The Scholarship of the Palimpsest

1. Pride of place goes to five leaves with parts of speeches by the Athenian orator Hyperides: 135-8, 136-7, 144-5, 173-6 and 174-5. These will be edited by Dr N. Tchernetska of Trinity College, Cambridge. The script is very untidy and probably to be dated in the eleventh century. This is a remarkable find, since it had been thought that no copy of this author survived into the Byzantine period.⁸
2. Three leaves, 119-22, 120-21 and 143-6 come from a book that contained a philosophical treatise. The script is a fine early minuscule without accents, probably of the late ninth century; it bears a strong resemblance to the hands seen in famous MSS of Greek lexica, Paris Coislin 347 and Rome Vallicelliana E.11. It is very hard to decipher; first impressions are that it was Neoplatonic.
3. Folios 13-20 and 15-18 are from a liturgical book, perhaps of the late tenth century. The script is not very calligraphic. The text can be identified for the most part, but the poor state of preservation creates some difficulties. On 15-18 we find hymns for May 3, as printed in the Roman edition of the Menaion.⁹ 13-20 exhibits a more unusual text. It turns out to be part of a canon in honour of St John Psichaites, the abbot of a monastery in Constantinople, which he rebuilt after its destruction by the Bulgarian Krum in 813. His feast was celebrated on May 25. The printed text depends on two MSS, Meteora 150 and Messina gr. 121 (two others, from the Lavra on Mount Athos, could not be collated by the editor).¹⁰ The present location of these witnesses is a hint that the saint was the subject of devotion in areas far removed from the capital, so that the relative rarity of the text fails to provide a precise indication of where copies were most likely to have supplied a need. There are textual divergences between the two MSS used; while some are minor matters of phrasing, others consist in the substitution of one stanza for another. The oddity of the text as found on leaf 13-20 is that it is a mixture; the stanzas appear to be the same as in the Meteora MS but there are agreements in minor details with the Messina MS at pp.276.129-30, 131-2, 277.161-2 and 279.201.
4. 23-6, 24-5 and 151-2 come from a tenth-century book with text in two columns and too faint to be read.
5. 7-12, 8-11 and 9-10 are from yet another book, but the script is almost invisible.¹¹

The Euchologion was therefore produced in a place which had once owned at least three unique classical texts, two of them of the highest importance. Where can that have been? Despite the note of possession pointing to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, nothing is known of the cultural history of that part of the Byzantine world in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century which could give strong support to the hypothesis of origin in that area. In all such questions the assumption must be that, in default of evidence to the contrary, we are dealing with activity in or near the capital. Other centres which in certain periods were active enough to deserve consideration are Thessalonica and Palermo. Of these two the latter is perhaps the more plausible candidate, since it was a flourishing cultural milieu under the Normans in the second half of the twelfth century.

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⁸ My scepticism, which seemed well founded, was expressed in Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975) pp.99-100.

⁹ V pp.16-17.

¹⁰ Edited by G. Schir� and C. Nikas, Analecta hymnica graeca IX (Rome 1973) pp.274 line 92 – 279 line 212. See also p.424.

¹¹ Lowden, op.cit., p.234, suggests �a calligraphic style perhaps of the boulet�e type�.