Ancient manuscripts of Russia. General history of the book. Appearance of handwritten books of ancient Russia

MKOU SOSH with. Leninskoe

Teacher of Russian language and literature Fedoreeva Irina Anatolyevna

Testing in literature grade 6 on the topic "Old Russian literature"

Test for grade 6

"Old Russian Literature"

a) IX-XIII

b) XI - XVIII

c) XI - XVII

c) story

d) annals

e) poems

a) Prince Vladimir

b) Nestor

c) Alexander Nevsky

a) Laurentian Chronicle

6. Pechenegs are ...

b)

7. Veche is ...

b) evening tea

c) something that lives forever

a) 11th century

b) 1113

c) 988

a) truthfulness

c) proximity to folklore

Test, grade 6

Old Russian literature

Old Russian literature belongs to the period:

a) IX-XIII

b) XI - XVIII

c) XI - XVII

The main genres of ancient Russian literature were:

c) story

d) annals

e) poems

3. The collection of chronicles "The Tale of Bygone Years" was compiled

a) Prince Vladimir

b) Nestor

c) Alexander Nevsky

4. The chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years" was compiled in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery in

5. The first known handwritten collection that has come down to us was called

a) Laurentian Chronicle

b) The story of the devastation of Ryazan by Batu

c) The legend of Belgorod kissel

6. Pechenegs are ...

a) ancient Russians who conquered overseas lands

b) unification of Turkic and other tribes in the trans-Volga steppes in the VIII-IX centuries

c) tribes living on the outskirts of Russia

7. Veche is ...

a) a popular or city meeting to discuss common affairs

b) evening tea

c) something that lives forever

8. Writing came to Russia in

a) 11th century

b) 1113

c) 988

9. The features of Old Russian literature include:

a) truthfulness

b) division of heroes into positive and negative

c) proximity to folklore

e) in places in the narrative there is something wonderful, fantastic, perceived as real

10. Compare the modern statement with the statement of ancient Russian people:

Sources of material:

1. Textbook “Literature. Grade 6”, V.Ya. Korovina, 2010

In the modern world, ancient manuscripts are treated with special respect - they are carefully stored in museums. It is understandable, because in ancient times they wrote only about significant things, believing that the word of God is reflected in the manuscripts. Thanks to the hard work of ancient Russian scribes, it is possible to compose a full-fledged message on the topic: handwritten books of Ancient Russia.

Appearance of handwritten books of ancient Russia

What the handwritten books of Ancient Russia looked like The message is quite interesting for the modern avid reader-bibliophile. Moreover, they were real works of art. Sheets of manuscripts were made from parchment (calfskin) and rarely from birch bark, which was not very durable. Four sheets were folded in half and an eight-sheet notebook was obtained. In order for the bulk content to fit, several notebooks were stitched together into a single book. To do this, the roots of the manuscripts were sewn with thick threads to special belts, the ends of which were threaded into holes sawn into the covers and nailed with pegs. The bindings were made of wooden planks covered with treated leather. For greater durability of the book, the corners of their covers were framed with metal squares, and the book itself was closed with a nice clasp. The covers were generously decorated with ornaments, gold, silver, and even precious stones. All this fittings made handwritten creations very weighty.

As for the letter, the text was applied in thick rusty iron ink and paint. There was a tradition to write capital letters in red paint - cinnabar. All other text was in brown.

Ancient manuscripts often contain drawings by artists. In ancient religious books there are images of saints and monks, in chronicles - kings and warriors. In addition, real art can highlight a whimsical image capital letters and ornamental headpieces at the beginning of the book.

The main reason why handwritten books appeared in Ancient Russia is the spread of Christianity. Consequently, most of them have a religious content. The most famous books on this subject are the oldest “ Ostromir Gospel” (1056), the first dated “ Kyiv Psalter"(1397), the most valuable" Izbornik Svyatoslav” (1076)

In the beautifully designed manuscript of the Ostromir Gospel, the lion's share of the content is occupied by daily gospel readings of commandments and spiritual parables . It reflected both the significant events of that time and the personalities who created the history. Written in liturgical statutes, the Kyiv Psalter contains the psalms of David, biblical prayers and songs of praise. The manuscript contains elaborate marginal illustrations. Compiled on the basis of a philosophical Greek collection, “Izbornik Svyatoslav” is supplemented with teachings of church ministers, excerpts from books of the Bible. The Izbornik has a spiritual and moral orientation, emphasizing the importance of the human soul and the need to take care of the purity of one's thoughts.

