Facial vault. Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century

"begins the publication of an electronic edition of one of the most famous monuments of ancient Russian art - the Facial Chronicle Code.

The facial chronicle vault of the 16th century is a monumental monument of ancient Russian book art, which in terms of scale and breadth of coverage of historical events, as well as in the form of presentation of the material, has no analogues in the world. This is the largest chronicle-chronographic work of medieval Rus'. The facial chronicle vault was created by order Ivan IV the Terrible in the period 1568-1576. in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, which at that time became the political center of the Russian state, the permanent residence of the Tsar. A whole staff of royal book writers and artists worked on compiling the code.

The facial vault has survived to this day in 10 volumes, located in different ancient repositories: the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg and the State Historical Museum in Moscow.

The ACTEON company, together with its curators, several years ago for the first time carried out a scientific facsimile publication of " Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century».

Today the Russian Faith website begins publishing full version. The proposed edition with translation is presented in three sections: biblical history, world history, Russian chronicle history.

Unlike some edited, unreliable, copied versions from low-quality paper reprints that can be found on the Internet, our publication is the primary source of this most valuable document. It was provided by the publishing house "AKTEON", whose employees carried out direct scanning of the facial vault, stored in Russian ancient repositories.

Today we are talking with the director of the publishing house "ACTEON" Kharis Harrasovich Mustafin.

Haris Harrasovich, several years ago publishing house "ACTEON" began large-scale work on scanning and publishing monuments of ancient Slavic literature. Why, in the presence of numerous ancient chronicles, Chety-Menya and other things, was the Facial Vault chosen as the main, main project?

The facial chronicle of the 16th century stands apart in ancient Russian chronicles. This is the greatest book monument, which is distinguished, first of all, by the scale of its presentation of events - from the creation of the world, biblical events, to world historical events. Finally, it sets out Russian chronicle history from the times of Vladimir Monomakh to the times of Ivan the Terrible.

This monument is interesting both from the point of view of the large amount of information and because it is a single complex, which was created, apparently, as a kind of state order during the formation of the Russian Empire in the 16th century. This is its uniqueness. On the other hand, this monument has a peculiarity: on almost 10 thousand sheets of manuscript there are more than 17.5 thousand book miniatures, never repeated, woven into the outline of the narrative. It turns out that this is not illustrative material for the manuscript, and the manuscripts are not captions for such a huge array of book miniatures.

This is something new, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a unique artistic, literary, historical work, where texts are interspersed with book miniatures, which often depict much more than is stated in the texts. Thus, the reader in these books can look at the events they recount through the eyes of Russian scribes of the 16th century. This is of particular value.

Therefore, to the question of why we took up the Facial Chronicle corpus, I want to answer that it was precisely because of its uniqueness. Many generations of historians and philologists dreamed of the appearance of a facsimile edition of this monument, and only thanks to new technologies of the 21st century and the determination of our team to begin this work and complete it, it became possible to publish this book monument.

One more thing. When we were selecting material for the publication, we sought advice from the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Archaeographic Commission of the Academy of Sciences. When asked what the most outstanding of the Russian book monuments is in the ancient repositories, we were answered unequivocally that this is the Litsevoy Chronicle, which has no analogues either in Russia or abroad. That's why the publishing house was created "ACTEON" specifically for the publication project Facial vault.

From the point of view of what tasks were set, we need to talk about a very important point. Not only the publishing house worked on the project, but also the largest library-custodians of the Personal Chronicle. A large number of different specialists participated in this project - historians, philologists from leading specialized organizations. This is not just a facsimile edition of a book monument, it is a scientific facsimile edition, which presents detailed descriptions original books, history of existence, a huge amount of work has been done to prepare indexes and bibliographic material. It is also very important that work has been done to completely transliterate the text and interlinearly translate it into modern Russian, which has dramatically expanded the ability of even unprepared people to get acquainted with this monument.

