Greek Manuscripts

There are near 1000 separate items in the library's collection of Greek manuscripts, making it the largest in the country and one of the largest in the world. It smaller in size that  the collections of Greece, Italy or France, but its value lies in accumulating the well-known landmarks of great historical and cultural importance. Many of them are impressive for their outstanding decoration: beautiful miniature illustrations, ornamented headpieces and initials. The collection of the National Library is also notable for a very significant number of dated Greek manuscripts.

The oldest part of the collection — is a group of papyri from the second to fourth centuries A.D. from the Tischendorf collection. They were found during the ninteenth century in Lower Egypt, near the ruins of ancient Memphis. Particularly interesting among them are fragments of Menander's plays Fasma and Arbitration dating from the fourth century, the earliest surviving texts of the great Athenian comedy dramatist. Papyrus scroll "books" were kept in special baskets — that is what libraries looked like in the Ancient World. The third-century catalogue of one such library is now in the Manuscripts Department. Among the books it lists is Aristotle's The Polity of Athens. Because the actual text of this work was discovered later than the mention of it in the catalogue, this item has become known as the "prophetic papyrus".

As Late Antiquity was succeeded by the early Christian era, papyrus scrolls gave way to parchment codices. Manuscripts of the early Christian era are written on parchment in uncial letters, the oldest Greek writing style. Among them are fragments of the earliest of the three surviving copies of the ancient Greek Bible known as the Septuagint — the famous Codex Sinaiticus produced in the fourth century. The text in the Codex Sinaiticus is written in four columns per page that was a rare way to arrange it.

Like the Porphyrius Gospel of 835 and the Porphyrius Psalter of 862, these fragments came into the library with the material gathered by Archbishop Porphyrius Uspensky (1804-1855), a palaeographical scholar and passionate collector. This renowned Porphyrius Gospel, created at the Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople, is the oldest surviving Greek manuscript with an exact date of creation, and, at the same time, the first dated manuscript written in minuscule, a new Greek script which replaced uncial letters. No less famous is the Porphyrius Psalter of 862, produced in the Church of the Holy Resurrection in Jerusalem in a special writing style — the Palestinian uncial.

Many Greek manuscripts entered the Imperial Public Library by way of the royal palace. In 1858 the Metropolitan of Trebizond in Asia Minor presented Alexander II with a lavishly decorated tenth-century manuscript with 15 magnificent miniatures. Now it is known as the Gospel of Trebizond.

In 1829, Nicholas I was given a precious nineth-century purple Gospel which had once belonged to the Christian community of the St. John the Baptist Monastery in Gumushane (Turkey). This volume written in gold and silver on purple parchment and adorned with miniatures was produced in the imperial Byzantine scriptorium. It is also called Empress Theodora's Codex. According to legend, this Gospel was written by the venerable Empress Theodora herself, known as the protector of icon veneration in Byzantium.

Another work from the same source is the Codex Petropolitanus, a sixth-century purple Gospel which Nicholas II bought from the village of Sarmisahly with the assistance of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople.

Approximately half the library's Greek manuscripts were written in the Byzantine era. They include extremely valuable sources on all aspects of the history and culture of Byzantium, be it book miniatures, palaeography, literature, ecclesiastical music, medicine, astrology, clerical procedures or canon law. The other half of the stocks dates from the time of the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the post-Byzantine period. These still little-studied manuscripts brought to us an interesting layer of late Greek culture, which continues the ancient antique and Christian Byzantine traditions.

Also directly connected with the Ancient World are the stone tablets from the Greek colony of Olbia on the northern Black Sea coast which adorn the library's main staircase. They record the outstanding services which citizens accorded the town and commemorate the erection of statues of gods and emperors. These tablets were donated to the Public Library in 1880 by the widow of Count Alexei Musin-Pushkin in accordance with his will.

View online exhibitions:

Greek Manuscript Gospels of the 6th–13th Centuries

Cultural heritage of Europe in the collections of the National Library of Russia. Cyprus

Cultural heritage of Europe in the collections of the National Library of Russia. Greece

Codex Sinaiticus and the Manuscripts of Mt Sinai in the Collections of the National Library of Russia

You can also see the full-text study in Russian with illustrations of stone tablets from the Greek colony of Olbia which adorn the library's main staircase.

Greek Manuscripts

Old Russian Manuscripts

South Slavic Manuscript Books

Oriental Manuscripts

Western Manuscripts

Manuscript Maps

Manuscript Music

Archive Collection