Chronicles, another genre of ancient Russian early literature, are of paramount importance for historians. The most famous of them was The Tale of Bygone Years, written by the monk Nestor in 1110. In it, he covered the history of the Russian land from the time of the Great Flood to the reign of Vladimir Monomakh. In a secondary school, this chronicle is introduced at a lesson called: “Handwritten books of ancient Russia, grade 4 message”. Another important monument of ancient Russian historical literature is " Word about Igor's Campaign ". Written in the 16th century, this manuscript tells of the unsuccessful campaign of a Russian prince against the Polovtsians.

There were also legal manuscripts that helped regulate the legal sphere of the life of ancient Russian society. In the 11th century, Prince Yaroslav the Wise published a legal collection “ Russian Truth ". The peculiarity of this collection is that it already makes a distinction between premeditated murder and this act of passion, but still encourages blood feuds. A more progressive book was the Sudebnik of 1497. It was intended to consolidate the centralization of the state, which had overcome feudal fragmentation. Basically, this set of laws protected the interests of the upper ruling stratum.

This report on the topic of handwritten books of Ancient Russia makes it possible to understand that ancient manuscripts both reflected the process of development of ancient Russian society and contributed to its development. The interaction was two-way. Also, from a brief analysis of Old Russian literature, it is clearly seen that there is no clear division into genres in it. Liturgical books also contain general knowledge about the world.

Historical - thoroughly saturated with the Christian worldview. One thing is certain - the ancient Russian manuscripts contain the intuitive wisdom of our ancestors, which enriches all the knowledge of the modern world.

On March 14, the Day of the Orthodox Book is celebrated in our country. This holiday was established by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on the initiative of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and is celebrated this year for the sixth time. Orthodox Book Day is timed to coincide with the release date of Ivan Fedorov's book "The Apostle", which is considered the first printed book in Russia - its publication is dated March 1 (according to the old style) 1564.

Birch bark letters

Today we would like to introduce you to the history of book printing in Russia. The first ancient Russian letters and documents (XI-XV centuries) were scratched on birch bark - birch bark. Hence their name - birch bark letters. In 1951, archaeologists found the first birch bark letters in Novgorod. The technique of writing on birch bark was such that it allowed the texts to be preserved in the ground for centuries, and thanks to these letters we can find out how our ancestors lived.

What did they write about in their scrolls? The content of the found birch bark letters is varied: private letters, household notes, complaints, business assignments. There are also special entries. In 1956, archaeologists found in the same place, in Novgorod, 16 birch-bark documents dating back to the 13th century. These were student notebooks of a Novgorod boy named Onfim. On one birch bark, he began to write the letters of the alphabet, but this occupation, apparently, quickly tired him, and he began to draw. Childishly clumsily, he depicted himself on a horse as a rider, striking the enemy with a spear, and wrote his name next to it.

handwritten books

Handwritten books appeared a little later than birch bark. For many centuries they have been an object of admiration, a luxury item and gathering. These books were very expensive. According to one of the scribes, who worked at the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, three rubles were paid for the skin for the book. At that time, three horses could be bought with this money.

The oldest Russian manuscript book, the Ostromir Gospel, appeared in the middle of the 11th century. This book belongs to the pen of Deacon Gregory, who rewrote the Gospel for the Novgorod posadnik Ostromir. "Ostromir Gospel" is a true masterpiece of book art! The book is written on excellent parchment and contains 294 sheets! The text is preceded by an elegant headpiece in the form of an ornamental frame - fantastic flowers on a golden background. Inscribed in the frame in Cyrillic: “The Gospel of John. Chapter A. It also contains three large illustrations depicting the apostles Mark, John and Luke. Deacon Gregory wrote the Ostromir Gospel for six months and twenty days - one and a half sheets a day.

