Greek Palaeography

The palimpsest manuscript Sin. ar. NF 66 is one of the treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine located in the Sinai Peninsula. Nowadays it consists of a few fragmentary parchment sheets, but originally it was a larger codex of ca. 300 folia. Some of these leaves have been purloined from the Sinai and are now kept in Cambridge, Leipzig, and Saint Petersburg, while others have been lost. The codex contained the Lives of Palestinian monastic Saints in Arabic translation and was copied at the Monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem in the first quarter of the 10th century. It was later brought, under unknown circumstances, to the Sinai. All preserved folia are palimpsests, with scriptiones inferiores in Greek and Christian Palestinian Aramaic. This article focuses on one of the Greek erased texts – a previously unknown classical text in hexameters of mythological content – and offers its editio princeps. Based on an analysis of codicological and palaeographical features, combined with that of linguistic and stylistic elements, it will be suggested that the Sinai hexameters might originate from the Hieroi Logoi in 24 Rhapsodies, i.e. the longest lost Orphic poem we know of.

Published in: P. RANCE, ‘Finding the Right Words: a Letter to the Emperor (Laur. Plut. 55.4, f. 197v) – Books, Education and Rhetoric in a Late Byzantine Household [with Corrigenda to Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit]’, Παρεκβολαί / Parekbolai 12 (2022) 27-56 at 47-50

Published in: P. RANCE, ‘Finding the Right Words: a Letter to the Emperor (Laur. Plut. 55.4, f. 197v) – Books, Education and Rhetoric in a Late Byzantine Household [with Corrigenda to Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit]’, Παρεκβολαί / Parekbolai 12 (2022) 27-56 at 33-35

This paper examines annotations inscribed in three manuscripts by Demetrios Laskaris Leontares (1418 – post-1475), an aristocrat whose possession or use of a dozen codices is documented. Palaeographic and historical criteria place all three texts in his adolescence around the 1430s. The primary focus is tenth-century Laur. gr. 55.4, a well-known collection of military treatises, in which successive generations of the Laskaris Leontares family inserted notices on personal and imperial events (1408-50). Overlooked by previous scholarship, on blank folio 197v Demetrios Leontares penned and signed a short letter addressed to an emperor, which constitutes a rare autograph specimen of Byzantine epistolography. This item was previously transcribed by Bandini (1768), who declined to edit and interpret its ‘barbaric and utterly illiterate’ script. Providing a new edition and first translation, this study situates the text within the evolution of epistolographic conventions in the early fifteenth century, as evidenced in contemporary letters and/or prescribed in letter-writing manuals. Whether interpreted as a draft or copy of an actual letter or a classroom exercise, this short private text adds uncommon ‘domestic’ and documentary dimensions to the study of Late Byzantine rhetoric, ideology and epistolary culture. The investigation widens to include two other undated annotations that can likewise be assigned to Demetrios Leontares’ youth: a co-ownership notice in recently commissioned Marc. gr. Z. 399 (5r) and a previously unpublished missive to an unnamed relative in twelfth-century Vat. gr. 586 (429v). Collective consideration of these three modest informal texts assists in clarifying their contexts and chronology, while elucidating broader themes of children, education, language and books in an aristocratic household.

An in-depth study of MSS Vat. gr. 704, Oxon. Bodl. Barocci 48 and some other later manuscripts, such as MS Vat. gr. 1444, provides a new reconstruction for both the authorial composition of the Solutiones quaestionum and the De numero septenario by Nikephoros Gregoras, and the manuscript tradition of the two treatises.

Sinaiticus arabicus NF 66 is made up of six fragmentary folia and three tiny parchment scraps. These were originally part of a codex of ca. 300 folia containing the Arabic translation of several lives of monastic Saints connected to the Monastery of Mar Saba. It was copied at Mar Saba (near Jerusalem) in the first quarter of the 10th century and later brought, under unknown circumstances, to St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. A number of folia from this manuscript are now dispersed, and have been identified in several libraries:
• Leipzig, Univ. gr. 2 [22 folia] = Codex Tischendorf 2
• Saint Petersburg, NLR, gr. 26 [6 folia]
• Cambridge, Add. 1879.5 [a small piece of parchment]
All preserved folia are palimpsests, with scriptiones inferiores in Greek and Christian Palestinian Aramaic. Among the folia with Greek scriptio inferior three different texts can be recognized: one biblical, one grammatical, and one poetical.
This paper focuses on the poetical text in the Sinai manuscript. Based on an analysis of codicological and palaeographical features, combined with that of linguistic and stylistic elements, I will suggest a possible date and authorship for the content of these poetical fragments.

