The Codex Sinai is the oldest known manuscript of the Bible, dating back to the 4th century AD. Until 1933, the relic was kept in the Imperial Public Library. However, at the height of the industrialization policy, the authorities of the country of the Soviets sold the rarity to the West for 100 thousand pounds sterling. Why did Russia lose one of the most important relics of the early era of Christianity?
Background
The "Codex Sinai" was found by a researcher from Saxony Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1844. As he said, the monks of the monastery of St. Catherine (now in Egypt) prepared parchment sheets for destruction. The scientist managed to save them and take them out.
However, another part of the manuscript remained in the monastery library. Tischendorf received the full text of the code only in 1859, when he was the official representative of Emperor Alexander II. After negotiations, the monks agreed to hand over the book to the Russian monarch, the patron saint of Orthodoxy, and in the same year the relic ended up in St. Petersburg. Subsequently, the monastery received nine thousand rubles from the king for this.
Codex Sinaiticus was published by facsimile method in 1862 - on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the Russian state. For his work, Tischendorf received a title of nobility - the book is depicted on his family coat of arms.
The parchment manuscript contains the entire Greek New Testament and many books of the Old Testament, and the text differs in a number of features. In addition, the works of the early Christian authors "The Shepherd of Herma" and "The Epistle of Barnabas" were combined with the Bible. These works of spiritual literature were previously known only in Latin translations. The letters of the codex were drawn by at least three different people between 325 and 360, and the manuscript was amended up to the 12th century.
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Sale
The Sinai Code, which attracted researchers from all over the world, was in Leningrad until 1933. But soon after the 1917 revolution, his fate was in question. In the 1920s, as archivist Lyudmila Wolftsun said, the Patriarchate of Constantinople made claims for the manuscript, referring to the fact that the monks had allegedly lured her away by fraudulent means. These claims were rejected, for which historians had to write a voluminous information to the Bolsheviks.
However, the manuscript did not remain in the USSR for long. The order to sell it to the West was personally given by Joseph Stalin, he also signed the corresponding document of the Council of People's Commissars. In 2010, The Art Newspaper reported that a document was found in the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry confirming the legality of the transaction.
In the minutes of the Politburo meeting on "the question of Comrade Rosengolts," the following resolution appears: "To oblige Comrade Bubnov to hand over to the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade the manuscript of the Bible" The Code of Sinai "and to allow the NKVT to sell it." Arkady Rozengolts at that time - the people's commissar of foreign trade, Andrei Bubnov - the people's commissar of education, who was in charge of libraries.
The buyer was the British Museum in London and the intermediary was Maggs Bros. Having learned that the USSR had offered to buy the code, the inhabitants of Foggy Albion, through a nationwide subscription, collected a huge amount of money at that time, which could buy several dozen expensive cars. When the relic was brought into the walls of the museum, those present took off their hats. However, the British unemployed, having learned about such a wasteful acquisition in the era of the economic crisis, even staged protests.
Upon learning of the sale of the manuscript to Great Britain, the Monastery of St. Catherine again tried to return it, but did not succeed. Nowadays the monastery has only a few pages, discovered in the wall of one of the buildings in 1975. However, as it turned out, there are still several fragments of the code left in the Public Library (now the Russian National Library) - they somehow ended up in other funds.
The reasons
What was the head of the atheistic state guided by when he sold the code, invaluable from the point of view of not only believers, but also scientists? The reason is trivial - the lack of money for the purchase of imported raw materials and industrial equipment.
The Codex was not the only cultural property that got abroad during the Stalinist era. Along with him, paintings by Rubens, Raphael and Rembrandt from the Hermitage collection, Faberge eggs and other values were sold. The foreign trade office "Antikvariat" of the Gostorg of the RSFSR, which existed until 1937, was engaged in such transactions.
A purposeful policy of selling the national property, aimed at obtaining foreign currency, has been carried out since 1930, when the NEP was curtailed and collectivization and industrialization began. The total value sold was $ 12.5 million.
Note that the code is now stored in excellent conditions and is available to Russian researchers, incl. and online.