Flowery Triodion

A fragment of the liturgical work entitled "Тріωдь цвҍтнаѧ" [Flowery Triodion], published in the world’s first Cyrillic printing house established in Cracow around 1489. The publishing house was established at the initiative of the Orthodox nobility at the court of Casimir IV Jagiellon. It was founded and owned by Szwajpolt Fiol (ca 1460–1525/1526), a goldsmith and embroiderer from the city of Neustadt an der Aisch in Franconia. The Cracow Cyrillic printing house published liturgical books in the Church Slavonic language, intended primarily for Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusians living in the eastern territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and for the needs of the faithful of the Duchy of Moscow, where no printing house existed at that time. Fiol’s printing house published a total of 4 liturgical books: Oktoikh [Oktoëchos], Chasoslov [Horologion], Triod' postnaya [Lenten Triodion] and Triod' cvetnaya [Flowery Triodion]. The full copy of Triod' cvetnaya consists of 366 leaves. The frontispiece features a woodcut with the “Crucifixion” scene and printer’s name: “Шбеиполть Фиоль” (only one existing frontispiece is preserved in the copy found in Brașov (Romania), found in 1971). The text was printed in continuo, which arose as a consequence of imitating early Cyrillic manuscripts. A fragment of Fiol’s Triod' cvetnaya from the Ossoliński collection consists of two leaves in folio. It was found in 1879 by the priest Ignacy Polkowski, a historian, archivist and bibliophile, in the binding of a Latin psalter from 1493. The fragment was part of the Ossolineum collection in Lviv – it was donated to the institution by the Poniński family, who bought it, along with Polkowski entire book collection, in 1895 at an auction after his death. The Ossoliński fragment contains leaves 347 and 358, with the liturgical text for Pentecost Monday and All Saints’ Sunday. All the books issued in the Fiol’s publishing house are exceedingly rare and valuable – about 80 known copies and fragments have survived to this day, the vast majority of which have been preserved in Russian book collections.