Megisti Lavra — Printed Books (Incunabula, Old Prints, Donor Trails)

1. Identification (standalone control page)

The Holy Monastery of the Great Lavra (Ιερά Μονή Μεγίστης Λαύρας), first in the Athonite hierarchy, preserves one of the largest printed-book corpora on Mount Athos. This page is an AthosForum bibliographic index: it itemizes the printed collection by chronological strata, records named early editions and donor trails, and provides a mechanical crosswalk for item-level indexing.

2. Document map

• Megisti Lavra hub
• Manuscripts (codices & scrolls)
• Archive (Actes de l’Athos axis)
• Treasury (icons & relics)
• Dependencies & metochia

3. Quantitative profile (chronological strata)

According to the AboutLibraries dossier for the Great Lavra, the printed-book collection today includes approximately 140,000 volumes. The chronological distribution is given in four control strata:

• 22 editions printed before 1500 (incunabula / very early Greek printing)
• more than 20,000 editions printed before 1800 (old prints / παλαιότυπα)
• 18,000 editions of the 19th century
• more than 100,000 editions of the 20th century

These figures are not decorative. They define the Lavra as one of the principal Athonite repositories of early Greek printing and establish the printed collection as a documentary layer comparable in mass to the manuscript corpus. Source: AboutLibraries: Great Lavra (lib_92).

4. The “incunabula nucleus” and named early Greek editions (1488–1498)

The AboutLibraries dossier singles out three named early Greek editions that function as a minimal “incunabula nucleus” for Lavra. These are to be treated as anchor witnesses for the monastery’s early printed-book profile.

Source for all three entries: AboutLibraries: Great Lavra (lib_92).

5. Old prints (pre-1800): control by function rather than “topic”

For AthosForum indexing, “old prints” must be classified by function, because Athonite libraries acquire and preserve books to operate (liturgy, administration, education, controversy), not to mirror a modern academic library. The Lavra’s scale implies the coexistence of multiple functional sub-libraries.

• Liturgical core: service books, euchologia, psalters, menaia, triodia, oktoechoi, typika.
• Patristic and dogmatic core: major Fathers, polemical literature, doctrinal compendia.
• Administrative/legal layer: printed canonical collections used alongside archival practice.
• Classical / humanist layer: reflected in the incunabula nucleus above, and reinforced by “Frankish” donor trails (see §7).

Control fact: more than 20,000 volumes are printed before 1800, implying that any adequate index must be built in layers (by class, then by century, then by imprint-line). Source: AboutLibraries: Great Lavra (lib_92).

6. A Lavra printing press (1759): a rare Athonite internal-print episode

The AboutLibraries dossier records an institutional fact of high documentary value: in 1759, a printing workshop was founded at the monastery by the former archimandrite Kosmas of Epidaurus and Soterios Doukas. It was housed in a tower of the enclosure known as the “Tower of Kosmas,” which no longer survives (it collapsed in the earthquake of 1905). The press produced one work only: the Eklogē tou Psaltēriou of Neophytos Kavsokalyvites. The existence of the press became known to the Ottoman authorities, who destroyed it immediately.

This is a canonical “documentation-index” item because it ties together: place (tower), date (1759), agents (Kosmas, Doukas), a single printed output (title + author), and a destruction event. Source: AboutLibraries: Great Lavra (lib_92).

7. Donor trails and “named-object prints” (a Slav axis within the Lavra corpus)

Printed books on Athos are often present not merely as texts but as “named objects”: heavy bindings, imperial dedication, procession-use, and explicit donor identity. The AboutLibraries dossier gives a prime example that must be indexed at object level:

• Megas Slavikos Evangelion (Μέγα Σλαβικό Ευαγγέλιο): a massive gilded Gospel book with large enamels, weight over 40 kg, carried on great feasts by two deacons. It was printed in Russia (1758) and arrived at the Lavra in 1778 as an offering of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (daughter of Peter the Great).

Source: AboutLibraries: Great Lavra (lib_92).

8. The “Frankish books” vector (Western/Latin printed layer)

The AboutLibraries dossier preserves an internal archival remark about “Frankish books” in the Lavra library: they carry inside the name of the person who brought them, Manuel Moschiotis, and the document notes that he “was a capable man” and that “the books were saved” in a given year (the internal date is preserved in the citation). This is a documentary signal of a Western/Latin printed layer inside a primarily Greek monastic library.

For AthosForum indexing, this vector must be treated as a donor-based sub-collection: “Frankish books with Moschiotis name-inscription.” Source: AboutLibraries: Great Lavra (lib_92).

9. Mechanical crosswalk (operational shell for full indexing)

This crosswalk is the AthosForum mechanism for converting the Lavra printed corpus into a documentation index. Use one row per identifiable edition. Do not invent imprint lines; leave fields blank until verified.

10. Extraction targets (to complete the printed-book index)

• Incunabula set (22 items): extract and list all 22 editions printed before 1500 (author, title, place, printer, date, format).
• Old prints pre-1800 (20,000+): build a two-tier index: (a) liturgical core; (b) patristic/dogmatic; (c) canonical; (d) classical/humanist; (e) Western/Latin (“Frankish”) layer; then sample by century.
• Athonite internal printing event (1759): identify surviving copies and their shelfmarks; record whether any colophons, errata-leaves, or binding notes survive.
• Provenance indexing: isolate print-objects with explicit donor identity (e.g., the 1758 Russian Gospel gift) and link each to procession/liturgical use where documented.

11. Bibliographic nucleus (printed books)

• AboutLibraries: Βιβλιοθήκη της Ιεράς Μονής Μεγίστης Λαύρας (lib_92) (counts, early editions, Athonite press episode, donor print-object).
• AthosForum: Megisti Lavra bibliography (hub bibliography and research pointers).
• Triantafyllos Sklavenitis, “Η βιβλιοθήκη των εντύπων της μονής Μεγίστης Λαύρας του Άθω,” Μνήμων 11 (1987), 83–122 (printed-book history and analysis).