THE ARCHIVE

The Sinai archive contains documents, letters, account books, and other compositions, pertaining to the Holy Monastery of Sinai itself, and to its many dependencies. The oldest Greek documents date from the middle of the fifteenth century, but there are older documents in Latin and in Venetian.

Many of the documents concern the safe travel of members of the community and of pilgrims to Sinai. They also deal with the prerogatives of the monastery and its many dependencies. Other documents witness to the communication between the monastery and its dependencies. The archive contains agreements between the monastery and the local bedouin. It also contains theological writings of past hierarchs and members of the community.

All of these documents are important in that they provide insights into the history of the monastery, and the difficult circumstances under which it nevertheless managed to exist.