Author: Anne-Sophie Rouckhout

The Byzantine Reader’s Experience Between Paratexts and Collections of Excerpts: Reading the Iliad

Posted on 09/06/2022Categories: Blog, Education, Excerpts, Iliad, Memory, Readership, Scholiaby Ottavia Mazzon

The compilation of anthologies of excerpts, that is to say, the selection and transcription of passages deemed important while reading a text, is a common scholarly practice in Byzantium: excerpts were essential to the way Byzantine intellectuals managed information. Very often, collections of excerpts were compiled close to the moment of reading, either simultaneously or shortly after; therefore, they faithfully record the reading experience of their compilers and provide useful insight in the relationship between readers and their books.

One of the largest collections of excerpts from the early Palaeologan period, MS Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III”, II C 32 sheds light on Byzantine intellectuals’ attitude towards paratexts and their role in the context of scholarly reading practices. Neap. II C 32 is the fair copy of earlier notebooks belonging to a group of anonymous scholars who worked in close connection with the «school» of Maximos Planudes; the codex was transcribed around 1330 by the professional scribe Georgios Galesiotes with the purpose of creating an orderly archive of the scattered papers which had circulated for a few years among the members of the group. It contains excerpt-collections from a wide variety of prose texts, from the Bible to the works of some of the most important Church Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom), alongside ancient Greek (pagan) literature, from history to rhetoric to philosophy.

Image 1: MS Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III”, II C 32, f. 296r (upper part).

A close examination of the anthologies of excerpts preserved in Neap. II C 32 shows that the scholars who compiled them were attentive readers of the paratexts of the books they excerpted from: in order to make referencing easier, they annotated not only the names of the authors, but also the titles of the individual works belonging to a corpus (e.g. Demosthenes’ speeches and Plato’s dialogues are all identified in the margins of the folia). Moreover, these same compilers frequently transcribed traditional paratexts (scholia) and regularly added paratexts of their own in their notebooks (usually newly composed scholia, which have been faithfully reproduced in the Neapolitanus).

The last section of Neap. II C 32 holds particular significance in showing the role of paratexts in the reading experience of the group of Byzantine scholars responsible for the materials later gathered in the Neapolitanus. This section, corresponding to ff. 366-371 of the MS, transmits a summary of the Iliad that is entirely composed of traditional paratexts which could be found in the many direct witnesses of the poem: the compiler of the summary put together, one after the other, hypotheseis (i.e. “abstracts”) pertaining to each book of the Iliad and prefaced them with a short text summarizing the cause of the war and the first nine years of the conflict, which they were also reading in the same Homeric codex they were excerpting the rest from.

In the Neapolitanus, the hypotheseis are written in black ink and each of them is preceded by a metrical paratext consisting of one hexameter. All the hexameters are copied in red ink, whose employment conveys their role as titles, and they provide key information to orient readers in the understanding of the summary as a whole: the majority starts with the letter/number of the book and continues with a list of events or a single important fact happening in that book. Here is, as an example, the line prefacing the hypothesis to Book Alpha/One:

Ἄλφα λιτὰς Χρύσου, λοιμὸν στρατοῦ, ἔχθος ἀνάκτων.

Alpha contains [NB: the verb ἔχει is sometimes omitted] the prayers of Chryses, the plague in the army, the quarrel of the kings.[1]
(DBBE Occurrence 18434)

These metrical paratexts working as titles circulated widely in the witnesses of the Iliad[2], as the DBBE shows. Embedded as they were into the traditional paratexts of the Iliad, the hexameters played an essential role in the way Byzantine readers approached the text of Homer: editors, scribes, and individual readers modified them or composed some anew in order to highlight the information they deemed important. The presence of these metrical paratexts in the summary of the Iliad transmitted by Neap. II C 32 is witness to the value attributed to this particular paratext. Since the notebooks on which the Neapolitanus is based were compiled in a school environment, these lines, with their prominent position on each page, could not only work as titles for each section of the summary, but also serve as simple memory aids for the content of each book. If memorized or consulted properly, they could be employed as effective reference tools for the text of Homer.

The summary of the Iliad contained in the Neapolitan codex was compiled on the basis of MS Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana A 181 sup. (Martini-Bassi 74)[3], a palimpsest codex whose scriptio superior dates to the early Palaeologan period, between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century. By comparing Neap. II C 32 and the Ambrosianus, it is possible to observe how the focus of the compiler of the summary was influenced by the layout of the exemplar they were reading; their gaze was likely oriented by a series of expectations on the place(s) where useful information was located and these expectations played a role in their perception of paratexts.

