Menaion

The book was created in 1756.

The manuscript is in two colors (black and red), the text in Church Slavonic, set in two columns, with running heads and catchwords. Letter foliation appears in the lower right corner of the page. The book's decoration is complemented by a polychrome page headpiece in the Guslitsy style, initials, and tailpieces.

The book has a hard cover, with boards of stiff cardboard, covered in leather in brown-burgundy tones with a stamped ornamental frame. The decoration of the front board is complemented by garlands of floral motifs surrounding a central composition of an openwork quadrilateral, an oval, and an elongated medallion. On the back board are five small metal feet. On the edges of the boards are elements and remnants of clasps of metal and leather.

The object entered the museum's holdings in 1954.

Note: the "Chetii Minei" or "Menaion" (from the Greek for "monthly" and the Old Rus' word for "reading" — "monthly readings") is a genre of church-religious compilation in which the "Lives of the Saints," narratives, homilies, and similar texts are arranged by day for each month, corresponding to the date on which the Church honors a given saint. The genre originated in Byzantium in the 9th century.