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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

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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.