Rękopiśmienne kopie antyłacińskich druków z okresu unii brzeskiej w zbiorach Biblioteki Narodowej w Warszawie

Well-preserved copies of religious polemics from the period of the 16th and the 17th century in library and museum collections usually constitute a rarity. Such writings were often purposefully destroyed by religious opponents; therefore, procuring them was not easy even in the past. One of the manners of copying such works which aroused powerful controversies was their manual rewriting. This also refers to the old prints from the period of disputes concerning the Union of Brest by the Bug River (1596). The collection of Cyrillic manuscripts of the National Library in Warsaw contains two books which feature copies of anti-Latin texts expressing dissatisfaction and protests of a well-known representative of the Orthodox Church – Kiev Monk Father Zachariasz Kopysteński, in relation to the conclusion of the religious union with the Roman Catholics and its formal and legal consequences of delegalisation of the Orthodox Church in the Republic of Poland. The article contains a codicological description of both manuscripts and their textual relations with printed books of polemics from the beginning of the 17th century.