In the Ambrosianus, which transmits the text of the Iliad, the metrical titles are usually found in the blank space after the end of the hypotheseis to each book and the beginning of the actual text, next to the unmetrical titles; sometimes, however, they are written also after one of the hypotheseis, far from the unmetrical title.

Image 2: MS Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, A 181 sup. (Martini-Bassi 74), f. 48v (detail of the bottom half)
Image 3: MS Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, A 181 sup. (Martini-Bassi 74), f. 49r (detail)

At times, the Ambrosianus transmits multiple metrical titles referring to the same book, each one describing the content in a different way. In Image 2 and Image 3 above, one can read the two lines pertaining to book Kappa/Ten, which were written in two different folia of the manuscript, the first one after the first hypothesis to this book, the second one next to the title:

(f. 48v) Κάππα δ’ ἄρ’, ἀμφοτέρων σκοπιαζέμεν ἤλυθον ἄνδρες.

Kappa: men go out on both sides on an exploratory survey.
(DBBE Occurrence 18434)

 

(f. 49r) Κάππα, Ῥήσου τὴν κεφαλὴν ἕλε Τυδέος υἱός.

Kappa: the son of Tydeus (i.e. Diomedes) took the head of Rhesus. (this translation is mine)
(DBBE Occurrence 33887)

Since for the most part the metrical paratexts are copied next to the title of each book, the attention of the compiler of the Naples manuscript tended to be focused on the same section of the page: in this case and all the others, this scholar only copied the line that was right above the beginning of the text of the Homeric book, disregarding the other option(s). This shows that the compiler was familiar with the traditional structure of a witness of the Iliad and, as a consequence, had certain ‘cultural’ expectations about the place(s) where the information they were looking for (i.e. the metrical titles) would be stored (i.e. next to the unmetrical title and nowhere else). Very likely, their knowledge patterns had already been shaped during the years of their education, when they were taught memorization techniques to best acquire and retain notions: in reading an exemplar of the Iliad, they were aware of the importance of the hypotheseis and the metrical titles, but were only ready to perceive them and commit them to memory in accordance with established models of behavior, that is when they were transcribed in their appropriate, ‘expected’ places.

 

Notes

[1] Where not otherwise specified, the translation of the paratext’s lines is that of W.R. Paton, with a few adaptions: Greek Anthology, with a translation by W.R. Paton, Vol. III, London- New York 1925 (Loeb Classical Texts), p. 215 (see the following note).

[2] The individual hexameters are also gathered together and transmitted, in the form of a single poem attributed to Stephen of Byzantium, within the corpus of the Greek Anthology (Anth. Gr. IX 385).

[3] A. Severyns, Pomme de discorde et jugement des déesses, «Phoibos», 5 (1950-1951) [= Mélanges J. Hombert], pp. 145-172; F. Pontani, Il mito, la lingua, la morale: tre piccole introduzioni a Omero, «Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica», 133 (2005), pp. 23-74.

 

Want to read more?

  • Brown-Grant, P. Carmassi, G. Drossbach, A. D. Hedeman, V. Turner and I. Ventura (eds.), Inscribing Knowledge in the Medieval Book: The Power of Paratexts, Berlin-Boston 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513329
  • Canart, P. Les anthologies scolaires commentées de la période des Paléologues, à l’école de Maxime Planude et de Manuel Moschopoulos, in: P. Van Deun and C. Macé (eds.), Encyclopedic trends in Byzantium? Proceedings of the international conference held in Leuven, 6-8 May 2009, Leuven 2011, pp. 297-331
  • Erll, A. Nünning, A. (eds.), Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, Berlin-Boston-New York 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110207262
  • Mazzon, O, Lavorare nell’ombra: Un percorso tra i libri di Giorgio Galesiotes, in: M. Cronier et B. Mondrain (édd.), Le livre manuscrit grec: écritures, matériaux, histoire. Actes du IXe Colloque Internationale de Paléographie Grecque (Paris, 10-15 sept. 2018), Paris 2020, pp. 415-440 (source of image 1, see p. 427)
  • Mazzon, O. Leggere, selezionare e raccogliere excerpta nella prima età paleologa. La silloge conservata nel codice greco Neap. II C 32, Alessandria 2021
  • Morlet, S. (éd.), Lire en extraits, Lecture et production des textes, de l’Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge, Paris 2015

 

About the author

Ottavia Mazzon obtained her PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Padua and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. For the academic year 2021-2022 she is Frances A. Yates Long-term fellow at the Warburg Institute in London. Her research interests intersect the history of the reading and reception of Greek and Latin classics from Byzantium to the Venetian Renaissance, the modes of organization of knowledge, and the dynamics of production and circulation of Greek manuscript books. Her first monograph on the anthologies of excerpts transmitted by MS Neap. II C 32, Leggere, selezionare e raccogliere excerpta nella prima età paleologa, appeared in late 2021 for the Edizioni dell’Orso.

