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The fund of Romanian manuscripts kept at the Academy Library totals almost 6000 volumes and primarily contains texts of old Romanian literature. From the point of view of antiquity, the manuscripts belong to the period of the 17th-20th centuries, and from the point of view of the content, they represent liturgical, patristic or eschatological books, calendars, letters, star songs or philosophical parables, but also manuscripts of the writers’ works Romanians, classics of our literature, from pre-modern to contemporary. The oldest Romanian manuscript in the collections of the Library of the Romanian Academy is the Scheian Psaltire, from the second half of the 16th century.
Texts of old Romanian literature
Most of the old Romanian manuscripts are those with religious content. The composition of the collection of Romanian manuscripts includes books of the Old and New Testaments (including translations or commentaries on them), liturgical books, books of homiletics, dogmatic literature and religious polemics, books of canon law (including all legal literature broadcast in Romanian space), patristic literature.
The Voronețean Codices, the Scheian Psaltire, the Voronețean Psaltire, translations from Slavonic originals of the New and Old Testament texts, dating from the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, are the oldest texts in the Romanian language. They are present in the Library’s manuscript collection alongside later copies of the text of the Psalter, in very large numbers. Along with these is the manuscript of the Psalter in verse by Metropolitan Dosoftei and the many star songs, extracted from his verses. Only one complete Bible is preserved in the manuscript collection, a manuscript dated approximately 1660-1675, the translation of which is attributed to Milescu.
Liturgical books, such as Liturghier, Molitvenic, Ceaslovul and Octoihul, are found in dozens of copies, complete or fragmented. Also remarkable is the Archpriest of Metropolitan Stephen of Ungrovlahia, with text in Slavonic, Romanian and Greek.
Related to the liturgical books, the Psalters, i.e. church music manuscripts, can be found both as original texts (the first Romanian translation dates from 1713) and in copies based on the Greek Psalters.
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Homiletic literature is brilliantly represented by the Didaches of Antimus the Ivirean.
The writings of the holy fathers are also extremely numerous: from Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, John the Chrysostom or Cyril of Alexandria to Nichifor Theotokis, they are present in the manuscript collection at the Academy Library, either with the entire work , either with fragmentary texts, in miscellanies or in volumes of collections, such as Alăuta dhurianceasca, Alfa vita suflesească.
A special category of manuscripts is represented by popular books whose translation into Romanian began very early. Among them, Florea Darurilor, a work created in the 13th century by the monk Tommaso Gozzadini, one of the oldest popular books that circulated among Romanians and which illustrates the early contacts between Romanian and European culture. Along with it, the popular novels Alexandria and Barlaam and Ioasaf, as well as Archirie and Anadan, Esopia, Halima, Berloldo, Philerot and Antusa, History of Erotocritos, Eliopic History of Iliodorus, History of Tarlo and his friends.
Apocryphal texts, sometimes included among popular books, are also present in the collection. They appear in our ancient literature since the 16th century, especially in Transylvania and are spread throughout the Romanian area, translated from Greek or Slavic literature.
A category of manuscripts richly represented in the collection of Romanian manuscripts is historical literature, including chronicles, rhyming chronicles, chronographs and historical texts, which circulated in manuscript form. Of particular importance are the 25 volumes donated by D. A. Sturdza to the Academy Library, containing copies of chronicles regarding Moldova and Wallachia, of remarkable value, both due to the rarity of the texts and the notoriety of the copyists in Romanian historiography. To these are added the 22 volumes donated by V. A. Urechia in 1882. Together, the two donations bring together the Letopisețeles of Miron and Nicolae Costin, the most complete text versions of Ion Neculce, the works of the mountain chroniclers Radu Popescu and Radu Greceanu.
Worthy of note are the two versions of Neagoe voivode’s Teachings to his son Teodosie, a work rarely found in the Romanian collection of manuscripts and all the more precious.
Important for law and language studies are the texts of rules, of canon law, most often miscellanies of ecclesiastical law and secular Byzantine law, present in many copies and variants.
To them are added the numerous language concerns, embodied in manuscripts of grammars, glossaries, lexicons and vocabularies.