#Exhibit of the Month

The Gospel is a fundamental liturgical book of the Orthodox Church that brings together the four apostolic testimonies about the Son of God - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - "inspired by the same Holy Spirit, the one true and sole author of the Gospel." The Gospel, or the Good News, testifying to the Glory of Christ, refers to the full teaching and deeds of the Savior; the four Gospels are regarded as the four sustaining pillars of the Church.
St. Jerome (c. 340-420), author of the first complete Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures, assigned to the four evangelists the living creatures that appear in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel (1:5). Thus, the Evangelist Matthew, the first to relate the Nativity of the Lord, is accompanied in imagery by the angel who announced the miracle; the Evangelist Mark, likened to St. John the Baptist - "the voice of one crying in the wilderness" - is associated with the lion. The Evangelist Luke, who opens his Gospel with the priest Zechariah, is personified by the winged ox, recalling the ox's sacrificial role; and the Evangelist John, for his elevated theological vision, is associated with the eagle.
This altar Gospel, printed in 1890 at the Lavra Pecerska printing house in Kyiv, contains - in addition to the four canonical Gospels - other liturgical texts: readings for Vespers, the Divine Liturgy, prayers, and services.
It is a large-format Gospel measuring 37 × 48 cm, bound in cardboard and leather. The gilded metal cover is fitted with two metal clasps and gilt edges. Five vertical-oval icon plaques in polychrome enamel are applied to the cover, which is engraved with vegetal and geometric ornamentation. The central plaque depicts the "Resurrection of the Lord"; in the corners of the upper register appear the faces of the Evangelists Matthew and John, and in the lower register those of Luke and Mark. Printed in red and black, the volume comprises 428 leaves; the text is enriched with various typographic ornaments - vignettes, initials, engravings, frontispieces, etc. Pagination is indicated on the leaves, the folio number appearing in the upper right.
The Gospel of Matthew is printed on pages 1-105, the opening page accompanied by the scene of the Nativity of the Lord. The Gospel of Mark continues on pages 104-168, its representative scene being the Baptism of the Lord. The Gospel according to Luke occupies pages 172-273, its opening page bearing the scene of the Annunciation. The Gospel according to John is included between pages 280-358, the evocative scene being the Crucifixion of the Lord.

The Lavra Pecerska printing house, cited in the colophon, has long roots - traditionally founded by Archimandrite Elisei Pletenetsky (1595-1624) in 1615 - although the precise dates of its earliest publications remain a matter of debate. This copy entered the collections of the National Museum of History of Moldova under inventory number FB-23062-35; acquired in 1982, it was transferred to the MNIM collections in 1996 from the holdings of the Museum of the History of Religion.

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Exhibitions

“Requiem for the Romanian Peasant: the Peasants and Communism”

Opening: May 18, 2020

They have always been on the battlefield. They fought with the Tatars, with the Turks and the Russians, with droughts and floods, with village headmen and activists, with tax collectors and quotas. They have always been defeated and victorious, for their sacrifice always nourished the continuity of history. However, in the fight against the Communists, they lost completely, because it destroyed not only their lives, but also their roots. Without land, peasants lost their essence. They went to wander, left for the cities, leaving the land and the household to women and children, and the harvest to students and soldiers. Those left to work in the fields began to "steal" from public property (which was actually their own property). Today the sacrifice of the peasants revolted in 1949-1950 remains a romantic episode. The final uprisings of 1960-1962 resemble medieval sieges. The day of April 1962, when collectivization was decreed, resembles the fall of Constantinople. Just as the paintings of Hagia Sophia illustrate a world foreign to the one to come, the peasants in the reality of our time seem martyrs without halos. Killed by bullets or ideology, they are the most numerous and innocent prey of communism.

The exhibition "Requiem for the Romanian Peasant: the Peasants and Communism" was organized in March 2009 by the International Centre for Studies into Communism, part of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism and to the Resistance - Civic Academy Foundation on the occasion of the of the 60th anniversary of the forced collectivization of agriculture and the beginning of the disaster for the Romanian peasantry (Plenary of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers' Party on 3-5 March 1949). The curator of the exhibition was the late Romulus Rusan, director of the International Centre for Studies into Communism.

By means of archival documents, genuine photographs and evidences of oral history, the exhibition reconstructs the world of a Romanian village, which disappeared as a result of forced collectivization imposed by the communist regime. One of the main elements of the exhibition is a map of the numerous peasant uprisings against collectivization and quotas that took place in 1949-1962.

The Timiş and Arad branches of the Association of Former Political Prisoners in Romania, the County Museum of History in Alexandria and many witnesses of the events, some of which became historians, also collaborated in the creation of the exhibition. The graphic design was made by the architects Octavian Carabela and Marius Marcu-Lapadat.

The exhibition was presented in several cultural institutions in Bucharest, Alba Iulia, Arad, Alexandria, Baia Mare, Brăila, Iaşi, Cluj, Timişoara, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Oradea, Satu Mare and other cities in Romania and at the B.P. Hasdeu State University in Cahul.

The exhibition can be seen in the hall of the second floor of the National Museum of History of Moldova from May 18, 2020.