Modern era (19th century onwards)

In the 19th century, copying activity in the Monastery continued, despite the spread of printed books. Among the well-known bibliographers, it is worth mentioning the names of the hieromonk Ioasaf from Paros and the archimandrite Jacob of Vatopedi, from whom at least 50 codices originate. Other manuscripts entered the library from the inheritance of famous Vatopedi monks, such as those of Gregory of Adrianople, and from the Monastery's fiefdoms in the Danubian principalities.

However, during this period, the displacement of codices continued. In 1802, the English traveler Clarke brought to London the famous codex with the speeches of the ten Attic orators, which seems to have been donated by John Kantakouzenos, while in 1841-1843, the Greek Minas Minoidis stole several manuscripts or parts of manuscripts on behalf of the French government, which are now in the National Library of France. Smaller in scope, but equally important, were the thefts of Konstantinos Simonides, who in 1853 cut and sold a sheet of the famous codex with Ptolemy's Geography to the British Museum, and of the Russian archimandrite Uspenskij, who also stole codices.

However, in the 19th century, conservation work on the Vatopedi collection began. In addition to the transfer of the library to the safe tower of the Virgin Mary, in 1869 the majority of the codices were collected by the hierodeacon Anthimos of Vatopedi and the monk Savvas, while efforts to catalog the manuscripts also began, which were completed in 1924 with the publication of the catalog of Arkadios of Vatopedi by Sofronios Efstratiadis.