The Archangelsk Gospel () is a lectionary written in Old Church Slavonic dated to 1092. It is the fourth oldest Eastern Slavic manuscript. The book is stored in the collection of the Russian State Library. UNESCO added the Arkhangelsk Gospel to the international register Memory of the World Programme in 1997.
The Arkhangelsk Gospel has a modest design and is a cheap, mass-produced book. The story of its creation and provenance until 1876 is unknown. The book was brought to Moscow by a farmer from the Archangelsk region and is named after its place of discovery. The manuscript is in satisfactory condition - the ink and vermilion has crumbled in places, but the parchment does not have signs of contamination or moisture. The Archangel Gospel was reproduced in 1912 as a facsimile and in 1997 as a scientific publication.
History of the manuscript
The early history of the manuscript and place of its provenance are unknown before 1876. There are some suggestions that it came from the scriptorium of the Lazarevsky monastery near Great Novgorod, but there is no unambiguous evidence to support the hypothesis.
In early December 1876 the manuscript was brought to Moscow by a peasant from Arkhangelsk region and was acquired by a Rumyantsev Museum trustee, merchant, old believer S. T. Bolshakov. He showed it to other bibliophiles and then offered to sell it to the Rumyantsev Museum for 400 rubles. Several experts worked with the manuscript in the museum, including E. B. Autograph, P. A. Kulish and A. L. Duvernoy. They concluded that it was written in 1192 because of the date of the scribe ending work on the manuscript ( Cyrillic numerals "from the creation of the world" - ҂ ЅѰ). At the request of Danilov Monastery dean paleographer Amphilochius (Sergius-Kazantsev), who worked at the time on Old Slavonic-Greek-Russian Dictionary using 11th and 12th-century manuscripts, Bolshakov took the Archangelsk Gospel from the museum and lent it to Amphilochius for study.
In 1912, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Rumjancev Museum, the text of the codex was edited in 100 copies in a facsimile edition. The facsimile edition reproduces a natural colour of the manuscript (parchment, ink, pictures, and holes created by insects). The paper used for this edition has approximately the same thickness as the parchment of the original codex.
Description
The manuscript consists of 178 pages of different sizes ranging from 20×16 centimetres to 20.5×16.8 cm. The tops of the leaves have been cut off with damage of numbering of the quires. The manuscript is written on parchment made from calf skins. Experts describe the quality of the material as low: rough manufacture of the leather, very economical open. Fifty-four pages have various defects: rough fields which have been not sewn up or have unfilled holes, the filed parts of the leaves. The Archangel Gospel is in a satisfactory condition; the parchment is not polluted, and traces of moisture are absent, but a number of sheets show traces of wormholes. It appears that some sheets had ink and cinnabar droplets fall on them, but this does not interfere with the text's legibility. As the restoration of the manuscript from the moment of its discovery was never successful, the manuscript needs a new binding of the book block and strengthening of reliure.
The manuscript lost six of the 8-folios quires (three in the beginning, two between leaves 84 and 85, one between leaves 100 and 101) and five separate leaves — together 53 leaves are lost. Separately last leaf of the manuscript is sewn to the book block with the text-palimpsest (presumably 12th century), written on the old washed off text.