The creation of the manuscript was hard and exhausting work. The working day lasted in summer from sunrise to sunset, in winter they also captured the dark half of the day, when they wrote by candlelight or torch, and monasteries served as the main centers of book writing in the Middle Ages.

The production of ancient handwritten books was also an expensive and time-consuming affair. The material for them was parchment (or parchment) - the skin of a special dressing. Books were usually written with quill pen and ink. Only the king had the privilege of writing with a swan and even a peacock feather.

Since the book was expensive, it was kept. To protect against mechanical damage, a binding was made of two boards covered with leather and having a fastener on the side cut. Sometimes the binding was bound with gold and silver, decorated with precious stones. Medieval handwritten books were elegantly decorated. Before the text, they always made a headband - a small ornamental composition, often in the form of a frame around the title of a chapter or section.

The first, capital letter in the text - "initial" - was written larger and more beautiful than the rest, decorated with an ornament, sometimes in the form of a man, animal, bird, fantastic creature.

Annals

There were many chronicles among the handwritten books. The text of the chronicle consists of weather records (compiled by years). Each of them begins with the words: "in the summer of such and such" and reports of the events that took place that year.

The most famous of the chronicles (XII century), describing mainly the history of the Eastern Slavs (the narrative begins from the Flood), historical and semi-legendary events that took place in Ancient Russia, can be called "The Tale of Bygone Years" - the work of several monks of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra and , first of all, Nestor the chronicler.

Typography

Books in Russia were valued, collected in families for several generations, mentioned in almost every spiritual letter (testament) among the values ​​and family icons. But the ever-increasing need for books marked the beginning of a new stage of education in Russia - book printing.

The first printed books in the Russian state appeared only in the middle of the 16th century, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who in 1553 set up a printing press in Moscow. To house the printing house, the tsar ordered the construction of special mansions not far from the Kremlin on Nikolskaya Street in the vicinity of the Nikolsky Monastery. This printing house was built at the expense of Tsar Ivan the Terrible himself. In 1563, it was headed by the deacon of the church of Nikolai Gostunsky in the Moscow Kremlin - Ivan Fedorov.

Ivan Fedorov was an educated man, well versed in books, knew the foundry business, was a carpenter, a painter, a carver, and a bookbinder. He graduated from the University of Krakow, knew the ancient Greek language in which he wrote and printed, knew Latin. The people said about him: such a craftsman that you can’t find it in foreign lands.

Ivan Fedorov and his student Pyotr Mstislavets worked for 10 years on the establishment of a printing house, and only on April 19, 1563, they began to produce the first book. Ivan Fedorov himself built printing presses, he himself cast forms for letters, he typed, he corrected. A lot of work went into the production of various headpieces, drawings of large and small sizes. The drawings depicted cedar cones and outlandish fruits: pineapples, grape leaves.

Ivan Fedorov and his student printed the first book for a whole year. It was called "Apostol" ("Acts and Epistles of the Apostles") and looked impressive and beautiful, resembling a handwritten book: by letters, by drawings and by screensavers. It consisted of 267 sheets. This first printed book appeared on March 1, 1564. This year is considered the beginning of Russian book printing.

Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets went down in history as the first Russian printers, and their first dated creation became a model for subsequent editions. Only 61 copies of this book have survived to this day.

After the release of The Apostle, Ivan Fedorov and his assistants began to prepare a new book for publication - The Clockworker. If the "Apostle" was produced for a year, then it took only 2 months for the "Hourmaker".

Simultaneously with the publication of the Apostle, work was underway on the compilation and publication of the ABC, the first Slavic textbook. The ABC was published in 1574. She introduced me to the Russian alphabet, taught me how to compose syllables and words.

And so the first Orthodox books and the alphabet appeared in Russia.

At the end of the 18th century, the collector of antiquities, Count A.I. Musin-Pushkin, got a handwritten collection with "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". The count published The Lay in Moscow in 1800. In 1812, together with the library in the mansion on Razgulyai, the original was lost. According to the publisher, it was known that he purchased the book from the former Archimandrite of the Spas-Yaroslavl Monastery Joel Bykovsky. Two hundred years later, it turned out that the count had lied.

