The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-01-29

uscript Gospel of the sixth century, not whit inferior in scientific value to the Sinai Bible of the fourth century, which is one of the older treasures of the library, or to the Ostromir Gospel of the year 1057. Till lately it has been in the possession of the settlement of Sarmazacha, near the Cappadocian Caesarea, in Anatolia.
 In 1895 the Russian archaeologist Smirnov travelled in Anatolia, saw the Gospel, and reported on it at once to the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople. Haste was necessary, for Englishmen and Americans had in tended for years past to buy the rare manuscript, and had already offered the above mentioned community twelve hundred pounds for 1t. The lat ter wished however, that the precious manuscript should not pass into any but Orthodox hands. The Archaeolog- ical Institute informed the Public I'm perial Library at St. Petersburg of the precious discovery, but Its means were too limited to permit its keepers to en- certain the thought of buying the treas ure. Then the Russian ambassador M. aC LNCilNioAA, uRpllCu to tLG VI diii lIuhS Constantine Constantinevich, president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, with the request that he would draw the attention of the Czar to the rare manuscript, and immediately after or ders were given to buy it for his Majes- l ty.
 ] It is an interesting fact that there was talk for some time in the spring of presenting the Sarmazachy Gospel to the emperor as coronation gift It is written in letters of silver, in two col umns of sixteen lines, on finely wrought red parchment of a slightly violet tinge. Only the words God" and Jesus Christ" and the titles of l the various sections, are written in let 1 ters of gold. Unfortunately, in the course of centuries more than half of the precious leaves have been lost. It l is written on one hundred and eighty two leaves, which now rest in a book cover made in 1920. The Russian Arch geological Institute in Constantinople examined it, and found that it forms an important part of that famous Pur- pie Gospel which Tischendorf designa- ted as Purple Codex N, and of which only forty-five leaves have hitherto been known. Six of them are in the Vatican Library, two in Vienna, four in London, and thirty three in the li- brary of the Convent of John the Di- vine in the Island of Patnos. It was further ascertained that many leaves were wanting even so long ago as the | twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The above mentioned leaves found their way to the Vatican and to Vienna in l the seventeenth century.
 The complete manuscript must have consisted of forty-nine stitched parts of ten sheets each. Very few manu- scripts on purple parchment have come down to our time. It is therefore easy to understand how highly they are valued, and the Sarmazachy Gospel is also especially important in textual and physiological respects. The very l high importance attached to the Purple l Codex in Europe Is clear from the fact lGf from no other) that the Vatican Li-
 brary presented Leo XIII with six 1 splendidly mounted leaves of it on his jubilee day. The Sarmazachy Gospel is venerated by the population of Ana tolia as a sacred thing, and before it was sent to the Russian embassy at l Constantinople large numbers of the
 inhabitants went to show their rever-
 ence for it for the last time.-Berlin
 Correspondence London Standard.