Few publishers have done this before. Now this is becoming a kind of standard, because it is very convenient for people. Many publishing houses are now trying to publish the original text and its transliteration, and if they have the strength, then a translation into a modern language. It's a difficult job. Ancient and modern languages are very close, and it is not at all easy to convey certain phrases without greatly distorting their meaning, so that it is understandable to contemporaries. From our point of view, it is very important that the book monuments that we deal with are created both for scientific specialists and for everyone interested in the history and culture of Rus'. We publish the Personal Chronicle in an easy-to-read form.

Can the books of the Facial Vault give to the modern reader new historical information?

The facial vault is interesting for several reasons. Firstly, its pages consistently present the vision of history by Russian scribes of the 16th century, as they understood it. They compiled these books based on their idea of history, and they understood that the history of any state and any society comes from the creation of the world, followed by biblical events, then world history, including the history of Troy, ancient Rome, Byzantium, then there is a transition to Russian history. Described complete picture historical canvas. There are few materials where this concept can be seen in its entirety. As a rule, what is published is fragmentary, but here we see an overall unified picture of the understanding of history by people of the 16th century, which is very important.

Later, of course, historical science developed, and this led to the emergence of many different new concepts about what the history was, in particular, of Rus'. Often science was formed to suit one or another political order. Therefore, having the opportunity to familiarize yourself with and evaluate the Russian scribes’ vision of the history of the 16th century, based on the published document - the Personal Chronicle Code, represents a very interesting opportunity. This vision is not clouded by many layers, on the one hand, artificially contrived, and on the other hand, based on modern historical science. From the Litsevoy Vault, which is, in fact, the primary source, one can examine many historical events of both the 16th century and an earlier era through the eyes of educated Russian scribes.

The point of studying the Code is that in addition to some textual descriptions of events, there is a lot of material related to the display of historical events in miniatures. Often only in them can one see many aspects related to the development of technology, weapons, crafts, and construction. To this day, almost no graphic information has been preserved about events in Rus' and countries adjacent to Rus', which would be reflected graphically. From this point of view, the material in the Code is very interesting and, indeed, can give the modern reader a lot of new historical information. The main thing is that a person has an inquisitive mind and is truly interested in the history and culture of his country.

Today, many publishers publish reprints and facsimile editions. However, their quality in most cases is, to put it mildly, lame. What technologies and software products were used by ACTEON to create, without exaggeration, the highest quality publication of this kind?

It has already been said that when the decision was made to publish a scientific facsimile edition of the Personal Chronicle, the publishing house “ACTEON” was specially created. The main emphasis in the work of this company was placed on the use of ultra-modern technologies that arose in beginning of XXI century. These are the first non-contact book scanners that allow you to illuminate ancient books with gentle light and scan them without contact and carefully with the highest quality.

Digital technologies also appeared, largely developed by specialists from our publishing house, which made it possible to virtually straighten the images of open books, to combine the face and the back of the sheets without the slightest distortion of the colors of book miniatures. And finally, our company purchased the country's first digital printing house, which allows for small-circulation production, in fact, the production of books to order at the highest level.

In order to obtain high-quality book bindings, our company created a division that carries out manual book binding, in which, in particular, the technology of the famous Russian book binding of the 16th century was reproduced.

This made it possible to create books that are not only unique in content, but in a certain sense are a work of modern book art.

Which Russian libraries and collections have received your edition of the Litsevoy Vody? Are there any reviews?

Our publication has arrived in almost all the largest libraries in the country: regional, republican, and central. It ended up in the largest universities in the country, as well as in a number of foreign libraries, primarily university ones, where the study of Slavic studies and the history of Eastern Europe and Russia takes place.

We received a lot of positive feedback. Moreover, on the initiative of the Bavarian National Library and the Institute for the Study of the History of Eastern Europe and Russia, the first International Conference dedicated to the study of the Facial Chronicle was held in Munich in 2011. It was published as a result of the appearance of our publication in the largest libraries of the country and the world.

Abroad, the publication of the Facial Vault, in a certain sense, created a scientific sensation, because for the first time a huge array of unique material, which had previously been inaccessible to study by specialists, became available for study. Moreover, the material is extremely valuable, both from the point of view of texts and from the point of view of a large number of book miniatures.

