Moscow, June 30, 2017
Photo: stsl.ru 14,568 rare manuscripts have been made publicly available on the official website of the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, reports patriarchia.ru. The digitization of the literary treasure was carried out as a joint project between the Lavra and the Russian State Library.
All the manuscripts are divided into archives and collections. There is a section of “Unique Books” which includes six publications: several volumes of the Russian Bible and the Life of St. Sergius of Radonezh.
The publishing of the 10-volume illustrated Russian Bible was the life’s work of the Church historian, archaeographer, and philologist Archimandrite Innokenty (Prosvirin) (1940-1994). The center of the publication was the first full Russian Bible (1499, the so-called Gennadievsky Bible,) with a parallel text of the Russian-language Synodal translation (1876), and illustrated material from books of the Bible from the Russian manuscript tradition from the 10th to 19th centuries.
On the significance of its manuscript collections, the Russian State Library site reads:
Old Russian manuscript works form a most important part of cultural heritage of Russia, of Slavonic peoples and of the whole world. The digital collection of manuscript materials is destined to open for readers a captivating world of Slavonic word stored at the funds of the Scientific and research department of manuscripts of the RSL. The collection demonstrates the process of development of Slavonic written language and culture. It also gives a bright insight on book — writing schools and workshops, on stages of development of the Church Slavonic language.
All manuscripts digitized by the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra are available here.