 

 

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DBBE Blog (17/04/2025) Ottavia Mazzon, The Byzantine Reader’s Experience Between Paratexts and Collections of Excerpts: Reading the Iliad. Retrieved from https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/the-byzantine-readers-experience-between-paratexts-and-collections-of-excerpts-reading-the-iliad/.
"Ottavia Mazzon, The Byzantine Reader’s Experience Between Paratexts and Collections of Excerpts: Reading the Iliad." DBBE Blog - 17/04/2025, https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/the-byzantine-readers-experience-between-paratexts-and-collections-of-excerpts-reading-the-iliad/
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"Ottavia Mazzon, The Byzantine Reader’s Experience Between Paratexts and Collections of Excerpts: Reading the Iliad." DBBE Blog - Accessed 17/04/2025. https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/the-byzantine-readers-experience-between-paratexts-and-collections-of-excerpts-reading-the-iliad/
"Ottavia Mazzon, The Byzantine Reader’s Experience Between Paratexts and Collections of Excerpts: Reading the Iliad." DBBE Blog [Online]. Available: https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/the-byzantine-readers-experience-between-paratexts-and-collections-of-excerpts-reading-the-iliad/. [Accessed: 17/04/2025]

 

Book Epigrams and Grammar: Verses in and on Grammar Books

Posted on 24/03/2022Categories: Blog, Education, Grammar, Scholia, Text booksby Febe Schollaert

All epigrams discussed in this blog post are to be found in the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams (last consulted on 04/03/2022).

 


I am a grammatical textbook,
easy to comprehend, easy to take in, focused, plain,
clear, written in good order,
guiding the answers to the question.
For this is the best way to ensure that the
word traders keep together the entire lesson of language.
DBBE Type 5248
Translation by De Vos, De Groot & Rouckhout (2019: 92)[1]

 

Grammar played an important role in Byzantine education, as we can tell from the numerous manuscripts handing down grammatical treatises and other texts used for the teaching of grammar, such as the Homeric epics and tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles.[2] Many such manuscripts are crawling with prose scholia and glosses commenting upon the grammatical aspects of these texts, like orthography or syntax. Quite often they also contain all kinds of metrical paratexts that are (more) closely related to the texts themselves. Just like their prose counterparts, these book epigrams – varying greatly in length – can be found either in the margins of the page or directly before or after the text they are connected to.

Image 1: Athens, EBE, 1077 (f. 1r)

 

A telling example is the epigram we selected to open this blogpost with. In it, a grammatical textbook directly addresses the reader and boasts about being both concise and easily understandable. In order to find out which book is speaking to us here, we need to take a closer look at the manuscripts in which the epigram has come down to us. As it turns out, all occurrences known today appear in the close vicinity of either the Erotemata Grammaticalia (“Grammatical Questions”) or the Schedographia written by the Byzantine grammarian and philologist Manuel Moschopoulos (13th – 14th century).[3] The former ties in neatly with verse 4, which brings to mind a text written in the form of question and answer. In a 15th-century manuscript (Image 1), we can find the epigram preceding this work.

This together with over thirty more text-related book epigrams have been collected and grouped by the DBBE team under the subject “grammar”.

 

 

 

Introductory book epigrams

Image 2: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, gr. 299 (f. 53v)

In several manuscripts, the beginning of a new text is indicated by means of a short metrical title consisting of no more than a single verse. This is also the case with both the Erotemata of Moschopoulos and the Erotemata of Manuel Chrysoloras (14th – 15th c.), another grammatical work written in question-and-answer format. In the manuscript Mon. gr. 299 (Image 2), for example, the text of Chrysoloras’ Erotemata is preceded by the following verse:

 


γραμματικῆς σύνοψις ἠκριβωμένη
Accurate overview of grammar.
DBBE Occurrence 23431
Translation by the DBBE team

 

In another manuscript from the 15th century, the same title is used for the Erotemata of Moschopoulos.

The following epigram introduces – in three different manuscripts – an anonymous grammatical treatise in a similar yet much more elaborate manner:

 


Τάδ᾽ ἐν ἐν συνόψει σοι παρ᾽ ἡμῶν, ὦ φίλος,
γραμματικῆς ἕνεκα τῆς πολυπλάνου·
σὲ δ᾽ οὖν σοφίσαι κἀμὲ καὶ σῶσαι πλέον,
ἡ τοῦ Θεοῦ πηγαία μόνη σοφία.
This is from me to you, my friend, in an overview,
as grammar is notorious for being far-roaming.
May you however be made wise – as well as I – and moreover saved,
by the one and only original wisdom of God.
DBBE Type 3550
Translation by the DBBE team

 

The epigram presents this treatise to the reader as a handy overview (ἐν συνόψει) of grammar, which in its turn is described as πολύπλανος, literally meaning “wandering in all directions”. Although we would not go as far as to consider grammar rules “devious” or even “leading astray”, they can indeed come across as going in all directions and difficult to oversee. Have we not all struggled with them? Luckily, the reader can also rely on the divine source of knowledge, which comes from God.

