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Locating Greek Manuscripts Through Paratexts: Examples from the Library of Cardinal Bessarion and Other Manuscript Collections

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Locating Greek Manuscripts Through Paratexts: Examples from the Library of Cardinal Bessarion and Other Manuscript Collections Vito Lorusso Locating Greek Manuscripts through Paratexts: Examples from the Library of Cardinal Bessarion and other Manuscript Collections Aristotle discussed motion right at the beginning of Book 3 of Physics. […] Having completed his account of the elements and the other causes […] later on he investigates and teaches […] space and time. […] For a body is in a space, and motion happens to a body, and time is present in motion. Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 4 – Prooemium (passim) x 1 Preliminary remarks: Theory and materials In this paper I study the temporal and spatial features characterising a repre- sentative selection of Greek manuscripts belonging to the Byzantine tradition. In particular, I focus on codices produced either in Byzantine workshops (alias scriptoria) from the Middle Ages (610–1453 CE) or in Italy, particularly in Rome in the workshop centred around Cardinal Bessarion (1403–1472), one of the most influential Greek scholars and manuscript collectors in the Renaissance period.1 Out of a total of thirteen codices examined here, twelve are kept in European collections today: one in the Laurentian Library in Florence, five in the Vatican Library, five in the National Library of St Mark’s in Venice and one in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Another is kept in an Egyptian collection, Sinaiticus gr. 180, held at the Monastery of Saint Catherine (South Sinai).2 The earliest of these || The research for this article was carried out within the scope of the work conducted by the SFB 950 ‘Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa’ / Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cul- tures (CSMC), Hamburg, funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsge- meinschaft, DFG). 1 For a very general overview of Cardinal Bessarion’s life, see Hintzen 2012: 93–95. 2 These codices contain a variety of texts: the four Gospels, liturgical texts (consisting mostly of those pericopes from the four Gospels usually read during religious services), theological and philosophical treatises and scientific works. In particular, the manuscripts currently held in Ven- © 2016 Vito Lorusso, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 224 | Vito Lorusso manuscripts dates back to 964 (Vaticanus gr. 1591), whereas the latest was com- pleted in 1552 (Vaticanus gr. 588). In this respect, this corpus attests to the unin- terrupted production of manuscripts that characterised the scholarly environ- ment of both the Greek–Byzantine world and the Italian peninsula from the Byzantine Middle Ages to the Renaissance, even after the printing revolution.3 With regard to time and space, the corpus of selected manuscripts, although ra- ther limited in size, is representative of a plethora of common phenomena char- acterising the Byzantine manuscript culture. Some of these manuscripts have already been studied by modern scholars.4 However, little effort has been made to elucidate the circumstances of their pro- duction. To carry out an investigation of this nature, the paratexts of these man- uscripts will play a central role in this enquiry. In fact, as borderlands of the text, paratexts are possibly the main sources from which one can retrieve information about the temporal and spatial context in which manuscripts were produced and used. In particular, paratexts help reconstruct the history of an object that might have passed through several hands on what may have been a long journey before reaching the library in which it is preserved today.5 As for the corpus analysed here, the main paratexts providing explicit infor- mation about the temporal and spatial features of manuscripts are colophons and || ice and Vienna are the main focus of research project C06 at the Centre for the Study of Manu- script Cultures. The manuscript held in Vienna was written by scribes affiliated to Cardinal Bes- sarion’s scriptorium, whereas the five Venice codices belong to the manuscript legacy donated to the Republic of Venice by the Cardinal himself in 1468 (see Labowsky 1979: 3–34). 3 On the enduring Byzantine practice of transmitting Ancient Greek literary, philosophical and scientific texts through manuscripts, see Brockmann 2014: 9–12. 4 For the Vatican manuscripts, see Follieri 1969; for Sinaiticus gr. 180, see Harlfinger/Rein- sch/Sonderkamp 1983. 