The Great Menaion Reader (russian: Великие Четьи-Минеи, Velikiye Chet’yi-Minei) is the official

Russian Orthodox Russian Orthodoxy (russian: Русское православие) is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, whose liturgy is or was traditionally conducted in Church Slavonic language. Most ...

menologium Menologium (), also written menology, and menologe, is a service-book used in the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite. From its derivation from Greek , ''menológion'', from μήν ''m� ...

, i.e., a collection of biblical books with interpretations of exordiums, patericons, translated or original

hagiographies A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

n saints, works of church fathers, and Russian ecclesiastical writers. Each of the twelve volumes corresponds to a certain month (hence, the name ''chet’yi-minei'' or ''monthly readings'', from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

word ''

menaion The Menaion ( el, Μηναῖον; Slavonic: Минїѧ, ''Miniya'', "of the month") is the liturgical book used by the Eastern Orthodox Churchand those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite containing the propers for fixed ...

'') and subdivided into days. Also, the Great Menaion Reader includes the so-called ''kormchiye knigi'' (books of guidelines, a.k.a. books of the helmsman), monastic charters, acts, and missives. All of this material is sorted by months. The Great Menaion Reader was compiled in the 1530s-1540s under the supervision of Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow. The Great Menaion Reader contains over 27,000 large-size pages copied by hand and artistically decorated. Metropolitan Macarius decided to compile the Great Menaion Reader for the purpose of centralizing the cult of the Russian saints and consolidation of ecclesiastic ideology, so no Russian

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

literature was included.

Manuscripts

* The first manuscript, known as the "Sophia" version, was given to the

Saint Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod The Cathedral of Holy Wisdom (the Holy Wisdom of God) in Veliky Novgorod is the cathedral church of the Metropolitan of Novgorod and the mother church of the Novgorodian Eparchy. History The 38-metre-high, five-domed, stone cathedral was built ...

in 1541. * While Metropolitan of Moscow from 1542 - 1563, Macarius commissioned additional lives of saints who had been recognized as national patrons at the Church Councils of 1547 and 1549, for a second expanded manuscript of the anthology, which he gave to the Moscow Kremlin

Cathedral of the Dormition The Cathedral of the Dormition (russian: Успенский собор , translit = Uspensky sobor), also known as the Assumption Cathedral or Cathedral of the Assumption, is a Russian Orthodox church dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotokos. ...

in 1552. * A third manuscript was prepared between 1550 and 1554 for presentation to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The Great Menaion Reader was revised and expanded by

Dimitry of Rostov Demetrius of Rostov (russian: Димитрий Ростовский, translit=Dmitri Rostovsky, ua, Димитрій Ростовський, translit=Dymytrii Rostovskyi, secular name Daniil Savvich Tuptalo, russian: Даниил Саввич Т ...

in the early 18th century. His version is still used by the

Russian Orthodox Church , native_name_lang = ru , image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg , imagewidth = , alt = , caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia , abbreviation = ROC , type ...

References

{{Authority control Russian Orthodox Church Christian illuminated manuscripts 16th-century illuminated manuscripts