Significance of the Collection

ACI stands out as a research institution and repository of valuable manuscripts and archival documents. The collection of 1509 manuscripts and early printed books has been rated as one of the most significant by Bulgarian and international scholars. Among the early printed books, it holds incunabula, the first edition of the famous 1581 Ostrozhka Bible, the Slepchensko Gospel, Gospels written by Ioan Kratovski, and the Boboshevo Gospel.

Miniatures from the Slepchensko Gospel rank among the most beautiful of Bulgarian manuscript decorations created during the Turkish subjugation, with gold-plated frontispieces of the Evangelists. Manuscripts from all of Bulgaria have found their home at HACI, but much of the collection came from the Bachkovo and Nesebur monasteries, two of the most significant Bulgarian medieval libraries.

The Slavic manuscript collection stands second in size in Bulgaria only to the NLCM. Similarly, the Greek manuscript collection stands second only to the Research Center "Ivan Dujchev" (RCID). The twelve researcher-scholars surveyed for this project (Appendix 1) agree about the significance of the collection: "first-rated collection," "the second in number of manuscripts and early printed books," and "extremely valuable." An analysis of usage over the last ten years (Appendix 2) established that Slavic researcher-scholars from Macedonia, Russia, Greece, Germany, Italy, France, and Belgium, in a variety of fields such as linguistics, paleography and codicology, history, history of art, theology, Medieval Studies and Literature, and Byzantine musicology, have heavily utilized the collection.

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Last Updated: April 29, 2002