How many linguistic registers did the Byzantines divide their language into? What characteristics did they attribute to each of those registers? Which textbooks for the teaching of Greek were circulating in the Middle Ages? Who read them, and how? Where are they found, and how should they be studied today? There are still no answers to these questions. This shortcoming is due mainly to the complex manuscript tradition and the lack of knowledge about the content and form of the textbooks. As regards the sources, apart from a few cases, we cannot currently say which manuscripts contain which textbooks. Grammatical texts are often known by their titles only, either because they remain unedited, or because they have never been properly translated or commented upon. This thematic session will shed new light on medieval Greek grammatical knowledge and place it in its original context (including its transmission beyond the chronological and geographical borders of Byzantium) by bringing the above questions to the fore and giving an account of the long-term research endeavor: the Ghent Textbooks Project. Combining the approaches of paleography, textual criticism and digital humanities, the papers will discuss the database-driven methodology tailored to (1) produce a recensio of the Greek manuscripts containing grammatical writings and correlate them according to the transmitted texts, persons, and places; (2) unravel and digitize the grammatical content of the various textbooks; (3) study the similarities and differences between Greek grammar theorized in textbooks and applied in actual Byzantine literature.
Konstantinos Arabites’ Parekbolaion is an obscure textbook of the Palaeologan period. Although it was mentioned by N. Festa while editing in 1922 another curious grammatical text, the Longibardos, the first serious attempt to explore its content and sources was undertaken by W. Bühler in 1986. The text itself was fully edited only in 2016 by…
The difference between higher and lower registers, together with the learning of Ancient Greek within the Byzantine educational system, fostered the development of numerous auxiliary instruments intended to facilitate the comprehension and use of the higher linguistic register by students of that period. Among these instruments may be included scholia and glosses, commentaries on individual…
The correspondence of Manuel Kalekas (c. 1360–1410), a distinguished intellectual and theologian of late Byzantium, is preserved primarily in his autograph manuscript at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vat. gr. 1879, dik. 68508), with additional letters in Vat. gr. 486 (dik. 67117) and Vat. gr. 1093 (dik. 67724). This corpus provides an exceptional vantage point from…
Maximos Planoudes is arguably one of the most important figures in Byzantine literary culture and is instantly recognizable even outside the specialist field. While initial scholarly interest focused on his role in aiding the transmission of ancient texts, his works are now beginning to receive due attention for their own merit. In today’s presentation I…
Determining the number and shelfmark of manuscripts that preserve a particular ancient Greek grammatical text is often a challenging task. Conducting a census of a given text always begins with a thorough examination of all catalogues of libraries holding Greek manuscripts worldwide. This is a lengthy and painstaking task, which is often only partially rewarding….