A fronte dei molti libri che il medioevo greco ha trasmesso sani e salvi, altrettanti si sono persi inesorabilmente. Tra questi due estremi — la salvezza e la distruzione — si pone il degrado cui un libro poteva andare incontro, il quale, innescando l’esigenza di porre rimedio a un danno — si trattasse di uno strappo accidentale o dell’asportazione volontaria di un intero fascicolo —, rappresenta l’occasione di ogni storia di restauro. E come ogni storia che si rispetti anche quella qui ripercorsa si fonda sulla concretezza dei dati oggettivi — in primo luogo l’esame diretto dei manoscritti, quindi l’analisi di sottoscrizioni, note, documenti, inventari, cataloghi antichi —, ma sovente dà spazio alle fonti letterarie, indagate sempre dalla parte dei libri, sia che attestino situazioni e accadimenti reali, sia che riflettano il mondo delle rappresentazioni e dell’immaginario. L’ambizione è di offrire al lettore un quadro complessivo, ricco e vivido, di quella che è stata una vicenda di rovina e rinascita, in cui gli aspetti materiali del restauro librario, ancorché importanti, rappresentano solo una parte del fenomeno, che risulta altresì indagato per le sue implicazioni nella trasmissione dei testi e nella storia culturale e sociale di Bisanzio.

After the return of the Court and the Patriarchate from the exile of Nikaia, the local tradition of the cathedral rite was not continued. The Byzantine tonal system according to a common understanding taught by the Papadike was defi ned according to the Koukouzelian wheel which was based on fi fth equivalence (the trochos system and the practice of parallage) and deeply rooted in the Middle Byzantine notation and the chant books Sticherarion and the Heirmologion.

Since John Koukouzeles’ Mega Ison as a method to teach all notational signs did not change the notation system, but rather exploited a former synthesis to transcribe the chant books of the cathedral rite (Asmatikon and Kontakarion-Psaltikon) with the notation of the Sticherarion, the synthesis of all chant books within one universal notation system was well prepared and this preparation motivated Christian Troelsgård to abandon the distinction of Middle from Late Byzantine notation. It was also the basis of the integrative role of Papadic teaching which was continued until the 19th century and the integration of the practice of cheironomia in Koukouzeles’ theory of the great signs. According to the new theory of Papadike, the Hagiopolitan oktoechos was the universal tonal system which had to integrate also the Constantinopolitan tradition of the cathedral rite. This synthesis is also the basic understanding of the Byzantine tonal system since its description by Oliver Strunk in 1942. The current understanding of the heritage of Byzantine chant is so deeply rooted on the Papadic synthesis of the 14th century that it lacks a proper understanding of the preceding tradition which was unified by the synthesis.

This essay is focussed on the kalophonic melos concerned with the repertoire of the kontakia and its modal transformation.

The present catalogue comprises a detailed description of the Greek manuscripts at the Benaki Museum Library (Athens) which date back to the era from the 16th to the 20th century.  It is a continuation of the Catalogue of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine MSS (10th-16th cent.) of the Benaki Museum compiled by Evrydiki Lappa-Zizika and Matoula Rizou-Kouroupou (1991) and constitutes the fruit of a research program funded by the Museum from October 2007 to October 2011.
The Catalogue contains the description of 259 MSS which fall into three individual collections: a) the Benaki Collection consisting of manuscripts which once belonged to Antonis Benakis, the founder of the Museum, and to other members of his family as well as of those which were purchased by or donated to the Museum during the 20th cent. (37 MSS); b) the Collection of Damianos Kyriazis which was donated to the Museum in 1953 (17 MSS); c) the Collection of the Exchangeables Community and Public Welfare Property Fund which was deposited for safekeeping at the Museum after the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations in 1923 (205 MSS).