Nowadays, the monopoly on familiarization with historical sources that specialists and researchers previously had is gradually being lost. An increasing number of digital copies are being published online. What role do you think the publication of primary sources can play in historical science, and in public life?

The question is posed in such a way as if the monopoly was created artificially. Researching historical sources is actually hard work. The people who do this work inspire deep respect and admiration. This work requires the highest qualifications. At the same time, our publications are aimed at facilitating the work of these specialists - on the one hand, and at the same time making unique book monuments more accessible to a wide range of the public who are interested in the book culture and history of their country.

In our opinion, Russian book culture deserves to be proud of it, to be known, so that people interested in the history of the country take these book monuments into service in order to carry them, first of all, to educational system, to their families. I want people, especially young people, to be proud of their country, their history, to know this history.

The fact that more and more materials relating to the history of the country, especially documents, are being published on the Internet is an extremely positive trend, which, we hope, will bear good fruit. More and more young people will be interested in the history and culture of the country, and this, from our point of view, will contribute to the revival and prosperity of Russia.

The year 2010 for specialists studying Ancient Rus' and simply history buffs was marked by a very important event: the Facial Chronicle Code (popularly called the Tsar Book) was posted on the Internet for open access. It was scanned and placed on the World Wide Web by representatives of the Society of Lovers of Ancient Writing.

What is the importance of this event?

Agree that the most important thing in the work of every historian is primary sources: written, works of art, architecture, household items and other artifacts. Unfortunately, in our time, not many researchers of the past turn to them. Often they study and quote the works of other historians, and those of others, and so on. As a result, if you start to understand, most of these scientists have never used primary sources, and created all their works on the basis of other people’s words and opinions. It turns out that these works can be compared to a bad copy of a copy of some “blockbuster”. If you open and read what is written in an ancient document and compare the information with what modern historians write, you can often find not only minor inaccuracies, but sometimes completely opposite facts. That's how it is, and this kind of thing happens all the time.

Ancient artifacts of Rus'

Unfortunately, not as many authentic primary sources have survived to this day as we would like. If we consider architectural monuments, then there are very few of them left, and besides, most of them date back to the 18th-19th centuries, because in Rus' the main building material- this is a forest, and regular wars and fires do not spare such structures. If we take household items and jewelry, everything is not so simple here: what we managed to preserve are all artifacts from the 15th to 19th centuries. And this is also quite understandable, because precious metals and stones have always been the goal of various kinds of profit lovers and black archaeologists. Almost all ancient burial places (mounds, etc.) on the territory of our country were plundered back in the time of Catherine the Second.

Oral traditions

The most complete historical information about the history of our land has been preserved in the memory of the people - these are legends, traditions, fairy tales, epics, etc. However, scientists categorically deny the possibility of considering oral creativity as a source of information, at least in relation to what is connected with the past of Rus', although they are ready to fully accept the legends of, say, the Scandinavian or British peoples. But in our fairy tales and legends a lot has been preserved interesting facts, a certain interpretation of which confirms one of the popular modern theories(A. Sklyarov “Inhabited Island Earth”). For example, we all know about such a fabulous wonder as a magic saucer with a poured apple in which the whole world is visible - why is this not an “iPhone” with its logo - a bitten fruit? What about flying carpets and walking boots? You never know what else...

However, we got very distracted, it's time to get back to main topic our article, and this, let us remind you, is the Facial Vault of Tsar Ivan (iv) the Terrible.

Written sources

Main written sources Ancient Rus'- these are chronicles. Since the 19th century, the Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles began to be published. Anyone could familiarize themselves with this printed publication by contacting the library. However, work is now underway within the framework of the project “Manuscript Monuments of Ancient Rus'” to transfer it into digital format, and in the near future it, like the Facial Vault of Ivan the Terrible, will be posted on the Internet for public use. Beginning researchers should know that ancient manuscripts contain not only text, but also drawings. We are talking about illustrated documents. The main one is the Facial Vault. It consists of ten thousand sheets and seventeen thousand illustrations.

