Categorie: Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams

The last lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series will be given by Aglae Pizzone (University of Southern Denmark).

Aglae Pizzone is a byzantinist with a training in classics. In her research she focuses on cultural history and history of the ideas. She is currently associate professor in Medieval Literature at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study, hosted by the University of Southern Denmark. She is interested in autography, self-commentaries in the Greek Middle Ages as well as in the Byzantine commentaries on Hermogenes. She has recently discovered new autograph notes by John Tzetzes in the Voss. Gr. Q1. She is PI in the MSCA Doctoral Network AntCom. From Antiquity to community: rethinking classical heritage through citizens humanities (2023-2027). Recent publications include Self-authorization and Strategies of Autography in John Tzetzes, Greek roman and Byzantine Studies, 60.4 (2020) 652-690; ‘Tzetzes and the prokatastasis: a tale of people, manuscripts, and performances’, in Prodi E. (ed.), ΤΖΕΤΖΙΚΑΙ ΕΡΕΥΝΑΙ. Bologna: Eikasmos, 2022, 49-104; and the volume, co-edited with Douglas Cairns, Martin Hinterberger and Matteo Zaccarini, Emotions through Time: From Greece to Byzantium. Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck, 2022.

Abstract

Before the composition of the Histories, Tzetzes’ commentary on Aphthonios and Hermogenes in political verse, with its scope and sheer extension, was certainly meant to be the most representative among his mature work. It is therefore no surprise that the Vossianus Gr. Q1, a contemporary, “bespoke” witness of the commentary, is equipped with a series of metrical and prose paratexts providing details on the genesis of this specific copy. They are to be found at fol. 30^r, after the end of the commentary on Aphthonios (6 hexameters), and at fols. 111^v–112^r after the end of the commentary on the four Hermogenian treatises and before the section of the Logismoi preserved by the manuscript (respectively 10 hexameters and 24 dodecasyllables). At fol. 112^r there is also a prose note, detailing the problems encountered by Tzetzes after handing over the requested copy to its commissioners. The longer hexametric poem provides us with information about the commissioner, one Nikephoros who might be the mystikos Nikephoros Serblias mentioned in the letter-collection. It also describes Tzetzes in dialogue with the Muse, whom he persuades to dwell in the “lower regions” of poetry in political verse. The talk will walk the audience through these paratexts, illustrating their function both within the specific textual organization of the Vossianus Gr. Q1 and more broadly against Tzetzes’ poetics.

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 14 June 2022, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/92420884710?pwd=aFprM2FpamdEN0ZKK2c3ZTJSQkZMQT09.

• Meeting ID: 924 2088 4710
• Passcode: r7BFw3Bv

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The fourth lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series will be given by Manolis Patedakis (University of Crete).

Manolis S. Patedakis is Assistant Professor in Byzantine Philology. He completed his undergraduate (B.A.) and first level of postgraduate studies (M.A.) at the Department of Philology, University of Crete; he finished his dissertation for the doctoral degree (D.Phil.) at the University of Oxford in 2004, under the title “Athanasios I Patriarch of Constantinople (1289-1293, 1303-1309): A critical edition with introduction and commentary of selected unpublished works”. Between September 2007 and May 2008, he was Research Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (Trustees for Harvard University), Washington, D.C. His special interests focus on texts and literature of the Palaeologan period, epigraphy and manuscript culture from medieval and early modern Crete, and Symeon the New Theologian. His publications include editions of Greek literary texts and inscriptions, including of the writings of Patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople.

Abstract

The collection of poems by Theodore Prodromos known as the Tetrastichs both on the Old and the New Testament preserves certain interesting aspects as regarding the aesthetics and the spirit of his. Simple comments on biblical incidents to a more perplexed criticism addressed to sacred figures, monologues and dialogues –which sometimes become more dramatic– coloured with a sense of humour, or possible sarcastic references to the poet himself, are only a few amongst the attributes that we can mention for this group of poems. As the narration moves from the Old to the New Testament the reader wonders whether the logic slightly changes, and the new spirit of Christian art and art of speech also allows further connections between Prodromos’ poetics and other artistic and cultural means in twefth century Constantinople and Byzantium.

