MATERIALS OF THE DEBATE ON THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS IN CHURCH PRESS BOOKS (1876–1892)

The article continues a series of published documents which characterize the Synodal printing-houses’ activities aimed at forming the norm of the late Church Slavonic language. The Synodal printing-houses had the exclusive right for publishing books in the Church Slavonic language so their influence on the grammatical norm’s conserva- tion and evolution was decisive. This article includes the documents related to the controversy on the use of capital letters in Church Slavonic books. Using capital let- ters for highlighting proper names was a feature of Russian civil spelling which was accepted by the St. Petersburg and Kyiv Synodal printing-houses. At the same time, the Moscow Synodal printing-house abided by more archaic rules. The coexistence of the two traditions caused controversy which is reflected in the published documents. They include two anonymous letters, the authors of which considered the spelling norm of the Russian literary language as the only possible one and suggested spread- ing it on all the Church Slavonic publications. This proposal was supported by the Committee for liturgical books’ revision which used to function in Moscow in those years. The stance of the supporters of conserving the former norm is set out in the of- ficial appeals of the Moscow Synodal printing-house to the Synod and a range of other documents. This debate resulted in the determination adopted by the Synod in 1887–1888 approving the Moscow Synodal printing-house’s spelling norm as the only possible one.