Posts in category: Κτηριακή Συγκρότηση 5 – Ξενοφώντος

Unfortunately, a catastrophic fire which broke out on 24 February 1817 in the (then) newly-built southwest wing destroyed valuable documents in the archives of the Monastery and many artefacts, resulting in a significant gap in our knowledge about the historic past of the Monastery. During the following centuries, the library collection was altered either by the addition of new codices – such as the valuable, decorated Slavic parchment Book of the Four Gospels donated to the Monastery by the Moldavian leader Alexandros Lapusneanu – or the removal of existing ones – as in 1596, when the Monastery was forced, under difficult circumstances, to sell an unknown number of manuscripts to the Xeropotamos Monastery.
Today, many important post-Byzantine manuscripts can be found in the library.

The library of the Monastery is housed in a secure area on the southwest side, and has a collection of manuscripts and printed books. Specifically, it has about 550 manuscripts, of which eight are parchment and three are parchment liturgical scrolls. It is important to note that there are a number of music manuscripts in the collection, while many of the more recent ones, mainly liturgical, are not yet known to the general public, since they are not included in the published catalogues which have been circulated. The library has about 15,000 printed books, including both rare, early editions and contemporary ones. In fact, the Monastery’s collection of early editions is one of the largest on Mt Athos today.