Facial chronicle vault

This document is the largest chronicle-chronographic collection of Ancient Rus'. It was created by order of the king in the period from 1568 to 1576. The front vault contains a statement of world history from the creation of the world to the 15th century and Russian history until the year 67 of the 16th century. Amosov A.A. calculated that this ancient artifact consists of ten volumes with a total of 9,745 sheets, which are decorated with 17,744 color miniatures. Historians have good reason to believe that the Tsar-Book also contained an eleventh volume. Now it has been lost, and this is understandable, because it dealt with the most controversial period of Russian history - before 1114.

Facial vault: content

The first three volumes contain the texts of biblical books such as the Pentateuch, the books of Judges, Joshua, Kings, as well as the books of Ruth, Esther, and the prophet Daniel. In addition, they present full texts Alexandria, two narratives about the Trojan War ("The Tale of the Creation and Captivity of Troy", extracted from the "Russian Chronograph", and "The History of the Destruction of Troy" - a translation of the novel by Guido de Columna) and the work of Josephus Flavius "History of the Jewish War". For subsequent world events, the sources of information were the work “Illinsky and Roman Chronicler” and “Russian Chronograph”.

The Litsevoy vault describes the history of Rus' in 4-10 volumes, the source was mainly As researchers (for example, B. M. Kloss) claim, starting from the events of 1152, the document also contains additional sources, such as the Novgorod vault (1539), Resurrection Chronicle, “Chronicle of the Beginning of the Kingdom” and others.

Ancient editing

The Tsar-Book has a number of edits; it is believed (though there is no evidence for this) that they were made around 1575 on the orders of Tsar Ivan the Terrible himself. The revision of the finished text affected mainly the period from 1533 to 1568. An unknown editor made notes in the margins of the document, some of which contain accusations against people who were repressed and executed during the oprichnina.

Unfortunately, the work on the Facial Vault was not completed: some of the miniatures were made only in ink sketches; they did not have time to paint them.

Conclusions

The facial vault of Ivan the Terrible is not only a monument of Russian book art, but also a very important source of historical events: miniatures, despite all their conventionality and rather symbolic nature, provide rich material for research into the realities of that time. In addition, studying the editorial changes that were made to the last volume (“The Book of the Kings”) provides an opportunity to obtain more in-depth information about political struggle post-oprichnichny period. They also make it possible to judge the tsar’s changed assessments of the activities of one or another of his associates. And also about new views on the events themselves during his reign.

In conclusion

Thanks to the activities of the Society of Amateurs ancient history, now everyone can get acquainted with this priceless artifact. After all, previously, in order to gain access to this document, it was necessary to make a lot of effort, and only historians could obtain it. But today it is available to everyone. All that is needed is access to worldwide network, and you can immerse yourself in the fascinating world of studying our past. See everything with your own eyes, form your own opinion about certain events, and not read the ready-made cliches of historians who, perhaps, have never even opened the original source.

Tom

Volumes are grouped into relatively chronological order:

Bible story
History of Rome
History of Byzantium
Russian history

Face Chronograph

Royal book

Museum collection (GIM). 1031 sheets, 1677 miniatures. An account of sacred, Hebrew and Greek history from the creation of the world to the destruction of Troy in the 13th century. BC e.
Chronographic collection (BAN). 1469 sheets, 2549 miniatures. An account of the history of the ancient East, the Hellenistic world and ancient Rome from the 11th century. BC e. until the 70s I century n. e.
Face Chronograph (RNB). 1217 sheets, 2191 miniatures. Outline of the history of the ancient Roman Empire from the 70s. I century until 337 and Byzantine history until the 10th century.
Golitsyn volume (RNB). 1035 sheets, 1964 miniatures. Outline of Russian history for 1114-1247 and 1425-1472.
Laptev volume (RNB). 1005 sheets, 1951 miniature. Outline of Russian history for 1116-1252.
Osterman's first volume (BAN). 802 sheets, 1552 miniatures. Outline of Russian history for 1254-1378.
Osterman's second volume (BAN). 887 sheets, 1581 miniatures. Outline of Russian history for 1378-1424.
Shumilovsky volume (RNL). 986 sheets, 1893 miniatures. Outline of Russian history for 1425, 1478-1533.
Synodal volume (GIM). 626 l, 1125 miniatures. Outline of Russian history for 1533-1542, 1553-1567.
Royal Book (GIM). 687 sheets, 1291 miniatures. Outline of Russian history for 1533-1553.

