A memorial plaque was put up recently in honor of Ivan Fedorov (Fedorovych) on Onufry Monastery’s wall in Lviv

Historians claim that the corner of Lviv’s Krakivska and Virmenska streets, now a children’s playground, was once the place of Ivan Fedorov’s printing shop. To set up a new print shop in what was known as Kulhaniv’s stone house, Fedorov borrowed considerable funds but failed to settle the debt because untimely death thwarted all his hopes. All his oldest son, dubbed Ivan Drukarevych (“son of the printer” — Ed. ), inherited was his father’s arrears — 1500 gold coins — and custody of Fedorov’s underage children by his second marriage. It is in Lviv that the first printer married for the second time. Drukarevych, who suffered from consumption, failed to meet the payment deadline and fell into debtor’s prison. A year after his father’s death he also passed away.

What was considered for a long time to be the remains of Ivan Fedorov and his son were found in a niche at St. Onufry’s Monastery, where Fedorov had also worked.

“Now it is time to repeat the dating of the remains. If the burial dates to the late sixteenth century, this will confirm again that the remains belong precisely to the pioneer printer,” says Larysa Spasska, curator of the Museum of the Ancient Ukrainian Book.

Today, the bones are kept at this museum, which brings the sad thought that Ivan Fedorov, not so happy in his lifetime, also failed to find peace after death. Maybe, his immortal soul alone knows that the Ukrainian public holds him in high esteem for an invaluable contribution to made to the development of Ukrainian culture by printing for the first time on this territory The Apostle, The New Testament, The Psalter , and The Classroom Gospel . Western Ukrainians, who highly appreciate the pioneer printers’ achievements, even write “Fedorovych,” as he signed himself in Ukraine, in their articles and studies, as if admitting that he had struck deep roots in Lviv. “He was undoubtedly an extraordinary person,” Ms. Spasska says, “not only a printer and a master of casting but also a publisher and a scholar. He had a sound educational background, spoke several languages, and traveled a lot. All Fedorov’s afterwords, the frequent quotations of St. John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and St. John of Damascus, the way he interpreted historical figures and events, show that he had a profound knowledge of medieval literature. Incidentally, the quality of the books he published was very high, even higher than that of some contemporary Western European publications. What is more, he was keenly aware of his vocation, and no hardships could make him veer off his chosen path. “But it does not befit me to work by the sweat of my brow with the plow or a sower, for I am a master of an instrument other than a plow, and, instead of sowing rye seeds, I must sow spiritual seeds and give spiritual food to all in this world... So I reached the God- saved city named Lviv, and all that I encountered on my way was nothing compared to the only desire to find a Christ of my own.”

Ivan Fedorov displayed extraordinary skill in printing. He was a virtual jack of all trades: he would make upper dies, cast, typeset and print letters, and even do some menial work... His Apostle is one of the highest achievements of the sixteenth-century printing art. This work of Fedorov was a showpiece for his pupils and followers, and the works of many masters of the next epoch bear the seal of his influence. Nobody could surpass him for a very long time. Many were surprised with his book-printing technique, when he would make one typeset and two prints. He worked on the territory of what is now Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland.

A memorial plaque was recently put up in the pioneer printer’s honor on the wall of St. Onufry’s Monastery with financial support of the Moscow city authorities and the Yury Dovhoruky Foundation.

“Ms. Spasska, can you have the remains buried properly at last?”

“Certainly, but we would like the prominent Ukrainian anthropologist Serhiy Horbenko explore the skull and reconstruct the face on the basis of the remains found in St. Onufry’s Monastery. He has often done this with the skulls of other prominent figures. For there is not a single lifetime portrait of Ivan Fedorov. But Horbenko is now in France, studying the supposed remains of Joan of Arc to clarify whether she was really burnt at the stake... This means we will have to wait a little. Only then can we put the bones into a special tightly-soldered casket. It would be a good idea to keep it an a sarcophagus at St. Onufry’s Monastery rather than at the book museum. This modern building, converted into a museum complex of the Lviv Picture Gallery in 1996, has nothing to do with the life of Fedorov. The museum keeps 12,000 exhibits today — from manuscripts to eighteenth-century books. The exposition devoted to Fedorov is only one, albeit very important, part of our complex. In Lviv, it is impossible not to mention the pioneer printer when speaking about old book printing. Printers have been aware of his beneficial influence for more than two centuries now.

It is also a positive fact that so-called Fedorov Seminars are being resumed after an eleven- year lapse: there were eleven of them conducted before 1993. As before, this international conference will focus on ancient printed books and manuscripts. The seminars will be attended by scholars from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and elsewhere.

The people who will come from various countries will surely want to bow to the grave of Ivan Fedorov... 420 years ago he was buried at the graveyard of St. Onufry’s Monastery, the place of one of Lviv’s first print shops. Stavropigian friars laid a two-meter-long stone slab on the pioneer printer’s grave. An unknown master carved out a print sign with the inscription below, “The printer of books never before seen.”

In the late eighteenth century Austrian King Joseph II ordered the cemetery to be closed, and the tombstones, including the one on Fedorov’s grave, were hidden inside and in the walls of the church. The church was again renovated in the fall of 1883. Unfortunately, many things were damaged. The tombstone has never been seen since, with all kinds of versions being told... Yet, the monks reburied the remains of Ivan Fedorov and his son in the church itself, next to the Holy Virgin’s altar, because they considered his heritage worthy of true memory and veneration. The burial was found in 1975 during an archeological excavation, and the remains were taken to the museum. So it would be logical and correct to bring the remains back to their original burial place. It is not clear how long Ivan Fedorov’s posthumous ordeal will last, but one hopes it would cease as soon as possible.

Fedorov once wrote, as if foretelling his destiny, “See how the Apostle prides in his woe! For woe breeds patience, patience begets hope, and hope will never deceive you...”