Everything turned out to be not as it had been thought for two hundred years. Archival documents discovered by Alexander Bobrov, an employee of the Pushkin House, indicate that the count is wrong. He did not buy the Chronograph from a private individual in Yaroslavl. Being the chief procurator of the Synod, he withdrew the handwritten book from the collection of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery.

After the resignation of the count, the commission of inquiry asked him about the fate of the Kirillo-Belozero Chronograph and ten more manuscripts. Two of them were soon found, but nine were not.

But Alexei Ivanovich answered that the books were "in the palace." And that this is known to "the whole Synod." It was under Paul I. But the scandal was hushed up. And the count later seems to pay off his conscience - in 1805 he will give Alexander I the Laurentian Chronicle. And he will also refer to private acquisition. Only recently it was revealed that he took her from Novgorod Sofia.

The count knew how to dissemble. He really gave Catherine II "The Lay of the Regiment". Just not the original Chronograph ( historical essay, followed by "fabulous tales"), but a specially made copy. Later it will be found in the papers of the Empress.

And the Spaso-Yaroslavl Chronograph, according to one inventory “given away”, and according to another “destroyed due to dilapidation and decay”, is still kept in the collection of the Yaroslavl Museum. It was a shock when, in the early 1990s, E. V. Sinitsyna discovered this. There are no additions to the book.

So, the name of one of the hidden books was named by the investigators: Chronograph of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. In earlier descriptions it is said that the book was completed by "fabulous" stories.

Why did the Count lie? Yes, because, having moved to Moscow, he prepared the edition of the Lay, and the best specialists of the century studied the manuscript. It took nine years.

However, the detective is just beginning. In the same Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, around 1474, Hieromonk Euphrosyn wrote a list of the "Zadonshchina" imitating the "Word" of the story about the Battle of Kulikovo. Likhachev said that this scribe, discovered in the early 1960s by Yakov Lurie, also from Pushkino, has a recognizable style of editing the text.

Euphrosyn is a historian, chronicler, the first Russian orientalist, a collector of "fabulous stories" and folklore. Six of his handwritten books - with editing, notes, cryptography! have come down to our days.

Efrosinov's short version of "Zadonshchina" is the only one in which not only the name of Boyan is correctly read, but also such information about this retinue singer of the 11th century is reported that is not in the "Lay". It is said that Boyan, "the notorious buzzer in Kyiv", sang to his contemporaries Prince Yaroslav and his son Svyatoslav, comparing their deeds with the deeds of the first princes - Rurik and Igor Rurikovich.

In 2005, the same Alexander Bobrov suggested that before being tonsured, Euphrosynus was Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Shemyakin. This is the great-grandson of Dmitry Donskoy and until the early 1460s a real contender for the Moscow throne. His father Dmitry Shemyaka was defeated in a twenty-year feudal war and poisoned in 1453 in Novgorod on the orders of the Moscow prince Vasily the Dark.

Shemyaka's son fled to Lithuania, but did not resume the civil war. Ten years later, shortly after the death of his father's poisoner, he, apparently having concluded an agreement with the new Moscow government, returns to Russia and becomes a monk of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery. This way of life is familiar to him: until the age of seventeen, Ivan was brought up in Novgorod, in the Yuryev Monastery, famous for its book collection.

And here's what else is important: after fleeing to Lithuania, Ivan Dmitrievich reigned in Novgorod-Seversky for several years. Yes, yes, in the former capital city of that same Prince Igor. And Bobrov's assumption looked quite logical, that the "Word" was rewritten by the same Euphrosynus. It’s just some kind of miracle: at the same time, Prince Ivan disappears from the annals (at the same time, it is known that he is alive and the Moscow government is afraid of his alliance with the Novgorodians), and a scribe appears in the monastery on the White Lake, who begins to compose an alternative official history XV century. At the same time, he is only interested in two Russian saints, each of whom turns out to be a voluntarily retired prince. Well, the ancestor of Ivan Shemyakin, who has sunk into the water.

But if the Kirillo-Belozero origin of the manuscript is a proven fact, then the identity of Euphrosynus and Prince Ivan Shemyakin is still only a plausible hypothesis.

Congratulations to Alexander Bobrov. The last student of Academician Likhachev, he managed to unravel the puzzle, over which generations of researchers struggled for two hundred years. Congratulations to us readers. And also - the wonderful Yaroslavl Museum "Words about Igor's Campaign". Yaroslavl residents were not involved in the loss of the Lay and its death in the Moscow fire of 1812. And how great that the good name of Archimandrite Joel Bykovsky has been restored. He did not forge a list of the great old Russian poem and did not trade in state property.

... I will add some of my thoughts.

The collections of Euphrosynus have come down to us far from being perfectly preserved.

They have recently been posted online, and everyone can see for themselves:

Other pages, as if they had put a wet rag on them. Here, for example, is Euphrosyne's essay "From the Book of the Kingdom of George the Sinner". From folio 359 the letters blur, some like smeared ink droplets.

In a commentary on The Lay (2006, Vita Nova publishing house), knowing little about Euphrosyn and not at all thinking about the puddles dried up in the manuscript, I suggested that in one place we are dealing with a half-erased digital a litter, a date taken as floating letters and inserted into the text as a missing syllable.

Euphrosynus has such syllables added above the line.

Omitting textological subtleties, I will tell you what my hypothesis is. I came to the conclusion that in the passage about the evil demon Diva there is an extra word “sta” (“... the whistle of the animal hundred”) both in meaning, and in gesture, and in rhythm. But it may be a misread date, the number 6360.

The date begins with a slash denoting a thousand. And behind it are three numbers, written, as was customary, in letters:

Zelo, Firmly and Xi.

Graphically similar to "hundred". Especially if the first and last letters are damaged. There are such pages in the collections of Euphrosynus. And the fact that this place is spoiled is evidenced by the absence in the Catherine’s copy of the fragment “whistle of animals in STAZBY”. Apparently, the copyist did not make out what was written in the line worn or flooded with water. And missed four words. And the publishers still unraveled them. But with an error, taking the marginal for part of the text.

Word one hundred here is an explicit insertion. Neither in meaning nor in rhythm is it suitable. But let's take it out of the brackets and get another, very rare verb:

vzbiti- hit. Sreznevsky gives an example of the 11th century: “Before, not even whip beat ... "(The second meaning according to Sreznevsky is 'to beat off the attack'.)

And the meaning became clear. The sun blocks Igor's path in the Field, a thunderstorm, birds and animals invite trouble, but the prince does not heed either the heavenly sign or the warnings of nature. He is led not by God, but by the insidious archaic Div, who orders "to search for the city of Darkness".

Marginalia are placed in the margins of the manuscript. This one was either between the lines or in the right margin. In terms of the size of the letters, it apparently did not stand out much from the background of the text. However, in the manuscripts of Euphrosyn Belozersky, the missing letters or syllables inscribed above the line are slightly larger than the main text. So the size of the letters of the First Publishers could not confuse.

The letter Zelo (S) is used not only as the number 6.

The answer to the question why the first digit (Zelo under the title) was given by the publishers with the letter Slovo is helped by extracts from A.F. Malinovsky, who worked with the Musin-Pushkin find. They preserved the only example proving that in this 15th-century text, Zelo was used even more often than was customary. This probably surprised the researcher: he copied the strange spelling through Zelo of the verb load: "immerse". (Igor plunged Russian wealth to the bottom of Kayala.)

The letter Zelo is written at the beginning of words green, star, cereal, evil, potion, serpent, beast. (But Euphrosyn wrote through Zelo and the word "prince").

Because of the four lexemes (s ly, selie, smy, sver) the letter Zelo, the sound of which (dz) was lost long before the Tale of the Regiment, was perceived by ancient Russian scribes as an “evil” letter (see the article “Zelo” in the Sreznevsky Dictionary about this).

But in our case, the word “svѣri” preceded the fragment “n’ vosta, beat (sya) Div.” And therefore, the Original Publishers decided that the scribe by mistake (or with the intent to emphasize the ominous connotations of the image) duplicated the "S" and instead of vsta(‘got up’) wrote insta. Zelo could be in the word zby[sya], however, Malinovsky did not note this.

Summer 6360. The date is not simple. This is the main date for Russia, according to Nestor - the annalistic "beginning of the Russian land." And if we subtract from it the date of Igor's campaign, we get the reserved number 333, which is also found in other chronological calculations of Euphrosynus. As Alexander Bobrov once suggested to me, with the help of the number 333, Euphrosynus calculated from the birth of Christ the year of the beginning of the reign of the greatest of the conquerors, Alexander the Great.

333 is half the biblical number of the beast. And the Divas, tormenting the Russian land, as a half forerunner of the Antichrist (and even the devil himself).

It is known that in one of the Kirillo-Belozersky chronicles of the time of Euphrosynus, the Moscow governor is called the devil in secret writing.

At the end of the XV century in Russia and in Europe, they were waiting for the end of the world in the seven thousandth from the Creation (1492 A.D.) year. So Euphrosynus begins his book ministry in the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery with the rewriting of the Apocalypse.

So the Russian scribe tried to comprehend the rhythm of world history.

And I translated the fragment about Diva like this:

That's when Prince Igor
stepped into the golden stirrup,
he went out into the open field.

The sun blocked his path with darkness,
the night moaned like a thunderstorm,
awakening the animals with a bird's whistle.
But Div shot up,
from the top of the Tree calls,
commands the unknown earth to tremble -
Volga and Pomor'ryu, and Po'sulyu,
Su'rozh and Ko'rsunya,
and you, Tmutorokan idol!

Igor leads his warriors to "drink with the helmet of the Don." It leads to Tmutarakan (Taman) and Korsun (now it is Sevastopol). It leads to a foreign land, where even the rain will fall on his warriors not in jets, but in arrows. God warned him with a solar eclipse, nature, and she is against it. But it is not God who dictates the will of this prince, but his own pride, the evil archaic Div.

With Div as leader, the army is doomed.

And after the death of Igor's army, trouble comes to Russia.
Virgo Resentment splashes with swan wings.
The monsters of Karn and Zhlya gallop through the defenseless land:

Blasphemy has already attacked praise,
violence has already set free,
already pounced Div on the ground.

I don’t know if the pages of the six collections of Euphrosynus that have come down to us will confirm my hypothesis. My learned friends have so far treated her coolly.

The task is simple: to find a similar marginalia among the one and a half thousand pages of Euphrosynus.

Nobody wants to help?

Andrey Chernov

See also:

Bobrov A. G. The early period of the biography of Prince Ivan Dmitrievich, priest Euphrosyn Belozersky (reconstruction experience) // Book centers of Ancient Russia: Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. SPb., 2008, pp. 94–172.

Works by A. G. Bobrov on the website of the Academy:

Here you can listen to my verse reconstruction of the Old Russian text:

On the same page there is an audio recording of the translation. As well as the opportunity to view two other paper editions dedicated to the Lay.

The first library of Kievan Rus

Yaroslav the Wise had a collection of just such unique books, each of which was an expensive masterpiece. He, like no one else, knew the importance of studying and reading for the development of man and the state as a whole. He was the first ruler in Europe who gave importance to this process. It is likely that he himself took part in the translation of texts from foreign languages ​​(which he knew well).
“Yaroslav loved books. In the summer of 6545, this Prince Yaroslav, son of Vladimirov, lit up the hearts of believers with bookish words. It is great because a person is benefited from the teachings of the book.
This is what the Tale of Bygone Years says.

In the same Tale, the only written mention of the existence of the Yaroslavl Library is recorded. The prince began to form it 17 years before his death. Basically, these were sacred, liturgical books and especially valuable for science - historical chronicles. Scientists admit that in general the collection could number up to 1000 unique publications. A kind of publishing house (where they translated and wrote) was located in the capital of Kievan Rus, namely, in St. Sophia Cathedral. Here was written the famous “Word of Hilarion”, “Word of Law and Grace” of the Kyiv Metropolitan Hilarion, here they worked on the “Izbornik of Svyatoslav”.

