Other interesting examples of late fourteenth - century fresco work were to be seen in the Church of the Nativity - in - the - Cemetery, and in the Monastery of St. Michael - in - Skovorodka. The paintings of St. Michael's had been cleared shortly before the war, but very indifferently photographed, and later destroyed by the Nazis. The frescoes of the Nativity Church show a tendency toward a distinct outline, a taste for polychromy, and a somewhat exaggerated attention to small detail. The murals of St. Michael's, painted in a colour scheme of bluish - violet, greenish, and yellowish - orange tones, were executed in a similar manner. The type of fresco decoration used in both churches included an abundance of various geometrical and plant ornamentation, sometimes covering large areas of wall and vault surface.

To sum up, each of the churches: of the Dormition - in - Volotovo - Field, the Transfiguration - in - Elijah - Street, St. Theodore Stratelates, Our Saviour - in - Kovaliovo, the Nativity - in - the - Cemetery, and in the Monastery of St. Michael, was painted in a highly distinctive manner of its own, irrespective of whether its decoration was the work of an individual master, or of a team. This demonstrates that Novgorod had many fresco painters; that they formed several schools; and that the artistic life of the city was extremely varied and active.

The world - famed Novgorodian icons of the fourteenth century betray an influence of the art of the fresco, mainly in their vividness and intensity of colour, and in their relative freedom of composition. Still, they are far more faithful to the old painting tradition than are the murals of the period.

It was of particular importance to the cultural history of Novgorod that throughout the whole period of Mongol - Tatar domination, there was no decline in literary activities, or in manuscript production. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Novgorod firmly retained its position as one of the leading centres in the copying and decoration of manuscripts. Codices from that time carry numerous readers' notes which help us to date the peak period of the Novgorodian art of the book. One of the names most frequently mentioned in such notes is that of Archbishop Moses, ruler of the House of St. Sophia from 1323 to 1330 yy., and again from 1352 to 1389 yy. We find that in 1356 y. Leonid and Joseph, two of the Lord Archbishop's "lads", or in other words scribes of his scriptorium, copied a bulky volume of church readings, called The Prologue, "at the command of Moses, Archbishop of Novgorod". A year earlier, "at the command" of the same dignitary, Leonid, working in collaboration with one Gregory, probably another of the Lord Archbishop's dyaks, or lay officials, had transcribed the Gospels; in the colophon he complained of the difficulties of his work thus: "an evil pen, ill-suited to write with for Leonid Ofonasivich, God's slave of many sins." This shows that at Lord Archbishop's Court the work of manuscript copying was, as a rule, carried out by the same scribes from year to year.

The Lord Archbishop was not, however, the only patron who commissioned manuscripts. Street householders' associations - communal units of self - administration in Novgorod - were also known to take the initiative in book production. Thus, one of the manuscripts copied in 1442 y. was executed "at the command of God's slaves, the men of St. Michael and Vidkova Streets" situated in the Market Side, who had just had their parish church rebuilt.

The surviving manuscript literature of Novgorod and "its younger brother", or rather junior partner, Pskov, forms the best part of the heritage of manuscript books from ancient Rus, now preserved in the libraries of various Soviet cities.