsky. Research and Materials” is a unique scientific illustrated publication that will crown at the end of 2021 the project “Alexander Nevsky: The Great Northern Route. On the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the statesman, commander and saint”. The presentation of the album will take place on December 14 at the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg (Peter and Paul Fortress) with the participation of the authors. Organizers: St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Political Encyclopedia Publishing House (ROSSPEN) and Norilsk Nickel; partners – the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the Novgorod Museum-Reserve and the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve.

The uniqueness of the publication is that, oddly enough, until the 21st century a detailed description of all the famous monuments associated with the burial and veneration of the holy relics of Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky had not yet been published. The album contains studies of recent years dedicated to the saint’s reliquaries. The authors consider in detail both the history of veneration of the Grand Duke in the context of Russian culture, and the phased transfer of relics, and, accordingly, the change in the nature and type of their containers from the Vladimir period (the Nativity Monastery in Vladimir as a memorial to Alexander Nevsky) to the Petersburg period (the famous silver cancer of Alexander Nevsky stored in the Hermitage) and even Petrograd, when the relics of the saint and related items were confiscated by the atheist authorities (the relic with the relics, which contained a unique letter of the 17th century, discovered by researchers only in the 21st century, a mantle that covered a silver shrine, now stored in the State Museum of the History of Religion).

A number of archival and museum finds were made during the preparation of various events in the jubilee year dedicated to the 800th anniversary of Alexander Nevsky. Research materials describing these latest discoveries are also included in the scientific publication.

Specialists from leading scientific and museum centers of Russia (St. Petersburg Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, the State Hermitage Museum, the State Archives of the Leningrad Region, the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve) took part in the creation of the album. Scientific publications of the professors-archpriests of the St. Petersburg Theological Schools (SPbDA) were prepared especially for the album. Illustrations for this edition were provided by the leading museums and archives of the country, as well as the authors of scientific articles.

The compiler of the album and author of the concept is A.V. Sirenov.
ROSSPEN, Moscow, 2021.

The presentation of the album “Reliquary of Alexander Nevsky” will take place on December 14 in the conference hall of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg at 16:00.

Ph.D. Natalia Sredinskaya, Chief Curator of the Western European Section of the Scientific and Historical Archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences reports about a fragment of a handwritten book from the collection of N.P. Likhachev on parchment belonging to the 15th century – a list of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” from the “Inferno” part – in the program “Autograph of History”. Air on November 20, 2021.

On November 22, the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a round table timed to the 80th anniversary of the opening of the “Doroga Zhizni” during the blockade of Leningrad.
Ways of interaction and directions for cooperation between “civil science” and the professional historical community were discussed during the round table. It was attended by representatives of state institutions and public organizations, focusing their activities on preserving the historical memory of the blockade.

A document from the collection of letters from the papal nunciature in Spain of the years 1670-1675, kept in the Archive of St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, can tell about an amusing episode in Spanish and Latin American history. In the program “Autograph of History”, Ph.D., researcher of the Department of General History Pavel Valentinovich Krylov, about a letter that fell into the very center of the interweaving of interests very far from the Peruvian shores and the Andean mountain ranges.