Byzantine book culture

The question addressed in my title “Why Go Digital?” is illustrated with three paradigms, essential for the study of the book in Byzantium. We shall see the importance of digital recording for the study of the representations of books in the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine era, the study of blind-tooling stamps with which the leather surface of the cover is decorated and finally we will touch upon the terminology employed for the recording of codices and the online databases available today.

The material provided by Greek illuminated manuscripts of the 9th to 10th cc. prompts us to view the evolution of Byzantine book decoration in several distinct stages: from irregular decoration it passed through a transitional period, before the formation of a regular decorative system. One of the determining features of irregular decoration (together with the absence of any hierarchy of artistic elements) is the presence of colophons that repeat the heading (end-titles), moreover with decorative emphasis on the end of the text as compared to the beginning of the following text.
An analogous function is also carried out here by the decorative element as coronis. This term was borrowed from papyrology, where it is used to signify special figures marking the paragraphs. The article focuses on the typology of this element in the uncial Biblical codices and on its reflection in the Greek manuscripts of the 9th to 10th cc. Unknown cases of the coronis in minuscule manuscripts in the Russian collections, such as the Ladder, dated 899, State Historical Museum, Synod. gr. 145 (Vlad. 184) and John Chrysostom, Synod. gr. 110 (Vlad.160) are described.

This paper focuses on just a few aspects and terms that were introduced for the comprehensive description of illuminated manuscripts published in the Corpus of Greek Illuminated Manuscripts in Russian Collections, vol. I: Manuscripts of the 9th – 10th cc. at the State Historical Museum, part 1 (n° 1–23), Moscow 2013.
So-called ‘colophons’ may denote not only the scribes' inscriptions and the ἐξεδόθη-Notizen, but also colophons of a third type: a repeat of the title at the end of the text. When embellished they are examined as an element in the overall decoration of the book.
Description of the running titles and consecutive numbers side by side with the titles, headings and marginalia amplifies the characteristics of the codex.
Such terms as ‘decoration of an irregular type’, ‘decoration of a transitional type’ and ‘decorative system of a regular type’ used for the description and characteristics of manuscript illumination. The material provided by illuminated manuscripts of the 9th to 10th cc. prompts us to view the evolution of book decoration in several distinct stages: from irregular decoration it passed through a transitional period, before the formation of a regular decorative system. The period of transformation lasted about a century, from the mid-9th c. to mid-10th c., with the gradual introduction of new features to the structure of the codex. The main tendency in manuscript design of the transitional phase was a gradual shift of the reader’s attention from the end of the text to the beginning.

The Pandektes of Antiochos of Mar Saba is one of a large dossier of writings that were provoked by the Persian conquest of Jerusalem and surrounding events in the first third of the seventh century. It is often cited by historians for its few but valuable details about contemporary historical events, and occasionally used by patrologists to unearth new patristic citations. But the work’s purpose and its Sitz-im-Leben in a monastic culture of intensive reading and conversation has been largely neglected.
The work consists of a series of ethical discourses, prefaced by a letter to an abbot Eustathios and concluded by a lengthy penitential prayer. Eustathios directed a monastery named Attalinê, in Ankyra of Galatia, where Antiochos had begun his monastic life before moving to Mar Saba. Due to the Persian invasion, the monks of Attalinê had been forced to leave behind their monastery, library included. Eustathios requested of Antiochos a digest of the Scriptures, as an edifying vade mecum for the homeless monks.
Each of the 130 chapters deals with a particular virtue or vice, addressing it primarily through patristic quotations, followed by a collection of supporting scriptural texts. It is not exactly a florilegium, given Antiochos’ active role in paraphrasing and adapting his texts. The patristic sources include both pre-Nicene Fathers—Ignatios of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas of Rome, Irenaios of Lyons, the pseudo-Clementine Epistles to Virgins—and post-Nicene ascetical authors, including Evagrios of Pontos, Diadochos of Photikê and John of Karpathos. The selection must reflect to some degree the availability of books in the monasteries in the environs of Jerusalem. It thus provides us with evidence for how authors at the end of late antiquity drew on the developing patristic canon and interpreted it for their own didactic purposes.
Antiochos primarily speaks to the monastic readership for which the work was requested, but he also sought to make it useful to a wider audience. At certain points he hints at oral delivery; perhaps Antiochos tried the discourses out on locals before sending off the polished form to the distant Galatians. Furthermore, in the course of the work, Antiochos provides evidence for the ubiquity of interactions between monks and laypeople, including frequent conversations on spiritual topics, and seeks to advise monks on how such visits should be conducted in order to edify laypeople while preserving monastic detachment.
With its traces of both written citations and spoken teachings, the Pandektes offers an important window into both the literate and oral culture of Palestinian monasticism in the early seventh century. It also shows how the two were organically interwoven and mutually influential, and how the fruits of such interaction might be collected in a book that was sent far away, in a monastic and literary network extending to Galatia. As such, it is an important test case for reading circles and cultures in the early Byzantine period.