Des cahiers à l’histoire de la culture à Byzance. Hommage à Paul Canart, codicologue (1927–2017), édité par Michel Cacouros et Jacques-Hubert Sautel, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 306, Bibliothèque de Byzantion 27, Leuven/Paris/Bristol: Peeters, 2021
Vaticanus graecus 177, which contains Ptolemy’s Geography (without maps), is usually dated to th... more Vaticanus graecus 177, which contains Ptolemy’s Geography (without maps), is usually dated to the thirteenth century. Due to a Latin note of possession on f. 1r, the codex is generally thought to have belonged to Maximos Planudes. In the first part of this article, I demonstrate that this attribution can be disproved. In the second part of the article, I reconsider some marginal notes in the manuscript that refer to maps. It has been claimed that these notes are contemporaneous with the principal hand, and also that they demonstrate that the manuscript was copied from a model containing maps. In contrast, I attribute these marginal notes to Bessarion and suggest a context in which he could have annotated the manuscript.
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The careful study of diagrams in illustrated manuscript texts can be extremely illuminating: it not only contributes, of course, to a better understanding of a certain text, but also sheds light on the history and the tradition of the text in question as well as on the history of the manuscripts containing and handing down this text, and hence on the stemmatology of these manuscripts. Nevertheless, the close reading of diagrams in illustrated manuscript texts has long been neglected. This aspect of analyzing a text and its tradition has only recently become popular among scholars.
Ptolemy’s Geography is a productive study subject for this method. The chapters on map projections in the theoretical parts of this work are provided with a set of originally five diagrams: four diagrams in Geogr. I,24 and one diagram in Geogr. VII,6. They are meant to illustrate the complex instructions on how to draw the three projection methods suggested by Ptolemy for tracing a world map or, more precisely, a map of the oikoumene: of the inhabited parts of the world then-known.
In the extant Greek manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography these diagrams appear intercalated into the text and can be found in both textual recensions of the work, Ξ and Ω. In some manuscripts, the diagrams –either all of them, some of them, or only one of them– were omitted. In this case the scribes often left a blank space (a so-called fenestra) between the two text portions where the diagram was supposed to have been placed. Thus the insertion of the diagrams was usually also planned in Geography codices which are completely or partially lacking the diagrams. All these circumstances suggest that the diagrams go back to an old tradition: they were most probably an integral part of the work since its composition ca. 150 CE, although the oldest surviving witnesses of Ptolemy’s Geography date from around the turn of the 13th to the 14th century and were therefore copied far more than one thousand years later.
The diagrams in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography are generally corrupted and defective in various ways: they were obviously continually copied from their respective models. As my examinations showed, they were usually drawn by the scribes, who ordinarily were not trained in cartography, in technical drawing, or in fundamental science; they roughly reproduced what they found in their exemplar, without necessarily understanding it.
We can therefore argue that the distortion of the diagrams in the manuscripts is on the one hand due to a) a lack of graphicacy of the persons who drafted the diagrams. Lack of graphicacy may have also been a reason for leaving them out. On the other hand the deformation of the diagrams is as a result of b) continuous reproduction, i.e. copying.
A closer look at one of the main copyists of Monac. gr. 223 and at his copying activity – his hand has been identified in three other manuscripts – as well as his procedure reveals that we can neither presuppose a direct influence of Akindynos himself nor of persons opposed to him on the production of this manuscript (and therefore on the shorter letter version preserved in it).
Studies on the manuscript transmission of two other Palamite works (Dialogue of an Orthodox and a Barlaamite and Logoi apodeiktikoi) demonstrated that here, too, we deal with two different versions of each or, more precisely, with two different redactions, obviously always authored by Palamas. This seems to corroborate an analogue situation for Epistula III to Akindynos.
The careful study of diagrams in illustrated manuscript texts can be extremely illuminating: it not only contributes, of course, to a better understanding of a certain text, but also sheds light on the history and the tradition of the text in question as well as on the history of the manuscripts containing and handing down this text, and hence on the stemmatology of these manuscripts. Nevertheless, the close reading of diagrams in illustrated manuscript texts has long been neglected. This aspect of analyzing a text and its tradition has only recently become popular among scholars.
Ptolemy’s Geography is a productive study subject for this method. The chapters on map projections in the theoretical parts of this work are provided with a set of originally five diagrams: four diagrams in Geogr. I,24 and one diagram in Geogr. VII,6. They are meant to illustrate the complex instructions on how to draw the three projection methods suggested by Ptolemy for tracing a world map or, more precisely, a map of the oikoumene: of the inhabited parts of the world then-known.
