Russian Orthodox book Minei/Mesetsoslov 1704-1799, October, There were originally a set of 8 manuscripts (books) that were needed to do the Orthodox services for one year. One of these eight manuscripts/books was the Minei (Greek = menaion, Slavic = "mesetsoslov"). Basically, it means "month." A set of 12, or sometimes 6 (with two months in each) or four (with three months in each) would be compiled and used. The menei could be of several different types. This is just some basic information. Menei in Slavic translation were among the first books to be translated (St. Cyril and St. Methodius) in the middle of the 9th century. - , 1704-1799. - , 12- ( ). . The Slavs, like the Greeks and many others, used letters of the alphabet as numbers, also. There is no hard cover. We are sorry, but we could not find pictures of the title page and the covers. Originally, books were usually not sold with the covers, but each buyer would arrange to have covers put on, sometimes immediately, sometimes they would wait. The covers would usually be of wooden boards covered with leather of some type. Often, the leather was tooled and ornamented. Depending on how much money a person could or wanted to spend, the covers could be fairly simple or very complex. The cost would increase with better quality of materials, more ornamentation and decoration, etc. We were able to determine that 20 different editions of the October Minei were published in Russia between 1704 and 1799. Of these, 16 different editions were published between 1747 and 1795 and in years that an impress ruled Russia. And so, it is safest to date your book the "second half of the 18th century" and the only way to more precisely date it might be to know exactly how many pages it was supposed to have. We write "supposed to have",- because pages would often be lost in these books and so counting the actual number of pages does not always give the accurate number usually listed in most good catalogs of early printed editions. Assessment of this old foliant book was kindly done by Predrag Matejic, Curator, from Hilandar Research Library in USA.
Condition Hard cover was lost. Some water damage to some pages. Some pages were lost.
Low Estimate: 4000;
High Estimate: 10000;
Condition: Good to Very Good;
Orignal: Yes;
Medium: Paper;
Circa: 1750;