Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts : Patristic and Byzantine theological texts

Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript, copied in England at various dates around 1632-1650, contains a selection of <i>Patristic and Byzantine theological texts</i>. The longest of these is the <i>Capita centum de perfectione spirituali</i> of the 5th-century ascetic and bishop Diadochos of Photike. The other contents include excerpts and short texts by writers including prominent Church Fathers such as Maximos the Confessor and Gregory of Nazianzus, along with the 10th-11th-century Byzantine mystic Symeon the New Theologian and more obscure writers such as John of Karpathos and Mark the Hermit.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The manuscript appears to be composed of three physical components bound together, while texts within individual parts were evidently copied at different times, as a number of these are followed by colophons dating the copying of a given work. These variously date the compilation of particular texts to 1632, 1634, 1638, 1639, 1641 and 1650. Some texts are in the hand of the scholar and royal librarian Patrick Young, who owned, copied, commissioned and annotated numerous Greek manuscripts. Young probably also paid for the copying of the other portions. Some of the colophons also give information on the location where the copying of particular texts occurred, variously in London, Oxford and Sherborne, or on the source manuscript employed.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Christopher Wright</p>