As a prisoner in the Monastery of Solovetsky Island from 1666–68, the archimandriteThe superior of a large monastery or group of monasteries in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Theophanes of Athos compiled a handwritten dictionary of Karelian words taught to him by one of his co-prisoners, most likely during the last year of his imprisonment, when four Karelian prisoners were incarcerated on the island. On the night of 1 October 1668, Theophanes and two other prisoners managed to escape, but their boat was caught in a storm and the three men drowned.Mullonen & Panchenko, 2013, pp. 16–30.
Fragments of Theophanes’ Karelian notes were discovered in the monastery in the late 19th century.Mullonen & Panchenko, 2013, pp. 16–30. Two of them are found today in a manuscript called the Patericon alphabet (Russian: Патерик азбучный), on the reverse folio 273 and folio 274.Feofam, ca. 1668.
The samples and characters listed are Cyrillic transcriptions of the original Church Slavonic manuscript.
Feofan, archim. (ca. 1668). Karelian-Russian notes of Archimandrite Feofan. In Патерик азбучный [Patericon alphabet, Sol. 648/706]. [Manuscript in quarto format (19,3 x 15 cm), 275 pages], fols. 273r–274. Library of the Solovetsky Monastery. Retrieved 20 September 2026 from primo.nlr.ru
Mullonen, I.I., Panchenko, O.V. (2013). Карельско-русские словарные записи афонского архимандрита Феофана, сделанные в соловецкой тюрьме: 1666–1668 годы [Karelian-Russian dictionary entries of the Athonite archimandrite Feofan, made in the Solovetsky prison: 1666–1668]. In Proceedings of the Karelian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, no. 4.