 

Book epigrams on (the value of) grammar rules

We have detected a strikingly similar imagery in a manuscript from Paris dating from the 14th or 15th century (Image 3). It features a book epigram encouraging the reader to make their way through the many rules of grammar (δίελθε τοὺς κανόνας τῆς γραμματικῆς), which again is called πολυπλανής.

 


Εἴπερ μαθεῖν βούλει, ὦ κάλλιστε φίλε,
τῆς πολυπλανοῦς γραμματικῆς τοὺς ὅρους,
ἤδει δίελθε καὶ κόπῳ τοὺς κανόνας
τοὺς ἀρσενικούς, θηλικούς, οὐδετέρους,
ὅλον τὸ ῥῆμα καὶ πάσας συζυγίας
καὶ τ’ ἄλλα λοιπὸν πάντα τοῦ λόγου μέρη,
ἃ καὶ διδάξει καὶ σαφῶς παραστήσει
τῆς γραμματικῆς ἡ πολύτροφος βίβλος.
If you wish to learn, my dearest friend,
the definitions of the far-roaming grammar,
make your way, both with pleasure and toil, through the rules
concerning the masculine, feminine and neuter,
through all of the verb and all declensions,
and all other parts of speech as well.
These will be both taught and presented clearly
by this well-fed book on grammar.
DBBE Type 33725
Translation by the DBBE team

 

Image 3: Paris, BNF, gr. 36 (f. 206r)

The epigram is found in the right margin of an anonymous treatise concerning different aspects of grammar, including prosody and orthography. The treatise is written in question-and-answer form like the Erotemata of Moschopoulos and Chrysoloras mentioned earlier. This text too is presented as a useful and clear tool, from which the reader will benefit. The book is called “well-fed” (if we accept the conjecture πολύτροφος, formulated to remedy the πολέτοφος to be found in the manuscript), and the reader would therefore expect a voluminous treatise.[4] Ironically, the work that follows is only three pages long. We seem to be dealing with an unfinished copy, written by two different scribes. It is lacking a title and further down the text, some initials are missing.[5] The layout of the epigram itself is actually quite exceptional. It was written vertically, forcing the reader to tilt their head.

The idea that the reader will benefit from these treatises is to be found in another epigram as well, which appears twice in the vicinity of a grammatical work and also contains a didactic message. Whereas grammar in the previous epigrams was called πολύπλανος / πολυπλανής, the book is here compared to a steady, unwavering door (πύλη ἀπλανής) the reader has to pass through. Dispersive as grammar rules may come across sometimes, they do offer a hold.

 

 

Lessons from the margins …

All epigrams mentioned up until now praise the value of the grammatical treatises they are connected to. The following verse scholion, however, is a lesson in grammar on its own (Image 4).

Image 4: Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Palat. gr. 252 (f. 26r)

 


Someone has corrected ἱππῆς by writing a diphthong [i.e., -eis].
But you should write it with an eta [η] in the Attic manner.
For that puppy [i.e., Thuc.] wrote in a most Attic way.
So write all the words of this kind with an eta:
hippês, aristês, Phokaês, but not proper nouns.
Proper nouns alone you should write with a diphthong,
I mean Demostheneis [i.e., Demostheneses] and the like.
DBBE Type 31250
Translation by Kaldellis (2015: 70)[6]

 

It is one of over 50 verse scholia which the famous 12th-century poet and grammarian John Tzetzes himself added in the margins of a 9th- or 10th-century copy of Thucydides’ Histories. In this particular case, Tzetzes comments upon the spelling of ἱππῆς (from ἱππεύς “horserider”) which someone had corrected unjustly into ἱππεῖς. This is far from the only passage where Tzetzes seizes the opportunity to dive into Attic orthography, while ranting at both rival scholars and Thucydides, whom further down the same manuscript he refers to as “a puppy” once again.

 

 

… that can also make the modern reader smile

Tough as grammar rules and their many exceptions may be, they did give rise to jokes as well. A case in point is our last epigram, which is known from the Greek Anthology (AP IX.489). It alludes to the three genders in Greek, by playing with the word παιδίον (“child”), which grammatically speaking is neutre.

