Ostroh

Ostroh stands on the Horyn in Volhynia, beneath the towers of the castle that was the seat of the Ostrogski princes. First mentioned in 1100, the town became a centre of learning and religious life as well as a residence of one of the most powerful families in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn Ostrozky founded a Slavic-Greek-Latin academy in 1576, gathering scholars and teachers to support Orthodox education. A printing press worked alongside them. In 1581 the printer Ivan Fedorov issued the Ostroh Bible, the first complete printed Bible in Church Slavonic, with scholarship directed by the academy's circle. The publication became a landmark of Slavic printing and religious culture. Ostroh received Magdeburg rights in 1585. The town's inhabitants included Orthodox Ruthenians, Catholics and Jews. Its fortifications, including a moat and bastions, surrounded a place that nevertheless suffered in the Cossack wars of the seventeenth century. After the Ostrogski line ended, the estate passed through other noble families. The second partition of Poland brought Ostroh under Russian rule in 1793.