Peresopnytsia Gospels
Presidents of five countries invited to attend festivities marking the 450th anniversary of this unique manuscript
August 2011 will mark the 450th anniversary of the handwritten Peresopnytsia Gospels, a symbol of Ukraine and the book upon which every president of Ukraine takes the oath of office. On May 12, 2010, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a resolution instituting official festivities next August in conjunction with the 450th jubilee, and proclaiming 2011 the Year of the First Ukrainian Book. In December 1991, the Peresopnytsia Gospels was first used as a symbol of the Ukrainian state during the inauguration of President Leonid Kravchuk. Since then taking the oath of office on this book has become a tradition.
According to Vasyl Bertash, head of the Rivne Regional State Administration, the presidents of five countries — Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Slovakia, and Bulgaria — have been invited to attend the festivities next year.
He added that sections of the princely palace and monastery where the Peresopnytsia Gospels was written, in Peresopnytsia, currently a village in Rivne oblast, will be restored and a historical town made up of several 16th-century buildings will be erected. These buildings will house a museum, cultural center, and other institutions. (By the way, they promise to build an asphalt road to Peresopnytsia in conjunction with next year’s festivities, and that an archaeological expedition will be working on the site of the princely palace and monastery where the Gospel was once written).
Peresopnytsia stands on the bank of the river Strubla, some one hundred kilometers from Dvirets. Under Kyivan Rus’ the place was a town that played a major role in the political events of the mid-12th century, Dr. Petro Kraliuk, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Ostroh Academy National University, writes in his article “Princess Zheslavska’s Gospels” in the book Ukraina Incognita, part of The Day’s Library Series. He adds that archaeological findings show that Peresopnytsia dates back at least to the 10th century, although it was first mentioned in writing in 1149. At the time Princes Yurii Dolgoruky and Iziaslav Mstyslavovych were fighting over the Kyiv throne and the Pohoryn region (river Horyn basin), particularly Peresopnytsia, found itself in the epicenter of the feud.
The so-called Kyiv Chronicle has a rather detailed account of this struggle, including events that took place in Peresopnytsia. “Reading this, one realizes that this is more than a chronicle, rather a story, and one finds oneself wondering whether this story was written in Peresopnytsia, and whether there was a book-writing community there at that distant period,” muses Dr. Kraliuk.
One of the legends has it that a monastery was founded in Peresopnytsia at that time. According to another le-gend, the monastery was founded under Prince Mstyslav Yaroslavovych the Mute, who ruled in Peresopnytsia in the first quarter of the 13th century.
At present, historians can only partially explain the creation of the Peresopnytsia Gospels. Petro Kraliuk writes that answers to some of these questions are found on the last page of the Gospels. In his article “Princess Zheslavska’s Gospels” he notes that this book contains not only religious texts, but also some notes, forewords, and afterwords: “One finds in them the exact dates on which this book was written. Work on it began on August 15, 1556, and ended on August 29, 1561. The book was ordered by and paid for by Princess Nastasia (Anastasia) Yuriivna Zheslavska-Holshanska (Zaslavska-Holshanska) and her daughter and her son-in-law (Yevdokia and Ivan Fedorovych Czartoryski). We also know the names of those who worked on the Peresopnytsia Gospels. Considering that medieval cultural monuments were mostly collectively and anonymously made, this fact appears to be out of the ordinary. Perhaps, the presence of these names indicates a new Renaissance trend that must have had its influence on the authors of this monument.”
The bulk of the text is done in two hands, in other words written by two persons, which means that another scribe was enlisted at the Monastery [of the Mother of God] in Peresopnytsia. The book contains 482 parchment pages, each in 380x240 mm format. It weighs 9.3 kg. It includes “The Science of Reading” and four Gospels [from the New Testament], each preceded by an index of chapters and a foreword, and followed by an afterword and church calendar. The text is divided into chapters, each beginning with a boxed summary, except for the first chapter of each Gospel.
The text is packed with glosses that contain Ukrainian lexical equivalents of certain words in the original text, continues Kraliuk. These are placed in boxes in the midst of the text and sometimes in the margins. The Peresopnytsia manuscript is a quaternary Gospel in content — in other words, it contains four canonical [Eastern Orthodox] Gospels that resemble the ones meant to be used in the course of divine service, although there are slight distinctions compared to the printed versions that appeared shortly afterward. The text is in old literary Ukrainian and one of the earliest known translations of this kind.
Rivne authorities have started getting prepared for the ceremonious event a year in advance, considering that much has to be done. Vasyl Bertash says that, all things considered, these preparations will cost at least 40 million hryvnias, and that most of the money will have to be scraped up from the oblast’s budget because the government will be able to allocate a mere five to six million. To somehow ease this burden, it has been decided to publish a thousand souvenir copies of the Peresopnytsia Gospels, each in a special case, and then sell them to the rich and famous people, institutions, and guests to the festivities. Each such copy may cost up to 1,000 dollars.
“The Peresopnytsia Gospels is a symbol of Ukraine. The thing is not only that it is one of the first religious text translated into Ukrainian. The lady who commissioned this manuscript came from Polissia, the manuscript was written in Volyn, and the main scribe came from Lemkivshchyna, the westernmost part of Ukraine. This book traveled from east to west and ended in Poltava. It is associated with such important Ukrainian historical figures as Mazepa and Shevchenko. It is therefore only natural that our presidents should take the oath of office on this First Book,” concludes Petro Kraliuk in his article “Princess Zheslavska’s Gospels.”
In view of the symbolic and cultural importance of the Peresopnytsia Gospels for Ukraine, the regional administration will invite the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Slovakia, and Bulgaria to help reprint this famous religious manuscript. Each head of state will receive a blank page from the future edition to fill it with a text of his own.
