The Ostrog Bible of 1581 is up for auction

MOSCOW. On September 25, an auction will be held in the Moscow House of Artists, at which the Ostroh Bible of the first Russian book printer Ivan Fedorov will be sold. The unique and rare church edition is the first complete Bible written in Church Slavonic. According to preliminary estimates, the cost of the Ostrog Bible is from 40 to 90 thousand dollars. The book will be exhibited in the auction house "Kabinet" in the section "Ancient and rare books, prints, photographs."

The Ostrog Bible was printed in 1581 in the amount of 1,500 copies in the printing house of Prince Konstantin of Ostrog. This unique rare book contains not only culture, but also the memory of the Slavic people. “It has museum value and collector value,” says co-owner of the Kabinet auction house, Ksenia Tsann-Kai-Si.

The full volume of the Ostrog Bible contains 76 books of the Old and New Testaments. Many books irretrievably lost a lot of sheets, but despite this publication is still a rarity. It will be possible to get acquainted with the valuable book in the framework of the pre-auction exhibition, which is held from September 17 to 24 at the Central House of Artists in Moscow.

Note that in 1663 the Ostrog Bible was reprinted in the Moscow printing house, after which it was declared the official editor of the Slavic Bible. In 1740, the Ostrog Bible was replaced by the Elizabethan Bible, which the Russian Orthodox Church uses to this day.

Svetlana Korableva © Gallerix.ru