ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Akakii Balandin, a composite character who undertakes a spiritual, intellectual, and physical journey from the Novgorod-Volotovo Monastery to the Solovki Monastery in the second half of the sixteenth century. Vassian Gusilov was the scribe of a Psalter held by the Iosifov-Volokolamskii Monastery library in 1545; the late sixteenth-century lev Balandin owned a hymnal later belonging to that monastery. Other aspects of the monastic experience described here are grounded in the collectively of surviving rules and other documents from a variety of Russian cloisters. Novgorod, Pskov, Kazan, Narva, Solovki Monastery, and the Otnia Hermitage all had the significance that their roles here indicate. The modest suburban Novgorod Volotovo Monastery, with inspiring frescos painted in the 1370s by Feofan the Greek, was as likely a place as any for our imagined Akakii to commence his life as a monk. The chapter also represents Akakii's personal capital part, which he will formally donate to the monastery.