History of the creation of the vault

The miniatures from the Code are widely known and used both in the form of illustrations and in art.

Facsimile edition (2008)

A copy of the complete facsimile edition of the Litsevoy Chronicle can be found in the library of the Manuscripts Department State Historical Museum in Moscow and in Pushkin House in St. Petersburg.

Currently, the Facial Chronicle is published for charitable and educational purposes by the Society of Lovers of Ancient Writing. Distributed free of charge.

Literature

Artsikhovsky A.V. Old Russian miniatures as a historical source. - M., 1944.

Podobedova O. I. Miniatures of Russian historical manuscripts: On the history of Russian facial chronicles / USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of Art History of the USSR Ministry of Culture. - M.: Nauka, 1965. - 336 p. - 1,400 copies.

Pokrovskaya V.F. From the history of the creation of the Facial Chronicle of the second half of the 16th century. // Materials and reports on the collections of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library of the USSR Academy of Sciences. - M.; L., 1966.

Amosov A. A. Facial chronicle of Ivan the Terrible: A comprehensive codicological study. - M.: Editorial URSS, 1998. - 392 p. - 1,000 copies. - ISBN 5-901006-49-6 (in translation)

Facial chronicle code of the 16th century: Methodology for describing and studying a disparate chronicle complex / Comp. E. A. Belokon, V. V. Morozov, S. A. Morozov; Rep. ed. S. O. Schmidt. - M.: Publishing house of the Russian State University for the Humanities, 2003. - 224, p. - 1,500 copies. - ISBN 5-7281-0564-5 (in translation)

Presnyakov A. E. Moscow Historical Encyclopedia of the 16th century // IORYAS. - 1900. - T. 5, book. 3. - pp. 824-876.

Morozov V.V. Front chronicle about the campaign of Igor Svyatoslavich // TODRL. - 1984. - T. 38. - P. 520-536.

Kloss B. M. Chronicle collection obverse // Dictionary of scribes and bookishness of Ancient Rus'. Vol. 2, part 2 (L - Z). - L., 1989. - P. 30-32.

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what the “Facebook Chronicle” is in other dictionaries:

Russian, decorated with 16 thousand miniatures, 10 volumes, approx. 9 thousand sheets. Compiled in the 60s. 16th century Covered the period from the creation of the world to 1567... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

FACIAL CHRONICLE, a chronicle decorated with miniatures in 10 volumes. (about 9 thousand sheets). Compiled in the 60s. 16th century Covers the period from the creation of the world to 1567. Includes 16 thousand miniatures. Source: Encyclopedia Fatherland ... Russian history

Russian, decorated with 16 thousand miniatures, 10 volumes, about 9 thousand sheets. Compiled in the 60s. XVI century Covered the period “from the creation of the world” to 1567. * * * LITSEVOY CHRNICAL CODE FACIAL CHronicle CODE, Russian chronicle code of 1540-1560s,... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

Chronicle collection 40-60s. 16th century Consists of 10 volumes containing about 9 thousand sheets, decorated with 16 thousand miniatures. Covers the period “from the creation of the world” to 1567. Creation of L. l. With. lasted intermittently for more than 30 years. The text was being prepared... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Chronicle collection 2nd half. 16th century Consists of 10 volumes containing approx. 9 thousand sheets, decorated with 16 thousand miniatures. Creation of L. l. With. lasted intermittently for more than three decades. L.l. With. can be divided into three parts: three chronograph volumes containing... ... Soviet historical encyclopedia

