Creating Collections of Communication – The Greek Epistolary Manuscripts from 800 to 1800

This project offers a new approach to Greek epistolography by examining how literary letters were transmitted and arranged in manuscripts from antiquity to the late Byzantine period. Rather than focusing on historical content or prosopography, it explores the principles behind the compilation, organization, and purpose of letter collections. The study investigates how letters, originally tools of communication, became literary artefacts valued for their rhetorical form and educational use. Drawing on approximately 17,500 known Greek letters (from classical and Byzantine times), the project highlights the fluid transmission of texts—how copying, rearrangement, and selection shaped the epistolary canon. Through analysis of manuscripts from the 10th century onward, it reconstructs premodern practices of collecting and reading letters as rhetorical models and means of self-presentation. By shifting attention from content to transmission and function, the study redefines letters as dynamic literary texts and illuminates their role within Greek learned culture.