 


Γραμματικοῦ θυγάτηρ ἔτεκεν φιλότητι μιγεῖσα
παιδίον ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν, οὐδέτερον.
Having slept with a man
the grammarian’s daughter
gave birth to a child, in turn
masculine, feminine & neuter.
DBBE Type 4453
Translation by Jay (1974: 295)[7]

 

A variant of this epigram is written in the upper margin of a 14th- or 15th-century manuscript from Milan containing various grammatical works. It precedes the Disticha Catonis translated in Greek by Maximos Planoudes (c. 1255 – c. 1305). The work itself – a collection of maxims – is also accompanied by glosses and scholia. One could wonder whether this epigram is perhaps intended as a playful counterpart of these more serious notes. This last example shows that there is still a lot more to be discovered in the manuscript margins. The DBBE team gladly contributes to uncover such hidden testimonies of readership in Byzantium.

 

Notes

[1] I. De Vos, S. De Groot, A. Rouckhout 2019, “I am a Grammatical Textbook”. Towards a Critical Edition of a Deceivingly Simple Book Epigram, in T. Scheijnen, B. Verhelst (eds.), Parels in schrift. Huldeboek voor Marc De Groote, Ghent, 91-94.

[2] On the importance of grammar and the transmission of grammatical works, see for example:

  • (for the 9th-12th c.) F. Ronconi 2012, Quelle grammaire à Byzance? La circulation des textes grammaticaux et son reflet dans les manuscrits, in G. De Gregorio (ed.), La produzione scritta tecnica e scientifica nel medioevo: Libro et documento tra scuole e professioni. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studio dell’Associazione italiana dei Paleografi e Diplomatisti Fisciano – Salerno (28-30 settembre 2009), Spoleto, 63-110.
  • S. Papaioannou 2021, Theory of Literature, in S. Papaioannou (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature, New York, 75-109.

An elaborate study of some textbooks of the Palaeologan Period (13th-14th c.) can be found in F. Nousia, 2016, Byzantine Textbooks of the Palaeologan Period, Vaticano. (Further reading concerning the earlier Byzantine period can be found in the introduction of this work).

[3] For a more detailed discussion of this epigram as well as an overview of the manuscripts in which it has been preserved, see De Vos, De Groot & Rouckhout (2019: 91-94).

[4] A possible alternative could be πολυτρόφος (“nourishing”) – with an accent on the paenultimate – which would refer to the usefulness of the work and fits in the overall message of this epigram.

[5] Information on the text courtesy of Andrea Cuomo, who also noted some similarities with scholia on the grammarian Dionysios Thrax.

[6] A. Kaldellis, 2015, Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians, Abingdon and New York.

[7] P. Jay, 1974, The Greek Anthology and Other Ancient Greek Epigrams: A Selection in Modern Verse Translations, London.

 

Want to read more?

 

About the author

This blogpost was written by Febe Schollaert within the framework of an internship at the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams. She holds a master’s degree in “Greek and Latin Linguistics and Literature” and is currently studying for a master’s degree in “Historical Languages and Linguistics” at Ghent University. Her research interests include narratology; textual criticism and Greek palaeography, with special interest in Byzantine poetry about grammar, in particular orthography. Her first master thesis consists of a study of the orthographical kanones by Niketas of Herakleia (11th-12th c.). She currently focuses on another Byzantine orthographical kanon (transmitted under the names of (Ptocho-)Prodromos, Mazaris or Galaction), and some issues scholars are faced with when editing such a text.

 

“I would like to thank the members of the DBBE team for their critical proof-reading of this blog and for sharing their insights. The translations of types 5629, 3350 and 33725 cited in this contribution are also the result of a collaboration of the DBBE team, to whom I am very grateful for their input. Special thanks goes to Ilse De Vos, Rachele Ricceri and Anne-Sophie Rouckhout, who guided me throughout the whole process of the writing of this blog and whose feedback was invaluable.”

 

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DBBE Blog (17/04/2025) Febe Schollaert, Book Epigrams and Grammar: Verses in and on Grammar Books. Retrieved from https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/book-epigrams-and-grammar-verses-in-and-on-grammar-books/.
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"Febe Schollaert, Book Epigrams and Grammar: Verses in and on Grammar Books." DBBE Blog - Accessed 17/04/2025. https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/book-epigrams-and-grammar-verses-in-and-on-grammar-books/
"Febe Schollaert, Book Epigrams and Grammar: Verses in and on Grammar Books." DBBE Blog [Online]. Available: https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/book-epigrams-and-grammar-verses-in-and-on-grammar-books/. [Accessed: 17/04/2025]

 

Launch DBBE Blog: Writing From the Margins

Posted on 24/03/2022

Spring has arrived, and so has our brand-new DBBE blog! 🌞🤩

We are excited to launch Writing From the Margins, accessible at https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/blog/. We have designed this blog as a space to widely disseminate ongoing research on Byzantine book epigrams. In the blog, you can read the fascinating stories behind some interesting, often little-known epigrams that feature in Byzantine manuscripts and that are recorded in our database.

