Libraries of Russia: Tsar-Book to be granted to the Pskov Regional Library

July 10, the Pskov Regional Universal Scientific Library will be given the facsimile edition of the Illuminated Chronicles of the 16th century as a gift. The monument of the world significance – the Illuminated Chronicles - is a masterpiece of the Old-Russian literature, the Tsar-Book, as it was called similar to the Tsar Bell and Tsar Cannon.

The Illuminated Chronicles was founded in the second half of the XVI century by order of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in a single copy for teaching his children. Metropolitans and "sovereign" workmen worked on it as well as about 15 clerks and 10 artists. The Code consists of more than 10,000 pages and over 17,000 illustrations. About two thirds of the monument feature pictures of the monument, miniatures of church, historic, and the battle-genre which not only illustrate the text, but also supplement it. Some events are not written, but are drawn. Miniatures tell readers how looked ancient clothes, military armor, vestments, weapons, tools, household items and other.

There is no monument in the history of the world written language, like the Illuminated Chronicles, neither in scale and nor scope. It consists of a sacred, ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek histories, the story of the Trojan War and Alexander the Great, the history of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, as well as the chronicle, which covers the four most important events in Russia and a half centuries from the XII to the XVI centuries. In the Face Chronicle the history of Russian state is considered closely with world history.

In the time of tsar Ivan the Terrible the book kept in the Kremlin, and then got to different owners. Due to various historical circumstances the Face Chronicle was fragmented in 10 volumes. In the XVII-XIX centuries, these volumes were in private collections, going from one owner to another. Today, the King-book partly stores in Moscow (at the State Historical Museum) and Saint-Petersburg (National Library of Russia and the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences).