The re-publishing of one of the oldest eastern-Slavonic liturgical books, which have been preserved, was carried out by the Volyn Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).
On 21 October, in Kyiv, the facsimile edition of the unique manuscript of the 14th c., the Lutsk Gospel was presented, reported Religion in Ukraine.
The re-publishing of one of the oldest eastern-Slavonic liturgical books, which have been preserved, was carried out by the Volyn Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) with the blessing of Metropolitan Volodymyr and Metropolitan Nyfont of Lutsk and Volyn. The project is dedicated to the 925th anniversary of the city of Lutsk.
The presentation at the UNIAN agency was attended by Metropolitan Nyfont of Lutsk and Volyn, Archbishop Oleksandr of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi and Vyshnevsk, the head of the Synodal Department “Church and Culture” of UOC-MP, Hegumeness Serafima (Shevchyk), clergymen of the Volyn Eparchy who participated in the implementation of the project.
The head of the Information-educational Departnment of Volyn Eparchy, Protopriest Vaaalentyn Marchuk noted that the Lutsk Gospel was created two centuries before the Peresopnytsia Gospel. The size of the facsimile edition is reduced only by 5% as compared to the original. The pages are reproduced in their original form and colour, without cleaning.
According to the experts, the manuscript represents the Halych-Volyn school of book writing. It is a vivid example of the graphic, patterns and language specificities of the school. The experts concluded that it was most probably written in the Krasne Selo Monastery of the Saviour which existed near Lutsk in the past.
The Lutsk Gospel holds the 51st place in the list of 128 most valuable manuscripts of the 11-18th cc., included in the study ”Monuments of Book Art” by a Doctor of Art Criticism Sciences, Yakym Zapasko.