Volume II. Ascetic Experiments. Part II: Supplement — Archpastoral Appeals on the Question of the Emancipation of the Peasants from Serfdom (1859). Comments by A. M. Lyubomudrov. Appendix — From the consistorial correspondence of the saint.

Volume III: A Word on Death. Supplement — Archaeological Description of the Antiquities of the Valaam Monastery (1853). Appendix — Consistorial correspondence (continued).

Volume IV: Ascetic Sermon. Supplement — Unpublished works of the saint (prose and verse). Appendix — Bibliography of publications of the works of St. Ignatius and literature about him (compiled by T. N. Semyonov).

Volume V. Offering to Modern Monasticism. Supplement — Letters of St. Ignatius to the Abbot of the Cheremenets Monastery, Hegumen Anthony (Alexei Pankratyevich Bochkov). Appendix — Letters to Vladyka: Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow, Metropolitan Philaret (Amfiteatrov) of Kiev, Archimandrite Ignatius (Malyshev), Archimandrite Pimen (Myasnikov); Optina Elders: Moses, Leonid, Macarius, Anatoly, etc.; Ploshchansk elders: Anatoly, Hilarius, Ioannikii, etc.

Volume VI. The supplement is the letters of Bishop Ignatius to the laity: N. N. Muravyov-Karsky, A. S. Norov, kn. D. N. Sheremetev, A. S. Taneyev, the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod A. P. Tolstoy, and others.

Volume VII. The final volume of the Collected Works of the saint is devoted to the publication of his numerous letters to various persons, many texts are verified from manuscripts or published for the first time. Appendix — Responses of the Press to the Publication of the Works of St. Ignatius. Theological Considerations of His Writings. Materials for the canonization of the great ascetic of God.

In distributing the texts into volumes, the editors unfailingly adhered to the author's will shown by His Grace in preparing for publication the first collection of his works. At that time, Bishop Ignatius was retired in the Nikolo-Babaevsky Monastery, where he completely immersed himself in publishing. He revised the texts of all his main works anew, it became possible to give them in their original entirety, without censorship deletions. The composition of the volumes was determined by the saint himself, the technical verification of the texts, and the proofreading he entrusted to the spiritual writer S. I. Snessoreva. All the expenses for the publication were borne by Peter Alexandrovich Brianchaninov, the brother of the Bishop, his sincere associate and philanthropist. The first two volumes of the Collected Works of the Saint, during his lifetime, were printed in the printing house of I. I. Glazunov in 1865. In the next two years, volumes III and IV were published, and the Lord vouchsafed His ascetic to rejoice in the results of his creative work during his lifetime and to fully manifest the author's will in the presentation of texts. The final, fifth volume of the Collected Works during his lifetime, "Otechnik", was published after the death of the saint. Thus the canonical type of publication of the works of Bishop Ignatius was formed, and all subsequent collections of his works (St. Petersburg, 1886; St. Petersburg, 1905) invariably repeated in the main the first, in which the will of the saint himself was expressed.

But years passed, new publications were accumulated, scattered in periodicals, archival finds multiplied. In the mid-1960s, during the reign of the atheists and the most severe persecution of the Holy Church of Christ, Hieromonk Mark (Lozinsky) of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra did an extremely important job of collecting and assimilating printed and archival materials, which he used as the basis of his master's thesis "The Spiritual Life of a Layman and a Monk from the Works and Letters of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov" (1967-1968). The dissertation consisted of eight volumes of typewritten text, in which, in addition to an extensive biography of the saint, there is a volume of his unpublished works and a large number of valuable documents relating to the activities of Bishop Ignatius. The corpus of letters presented in the collection of Hieromonk Mark is 200 units longer than the one known from previous issues. The epistolary heritage of the saint is an integral part of his theological works. And perhaps the full publication of the letters of the great spiritual writer-ascetic makes the new edition of his works even more valuable and significant. Of course, all of Fr Mark's archival research, as well as all the new archival materials discovered after his death, will be included in the next volumes of the Complete Works of St. Ignatius, which is offered to readers.

In preparing this edition, the editors sought to adhere to the requirements for compliance with the author's writing and punctuation features. All published materials were carefully verified, Russian correspondences were given to quotations from the Holy Scriptures according to the Synodal translation (highlighted in italics); the historical figures mentioned in the "Life" are revealed and explained; Editorial inserts are in square brackets. The textual principles of this publication rest on the following foundations: the spiritual writings of an outstanding figure of Orthodoxy, now canonized, are of national importance, representing a great monument of Russian culture in general and of the culture of the Russian language in particular. The renewal of spelling and punctuation norms should not affect the language skills of the writer, preserving all the significant originality of his written speech, without violating even the most subtle semantic shades. The editors also strove with the utmost attention to observe the stable graphic features of Brianchaninov's texts, and at the same time, the use of lowercase and uppercase letters, other visual elements of the text, for example, italics and quotation marks, should coincide as fully as possible with modern norms of the external design of texts. The final volume of the Collection, devoted to the letters of the saint, is supposed to be provided with a large number of illustrations.

The editorial board intends to carry out the entire publication within two years.

A. N. Strizhev

BIOGRAPHY

BISHOP IGNATY

BRYANCHANINOVA,