The Sinai Monastery: The Treasures of the Oldest Existing Library in the World

The Sinai Monastery: The Treasures 

of the Oldest Existing Library in the World

In the fourth century, Egeria attended services at the summit of Mount Sinai, at the Chapel of the Prophet Elias a short distance from the summit, and at the Chapel of the Burning Bush in the valley below. She commented approvingly on the passages of scripture that were read concerning each of these holy sites. In this, we may assume the existence at Sinai, in the fourth century, of manuscripts of the scriptures, the services, and other spiritual texts.

Saint John Climacus came to Sinai in the sixth century, when he was only sixteen. He lived as a solitary for forty years, before being elected abbot of Sinai in the seventh century. In his life, it is recorded that ‘he prayed much and wrote books’. This is evidence for the production of manuscripts at Sinai in the seventh century.

The earliest Sinai manuscripts were practical texts, for use in the services, or to inspire the monks who lived in the area. Materials that would allow for the production of manuscripts were brought to the area with great difficulty. The deterioration of such texts through use was checked by the dry and stable climate, and the extreme isolation of the monastery protected it from destruction. In this way, the present library of Saint Catherine’s Monastery had its beginnings.

The library today contains some 3300 manuscripts in the Old Collection, not to mention the manuscripts that came to light in 1975, collectively known as the New Finds, and the many documents in the archives. The monastery has been predominantly Greek throughout its history, and this is reflected in the library. But it has also been the destination of monks and pilgrims from many lands, who left behind manuscripts in their languages, both as gifts to the monastery and for use by future pilgrims. This accounts for manuscripts in eleven languages, with important collections in Arabic, Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Georgian, and Slavonic.

The Sinai manuscripts continue to be essential for the study of the scriptures, the writings of the early Fathers of the Church, and the history of the services. They also include manuscripts of classical Greek texts, especially of important medical texts. The bindings of the Sinai manuscripts are only now being studied. They reveal a progression of different techniques over the centuries. Binding tools and colophons often allow us to identify the workshops in which the manuscripts were bound.

A few of the Sinai manuscripts are splendid works of art, with gilded letters and brilliant illuminations, created in Constantinople in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, when the City was at its height as the centre of culture and devotion. But no less significant are the humble manuscripts written at Sinai, often on reused parchment, bound between rough boards, the pages stained from long use, a witness to the deprivations and austerity of Sinai, and to the generations of monks who have maintained the life of devotion and the cycle of daily services at this holy place.

By Father Justin of Sinai, Librarian

From The Sinai Palimpsests Project: http://sinaipalimpsests.org/