Domostroi (The Household Orderer)
Домострой
Господи Иисусе Христе Сыне Божии, помилуй нас. Аминь.
Our renderingLord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Amen.
What it is
The Domostroi is the canonical Orthodox household-formation manual of Muscovite Russia, edited by Silvester, archpriest of the Kremlin Cathedral of the Annunciation (1545-1556) and close spiritual advisor to Ivan IV. Its first fifteen chapters ('On the Spiritual Structure') lay out the entire religious life of the household: church attendance, morning and evening prayers, icon veneration, fasting, almsgiving, and the husband's duty to lead his family as a domestic priest. Silvester appended a personal 'Instruction' (Naказ) addressed to his own son Anfim, confirming direct use as a formation text for the next generation of the Muscovite court elite. The text survives in some forty-three manuscript copies from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.
Why it still matters
A Christian household today can use the Domostroi's opening chapters as a template for ordering family prayer: morning and evening worship, icon corners, family fasting, and the discipline of attending the Divine Liturgy together — all presented as the husband-father's primary calling.
Kept alongside
Sermon on Law and Grace (Slovo o Zakone i Blagodati)
Слово о Законе и Благодати
Metropolitan Hilarion — personal presbyter to Yaroslav the Wise and the first native-born Metropolitan of Kiev, appointed 1051 — composed this masterpiece of Old Slavic homiletic rhetoric for the Kievan royal court, almost certainly delivered in the Tithe Church around 1049. The sermon contrasts Mosaic Law with Christian Grace using typology drawn from Galatians, celebrates Vladimir I's baptism of Rus, and concludes with a panegyric prayer for Yaroslav and his dynasty. It was both a theological manifesto for the independence of the newly Christianized Rus church from Byzantium and a devotional model of Christian kingship for the Rurikid heirs. Its use as a formation text at the Kievan court is attested by its careful preservation and repeated copying.
Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073)
Изборник Святослава 1073 года
This lavishly illustrated Slavonic florilegium was commissioned directly by — and bears a dedicatory portrait miniature of — Grand Prince Sviatoslav II Yaroslavych of Kiev and his family. Compiled from Church Slavonic translations of Greek patristic texts (homilies of John Chrysostom, the Questions and Answers of Anastasios of Sinai, church-council summaries, and further patristic writings), it was designed as an encyclopedic introduction to Christian doctrine for a ruler consolidating Orthodox literacy in Kievan Rus. Discovered in 1807 at the Resurrection Monastery near Moscow, it is now preserved at the State Historical Museum in Moscow and represents the most direct evidence of a Rurikid prince personally commissioning a patristic devotional compendium.
Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1076)
Изборник 1076 года
The companion volume to the 1073 Izbornik, this smaller anthology was prepared for Prince Sviatoslav II and is more directly practical in its spiritual orientation. It integrates moral aphorisms, apophthegmata from the Desert Fathers (derived from the Bulgarian 'Kniazheskii Izbornik'), homilies of John Chrysostom, scriptural commentary, and wise sayings arranged for daily devotional reading. It is one of the earliest witnesses to the paraenetic tradition in Slavia Orthodoxa and demonstrates how the Rurikid court sought short, meditative texts for formation rather than long theological treatises. Both Izborniki survive and are studied as foundational texts of early East Slavic Christian culture.