Codex Zographensis

The Codex Zographensis (or Tetraevangelium Zographense; scholarly abbreviation Zo) is an illuminated Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript. It is composed of 304 parchment folios; the first 288 are written in Glagolitic containing Gospels and organised as Tetraevangelium (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), and the rest written in Cyrillic containing a 13th-century synaxarium. It is dated back to the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. The manuscript originally belonged to the Bulgarian Zograf Monastery on Mount Athos. It is said that it was kept at a conventual church near Ierisso and later transferred to the monastery's library. In 1843, the Croatian writer and Habsburgian diplomat Antun Mihanović discovered the manuscript during his stay at the monastery. The codex's importance was announced by the Russian historian and folklorist Victor Grigorovich who visited the monastery one year later and who is regarded as the founder of Slavonic studies in Russia. Izmail Sreznevsky published a first transcription of some parts of the manuscript in 1856. In 1860 monks from the Zograf monastery donated the Codex to the Russian emperor Alexander II. The donation was transferred to Russia during an archaeological expedition of Pyotr Sevastyanov (1811-1867).