Chronicle collection Litsevoy- – vault of the 16th century, the largest chronicle-chronographic work of medieval Rus'. L.S. L. has come down to us in 10 volumes, where almost every page is decorated with miniatures (there are more than 16,000 miniatures in total). The first three volumes of L. p. L. are dedicated to the world... ... Dictionary of scribes and bookishness of Ancient Rus'

facial- a/ya, o/e 1) Related to the face, located on the face. Facial nerve. Facial muscles. 2) Front part, front side of something. Front side of the fence. Behind the village there was a bridge over the Demena River, after which the village of Pavlinovo stretched to the right,... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language

Adj., used. compare often 1. Facial is anything associated with the face as the front part of a person’s head. Facial nerve. | Facial muscles. 2. The front side is the front, outward-facing part of something, as opposed to... ... Dictionary Dmitrieva

The facial chronicle code of the second half of the 16th century is the pinnacle achievement of ancient Russian book art. It has no analogues in the world culture of this century. The facial vault is also the largest chronicle work in terms of volume in Ancient Rus'.

In the Middle Ages, illuminated (illustrated) manuscripts with images of people - “in faces” - were called obverse. The Facial Vault contains about 10 thousand handwritten sheets and more than 17 thousand miniatures. The facial vault has long attracted the attention of art critics, bibliologists, and historians - especially those who study the problems of the development of public consciousness, the history of spiritual and material culture, and the state and political history of the time of Ivan the Terrible. This precious cultural monument is unusually rich in information for those who specifically study the features of historical sources different types- verbal, written (and where there are postscripts, oral, directly capturing spoken language), figurative, material, behavioral.

The work on compiling the Facial Code was not completely completed. Bales of sheets remained in the 17th century. unintertwined. No later than the first half of the 18th century. arrays of leaves of the colossal chronicle were already dispersed. They intertwined them independently of each other; and some of these resulting volumes were named after their owner (or one of the owners during the 17th-19th centuries). Gradually, the Facial Vault began to be perceived as a monumental body of ten huge volumes. At the same time, it turned out that individual sheets and even arrays of sheets were lost, and when bound into books, the order of the sheets was sometimes disrupted.

Conventionally, this ten-volume manuscript corpus can be divided into three parts: three volumes of world history, seven volumes of national history; of which five volumes are a chronicle of the “old years” (for the years 1114-1533), two volumes are a chronicle of the “new years”, i.e. during the reign of Ivan IV. It is believed that sheets about the initial history of the Fatherland (before 1114), possibly about the world history of the X-XV centuries, until the time after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, as well as sheets outlining the events of the national history of the last decade and a half of Ivan’s reign have not reached us IV (or preparations for them), since in the middle of the 18th century. The sheets about the crowning of Fyodor Ivanovich were still preserved.

The company "AKTEON" together with the curators for the first time produced a scientific facsimile edition of the "Facebook Chronicle of the 16th Century".

The so-called “people's edition” is a complement to the scientific apparatus of the above-mentioned facsimile. It fully reproduces the miniatures and Old Russian text of each sheet of the manuscript. At the same time, transliteration and translation into modern Russian are shown on the external field. The sheets are arranged in chronological order of the story.

First section:

Biblical history in 5 books. This history books Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Book of Joshua, Book of Judges of Israel, Ruth, Four Books of Kings, Book of Tobit, Book of Esther, and Visions of Daniel, including history ancient Persia and Babylon, the history of ancient Rome.

Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century. Biblical history - Imprint by volume

Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century. Biblical history. Book 1. - M.: LLC "Firm "AKTEON", 2014. - 598 p.
Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century. Biblical history. Book 2. - M.: LLC "Firm "AKTEON", 2014. - 640 p.
Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century. Biblical history. Book 3. - M.: LLC "Firm "AKTEON", 2014. - 670 p.
Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century. Biblical history. Book 4. - M.: LLC "Firm "AKTEON", 2014. - 504 p.
Facial chronicle vault of the 16th century. Biblical history. Companion volume. - M.: LLC "Firm "AKTEON", 2014. - 212 p.