In the extant Greek manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography these diagrams appear intercalated into the text and can be found in both textual recensions of the work, Ξ and Ω. In some manuscripts, the diagrams –either all of them, some of them, or only one of them– were omitted. In this case the scribes often left a blank space (a so-called fenestra) between the two text portions where the diagram was supposed to have been placed. Thus the insertion of the diagrams was usually also planned in Geography codices which are completely or partially lacking the diagrams. All these circumstances suggest that the diagrams go back to an old tradition: they were most probably an integral part of the work since its composition ca. 150 CE, although the oldest surviving witnesses of Ptolemy’s Geography date from around the turn of the 13th to the 14th century and were therefore copied far more than one thousand years later.
The diagrams in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography are generally corrupted and defective in various ways: they were obviously continually copied from their respective models. As my examinations showed, they were usually drawn by the scribes, who ordinarily were not trained in cartography, in technical drawing, or in fundamental science; they roughly reproduced what they found in their exemplar, without necessarily understanding it.
We can therefore argue that the distortion of the diagrams in the manuscripts is on the one hand due to a) a lack of graphicacy of the persons who drafted the diagrams. Lack of graphicacy may have also been a reason for leaving them out. On the other hand the deformation of the diagrams is as a result of b) continuous reproduction, i.e. copying.
A closer look at one of the main copyists of Monac. gr. 223 and at his copying activity – his hand has been identified in three other manuscripts – as well as his procedure reveals that we can neither presuppose a direct influence of Akindynos himself nor of persons opposed to him on the production of this manuscript (and therefore on the shorter letter version preserved in it).
Studies on the manuscript transmission of two other Palamite works (Dialogue of an Orthodox and a Barlaamite and Logoi apodeiktikoi) demonstrated that here, too, we deal with two different versions of each or, more precisely, with two different redactions, obviously always authored by Palamas. This seems to corroborate an analogue situation for Epistula III to Akindynos.
SwissByz is a website with blog run by Renate Burri. Renate Burri is a Swiss classicist with a strong interest in Byzantine Studies, especially Byzantine Manuscript Studies.
The website wishes to contribute to and foster ‘Swiss made’ research in Byzantine Studies (however rather rarely ‘made in Switzerland’). This rich and highly interdisciplinary field of research is still largely neglected and underrepresented at Swiss Universities and in Switzerland.
The blog will document Renate Burri’s current research project “In the Name of the Rose”, a search for unknown, lost, and forgotten Greek manuscripts and texts in the Vatican Library. It is addressed to anybody interested in manuscripts and their rich context such as history, culture, script, materials, literature, language, knowledge etc., and to anybody who is curious.
This edition presents the Third Letter of Gregory Palamas to Gregory Akindynos - a crucial text for the history of the Hesychast conflict - in the two different versions that have come down to us. Besides the first-time synoptic and searchable edition of the two Greek texts, the website provides information and links to the manuscripts, English summaries of both versions, information on the historical background, annotations to the texts and a bibliography.
This edition results from an interdisciplinary collaborative research project with the title “Acindynus and Palamas in Dispute on Divine Energies”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project was established at the Institute of Historical Theology (Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, Switzerland) and ran from January 2015 through March 2019. The research group was headed by Prof. Dr. Katharina Heyden. The digital edition was realised by Dr. Renate Burri (synopsis and editing of Greek texts, website design, preparation of DTD/XML documents, English texts) and Rafael Schwemmer / text & bytes (technical implementation, website design).
This edition results from an interdisciplinary collaborative research project with the title “Acindynus and Palamas in Dispute on Divine Energies”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The project was established at the Institute of Historical Theology (Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, Switzerland) and ran from January 2015 through March 2019. The research group was headed by Prof. Dr. Katharina Heyden. The digital edition was realised by Dr. Renate Burri (synopsis and editing of Greek texts, website design, preparation of DTD/XML documents, English texts) and Raffael Schwemmer / text & bytes (technical implementation, website design).
In this paper, I will present what we can learn from a close reading of Irene’s letters, refer-ring particularly to the author’s ‘factual’ background (e.g. her descent, education etc.) and character (how does she express herself, what emotions are expressed in her letters, what does she reveal about herself?). In a second step, I will analyse the interaction between Irene as a noble Constantinopolitan woman with a certain level of education, and her spiritual father, a maybe slightly younger, well-educated monk with anti-palamite tendencies, in order to better understand what role gender and class played in this relationship. The outcome of these examinations may contribute to a clearer understanding of character construction of historical or fictional (female) characters in Byzantine texts.
Etwa hundert Jahre später gelangte die Geographie des Ptolemaios nach Italien, wo sich die Protagonisten des italienischen Renaissance-Humanismus brennend für dieses Werk interessierten. Was faszinierte sie daran, und welchen Einfluss hatte die Geographie des Ptolemaios auf das damalige Weltbild?
