Ask the Scholar

This liturgical text is a rare example of an early Russian manuscript, dating from the fourteenth century. It offers a fascinating case study in the history of manuscript collecting. Because of some eleventh-century dates written in the text, the manuscript was long believed to have been made in that century. Later it was argued that the work was in fact a nineteenth-century forgery by a Russian collector, Alexander Sulakadzev (Demkova 1979). A recent study (Afanas'eva 2009), however, has determined its origin definitively: the pages of this book were cut from a larger manuscript (Saint Petersburg, National Library of Russia, ms. O.П.І.4) and bound together (out of order), probably by Sulakadzev. Sulakadzev is also likely to have added the notes that made the text appear to date to the eleventh century.