5 Genette 1987: 7: ‘[Le] texte se présente rarement à l’état nu, sans le renfort et l’accompagne- ment d’un certain nombre de productions, elles-mêmes verbales ou non, comme un nom d’au- teur, un titre, une préface, des illustrations, dont on ne sait pas toujours si l’on doit ou non con- sidérer qu’elles lui appartiennent, mais qui en tout cas l’entourent et le prolongent […] pour le présenter […] pour le rendre présent, pour assurer sa présence au monde, sa “réception” et sa consommation, sous la forme […] d’un livre’ (‘this text is rarely presented in an unadorned state, unreinforced and unaccompanied by a certain number of verbal or other productions, such as an author’s name, a title, a preface or illustrations. And although we do not always know whether these productions are to be regarded as belonging to the text, in any case they surround it and extend it, […] in order to present it […] to make it present, to ensure the text’s presence in the world, its “reception” and its consumption in the form […] of a book’; translation by Lewin 1997). Locating Greek Manuscripts through Paratexts | 225 subscriptions, where we can find dates and toponyms.6 These data can be further integrated with other paratexts, such as dedication poems, ownership marks, ex- egetical notes and page numbering which can help reconstruct the social context of scribal activity and thus contribute to locating manuscripts. When the data found in paratexts are not accurate enough to allow full loca- tion of the manuscripts with which they are associated, this does not mean that they cannot provide other useful information about the manuscripts. There are in fact several tools – philological, palaeographical and codicological – that allow the retrieval of information about time and space, albeit in very general terms. In this respect, peculiarities of the language, writing conventions and the number- ing of pages and quires, etc. represent very valuable sources of information. In the following two sections, I will discuss the data concerning time and space as they are provided by the paratexts of the corpus under consideration. Further details about the manuscripts containing those paratexts are compiled and discussed in the Appendix. 2 Time In Greek manuscripts, dates usually contain indications of the year (Byzantine year, lunar and solar cycles, and the 15-year cycle called indiction), month and day when manuscripts were completed. Furthermore, the name of the weekday and the hour of the day are also sometimes mentioned. The distribution of the date elements does not follow a fixed pattern, but varies freely, as we can see from the following three examples: || 6 For an examination of the problems surrounding the term ‘colophon’, see Reynhout’s (2006: 20–25) study of colophons in Latin manuscripts. The term ‘colophon’ derives from the Greek noun κολοφών (kolophṓn), meaning ‘summit, top, finishing touch’. We are well informed about the etymology of the word ‘colophon’ by Strabo, the Greek geographer and historian (62 BCE– 23/24 CE). In his work Geography (XIV 1.28), Strabo says that the inhabitants of Colophon on the Aegean coast of modern Turkey once possessed notable naval and cavalry forces. In particular, Colophonians were known for their superior cavalry. According to a widespread popular senti- ment, as reported by Strabo, whenever a war reached a state of deadlock, the intervention of the Colophonians’ cavalry brought it to an end. Thus, as Strabo remarks, ‘arose the proverb, “he put Colophon to it”, which is quoted when a sure end is put to any affair’. On the other hand, the term ‘subscription’ is by no means synonymous with ‘colophon’. In this regard, the Greek case rather suggests that in manuscript studies the term ‘colophon’ should definitely be preferred to the term ‘subscription’, which must only be used for the signature written at the end of a work; see e.g. Agati 2009: 288–289. 226 | Vito Lorusso colophon of Vaticanus gr. 354 ἐγράφη ἡ τιμία δέλτος [...] μηνὶ Μαρτίῳ α΄ ἡμέρᾳ ε΄ ὥραϛ ἔτους ˏϛυνζ ἰνδικτιῶνος ζ΄ This valuable book was written […] on 1 March on Thursday at the sixth hour (noon) of the year 6457 (949 CE), the seventh year of the indiction. colophon of Vaticanus gr. 1591 [...] τέρμα πυκτίδος γραφὲν [...] μηνὶ Δεκεμβρίῳ κδ΄ ἡμέρᾳ σαββάτῳ ὥρᾳ ϛ΄ ἰνδικτιῶνος η΄ ἔτους ˏϛυογ σελήνης κύκλου ιγ΄ The end of the book written […] on Saturday, 24 December at the sixth hour (noon) in the eighth year of the indiction of the year 6473 (964 CE), the 13th year of the lunar cycle. invocation in the subscription of Laurentianus Conv. Soppr. 39 μνήσθητι, Κύριε, Λουκᾶ [...] τῷ γράψαντι ἐν ἔτει ˏϛχιγ΄ ἰνδικτιῶνος γ΄μηνὶ Ἰουνίῳ ιζ΄ Remember me, oh Lord, the scribe Lukas […] 17 June 6613 (1105 CE), the third year in the indictional cycle. As is already evident from these examples, the year is the most complex among the dating elements as it can be expressed according to various reckonings. As a rule, Greek paratexts follow the Byzantine calendar, a system which came into being during the tenth century. This refers to the date of the creation of the world as the starting point for counting the remaining years. The Byzantines called this date either ἔτη γενέσεως κόσμου κατὰ Ῥωμαίους (‘years from the creation of the world according to the Romans’)7 or ἔτος κτίσεως κόσμου/ἔτος κόσμου (‘year from the foundation of the world/year of the world’, Latin: Annus mundi), fixing the creation of the world at 5508 years before Christ’s birth.
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