An examination of the word order in which Greek literary texts, up to circa 325 bce, record compound numbers (e.g., “twenty-four”) illuminates two problems: the transmission of numbers in those texts, and the expansion of “commercial” numeracy in Greek society. Compound numbers occur both in descending (“twenty-four”) and ascending (“four and twenty”) order. The prevalence of ascending-ordered numbers in these literary texts argues for their having been transmitted as words, not numerals. The proportion of numbers written in descending order differs among authors, and is correlated with a stronger presence of “commercial” numeracy. The evidence of inscriptions and papyri concurs.

Short manual of GREEK PALEOGRAPHY (71 pages containing many illustrations). An overview on majuscule (Uncial) and minuscule Greek bookhands. Please send comments. It is also available a Spanish version of this manual. Last updated February 2024. Please LEAVE COMMENTS. Thanks in advance.

Those interested in reading a true treatise on Greek Paleography can find useful my book entitled "Manual ilustrado de PALEOGRAFÍA GRIEGA" (in Spanish), 556 pages containing more than 100 images, some of them in color, published by DYKINSON, Madrid 2017. Information here: http://www.dykinson.com/libros/manual-ilustrado-de-paleografia-griega/9788491480075/
You can have a look inside this book here:
https://www.academia.edu/31025310/Manual_ilustrado_de_PALEOGRAFIA_GRIEGA._Enero_2024

Scholars of the New Testament generally regard a small papyrus scrap of a page of the Gospel of John, P52, as the oldest surviving manuscript of any part of the New Testament.  C.H. Roberts, who first published this papyrus in 1935, dated it on palaeographical grounds to "the first half of the second century."  Since then, scholars of the New Testament have tended to assign to P52 a date closer and closer to the early end of Roberts' tentative range, and they have provided little or no evidence for doing so.  In this paper, I have collected images of the papyri Roberts used to date P52, and I have provided images of several other more securely dated documentary papyri to demonstrate that, on palaeographical grounds, any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries.  This conclusion has serious implications for those scholars who have attempted to use an early dating of P52 to argue for a correspondingly early date of composition for the Gospel of John.

"A new and analytical codicological and paleographic description of the Pandette
confirms the 6th century and Constantinople as time and place of execution
of this famous manuscript. This codicological analysis of the Pandette is presented here for the first time illustrating, for example, the positions of the prickings, the various types of ruling, and the particular ornament present in the manuscript.
The history of the Pandette has been enriched with unpublished documents
from the Laurentian Library’s historical Archives, Florence state Archives and
other Florentine libraries. These new documents, edited here in the ‘Appendix’,
give many details on the manuscript, e.g. the year in which it entered the Laurentian Library (1786), and provide an objective reconstruction of the manuscript’s life. Moreover during the study of the codex its unused and little known bindings have been examined and are described completely."

This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. The content of these manuscripts ranges from medicine, including theories on diagnosis and treatment of disease, to astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. With texts dating from the ancient era to the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, each manuscript provides its own unique story, opening a window onto different social and cultural milieus. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection.

Il presente lavoro prende in considerazione la "terza orazione teologica" di Gregorio Nazianzeno (IV sec.). La ricerca verte sull'analisi di alcuni selezionati passi dell'omelia XXIX e sul commento di specifiche peculiarità linguistico-letterarie, stilistico-retoriche e filologiche, senza trascurare il fondamentale apporto di questo testo allo sviluppo della teologia cappadoce, a ragione identificata da I. Zizioulas nella "ontologia dell'ὑπόστασις".

This work deals with the "third theological Oration" of Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century). The research aims at analysing a few passages selected from the Oration XXIX and commenting some specific peculiarities concerning linguistic, stylistical and philological aspects. In these chapters it is also highlighted the homily's primary contribution to the development of the "cappadocian theology", which I. Zizioulas has rightly defined as an "ontology of Personhood".

Ancient letters had formatting and stylistic conventions that were carefully respected by their writers. This book provides the first comprehensive study of these conventions based on a wide corpus of letters surviving on their original material substrates primarily from Graeco-Roman Egypt. It elucidates and contextualises the impact of sociocultural phenomena on stylistic variations over a long period in the history of epistolary practice.