In a first phase, this blog will primarily host posts written on the basis of the lectures delivered within the Speaking From the Margins series. In addition, we welcome ideas for contributions from scholars, teachers and students on any topics related to metrical paratexts.

The blog posts will be published on a regular basis and will address a broad audience, appealing to both specialists and non-specialists. We encourage you to share the blog posts among your (social) networks and look forward to reading your comments.

The first blog post that we publish has been written by Febe Schollaert, MA student at Ghent University, in the framework of an internship at DBBE. Her contribution provides an overview of book epigrams on grammar.

Eager to write a post for our blog? 🖋 Don’t hesitate to reach out! 📧

Epigrams in the picture: World Poetry Day

Posted on 21/03/2022

Today, on the first day of Spring, we celebrate World Poetry Day! The DBBE is a huge treasury of poems that were written down centuries ago in the margins of medieval manuscripts. What better opportunity to put another one of those fascinating book epigrams in the spotlight? 😍
This year, we particularly feel the need to remember what World Poetry Day is all about: seeking beauty. The verses below are part of an epigram that compares the book it introduces to a beautiful garden full of blossoming flowers and trees. 🌸🌳 Books can and should be an oasis of peace.

Paris, Coislin 264, f. 1r

 

✒️ Ἔχουσιν οἱ λειμῶνες ἄνθη ποικίλα
καὶ παντοδαπά, πολλὰ καὶ διάφορα·
τούτων τὰ μὲν τέρπουσι τὴν θεωρίαν,
εὐωδιάζει τὰ δὲ τὴν ῥῖνα μόνην,
ἄλλα δὲ τὸν φάρυγγα καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν
τρέφουσι, γλυκαίνουσιν οὐκ ἀθεσφάτως.
Οὗτος δ’ ὁ κῆπος, ἐξ Ἰωάννου φέρων
καρποὺς πεπείρους, δαψιλεῖς τὰς ἰκμάδας,
αὐχεῖ χορηγεῖν καὶ πρέμνων εὐμορφίας
φύλλων ἐν αὐτοῖς εὐχλοούντων ἐνδρόσων,
ἐξ ὧν τὸ θάλλον ὡραΐζει τὴν χάριν

 

📖 The meadows have various flowers
from different origin, many and diverse.
Some of them are joyful to look at,
some have only a pleasant perfume,
others feed and sweeten divinely
the throat and the stomach.
This garden, bearing fruit from John,
ripe and full of juice,
is proud to provide also well-shaped trees
with green leaves covered with dew,
whose blossoming beautifies the grace.

 

 

🌐 https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/3069

These verses open a long poem of 102 (!) verses, the first in a poetic cycle of four metrical paratexts on John Klimax and his ‘Ladder of Divine Ascent’, written at the end of the sixth century or in the first half of the seventh century. The epigram is transmitted in four manuscripts and functions as a spiritual preparation to the ‘Ladder’. In this epigram, the book is metaphorically described as a garden: the trees are the moral lessons expressed by the words of Klimax, i.e. the branches of the tree. An extended allegory follows, evoking an idyllic place where birds dwell under a rising and shining sun.

Mosaic in the apse of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe (Ravenna), depicting Saint Apollinaris in a green valley with rocks, bush, plants, sheep and birds.

4 March 2022: Workshop on Digital Humanities

Posted on 24/02/2022

The Argentine Committee of Byzantine Studies (CAEBiz) cordially invites you to its Online workshop on Digital Humanities. The meeting will be co-ordinated by José Maksimczuk (Universität Hamburg – CSMC) and Tom Gheldof (KU Leuven) and will take place on Friday, March 4, 2022, 14.00 CET (= 10:00 Buenos Aires).

 

Program

Session 1 (14.00-15.30 CET / 10.00-11.30 BsAs)

  • Gimena del Rio Riande – Gabriel Calarco (IIBICRIT), “Digital Humanities in Argentina: Past, Present and Future”
  • Sylvia Melzer (Universität Hamburg – CSMC), “Federated Search in Manuscript Databases”

Session 2 (15.45-17.15 CET / 11.45-13.15 BsAs)

  • Gianmario Cattaneo (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale), “Towards an Open-Access Database of Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis: The DigilibLT and JuNO Projects”
  • Colin Swaelens (University of Ghent), “You shall know a verse by the company it keeps. Detecting orthographic and semantic similarity between epigrams”

Session 3 (17.30-19.00 CET / 13.30-15.00 BsAs)

  • Tom Gheldof (KU Leuven), “A virtual tour of the Trismegistos metadataverse”
  • Lena Hofmann (Universität Hamburg), “Etymologika: towards a multi-linked digital edition of the Greek text”

 

The workshop will be held via Zoom (no registration is required):

https://uni-hamburg.zoom.us/j/66093457970?pwd=N0h3ZjM4VFYzTlFJQWVXVUpUMmxIZz09

  • Meeting ID: 660 9345 7970
  • Passcode: 23868106

All information can be found on the website of the CAEBiz.

Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series

Posted on 02/02/2022

We are delighted to announce that the Speaking from the Margins lecture series is about to enter into its third season! The new Spring 2022 series will include five online lectures, and you are all warmly invited to attend.

As you may know, the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams project, hosted at Ghent University (www.dbbe.ugent.be), organises regular online lectures on the topic of book epigrams. These lectures intend to deepen our knowledge of a variety of book epigrams and to broaden our horizon about their contexts of use and production.

As we continue to learn through this series, book epigrams are testimonies to a long and often eventful history of reading, writing and interpretation in Byzantine culture. At the same time, they are fascinating (but sometimes overlooked) works of poetic art. Their study allows us to understand the transmission of texts and the book culture of Byzantium, in exchange with neighboring cultures.

The lectures will take place at 4pm (CET) and will be accessible to everyone via Zoom. The recordings of all the previous online lectures are available on the DBBE YouTube channel.

More information and links to the individual lectures can be found here.

Please feel free to spread the word and mark these dates in your calendar!

  • Thursday 17 February 2022
    Brad Hostetler, Ekphrasis and Epigrams on Byzantine Art
  • Thursday 17 March 2022
    Nina Sietis, Reading ‘la plume à la main’: Case Studies of Secondary Metrical Paratexts
  • Thursday 21 April 2022
    Luise Marion Frenkel, The Diaphanous Reputation of Late Antique Patristic Authors on the Byzantine Folio
  • Tuesday 17 May 2022
    Manolis Patedakis, Some Aspects of Theodore Prodromos’ Poetry in the Tetrasticha on Chapters From the Old and New Testament
  • Tuesday 14 June 2022
    Aglae Pizzone, Patrons and Heroes in the Book Epigrams of the Voss. Gr. Q1

 

Epigrams in the picture: Merry Christmas!

Posted on 25/12/2021

The DBBE team wishes you all joyful Christmas holidays and many heart-warming moments with your loved ones! 🎄🎅

Some time ago, we shared the illuminations – and their accompanying verses – of Good Friday, Easter, the Ascension of Christ and Pentecost from the 14th-century Gospel Athos, Mone Batopediou 937. (If you missed them, have a look in our “epigrams from the picture” album!) But there are more amazing images to be found in this codex, e.g. this one on f. 15v, which depicts the Nativity of Christ. As usual, it is captioned by a pair of verses:

 

✒️ Ὅραμα φρικτὸν φρῖξον ὧδε πᾶς βλέπων·
Χριστὸς βροτωθεὶς ἐν φάτνῃ κεῖται βρέφος.

 

📖 Jeder, der du hier den schaudervollen Anblick siehst, erschaudere!
Christus, sterblich geworden, liegt als Kind in der Krippe.

 

🌐 https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/occurrences/20357
📸 A. Rhoby, 2018, Ausgewählte Byzantinische Epigramme in Illuminierten Handschriften. Wien: 642

Epigrams in the picture: International Music Day

Posted on 04/10/2021

🎵 Time to celebrate International Music Day on the 1st of October! This day has been organised since 1975 by the International Music Council. This year, we are putting a spotlight on a famous lyric poet from ancient times: Pindar!

This poet, who was active in the 5th century BCE, was still popular in Byzantine times, as the following book epigram shows. The poem praises Pindar for the musical gift with which he artfully composed his odes, hymns and other kinds of songs. It opens with a comparison to show how much Pindar surpasses all others and then refers to an anecdote we also read in ancient biographies on the poet. It tells the story of how a bee once landed on the poet’s lips, after he had fallen asleep on Mount Helicon, and made a honeycomb. That would be the reason why Pindar became a poet of honey-like verses. 🍯 The last two verses bring up another mythological story that ancients have written about Pindar. They said that the satyr god Pan was once heard singing a song of Pindar. What more praise could a mortal poet hope for? 🎼

 

🖋️ Νεβρείων ὁπόσον σάλπιγξ ὑπερίαχεν αὐλῶν,
τόσσον ὑπὲρ πάσας ἔκραγε σεῖο χέλυς·
οὐδὲ μάτην ἁπαλοῖς περὶ χείλεσιν ἑσμὸς ἐκεῖνος
ἔπλασε κηρόδετον, Πίνδαρε, σεῖο μέλι.
Μάρτυς ὁ Μαινάλιος κερόεις θεὸς ὕμνον ἀείσας
τὸν σέο καὶ νομίων λησάμενος δονάκων.

