On 4 December at 2 p.m. there takes place a solemn ceremony of launching of the Polotsk Gospel facsimile edition – one of the oldest Belarusian books of the late 12th – early 13th centuries.
This event is part of the Year of Book and is timed to the 1150th anniversary of the foundation of Polotsk. This project is a result of a joint five-year activity of the National Library of Belarus, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the publishing house of the Belarusian Exarchate and the International Fund “Family – Unity – Fatherland”.
The Polotsk Gospel is the unique monument of Slavic writing; the very fact of its existence testifies the antiquity of Orthodox traditions in the Belarusian land. In Ancient Russia the main book in each temple was the Gospel. The Polotsk Gospel played such a high role of the main temple book in the most ancient town of Belarus.
The Polotsk Gospel represents a hand-written book in the form of the code consisting of 172 sheets of parchment. The text of the manuscript is written by the beautiful charter – the ancient form of Cyrillic alphabet which was used in early manuscripts as a kind of the most solemn letter. The language of the Gospel is Church Slavonic; however some local features of the Belarusian lexical color are obvious. The text is decorated with headpieces, ornamented initials and artistic headings. Interesting are notes and supplementary records of Polotsk residents of the 13th – 14th centuries which kept features of the living language of our ancestors.
Today this very first book of Belarusian people is outside of Belarus and is poorly accessible even to researchers. The main part of this unique monument of Belarusian book tradition is kept in collections of the Russian National Library in St.-Petersburg, and two more sheets – in stocks of the Russian State Library in Moscow.
Facsimile reproduction will allow to restore, as much as possible authentically, the appearance and the original structure of a book monument, and also to return it to cultural space of our Fatherland making it a true national property. The facsimile edition shows the riches and antiquity of spiritual culture of Belarus and allows the broad audience to get acquainted with the ancient masterpiece.
The solemn printing of the first sheet takes place with the participation of the main organizers of this project at the Technical center “SNAMI” (Minsk, Fabrichnaja street, 22 – 333).
Contact phone number: (8 017) 293 27 56.