Настоящий сборник содержит материалы (статьи, тезисы, аннотации докладов) Международной научной конференции, в рамках которых обсуждаются актуальные вопросы греческой, латинской, славянской и отчасти восточной палеографии, кодикологии и дипломатики. Конференция посвящена 75-летию со дня рождения доктора исторических наук Бориса Львовича Фонкича, внесшего большой вклад в развитие этих дисциплин.

El libro titulado “Paleografía Griega” (un manual ilustrado), es el primero de estas características escrito en castellano y pretende llenar la laguna existente en este campo hasta el momento en lengua hispana. Tiene 550 páginas y cuenta con más de 100 imágenes de manuscritos, que apoyan en todo momento las explicaciones. Sus 62 capítulos permitirán al lector seguir la evolución de la escritura del griego antiguo a lo largo de toda su historia (desde el siglo IV a.C. hasta el año 1600), siendo también una guía para adentrarse en la lectura de los textos clásicos griegos en su soporte original.
  Como complemento, también se dedican varios apartados a temas codicológicos (materiales e instrumentos escriptorios, confección del libro, pautado, sistemas de paginación, formato del libro, encuadernación, decoración, etc.), ecdóticos (problemas de edición) y de transmisión textual (cómo nos ha llegado la literatura griega).

En el presente PDF (16 Mb, 290 páginas) han sido suprimidas intencionadamente la mitad de las páginas de las que consta el libro completo, pues de lo que se trata es de que el potencial lector del mismo compruebe si la calidad del libro satisface sus exigencias antes de decidir comprarlo. Está disponible en AMAZON al precio de 38 $ USA, aproximadamente 35 €:  --- https://www.amazon.com/dp/1790291771 --- Si desea hacer comentarios o sugerencias, envíe un email a:  juanjmarcos@gmail.com

A fourth unit will be about the origins of the traditional methods of the thesis of the melos, and their books. One concern of this lecture is the cathedral rite, the surviving Greek and Slavonic manuscripts of kontakarion and asmatikon will be regarded as a reception outside Constantinople, although the Slavonic one seems somehow between the original books, their notation and their tonal system (of sixteen echoi) and their transcription into the monastic oktoechos notation, they also have traces of a very original local style. There are two focuses on this secular tradition, the genre kontakion and the cherouvikon. The history of the kontakion will treat Romanos’ propaganda role during the Justinian era, when the Hagia Sophia was constructed and inaugurated, but also how the genre has changed until the 14th century. The cherouvikon is the very heart of the divine liturgy, it was introduced by the end of the 6th century, since a change in sacred architecture caused, that there must be a procession at the beginning of the second part of the liturgy, reserved for the baptised. For each formular of a divine liturgy there is only one offertory, known as the cherouvikon for the one ascribed to John Chrysostom. According to the Byzantine rite, it existed only in the devteros echos. Only by the end of the Byzantine empire, Manuel Chrysaphes replaced the cherouvikon asmatikon with a papadic oktoechos cycle, so that the cherouvikon could be sung according to the echos of the week.

The other concern is the development of a monastic hymn repertoire composed as oktoechos melodies. Today it is simply regarded as the creation by Ioannes of Damascus and his step brother Kosmas during the 8th century. Recent papyrus studies gave evidence, that the oldest Greek tropologia which preceded the notated chant books of the 10th century (sticheraria, heirmologia, great oktoechos, oktoich) are related with other redactions which were older than the Christian Byzantine empire, such as the Syriac tropligin, the Georgian iadgari, and the Armenian šaraknoc’. The first Greek tropologion was created by Syrian hymnographers in Jerusalem, but it has only survived in Syriac translation since the 6th century. When Ioannes and Kosmas entered Mar Saba, a monastery of this Patriarchate whose territory was outside the Byzantine empire, a synodal reform had already established an oktoechos reform which was opposed against the Constantinopolitan rite.