 

📖 As much as the trumpet out-peals the fawn-bone flute,
so much does thy lyre out-ring all others.
It was not idly, Pindar, that that swarm of bees
fashioned the honeycomb about thy tender lips.
I call to witness the horned god of Arcady,
who chanted one of thy hymns and forgot his reed-pipe.

 

🌐 https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/5347
📸 http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_1752_f089v

 

 

This epigram is the second of a small collection of similar epigrams. These laudatory epigrams on Pindar are found in the Anthologia Graeca (16.305 etc.) and composed by Antipatros of Thessaloniki. Antipatros was a poet in the 1st century BCE. Therefore the archaic Greek and metre of his poems were nothing like the Byzantine language. In this 15th-century London, Harley 1752 (https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/manuscripts/14999), they precede the text of his Olympian Odes but were written by a different hand than the main text. It is not uncommon that several book epigrams were collected on a separate folio like this one. This shows that Byzantine readers also read and appreciated the epigrams independently from the text, as e.g. DBBEing Sien De Groot writes in her doctoral thesis.

 

🌐 Curious for more of these laudatory epigrams? Check out https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/5344 , https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/5349, https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/5351, https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/3840!

Epigrams in the picture: Nativity of Mary

Posted on 08/09/2021

📅 Today, the eighth of September, is the Christian feast day on which the birth of the Holy Virgin Mary is celebrated. In the canonical biblical books no mention is made of Mary’s family background, but the apocryphal Gospel of James (5:2) states that she was the child of Anne and Joachim.

👤 Theodore Prodromos, a twelfth-century Byzantine poet, wrote a series of poems about important biblical events. One of these poems is dedicated to Mary’s birth. Mary’s mother Anne is in a peculiar position, Prodromos says: she is famous because of her child, and not the other way around.

 

🖋️ Ἐκ πατέρων παίδεσσι προήλυθεν εὐγενὲς εὖχος,
ἠυτ’ ἀπὸ κρήνης κάλλος ποταμοῦ προχοῇσιν·
Ἄννα δὲ τἀνάπαλιν κούρης ἀπὸ παιδὸς ἀγᾶται,
ἣ Θεὸν ὑψιθόωκον ἑαῖς ἐνὶ δέκτο λαγόσσιν.

 

📖 Children derive their noble glory from their parents,
just like the beauty of a river flows forth from its source.
Anne, conversely, is admired because of her daughter,
who received God, seated on His high throne, in her womb.

🌐 https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/6858

 

The poem occurs once as a book epigram, in the manuscript British Library Add. 5117, f. 10v. This gospel book has been digitized by The British Library and can be found on their website: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_5117_f010v

💡 The Paratexts of the Bible project offers an extensive overview of the content of this manuscript: https://www.manuscripta-biblica.org/manuscript/…. On folio 10v you can find our poem.

📷 The image shows our poem as it is found in the London manuscript. Above it you can see a beautiful miniature depicting the birth of Mary from another manuscript, the 10th c. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 22: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/.

Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series

Posted on 03/09/2021

Perhaps you have participated in, or heard about, the first series of online lectures on the topic of book epigrams, organized by The Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams project, hosted at Ghent University (www.dbbe.ugent.be). This series, of which the online format was initially prompted by  health measures, contributed greatly to our knowledge of a variety of forms and types of book epigrams, and invited interesting interdisciplinary exchanges.

Therefore, we are delighted to announce the programme of a second series of Speaking From the Margins, which will include four online lectures. We keep the focus on book epigrams in a broad sense, bringing together speakers across the scholarly spectrum.

Book epigrams continue to elicit interest from many angles. Byzantine manuscripts regularly contained colophons, scribal prayers, dedicatory pieces, and other “paratexts” in verse. These small (or sometimes long) poems give us unique insights into the interests, ideologies and emotions of scribe, patron, and/or reader. They are testimonies to a long and often eventful history of reading and interpretation in Byzantine culture, and at the same time, they are fascinating (but sometimes overlooked) works of poetic art.  

 

The lectures will take place at 4pm (CET) and will be accessible to everyone via Zoom. The recordings of all the previous online lectures are available on the DBBE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm085S1xRlDi5LQ5t5NMRFw. 

More information and links to the individual lectures can be found on: https://www.projectdbbe.ugent.be/lectures/. 

 

Please save these dates in your calendar: