But even his
edition could not satisfy the more critical spirit of our days. A
new one has been published in the course of the last seven years; for
which, not less than fifty-three manuscripts were carefully compared.
The merit of it belongs to the Archaeographical Commission of the
Academy.
The _third_ period begins with the sixteenth century. In the course of
time, and after passing through the hands of so many ignorant
copyists, the holy books had of course undergone a change; nay, were
in some parts grown unintelligible. The necessity of a revision was
therefore very strongly felt. In A.D. 1512, the Patriarch of
Constantinople, at the request of the Tzar Basilius Ivanovitch, sent a
learned Greek (a monk of Mount Athos) to Moscow, to revise the church
books, and to correct them according to the Greek originals. As this
person some years afterwards fell into disgrace and could not
accomplish the work, it was taken up repeatedly in the course of the
same and the following century, until the revision of the liturgical
books was pronounced to be finished in A.D. 1667; but that of the
Bible not before A.D. 1751. The principles on which this revision, or,
as it was called, _Improvement_, was made, were in direct conflict
with the reverence due to the genius of the Slavic language.
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