In this paper, I take a closer look at this hitherto hardly studied manuscript of the Iviron Monastery by analysing it in the wider context of the overall manuscript production of Kamariotes, and try to suggest possible reasons for why this manuscript is today in the Georgian Monastery of Iviron on the Holy Mountain.
This paper looks at the impact of the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 on Greek literary heritage and Byzantine book production and their significance in Western and Eastern Europe after the doom of the Byzantine Empire. It focusses on Bessarion’s outstanding role in this regard, but also takes into account other individuals in Italy and Constantinople who contributed to the preservation of the Greek literary heritage.
Genau diesem Aspekt hat sich die Forschung des Wiener Euchologia Projekts (VEP) verschrieben, dessen Vorstellung diesen Vortrag abrunden wird.
In this workshop, I will argue that the overall formative principle of the letter collection is variatio, and look forward to discussing what this principle could mean for the formation of the corpus. Second, I will suggest that these letters might have been performed in theatra and am curious about reactions from the workshop participants on this hypothesis. Last, I will try to offer possible explanations for the scarce manuscript evidence of this work.
Palamas’ dogmatischer Wandel schlug sich auch in der Redaktion und Überlieferung seiner Werke nieder, von denen mehrere in unterschiedlichen Fassungen bekannt sind. Während nicht in jedem Fall geklärt ist, welche Fassung die ursprüngliche bzw. ob jede Fassung auktorial ist, dürfte die Mailänder Handschrift I 24 sup. (Ambr. gr. 457), die hauptsächlich Werke des Palamas enthält, in eindrücklicher Weise dokumentieren, wie der Autor höchst persönlich seine Texte bearbeitete und änderte.
Die genannten Probleme, insbesondere was die Auswahl und Anordnung der Briefe und deren unterschiedlich lange Textfassungen betrifft, scheint das Vorhaben einer neuen Edition vor schier unüberwindbare Probleme zu stellen. So stützen wir uns für Philostrats Briefe nach wie vor auf Textausgaben aus dem vorletzten Jahrhundert: Neben derjenigen Herchers in seinen Epistolographi Graeci (1873, 468–489) und neben Boissonades Edition von 1842 sind vor allem Kaysers Ausgaben von 1844 (editio maior) und 1871 immer noch maßgebend.
Mit einer traditionellen textkritischen Analyse scheinen mir die Fragen nach der Formierung des Briefcorpus und der Beurteilung seiner unterschiedlichen Fassungen kaum lösbar. Könnten sie mit einer kodikologisch-paläographisch-historischen Untersuchung der einzelnen Textzeugen geklärt werden? In welchem inhaltlichen und materiellen Gesamtkontext Philostrats Briefsammlung in den Handschriften auftritt, welche inhaltliche und kodi-kologische Position und Funktion die Briefe im jeweiligen Textzeugen einnehmen und welcher ,Sitz im Leben‘ die einzelnen Handschriften hatten, wurde bisher nie untersucht. Diese Aspekte dürften aber für die offenen Forschungsfragen äußerst aufschlussreich sein.
The quantity and relevance of the output of this research project was not predictable. The best-case scenario, i.e. the discovery of an unknown or the rediscovery of an allegedly lost text or manuscript, did not happen yet. Still, the harvest was far more bountiful than expected as many small but exciting findings demonstrate. They range from an unknown witness of a paraphrasis of poems by Gregory of Nazianzus over a medical treatise on a skin disease to a short text on different names for Sunday, to name but a few examples which will be discussed in this presentation.
Nach der Mitwirkung an einer neuen Edition der ptolemäischen Geographie kam Renate Burri zum Schluss, dass im Fall dieses Werkes die klassische textkritische Methode an ihre Grenzen stößt: Die Geographie, ein vorwiegend aus Namen und Zahlen bestehendes Werk, das außerdem graphische Elemente enthält, war anderen Mechanismen und Problemen der Überlieferung unterworfen als ein herkömmlicher Prosatext. Deshalb nahm Renate Burri in ihrer Doktorarbeit zu den griechischen Handschriften der Geographie des Ptolemaios im Sinne des material turn und in Anlehnung an die New Philology (aber auch in Abgrenzung zu ihr) die einzelnen Textzeugen dieses Werkes näher unter die Lupe. Das Studium der einzelnen Handschriften, die Rekonstruktion ihrer ,Biographie‘ und die Berücksichtigung der Diagramme in der Geographie haben Erstaunliches zum Vorschein gebracht, das mit traditionellem Kollationieren unerkannt geblieben war.
Während der Arbeit an seiner 2017 veröffentlichten Dissertation zur Iberischen Halbinsel bei Ptolemaios stellte Olivier Defaux fest, dass der allgegenwärtige digital turn die Geo-graphie des Ptolemaios mit ihren Tausenden von Koordinatenangaben auch für Forschende interessant macht, die über keine philologischen oder althistorischen Kenntnisse verfügen. Allerdings betrachten interessierte Mathematiker*innen, Programmierer*innen, Geo-graph*innen, ja selbst Wissenschaftshistoriker*innen, deren Forschung sich bisher auf die Moderne beschränkte, den Ortskatalog der ptolemäischen Geographie oder die handschriftlichen Karten des Ptolemaios nicht selten aus einer rein quantitativen, computer-orientierten Perspektive und gehen mit diesen Elementen um wie mit einer Datenbank, ohne ihre Genese zu bedenken. Dieses Ausblenden der eigentlich notwendigen interdisziplinären Perspektive auf das Forschungsobjekt kann zu verzerrten Forschungsergebnissen oder gar zum Scheitern eines Forschungsvorhabens führen.
Vom digital turn und der damit einhergehenden Digitalisierung von Handschriften konnte die 2013 publizierte Arbeit von Renate Burri noch kaum profitieren. Während damals erst vereinzelt Handschriften im Internet zur Verfügung standen, hat sich die Situation in den letzten ca. sechs Jahren radikal geändert. Dennoch argumentiert Renate Burri, dass der digital turn die Konsultation des Originals für jede Art von handschriftenkundlichen Fragen nie erübrigt. Genauso wenig wird sich durch den digital turn die Editionsphilologie erübrigen.
Olivier Defaux sieht im digital turn viel Potenzial für die Alte Geschichte und die Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Gewisse Arbeitsschritte gewinnen durch digitale Ressourcen oder Anwendungen an Effizienz oder werden dadurch erleichtert. Neuartige Visualisierungen oder Berechnungen von Daten werden möglich. Bestimmte Forschungsergebnisse wie geographische Karten oder interaktive Forschungstools, die sich nicht oder schlecht für den Druck eignen, können online publiziert werden. Gerade für das Feld der mathematischen Geographie sind dies allesamt hilfreiche und interessante Optionen. Allerdings ist Olivier Defaux überzeugt, dass die Werke des Ptolemaios auch im Zeitalter der digital bzw. computational humanities nicht erfolgreich untersucht werden können, wenn dabei die philologische und historische Seite vernachlässigt oder gar aus den Augen verloren wird.
This paper tries to shed new light on a document that played a decisive role in the Hesychast Controversy and again caused a fierce quarrel among scholars in the last quarter of the last century. I will examine to what extent an analysis of Monac. gr. 223 and its wider context can contribute to a better understanding of the dispute(s). At the same time, a closer look at Byzantine publication habits in general and the genre of Byzantine letters in particular will allow to reconsider the phenomenon of the two versions of Palamas’ Third Letter to Acindynus.
Die Beobachtungen zur Form des Gesamtcorpus sind wiederum nicht nur für die Erfassung der Funktion dieser Briefsammlung und ihres Zielpublikums aufschlussreich, sondern liefern auch Hinweise auf ihre Popularität und Rezeption im Laufe der Zeit und geben mögliche Erklärungen für die schmale Überlieferung dieses Werkes.
The Workshop will take place realiter (until further notice) and be streamed live. It is open to the public. The final programme, further information on registration and the streaming link will follow on this website and elsewhere in early September.
More information on the research project "In the Name of the Rose" at https://swissbyz.ch
Nicht nur der Inhalt einer Handschrift wird uns interessieren, sondern auch ihre Komposition und was sich aus dieser für den kopierten Text folgern lässt. Der Vortrag wird vermitteln, welche kodikologischen und paläographischen Aspekte einer Handschrift zu beachten sind, welche wichtigsten Tools uns bei der Analyse dieser Komponenten zur Verfügung stehen, inwiefern diese Beobachtungen für die Rekonstruktion der ‚Biographie‘ eines Manuskripts nutzbar gemacht werden können und wie diese ,biographischen‘ Daten zum Verständnis des Objekts als Textzeuge beitragen. Ein besonderes Augenmerk wird auf dem Layout liegen: Die Präsentation des Textes, allfällige Illustrationen, das Verhältnis von Text und Bild, die Präsenz von Paratexten und weitere Phänomene können für das ganzheitliche Erfassen und Verstehen einer Handschrift, ihrer Entstehungsgeschichte und ihrer Funktion als Textzeugin relevant sein.
Die besprochenen Probleme werden nach Möglichkeit mit konkreten Fallbeispielen veranschaulicht. Den Vortrag wird ein kurzer Blick auf die Überlieferung, Rezeption und Präsenz griechischer Texte im lateinisch-sprachigen Westen Europas im Verlauf des Mittelalters abrunden.
Sercan Yandim (Hacettepe University): "Struggle for power is greater than fear of death…"
Ivana Jevtic (Koç University): "Plague in the Byzantine World and Beyond: Artistic Evidence?"
Renate Burri (University of Bern): Chair