Moscow, July 31, 2025
Photo: wikimedia.org
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has included the Chludov Psalter in its Memory of the World Register, recognizing the 9th-century Byzantine manuscript as part of humanity’s shared documentary heritage.
The psalter, housed in Moscow’s State Historical Museum, was among 74 documents added to the international registry, which preserves documentary collections including books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and audio-visual recordings, the museum reports.
Selections are made by UNESCO’s Executive Board following evaluation by an independent international advisory committee.
Created between 843 and 867 AD, the Chludov Psalter is one of only three surviving early monuments of Byzantine art from this period. The manuscript emerged during the post-iconoclastic era, following a prolonged period of systematic destruction of Byzantine religious images.
The 195mm by 150mm psalter contains 169 folios and is decorated with 208 painted miniatures and a frontispiece. According to scholarly tradition, many of the miniatures were created clandestinely and directed against Iconoclasts, with explanatory text and arrows connecting illustrations to specific lines in the main text. The polemical style reflects the intense passions generated by the Iconoclast dispute.
The text includes the Psalms arranged according to the Septuagint and liturgical responses for chanting that follow the Liturgy of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople’s Imperial church. The original text was written in diminutive uncial script, though much was rewritten in minuscule script approximately three centuries later.
Scholar Nikodim Kondakov theorizes that the Psalter originated at Constantinople’s St. John the Studite monastery, while other researchers suggest its liturgical responses indicate creation in Imperial workshops following the Iconophiles’ return to power in 843.
The manuscript remained at Mt. Athos until 1847, when a Russian scholar stole it and brought it to Moscow. It was subsequently acquired by collector Aleksey Khludov, from whom it takes its current name. The Psalter passed through the Khludov bequest to the Nikolsky Old Believer Monastery in Moscow before reaching the State Historical Museum.
Researchers from the Historical Museum’s manuscript department and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute are currently using multispectral imaging and neural network processing to visualize faded miniatures, separate painting layers, and reconstruct the manuscript’s original appearance.
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