Western Medieval Manuscripts : Greek medical works

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'> The manuscript contains a collection of <i>Greek medical works</i> copied by the scribe Georgios Basilikos in 1550, when he was in Messina.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'> Notes on the manuscript allow us to reconstruct its journey from Messina to Cambridge (see Provenance). Some 16 years after its production, the codex, still in Messina, was bought by a certain hieromonk Neophytos of Sinai for the price of 15 tarì (see note on the <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(2);return false;'> left pastedown</a>). MS Ff.3.30 was probably brought to St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, where it was certainly held in 1618/1619, as stated in a note signed by a certain Ioasaph (<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(518);return false;'> f. 257v</a>): a similar note by him is present on a manuscript which has remained until now in the monastery, MS Sinai, Saint Catherine's Monastery, gr. 74 (f. 246r). Some thirty years later the manuscript was in Cairo: in 1650 Edward Abbott, who at the time was consul there, having acquired it " out of the publique library of the Bishopp of Mount Sinai resident heere in Grand Cayro" (as he wrote in a message written on <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(4);return false;'>f. i verso</a>), donated it, together with another Greek manuscript (<a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FF-00003-00004/1'>CUL Ff.3.4</a>) to Nicholas Hobart (ca. 1605-1657). In 1655 the codex was finally given by Hobart, Fellow of King's College in Cambridge (1624-1650), to the Library, concluding thus an unusual journey from the West to the East to the West again. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'> Dr Erika Elia</p>