The influence of the Ruthenian clerical elite on Orthodox church culture in east Slavic lands as well as on the development of Muscovite/Russian intellectual and cultural history has now become well accepted. The specifics of this influence, however, have only begun to be explored in any systematic way in the last few decades through studying the writings and sermons of the Ruthenian clerical elite as well as determining which of them occupied high positions in the Church, government and other educational institutions of the Russian empire. Another approach to that study is through the history of the book, in particular, the library of the Kiev Mohyla Academy, which was the central educational institution of higher learning for Ruthenian clerics. Knowing which books were in the library helps the scholar to trace lines of influence. A major drawback in this case is the fact that the library burned down in 1780 with the loss of most of its books. Perhaps this loss has contributed to the lack of any previous study of the history of the library. Liudmila Charipova has gone far to fill the gap in our knowledge about the academy's library by reconstructing what its contents must have been throughout its history from the founding of the college by Metropolitan Peter Mohyla in 1632 through the mid-seventeenth century when the library contained around 2,500 books to the end, when, by her estimate (p. 125), it housed ‘at least 8500 books’ (8,632 according to Metropolitan Krementsky's account written in 1780 [pp. 125–6]). She has also tracked down and examined the 203 volumes (actually 262 titles as some items were bound together) still existing, of which she includes a detailed list (pp. 180–231). She reports that the library functioned and was maintained along the same lines as its western counterparts, a finding that is understandable given the heavy Polish Jesuit influence, which had as one of its unintended consequences the revival of eastern Orthodoxy in Ruthenia. According to her evaluation, around 90 per cent of the books in the library were in Latin and their ‘range of subjects … largely corresponded with the educational model that had been adopted, on a virtually wholesale basis, from the Jesuits, whose editions made up a considerable proportion of the library stock’ (p. 176). She also notes ‘a significant number of Protestant editions, as well as books published by the Orthodox themselves’ (p. 177). For most of the library's existence, as her study of the surviving volumes corroborates, the books were intended to be used for study but were available only to faculty of the academy, although later in the eighteenth century a small library for students was established. On the question of what caused the fire that destroyed the library, Charipova, after a study of the evidence, including the police record, concludes that it was entirely accidental, spreading from a nearby dwelling. By situating her study of the Mohyla Academy library methodologically within the western scholarly tradition of the history of the book Charipova makes her findings accessible to a wider audience.