The collection of digitized manuscripts is destined to present to our users the rare and valuable samples of Slavonic documents stored at the Russian State Library. It demonstrates the main stages of development of the Slavonic written language and culture. It also gives a bright insight on book–writing schools and workshops, and on the evolution of the Church Slavonic language itself. “The collection of Manuscript Materials” contains over one thousand manuscript books dated by the 10-18^th centuries. In addition, the professionals of the branch would also discover here the digitized inventory lists of the items of the RSL Manuscript Department.

For the present, our e-collection of manuscripts includes:

• Earliest Old Slavonic, Old Russian and Old Bulgarian manuscript books dated by the 10-12^th centuries;
• Pachment and charta bombycina (cotton paper) manuscripts of the 12-14^th centuries;
• Books of Holy Scripture and chronographic writings of the editions of the 14-16^th centuries known as the main source for the historical, theological and philosophic knowledge base for the Ancient Russia period.
• Hagiography artifacts of the 13-17^th centuries among which you’ll discover Vitae of Saints, patericons, prologues and Reading Menaions.
• Liturgical books of the 13-17^th centuries destined for collective or private religious services, the significant part of which is composed of the church Menaions. Lots of them contain pieces scripted in early stolp and other neumatic musical notations.
• Teaching and ascetic literature of the late12 – 17^th centuries belonging to the works by  Early Church Fathers and Teachers (such as Ephrem the Syrian, John of Damascus, John Chrysostom, Saint Basil the Great, John Climacus, Gregory of Nazianzus, etc.)