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 17 May 2022, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/94744052849?pwd=SndUT3NWd3FWZFBWbjNlbUJxSENaQT09.

• Meeting ID: 947 4405 2849
• Passcode: ka88aW3p

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The third lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series will be given by Luise Marion Frenkel (University of São Paulo).

Luise Marion Frenkel has been assistant professor of classical Greek language and literature at the University of São Paulo since 2013. She holds one PhD in Mathematics from this university and one in Divinity from the University of Cambridge. She has been a visiting fellow of the British School at Rome and of ITSEE (Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing) at the University of Birmingham. She has collaborated with a number of research groups, such as ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ in Erfurt, ‘Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ in Tübingen and ‘Polyphony of Late Antique Christianity’ in Frankfurt. She has been a visiting scholar at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. Her interests centre on orality, entextualisation and the transmission and reception of ancient texts. Most of her publications address the historiography of fourth- to seventh-century religious controversies in the Eastern Roman Empire and beyond.

Abstract

Manuscripts of most fourth- and fifth-century Christian leaders, thinkers, rhetors, historians and poets have remarkably empty margins, and DBBE suggests that canonical authors and their works were not a favourite subject for poets. Still, a number of book epigrams, often added by later hands, can be found. Surveying the book epigrams which can be linked to Origen, Eusebios of Caesarea, Athanasius of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrrhus currently in DBBE, some tentative conclusions will be drawn about the relevance of text-related poems on Byzantine readers and audiences. Then, some occurrences found in Paris. gr 451, Florence Plut. 70, 7 and Basiliensis gr. A III 4 will be discussed, pointing to new avenues for DBBE and all interested in the transmission and Byzantine reception of patristic authors.

Practical information

Date & time: Thursday 21 April 2022, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/99015767396?pwd=S3dUQWdlNmJudWhNanRiUitNakxKZz09.

• Meeting ID: 990 1576 7396
• Passcode: u88fyAzq

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The second lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series will be given by Nina Sietis (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio).

Nina Sietis is currently Assistant Professor (Ricercatrice a tempo determinato) at University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, were she contributes to the activities of the project MeMo – Memory of Montecassino (https://www.memo.pyle.it/) and teaches History of the Book. Her research interests lie primarily in Greek palaeography and codicology: she published papers and gave talks concerning different topics over the long course of Greek writing history.

Abstract

Medieval men used to read the manuscripts they came across «la plume à la main» and to leave notes on them. These texts are invaluable evidence for understanding interests and habits of readers during the Middle Ages. The aim of my paper is to show how metrical annotations added by later readers, namely what I call ‘secondary metrical paratexts’, offer an invaluable insight into the reconstruction of the links between different manuscripts and textual traditions. I will firstly focus on a prolific but anonymous reader from the late 11th century and the manuscripts he owned. The last part of my speech will be devoted to some notes added in the margins of manuscripts of the Monastery of St. John Prodromos of Petra in Constantinople.

Practical information

Date & time: Thursday 17 March 2022, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/97360235794?pwd=YzB6djIzT3FqWDJHb2VNb05BcmZOZz09.

• Meeting ID: 973 6023 5794
• Passcode: t7pA7uEu

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The first lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series will be given by Brad Hostetler (Kenyon College).

Brad Hostetler is Assistant Professor of Art History at Kenyon College. He specializes in the art and material culture of Late Antiquity and Byzantium, with a particular emphasis on portable luxury objects from the ninth through the twelfth centuries. His research focuses on the relationships between texts and images, including ekphraseis about, and words inscribed on, works of art. He is currently working on a book that examines the nature and meaning of relics and reliquaries in Byzantium through the lens of inscriptions, including the ways in which inscribed texts mediate and guide the faithful’s engagement with, and understanding of, sacred matter. Brad’s work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Abstract

The term “ekphrastic epigram” has been used to denote verse inscriptions that describe works of art. But, as has been demonstrated, this term is a misnomer as these poems are not technically ekphraseis. Prose was traditionally the medium of choice for ekphraseis; the need to achieve the vividness of speech was more difficult in verse, given its metrical constraints. Inscribed epigrams therefore presented a double challenge in that they also constrained the writer to a limited number of verses that could be displayed on the object. As Marc Lauxtermann observes, epigrams inscribed on works of art are too short to elaborate on the “emotional depth and narrative width” that is required to develop ekphrastic themes.

While I agree with this assessment, I also suggest that Byzantine epigrams on works of art do exhibit some characteristics of ekphrasis, albeit in a much more abbreviated form. In this paper, I examine these features, and show the ways in which some inscribed epigrams possess rhetorical properties that are similar to those required for literary ekphraseis. Just as Nicholas Mesarites, for example, led the listener/viewer beyond the facts of the images in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and challenged his audiences’ perception of the mosaics through vivid description, so too do the poets of inscribed epigrams open up their descriptions to help the viewer consider their perceptions of objects.

Practical information

Date & time: Thursday 17 February 2022, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/96375525205?pwd=Q2Y4L2tRQ2VVakEzUXJta1NVVGpudz09.

• Meeting ID: 963 7552 5205
• Passcode: 750inUfB

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The last lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series will be given by Julián Bértola (Ghent University).

Julián Bértola studied classical literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2016, he followed the Byzantine Greek Summer School at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection and in 2017 he moved to Belgium to do a PhD at Ghent University as part of the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams (www.dbbe.ugent.be). In 2021, he completed his doctoral dissertation “Using Poetry to Read the Past: Unedited Byzantine Verse Scholia on Historians in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts”. He is now a Postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University with the project “Byzantine scholia on historians and the literature of marginalia: reading and writing practices in the margins of medieval Greek manuscripts”.

Abstract

In this presentation I will investigate how other book epigrams can contribute to the study of verse scholia, my main research interest. Verse scholia constitute a special type of book epigrams since they comment on particular passages of the main text next to which they are copied. During my work with unedited cycles of verse scholia on historians, the co-occurrence in the manuscripts of a more common type of book epigrams, namely colophons, has proven to be of great help to better understand the context in which the verse scholia were produced.

My first case study is a long poem in hexameters (https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/6177), a scribal epigram that dedicates the volume to a patron of high social rank. I will introduce the verse scholia that occur together with this book epigram in two manuscripts of Herodotus from the 15th century. The court circulation of the exemplar from which our manuscripts derive could account for a certain didactic and gnomic tone of the verse scholia. The second case study is a shorter dodecasyllabic epigram at the end of the Vindobonensis Hist. gr. 53, a famous manuscript of Niketas Choniates (https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/33795). The colophon attests to the restoration of the manuscript on behalf of the bishop of Ainos. This information supports the evidence from the verse scholia copied in this manuscript that largely reproduce the wording of the chronicle in verse by Ephraim of Ainos. The manuscript and possibly its model may have been in Ainos where Ephraim composed the verse scholia. To conclude, I will present some limit cases: a poem in f. 168v of Vat. gr. 163 (Niketas Choniates) and https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/occurrences/17771 (John Zonaras). These are book epigrams that refer to specific passages, but do not correspond in full to the typology of verse scholia because of their position in the manuscript, their layout and their content.

---

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 14 December 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom. The link will be available soon.

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The third lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series will be given by Ottavia Mazzon (University of Padua).

Ottavia Mazzon is currently Frances A. Yates Long-term Fellow at the Warburg Institute and a post-doc researcher at the University of Padua. Her research interests lie at the intersection of classical philology and book history, focusing on the readership and material reception of ancient Greek literature in Byzantium and in Renaissance Europe. Her first monograph, Leggere, selezionare e raccogliere excerpta nella prima età paleologa. La silloge conservata nel codice greco Neap. II C 32, is forthcoming with Edizioni dell’Orso (Hellenica, 99).

Abstract

Byzantine intellectuals frequently put together collections of excerpts aiming to preserve the most interesting passages they encountered while reading. Many of these have survived, especially from the Palaeologan period, allowing us to explore Byzantine scholars’ reading interests and to understand how they used their books. Whenever they read, Byzantine scholars did not exclusively focus on literary works they were studying. When consulting a codex, they also took notice of the paratexts and sometimes ended up transcribing them alongside the quotations they had selected from the main text; the paratexts thus became an integral part of excerpt collections.