Today their particular role is regarded as their contribution to the heirmoi and to more complex unique melodies of the sticheraric repertoire known as idiomela which we do only know by the “unnotated” tropologia. The whole repertoire as it is known today was completed by many hymnographers (also female hymnographers in Constantinople) until the 11th century. They were either mainly based in Mar Saba at Jerusalem and St Catherine’s at Sinai (Coislin types of Old Byzantine notation), or in many metochia associated with the Mone Stoudiou in Constantinople (Chartres types of Old Byzantine notation). The Slavonic translation at Ohrid conservated the complex system of hymn melodies organised between idiomela, avtomela, and prosomoia, or kanones composed according to the heirmoi, they did not care so much about the literal meaning of the Greek hymns. Later new literal re-translations in Kiev and Novgorod provoked an entire recomposition of its melodies, in peripheral regions it was mastered by an oral tradition based on simple oktoechos recitations (sometimes in multipart forms of recitation).

In our paper we present the data which led to our consideration that the mention of the name “Preveza” in two versions of "The Chronicle of Morea" –the version of the Greek manuscript of Copenhagen (Havniensis) and the French manuscript of Brussels (Bruxellensis)– presupposes Preveza’s existence, which dates after the construction of the castle of Bouka (Preveze kalesi) by the Ottomans in 1478.

It is up to the philological academic community, the codicologists and the palaeographers to redefine the dating of the above two manuscripts of "The Chronicle of Morea". This has been, in fact, the practice in similar cases when scholars detected names or historical events which specified different eras, distant from the facts that are narrated in a Chronicle.

Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75), a well-preserved Greek papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke and John, has been called the most significant New Testament papyrus so far discovered. The reason for this high estimation is the combination of the early date assigned to the manuscript on the basis of paleography (ca. 175–225 CE) and its close agreement with the text of Codex Vaticanus, which is thought to provide evidence that the “B text” of Vaticanus was produced as early as the second century and was very carefully transmitted. The evidence gathered in the present essay calls these conclusions into question by showing that both paleographically and codicologically, P.Bodm. XIV–XV fits comfortably in a fourth century context, along with the bulk of the other “Bodmer papyri” with which it was apparently discovered. These observations, combined with the fact that the text of P.Bodm. XIV–XV so closely matches that of Vaticanus—a codex widely acknowledged to be a product of the fourth century—suggest that P.Bodm. XIV–XV was also itself produced in the fourth century. Thus, a number of previous arguments that relied on a second- or early-third-century date for P.Bodm. XIV–XV will need to be reconsidered.

Le lexicon est une publication pédagogique proposant une vue d’ensemble des dispositifs élaborés dans différentes traditions linguistiques et culturelles (domaines latin, roman,grec, hébreu et arabe) pour la mise en page et la « mise en texte » des manuscrits.

Methodological the Researches on the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Paleography in Albania, Assessments about Past and Present, Perspectives and Future Challenges

In the Central State Archive of Tirana, Albania, there is a collection of approximately 100 Byzantine and post Byzantine manuscripts, arranged in the Fund “Codices of Albania”, bearing the index number 488. On the ground of paleographical or philological studies, few things have been said about this collection. One of the issues that have not been addressed in separate studies, is the history of these manuscripts, how did they come from the hands of their users, to their nowadays lodging in the archive shelves. Chasing them back in time through centuries is not an easy task, due to the lack of information. However, an effort on the field can be done. In the first part of the present paper we will try to bring forth all the historical data relating the CSA’s manuscripts collection and at the same time, will present the scientific achievements in this field up to now. We will evaluate the earlier attempts of cataloguing these manuscripts from different authors, whose endeavors date since the 19th century, and while contextualizing them to the circumstances and specific conditions of their time, we will evaluate the methodology used in compiling them and how they respond to the nowadays needs of researches. While in the second part, taking in consideration the existing difficulties which researchers encounter while trying to address to the Tirana manuscripts, we will propose some contemporary scientific methodologies and technologies in cataloguing the manuscripts, on publishing these catalogues and synthetically utilizing their content, as well as using new technological means on the paleographic studies.

The earliest extant Byzantine prayer books in codex form date back to the late 8 th century. However, they are the result of the collection of older material, whose traces we find scattered on different kinds of material supports such as pieces of papyrus and parchment. What has survived and what has gone lost? By considering from a codicological point of view the ten earliest Byzantine Greek Euchologia in codex form, this article lays the ground to start exploring the open question of continuity in the use of liturgical material. It also helps to shed some light on the ways the Euchologion was assembled.