The Chvabiani Gospels (H-1791) and the Fragment Preserved in the Mestia Museum (SMHE N 491)

The paper identifies the manuscript of the Gospels (referred to as "The Muzhali First Gospels" in the scientific literature of the second half of the 19th  century and the beginning of the 20th century), whose traces were not seen among the handwritten Gospels preserved in Svaneti or taken from Svaneti. On the basis of the paleographic-codicological and textological analyses, it is proved that the manuscript called "The Muzhali First Gospels" is codex H-1791, which is preserved in Fund H of Korneli Kekelidze National Center of Manuscripts (NCM). It is also determined that one  part of this manuscript (153 pages) transcribed in 1213-1216 in the savannah of the Monastery of the Black Mountain remained in Chvabiani, while another was taken to Mestia and afterwards, to Tbilisi, where it is presented in the collection of the Historical-Ethnographic Society (NCM, H-1991). As a result of the research, it was determined that the four-page fragment (SMHE N 491; K-8) preserved in the Mestia Museum under the name the Chvabiani Gospels is a part of H-1791. The paper raises the question that this fragment as well as the manuscript H-1791 should be called the Chvabiani Gospels. Both the manuscript H-1791 and the Chvabiani fragment, which is preserved in Mestia, contain 157 (not 153) pages.

Keywords: fragments kept in the Mestia Museum, manuscripts of the Gospel from Svaneti, old Georgian manuscripts, the Chvabiani Gospels