Sixth edition. Octavo (ca. 23x14 cm). [2 – t.p.], 65 pp. Grey publisher’s wrappers. Period brown ink owner’s note in Russian on the title page (“Markiza [Tereza?]”); period brown ink note in French (“La preuve de la chemin de la vie éternelle”) on the front wrapper. Wrappers slightly soiled, a couple of minor tears on the extremities and the back wrapper, but overall a very good copy in its original state.

Very rare early imprint of the famous instruction in the Christian faith, written by a renowned Russian American missionary and linguist, the “Enlightener of Alaska and Siberia,” Ivan (Ioann) Popov-Veniaminov, who later became Innocent, Archbishop of Kamchatka, Kurile and Aleut Islands (1840-1868) and Metropolitan of Moscow (1868-1879). In 1977, he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The book was written specially for the indigenous Alaskan converts into Orthodox Christianity during Fr. Ioann’s service on Unalaska (1824-34) and as the dean of St. Michael’s Cathedral in New Archangelsk (Sitka) in 1834-37. In 1838, Fr. Ioann travelled to St. Petersburg to obtain the church authorities’ permission to publish several original works, as well as his translations of the foundational Christian books (the Gospel of Matthew and Catechism) into the Aleut language. According to the author of the fundamental biography of Fr. Ioann, Ivan Barsukov, “on February 12, [1840], two petitions of Fr. Veniaminov were presented to the Holy Synod, about the publication of his translations and the original work in the Aleut-Fox language. In his petition about the original work, Fr. Veniaminov asked for the blessing to print it on his own account in the Synodal typography in Moscow. The Holy Synod concluded it was undoubtely useful and necessary to print the presented texts, and especially praised his work “A Guide of the Path to the Kingdom of Heaven,” having deemed it necessary to publish this book not only in the Aleut-Fox language, but also in Russian and Church Slavonic” (Barsukov, Ivan. Innokentii, Mitropolit Moskovsky i Kolomensky po yego Sochineniyam, Pismam i Rasskazam Sovremennikov. Moscow, 1883, p. 111). The first edition of the “Ukazaniye Puti” in the Aleut language was published in 1840, in Russian – in 1841. The book became very popular, and before the Revolution of 1917 its Russian text had over 20 editions. During the Soviet period, like all other Christian books, it was not republished.

The books were actively used by the Christian community and didn’t survive in large numbers. There are four copies of the first Aleut edition of 1840 (University of Alaska Fairbanks, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Gordon College) and two copies of the first Russian edition of 1841 (UC Berkeley, Library of Congress) found in Worldcat. No copies of the sixth edition (1859) were found in Worldcat.

The book consists of an Introduction, Conclusion and four parts: I. The goodness that Jesus Christ granted us with His death; II. How Jesus Christ lived on earth and what He suffered for us; III. Which path leads to the Kingdom of Heaven; IV. How Jesus Christ helps us to walk on the path to the Kingdom of Heaven and how we can get this help.

Our copy retains its original publisher’s wrappers and bears a period ink note on the title page and a title of the book in French (“La preuve de la chemin de la vie éternelle”) the front wrapper. Overall a nice copy of this important work by the Innocent of Alaska, preserved in its original state.

«The author’s full name was Ivan Evseevich Popov-Veniaminov. The son of a sexton in a Siberian village, after the usual theological studies and intermediate churchly positions, he was ordained a priest in 1821 and two years later decided to become a missionary and spread the Gospel among the Aleutian natives. His first post was at Unalaska, where he built a church. In the course of some 30 years of devout and enlightened missionary work throughout the Aleutian and Kuril Islands, as well as in Kamchatka, he started schools, vaccinated the natives against smallpox, translated Russian liturgical books into native languages, etc. In 1857 (by then Archbishop of Kamchatka, the Kuriles and the Aleutian Islands), Veniaminov was called to St. Petersburg and in 1868 was made Metropolitan of Moscow under the name of Innokentii. For a more complete biography of this remarkable man, see the 24-page The Life and Work of Innocent, the Archbishop of Kamchatka (San Francisco, 1897), which is based on a voluminous work (in Russian) by I.P. Barsukov entitled Innokentii, Mitropolit Moskovskii (Moscow, 1883)» (Lada-Mocarski, 107).

Ivan Veniaminov went to Unalaska as a missionary priest in 1824 and spent ten years there. He «transliterated Unangan, the Fox Island dialect, into Cyrillic characters and, with the help of Ivan Pankov, translated the St. Matthew’s Gospel, as well as many prayers and hymns. The work was continued at a later date by Father Ilya Tyzhnov, who produced the first and only printed part of the Holy Scripture in the variant of Aleut spoken on Kodiak Island». He served in Sitka in 1834-38, where he built a school for Tlingit children and composed textbooks for it. In 1840, he went to St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he took monastic vows and was subsequently nominated bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuril and Aleutian Islands. In May 1842, «he set off on a tour of his diocese, visiting Unalaska, Atka, Unga, Pribilof, Bering and the Spruce Islands, <…> Kamchatka and Okhotsk». In the 1840-1850s, he made another three voyages around his diocese, in 1853 he took up permanent residence in Yakutsk; later he travelled across Eastern Siberia and the Far East to Blagoveshchensk, the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, and Kamchatka. <…> On 6 October 1977, by a decision of the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, acting on the official request from the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America, Veniaminov, Bishop Innocent, was numbered among the saints» (Howgego, 1800 to 1850, V4).