The objective of my paper is to show how the DBBE is an effective tool for the identification of paratextual elements within an excerpt-collection and facilitates the reconstruction of the material characteristics of the manuscripts read by the excerptor(s), going so far as providing essential information for the recognition of the exemplar employed. I will do so by presenting examples from two excerpt collections from the early Palaeologan period which I have chosen as a case-study: the Rhodoniai of Makarios Chrysokephalos, preserved in MS Marc. gr. Z. 452 (coll. 796), and the excerpt-collection transmitted by MS Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, II C 32. The book epigrams preserved in the latter are partially known; Neap. II C 32 contains a poem summarizing the content of the Iliad, which accompanies the hypotheseis to each book (ff. 366r-371v).

---

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 16 November 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/96553291684?pwd=SyticTAxYmpLVy9sYm5RNzFHYUJjQT09.

• Meeting ID: 965 5329 1684
• Passcode: 8u5s8CW3

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The second lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series will be given by Simon Zuenelli (Universität Innsbruck).

Dr Simon Zuenelli is Assistant Professor at Innsbruck University (Austria) and chief editor of the review journal Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft. His research focuses on post-classical Greek poetry. He authored several contributions on Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and is currently preparing a monograph on the ancient Greek book epigram.

Abstract

As the DBBE effectively shows, the production of book epigrams was indeed a popular phenomenon in the Byzantine Middle Ages. Yet, the book epigram is not a Byzantine invention, but rooted in a long tradition going as far back as the Hellenistic period. The history of the ancient book epigram is currently being investigated in the project “The Ancient Greek Book Epigram”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund and carried out at Innsbruck University. In my paper, I would like to present some of the results gained so far, which can lead to a better understanding of the evolution of the Byzantine book epigram tradition. Accordingly, my paper will highlight the continuity of book epigram production between Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

More specifically, after a brief general introduction to the ancient Greek book epigram, the paper will firstly deal with the continuity on a generic level. To this end, the type of the ancient “scribe-related epigram”, where the aspect of continuity is particularly visible, will be discussed. Secondly, two important issues related to the practice of Byzantine book epigram production will be addressed, namely the question of visual presentation and that of textual fluidity (or textual recycling). Taking P.Lond.Lit 11 as an example, several striking parallels with the ancient book epigram tradition in regards of both phenomena will be presented. This analysis will eventually lead to the general discussion of how to determine the “origin” of single Byzantine book epigrams.

---

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 19 October 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/99768938150?pwd=RkVaRlBLeGRxSTFXUmFoU1FvUWVWZz09.

• Meeting ID: 997 6893 8150
• Passcode: Pk1QAR6S

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

 

The first lecture in the Fall 2021 Series of Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures will be given by Renaat Meesters (Ghent University & KU Leuven).

Renaat Meesters was a heuristic collaborator (scribe) of the DBBE from 2011 to 2013 and obtained his doctoral degree in 2017 at Ghent University with a dissertation on Byzantine book epigrams on John Klimax. Since 2016 he is a teacher of Greek and Latin at the College of Essen and a voluntary postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University and KU Leuven.

Abstract

Since its inception in 2010, the DBBE has disclosed an important corpus of medieval Greek texts to the academic community, shedding new light on a plethora of aspects of Byzantine book culture. Regrettably, there is currently no similar project for the collection, cataloguing and edition of metrical paratexts written in Latin. Despite some examples of Latin epigrams which have received a certain measure of attention, this considerable corpus remains seriously understudied.

The purpose of this paper is to promote the idea of founding a Database of Latin Book Epigrams (DLBE), inspired by the DBBE. Therefore, a broad overview of the corpus will be sketched by presenting some Latin book epigrams, mostly selected from manuscripts preserved in the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) in Brussels. These examples will be compared to Byzantine book epigrams that reveal similar generic features. The observation that Byzantine and Latin book epigrams have a lot in common, underlines the feasibility of setting up a database of Latin book epigrams, which may lead to a better and more thorough understanding of mediaeval book culture in general and of book epigrams in particular.

---

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/94069376394?pwd=NzNtVzRjTlphNzgzS25GSUxsQ2tzUT09.

• Meeting ID: 940 6937 6394
• Passcode: iLtrHAu2