Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts : Greek Miscellany

Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript, copied in the years around 1500, is a <i>Greek Miscellany</i> whose largest single component is the collection of short biographies of ancient philosophers by the 3rd-century CE writer Diogenes Laertios. It also contains a range of ancient and medieval grammatical and rhetorical texts and excerpts, primarily commentaries on the works of the ancient rhetoricians Hermogenes and Aphthonios by the leading late 13th-early 14th century Byzantine classical scholar Maximos Planoudes. Other contents include commentaries on mythology and the most recent component, a brief excerpt from a theological text by Georgios Scholarios (c. 1405-c. 1472), the scholar and official who became Patriarch of Constantinople as Gennadios II.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The manuscript was copied by three different copyists, whose work is interspersed throughout the manuscript. One of these has been identified as Georgios Moschos, a scholar from Corfu who copied manuscripts there before moving to Italy towards the end of the 15th century, where he worked in Ferrara and Mirandola, taught rhetoric and medicine and did editorial work for the great Venetian printer of Greek texts Aldus Manutius. Another has been identified as one Ioannes, a collaborator of Georgios, who has been tentaively identified as his father Ioannes Moschos. A variety of other manuscripts copied by both men have been identified, mostly classical texts.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Christopher Wright</p>