Russian Monastery’s Accounting and Auditing in the 16th –17th Centuries

Year 2016, Issue: 10 - Issue: 10, 139 - 154, 01.01.2016

Vladimir Ivanov

Abstract

This paper reviews a history of accounting and auditing practice in
16th-17th centuries at the most known monastery of Russia – Solovetsky. This
monastery was established in the first half of 15th c. For the first time the earliest
of the preserved accounting documents of the monastery - saint hegumen Philip’s
“memory” of donations and expense to the cloister building (1547/48) is introduced.
The evolution of accounting system and basic principles of the income-expenditure
books’ composition in different cloister services are investigated on the archive’s
documentary base. In the monastery existed a universal system of the money and
other means accounting. All officials, even common monks and servants, who carried
out temporary commissions or trips, had to fix their incomes and expenditures, and
reported before the management of the monastery.
The special commissions headed by “eklisiarkh” were established in the
17th c. They conducted testing (“schet”) of all cloister services and compiled auditing
paper (“schetny spisok”). Such records of 1628, 1645, 1649, 1656 and others have
been considered. Similar tests since 1631 were converted into the unique audit.
Those auditing not only studied the correctness of the income-expenditure books
composition (i. e. their balance - equality of income with the expenditure and the
remainder), but also the state of entire service. In this year on the initiative, it is
probable, of a new head of monastic economy (“kelar”) Varfolomey was introduced
the required composition of rejection (“otvodnaja”) books. They were created with
each change of stewards. In them it was fixed all production equipment (except
buildings), inventory, cattle, food and other reserves, which were in every service.
So not only data of the income and expenditure books were considered, but also was
compared state, it is possible to say, the fixed capital of service at the beginning and in
the end of every term. The economic effectiveness of the work of each service, each
steward was evaluated.

Keywords

Bookkeeping Audit 16-17 Centuries Russia Solovetsky Monastery History