Greek Manuscripts Beyond Byzantium. Transmediality in Andreas Darmarios’ Atelier at the End of 16th Century?

When Andreas Darmarios gained access to the Escorial Royal Library in 1573/4, both his manuscript production and his impact on the book market expanded rapidly. Working at great speed, Darmarios and his collaborators tried to produce and then sell manuscript copies of new, unpublished texts before the printed ones (the editiones principes) overtook them. This is why their production is often labeled as „series production“, i.e., making many copies in a row; yet the philological and codicological data point towards a different process, and raise issues of transmediality. The present paper offers a new interpretation of the workflow in Darmarios‘ atelier, which in turn sheds light on his reputation as a careless scribe and a forger. The relevance of the recentiores may be obvious for a philologist („Recentiores non deteriores“), while their number is often problematic. Andreas Darmarios, Sophianos Melissenos and other collaborators, having produced hundreds of manuscripts in Spain during the last quarter of 16th c., contributed to a number of Byzantine textual traditions, many of which can be better (or solely) understood via their ‚beyond-Byzantium‘ manuscripts.