Kiev Gospel of the Queen of France

Valuable books from the collection of Yaroslav the Wise became a dowry for his daughters. As the father of nine children, the prince was primarily concerned with their education. All three daughters were given for kings. Elizabeth married the Norwegian king, Anastasia married the Magyar, and the youngest Anna became the most famous
.Interestingly, the 18-year-old French Queen Anna Yaroslavna was famous not only for her beauty, but also for her education; apparently, not a single woman in Europe at that time could compare with her. And her husband, King Henryk I, could neither read nor write.
Therefore, a girl or not from the first days of married life took up the leadership of the state. She signed state acts with her name “Anna Regina”, while King Henryk put a cross on his name. That was the Kiev Gospel,
which would later be called Reims.
Surprisingly, from that time on, all the kings of France, up to Louis XIV, took the oath in the Cathedral of Reims with a hand on the Gospel, written in the old Old Russian language.

Each prince (Anni's sisters) who got married was given something from the parent library along with the other. Therefore, part of Yaroslav's books was transported to Europe

. "Whoever finds this move will find the treasure of Yaroslav"
Unfortunately, no one knows whether the books of Yaroslav the Wise still exist. Since then, there have been many wars, fires and other troubles.
The library could have burned down during the capture of Kiev by the Tatar-Mongols in 1240, who set fire to the city. It could have been plundered. Nevertheless, scientists fully admit the version according to which historical books are still stored in the depths of Kyiv lands. The catacombs of ancient temples, deep caves and dungeons, with complete certainty, could serve as a reliable cache of the collection. Built in 1037, a beautiful stone temple with unique mosaics and frescoes - Hagia Sophia - became the best place for the prince's book collection. Probably, the library was not moved from there.

Interestingly, in 1916, a deep abyss formed near the St. Sophia Cathedral, in which an underground passage was visible.
The expedition of researchers was led by Alexander Ertel. Examining the ancient corridors, scientists suddenly came across an amazing find: a piece of birch bark with a message that said: "Whoever finds this passage will find Yaroslav's great treasure."
The author carved the letters on wood and then sketched them in ink. No one doubted that it was a valuable library that was meant. Just as quickly, scientists figured out that the inscription belongs to the late Middle Ages. But the find only proves that in the 17th century the locals knew about the treasure or there were rumors about it.

.Mystery of the Kyiv monks

During the time of Kievan Rus, books were mainly occupied by monks. During hostile raids or other great danger, they carried the most valuable things to the underground passages. “I buried books from hostile invasions by monks in caves,” chroniclers wrote.
In caves where there is no sharp fluctuation in temperature and there is no high humidity.
And the place of the hiding place was kept in the strictest secrecy, which, unfortunately, could die along with the servants of the monasteries. Therefore, the library of Yaroslav the Wise could be kept in the underground labyrinths of one of the Kyiv churches. And it is entirely probable that the parchment editions have retained a fairly good condition to this day. There are many versions regarding the specific location of the collection.
The Mezhigirsky monastery is also a contender for a place of storage for one reason. In Soviet times, during the construction of Postyshev's dacha in Mezhgorye, workers accidentally stumbled upon a basement filled to the brim with ancient books. But whether this was the treasure of Yaroslav the Wise is unknown. Books were then covered with earth, and later researchers could no longer find that cellar. Another place where the library was stored could be a complex of caves near the Vydubitsky Monastery. At different times, many interesting and mysterious things were found here. The Kiev Pechersk Monastery and the Lavra dungeons of the oldest monastery could also become a reliable hiding place for such a valuable treasure.

discussions continue, but most scientists still consider the existence of the library of Yaroslav the Wise a historical fact
Treasure hunters believe that in the future someone will be lucky to find folios from the collection of Yaroslav - one of the greatest treasures of ancient Ukraine - Kievan Rus
translation from Ukrainian -my.

Old Russian book miniature from her early masterpiece - the Ostromir Gospel (XI century)
to another masterpiece - the Khitrovo Gospel (beginning of the 15th century).