Front chronicle of the 16th century - Biblical history - Contents by volume

Biblical history. Book 1 contains a summary of the Bible Books: Genesis; Book 2 - Exodus; Book 3 - Leviticus.
Biblical history. Book 2 contains a summary of the Bible Books: Numbers; Deuteronomy; Book of Joshua; Book of Judges of Israel; Book of Ruth.
Biblical history. Book 3 contains a summary of the Bible Books called the Four Books of Kings.
Biblical history. Book 4 contains a summary of the Bible Books: The Book of Tobit; Book of Esther; Book of the Prophet Daniel; History of ancient Persia and Babylon; The beginning of the kingdom of Rome.

Facial chronicle of the 16th century - Biblical history - From the publisher

The front (that is, illustrated “in faces”, with images of people) chronicle collection, created in a single copy for Tsar Ivan the Terrible, his legendary book collection is a book monument that occupies a special place in world culture. On 10 thousand sheets with more than 17 thousand colorful miniatures - “windows on history” - the earliest historical and literary encyclopedia is presented. It brings together the first illustrated Bible in the Slavic language, such artistic historical works as the Trojan War, Alexandria, the Jewish War of Josephus, etc., as well as weather (by year) chronicles, stories, legends, lives of Russian chronicle history.

The facial vault is the largest chronographic work of medieval Rus'. It has survived to this day in 10 volumes.

Currently, the volumes of the Litsevoy vault are in different book depositories in Russia: three volumes (Museum collection, Synodal volume and the Royal Book) - in the manuscript department of the State Historical Museum (Moscow), four volumes (Litsevoy Chronograph, Golitsynsky volume, Laptevsky volume, Shumilovsky volume) in the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg) and three volumes (Chronographic collection, Osterman's first volume, Osterman's second volume) in the manuscript department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg).

The first three volumes of the Facial Code tell about the events of biblical and world history, following in chronological order, and include outstanding works of world literature that form the basis of book culture. They were recommended reading for medieval Russian people.

Volume 1 - Museum collection (1031 sheets) contains a presentation of sacred and world history, starting from the creation of the world: the Slavic text of the first seven books of the Old Testament, the history of the legendary Troy in two versions. The first part of the Museum Collection is a unique Russian obverse Bible, characterized by the utmost completeness of the content reflected in the illustrations, and corresponds to the canonical text of the Gennady Bible of 1499.

After the biblical books comes the Trojan History, presented in two versions: the first is one of the earliest copies of the medieval Latin novel “The History of the Destruction of Great Troy,” created at the end of the 13th century by Guido de Columna. The second version of the Trojan story is “The Tale of the Creation and Captivity of Troy,” compiled by Russian scribes based on earlier South Slavic works on the topic of the Trojan War, giving a different version of the events and destinies of the main characters.

Volume 2 - Chronographic collection (1469 sheets) contains an account of the history of the ancient East, the Hellenistic world and ancient Rome. The text of the Chronographic Collection consists of three large sections:

I. Biblical books (Ruth - the last part of the Octateuch, the Four Books of Kings, the Book of Tobit, the Book of Esther).
II. A story about the events of world history: the book of the biblical prophet Daniel with additions from the chronicles of George Amartol and John Malala, the history of ancient Persia and Babylon, the history of ancient Rome, the Biography of Alexander the Great, the history of the Roman Empire, which is woven into: the history of the events of the New Testament, the Word of Epiphanius the monk about the life of the Mother of God.
III. The History of the Jewish War by Josephus (an outstanding work of world literature telling about the tragic events of the siege, assault and capture of Jerusalem by the Romans). The Author of the History was not only a witness, but also an active participant in the events described.

Volume 3 - Face Chronograph (1216 sheets) continues the story of the history of Rome and Byzantium, bringing the story to the 10th century. The text of the manuscript covers the history of Rome and Byzantium from the reign of the Roman Emperor Titus to the era of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus.