Five sixteenth-century texts from the world Skaryna opened: printed scripture, a portable prayer book, a manuscript Gospel, a catechism and a law code. Each page gives the original text in its own spelling, taken only from public-domain editions and checked against page scans, alongside facsimiles of the pages themselves. Where no open transcription exists, the page shows the images and says so. Every page ends with its sources and rights.
1. Bible of Francysk Skaryna
Prague, 1517–1519 — The founding text: scripture put into print by Skaryna, with his own first-person prefaces and woodcuts. The page lists every Prague book, with full-text L0 pages from the archived biblia.by transcriptions (Genesis to Kings, Ruth, Esther, the Preface to the whole Bible) and the Vilnius Apostol of 1525.
2. The Little Traveller's Book · Малая подорожная книжица
Vilnius, c. 1522 — Scripture made portable: a small devotional volume for daily reading, printed in Vilnius.
3. Peresopnytsia Gospel · Пересопницкое Евангелие
manuscript, 1556–1561 — The manuscript counterpoint to print: an illuminated Gospel whose scribe notes its rendering into the vernacular.
4. Symon Budny’s Catechism · Катихисис
Nesvizh, 1562 — A teaching text in question-and-answer form from the Reformation, for a Ruthenian readership.
5. Third Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Vilnius, 1588 — The same written language used for civic law, with Lew Sapieha’s prefaces on laws in one’s own tongue.
What we have, what is missing · Что есть и чего нет
Skaryna printed 25 works: the 23 books of the Prague Bible (1517–1519; the four books of Kings count as four), the Little Traveller’s Book (Vilnius, c. 1522) and the Apostol (Vilnius, 1525). Here is exactly how much of his original text we can show you, and why the rest is missing.
| Work | Page scans | Original text |
|---|---|---|
| Psalter · Псалтирь 1517 | complete | psalms: none · preface: complete |
| Job · Иов 1517 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Proverbs · Притчи 1517 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Sirach · Сирах 1517 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Ecclesiastes · Екклезиаст 1518 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Song of Songs · Песнь Песней 1518 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Wisdom · Премудрость 1518 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| 1–3 Kings · Царств I–III 1518 | complete | partial: 2 of 31, 3 of 24, 1 of 22 chapters |
| 4 Kings · Царств IV 1518 | complete | none |
| Joshua · Иисус Навин 1518 | complete | partial: 2 of 24 chapters |
| Judith · Иудифь 1519 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Genesis · Бытие 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 50 chapters |
| Deuteronomy · Второзаконие 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 34 chapters |
| Daniel · Даниил 1519 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Esther · Эсфирь 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 16 chapters |
| Ruth · Руфь 1519 | 2 pages | complete (4 of 4 chapters) |
| Lamentations · Плач Иеремии 1519 | complete | none (preface excerpts) |
| Exodus · Исход 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 40 chapters |
| Leviticus · Левит 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 27 chapters |
| Numbers · Числа 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 36 chapters |
| Judges · Судьи 1519 | complete | partial: 1 of 21 chapters |
| Preface to the whole Bible · Предсловие во всю Библию 1519 | complete | complete |
| Little Traveller’s Book · Малая подорожная книжица c. 1522 | 12 of 22 parts | none (excerpts only) |
| Apostol · Апостол 1525 | complete | partial: 25 of 149 chapters; 4 short epistles complete |
Why the rest is missing.
- The complete transcriptions exist, but we cannot reach them. Two modern public-domain transcriptions are on biblia.by: Aleś Brazhunoŭ’s (2022) and Siarhej Shobik’s (2024). The site refuses our region («Доступ … абмежаваны для вашага рэгіёна»), and so does the Russian National Electronic Library. We do not route around such blocks. What we publish is only what the Internet Archive has captured, usually one chapter per book.
- For eleven Prague books, and for the Little Traveller’s Book, there is no open transcription at all. We have complete public-domain scans (Russian State Library copy, via Wikimedia Commons) and, for most books, Skaryna’s preface words quoted in Vladimirov’s 1888 study.
- Modern editions are not used. Skaryna’s Прадмовы і пасляслоўі (Minsk, 1969) and Творы (Minsk, 1990) are labelled “public domain” by an uploader on the Internet Archive. That label is not credible for modern editions, so we do not copy them. The same applies to the Minsk facsimile of 1990–91 and the National Library of Belarus facsimiles.
- Some texts have no licence we can verify. Two akathists from the Little Traveller’s Book are on Belarusian Wikisource without one, so we keep them for research and do not publish them.
- Some parts have no open scan. For 10 of the 22 parts of the Little Traveller’s Book we found none.
How the gaps can close: a text dump requested from biblia.by (its texts are already public domain), or our own proofread transcription of the complete public-domain scans. Behind the texts sits a private research index of 1,479 scholarly works about Skaryna, 93 of them stored in full under open licences.
Коротко: из 25 печатных книг Скорины полный текст у нас есть для одной (Книга Руфи), частичный — для двенадцати, полные сканы — для двадцати трёх. Полные современные расшифровки существуют на biblia.by, но сайт закрыт для нашего региона, а обходить блокировки мы не будем. Издания 1969 и 1990 годов не используем: их статус общественного достояния не подтверждён.