Well-known to historians of the language from numerous publications, the letters were not actually called so, but they were called letters by publishers and researchers. In reality, these texts did not yet have proper names in pre-Petrine times.
At the same time, in a number of business monuments of the XI-XIV centuries, there are already names related to the whole text, but they only name the topic, action or act set out in it, without yet defining the type of the text itself, without describing it as a genre (Charter, Series, Truth).
Before the appearance of business texts with real names, similar business papers were mentioned in the annals: Answer, Testament, Commandment, Strengthening, Finishing. However, contexts do not always allow you to correctly understand the meaning and determine whether it is a document or just an action. It is difficult to rely on the information of the chronicle as a reliable source of the first mention of the document, since all of them were preserved in late lists of the XV-XVII centuries, and scribes could enter the names of contemporary documents in the text.
One of the earliest established types of business text, which received their own special names, was Records. Initially, they are represented by-
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It is a diplomatic document of non-aggression and territorial delimitation (1375).
At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, texts with names attached to them appear, for example, Unsubscribe - "receipt for receiving property"; Kabala - "document on monetary debt, debt obligation".
One of the most common types of business writing at this time was spiritual orders, called Manuscripts. Expressing his dying wish, the author of such a text communicated the conditions for transferring his property to a monastery, church, or other religious institution. The text of Spiritual Certificates is also similar in content.
There is a noticeable increase in the number of documents related to organizational and administrative activities, for exam ...
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