Information technology and church: The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius presented Internet users access to digitized ancient manuscripts and books from its collection

The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius presented Internet users an access to 14.5 thousand of its artifacts. For 15 years, a unique humanitarian project has been implemented, whose significance for those who are interested in the history of Russia and our national culture cannot be overemphasized. With joint efforts of the Russian State Library and Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra are digitizing old manuscripts and manuscripts from the pre-revolutionary meeting of the Lavra and the Moscow Theological Academy. The received electronic copies are placed on the site of the Holy Trinity Monastery and are available to anyone who wants to read them.

90 years ago the richest library, which the Troitsky monks have collected for centuries, was taken from Sergiev Posad to Moscow and entered the "Leninka" funds. At the same time, the most valuable and ancient manuscript copies were practically inaccessible to ordinary visitors of the Lenin Library.

Already in our time this situation has been changed. Since 2002, specialists have started implementing a joint project of the Russian State Library and the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius to create electronic duplicates of these artifacts. In the premises of the Department of Manuscripts of the RSL equipped with the necessary equipment, scanning and digitizing pages of ancient documents is carried out. Digitized handwritten copies of the books are posted on the website of the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius for general use.

Over the past two years about 5,000 "laurel" manuscript documents have been digitized. At the moment, for Internet users on the website are available more than 14.5 thousand such artifacts. The most ancient of them date back to the XI-XIII centuries. This, for example, is the Gospel of the Iosif-Volotsky monastery, which was created by monks-census-takers more than 700 years ago. Of great interest there are also documents from the archives of one of the governors of the Trinity Lavra, the Martyr Kronid (Lyubimov), including the manuscripts of his stories. And looking into the archives of the Metropolitan of Moscow Platon (Levshin), where artifacts of the second half of the XVIII and early XIX centuries are collected, it is interesting to see the "Everyday Records of Activities with the Heir Pavel Pavlovich (future Emperor Paul I)", as well as solemn hymns and odes In honor of this very revered church hierarchy, prepared for his visits to students of seminaries.

The work over the digitization of unique book manuscripts is continued.