This section includes short articles about the Ostromir Gospels: the significance of the manuscript, the details of its contents and decoration, the historical circumstances of the creation and history of the manuscript.
This section contains archaeographic and codological description of the Ostromir Gospels. The information can be quickly illustrated by the related digitized pages of the manuscript.
The section shows the contents of the manuscript in Russian. From this page, you can go to the required part of the manuscript.
Each digital page of the manuscript is accompanied with the text transliteration (in the right window).
Approaches to the transliteration are following.
The transliteration is arranged in two columns to match the manuscript, line by line. This transliteration is done using A. Vostokov's edition (Ostromir Gospels of 1056 - 57 with the Greek text and grammatical explanation, published by A. Vostokov. St.Petersburg, 1843). The text was again compared with the manuscript (a digital copy) and transliterated by the letters of the modern Russian alphabet. To make it easier to understand the text, entire words are typed in place of scribal abbreviation marks; the letters, extended above a line, are added to the line. The Cyrillic numerals are replaced with Arabic numerals. All punctuation symbols (including a space) in the manuscript are changed into dots in transliteration. Capital letters are used in all proper names (persons and places), as well as for nouns describing sacral persons (God, Spirit, Father) with the pronouns (He, Him) referring to them, as it is done in the synodal text of the Bible. The headings of the manuscript are set off in bold in the transliteration.
The headings contain numbers of chapters according to the system of dividing the four Gospels, known as Ammonian Sections. Such division was affixed to the original and was common at that time. The present system of dividing the Gospel text into chapters and verses is given at the beginning of each verse of the Gospel text: the Gospel (Matt., Lk., Mk., Jn.), the number of the chapter, followed by colon and the number of the verse.
When using the resource for research and educational purposes, please note that the presented printed text is not a scientific transliteration of the literary landmark. It is an adapted version, mainly applyed to search for the desired folio of the manuscript by text. Learn more about the scientific transliteration in A. Vostokov's edition.
Digital copies of each folio of the manuscript are linked with an analytical description in the Depositary Information Retrieval System.
In the right lower corner of the screen, there is shown folio numbers and the title of the viewing part of the manuscript.
Search for entries from the text of the manuscript is carried out by the following parameters:
It is also possible to do a full-text search by keywords. This search compares every word of the search request against every word within the transliterated text. This field can also be used to search for the necessary chapter and verse of the Gospel text. To do this, create a search query in this way: a common abbreviation for the Gospel book (Мф., Лк., Мк., Ин.), a space and then the chapter number in arabic, followed by colon and the verse number without spaces, for example: Мф. 3:11.
Your search results will be displayed as a list of manuscript folios which contain the required term (entry, word). From this list, you can go to the desired part of the manuscript. If you select the "Search by Text" option and enter a search term, the required word will be marked with a colour in the transliteration window.
The section contains a list of publications of the Ostromir Gospel text and the reference literature.