#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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XXXth Annual Scientific Conference with International Participation “History. Archeology. Museology” held online

Chișinău, October 29-30, 2020

The annual scientific conference held by the National Museum of History of Moldova over the years has turned into a prestigious forum that brings together famous historians, archaeologists and museographers from the country and abroad. This year's conference communications featured thematic diversity, new methodological approaches, and interdisciplinary research. A significant part of the communications was based on the results of new archaeological investigations, the study of original archival sources, offering new interpretations of known sources.

The conference brought together over 90 participants from 10 countries: Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, Tajikistan, Lithuania, Georgia, and the Russian Federation.

During the two days of the conference, 65 communications of researchers from different institutions were heard: from museums (Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, Russian Federation): the National Museum of History of Moldova, the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, the Odessa Museum of Archeology (Ukraine), the Moldova National Museum Complex Iaşi (Romania), the Arad Museum Complex, the Vasile Goldiş Western University (Arad), the Kuskovo Museum (Moscow), the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences; from universities (Moldova, Germany, Russian Federation, Romania, Poland, France, Georgia): the Moldova State University, the Ion Creangă State University, Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don (Russian Federation), the Wallachia University of Târgovişte (Romania), Université Sorbonne, Paris (France), the University of Bucharest, the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, the Jagiellonian University, Kraków (Poland), the West University of Timişoara, the Tbilisi State University (Georgia), the Don State Technical University, Rostov-on-Don (Russian Federation), the St. Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (Russian Federation), the Saint Petersburg State University (Russian Federation), and other academic institutions (Moldova, Russian Federation, Romania, Lithuania, Tajikistan: the Institute of History of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, the Institute of Archeology of the Romanian Academy Iaşi Branch), the Olga Necrasov Center for Anthropological Research of the Romanian Academy (Iaşi Branch) (Romania), the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian Federation), the N.N. Miklouho-Maclay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), the Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius (Lithuania), the Faculty of Philosophy of the Oryol State University (Russian Federation), the A. Donish Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, the Center for Written Heritage of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia), the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia). The full program of the conference can be found here.

We express our gratitude to all the participants of this conference.