An Introduction to the Study of Byzantine Manuscripts

Hatzopoulou Venetia
Associate Cataloguer, Mount Athos Manuscripts Digital Library

February 2002

Byzantine manuscripts constitute an inseparable part of, and witness to, the everyday
life of the thousand-year-old civilization of the Byzantine people. The careful observation
and description of the content of the manuscripts as well as their systematic research will
allow us to put them in their chronological context and even reveal both their maker and
receiver. Most of all though, their careful analysis and study will help us draw many
important conclusions concerning the authors, the history and tradition of the texts as well as
the everyday life in Byzantium, the material civilization and the technical skills of its people,
the educational, intellectual and aesthetic level of the society. Furthermore, such a study will
provide us with information on the financial standing and social stratification, the work, and
the trade in Byzantium.

Materials and Forms

The first step towards describing Byzantine manuscripts is the definition of the
material used to create them and the form in which they are presented. Papyrus was the first
writing material in Byzantium; it derived from the appropriate elaboration of the
homonymous plant that existed in abundance in Egypt and was used mainly for documents
and letters almost until the 7th century A.D. It was in the 7th century that Egypt was
conquered by the Arabs and this fact rendered difficult the procurement of papyrus and
favored the use of parchment which was now elevated to the principal writing material in
Byzantium. Nevertheless, papyrus continued to be used for patriarchal, imperial and private
documents until the 10th century A.D.
Parchment, the second and most important writing material of the Byzantine era, was
fabricated from animal skins (calfskin, goatskin, lambskin, sheepskin). Already from the 4th
century A.D. this less fragile and delicate material was immediately widely used and started
substituting for papyrus. It was an expensive writing material, which was mainly used until
the 13th century. However, for the creation of precious manuscripts (such as Biblical and
liturgical texts or works which were destined for significant people) parchment remained in
use until the end of the Byzantine epoch. In the category of luxurious parchment
manuscripts belong the purple codices, which were intended for the emperor. In these
manuscripts, the parchment was colored with purple and it was written in gold or silver
letters. The most important examples of purple codices are mainly dated to the 6th century
A.D.
Paper became known to the Byzantines from the Arabs and replaced parchment as a
more economical writing material. Already from the 11th century A.D. the imperial
secretariat used oriental paper (the first dated sample is traced back to 1052) and in the
13th century appears the occidental paper. Paper was the dominant writing material
during the last two centuries of the Byzantine empire.
In Byzantium, the roll of papyrus was the initial form of a book. A roll is a long (3-
10 meters) strip of papyrus, with text written in successive vertical columns. The reader used
one hand to unroll the part of the papyrus he wanted to read and the other hand to roll it back.
With the predominance of the codex after the 4th century, the use of the roll of papyrus
now of a much smaller lengthwas limited only to official documents. However, apart from
that, eilitario or eilito was used in Byzantium and throughout the Byzantine era; the eilitario
or eilito was a roll consisting of a long strip of parchment, where the text was written
continuously, parallel to the narrow side and on both sides. The content of eilitaria was
chiefly liturgical. The codex, which dominated over the roll as more a practical and long-
lasting form of book, constitutes the principal form of the book in Byzantium. It was
composed of leaves of papyrus, or more often, parchment or paper which formed quires that
were bound in order to form a book.
A special category of manuscripts is the palimpsests. They are mostly codices of
parchment, original writing of which was effaced by a special procedure in order to write a
new text on the same material. The creation of palimpsests was mostly due to economical
reasons and signifies the high cost of parchment.

Binding
In order to avoid the decay of the manuscript, Byzantines started to practice binding,
which in Byzantine terminology is called stahosis. The binding of manuscripts is initially
applied to codices. The quires are joined together, sewn up and protected with two wooden

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boards. In the simplest form of the Byzantine binding, these boards are covered with skin
and decorated with printed stamps which leave geometrical shapes and a variety of vegetable,
animal-form and other figures. The text of the Gospels, which stood out among others for its
importance, as well as the manuscripts which were made for or subsidized by an eminent
personality (the emperor or members of the imperial circle and the upper class of the society),
were characterized by their luxurious binding with sumptuous textiles or expensive materials
such as gold, silver, precious stones and enamel. The manuscript remained closed, in order
to avoid deterioration, with the help of clasps, which were adjusted on the boards.

Illumination
An important element of the whole appearance of a manuscript is the decoration that
any given manuscript presents and which determines its aesthetic quality to a considerable
extent. After the completion of the coping of the text, the scribe usually supervised himself
the decoration of the manuscript. In this case the decoration is normally plain and limited to
the design of headpieces, titles, capital initials and to the composition of simple ornamental
elements at the end of chapters or of the whole text. However, the contribution of special
painters-artists was sought when the decoration of the manuscript required the creation of
miniatures for the representation of scenes, persons and figures or the design of elaborated
ornaments. These miniaturesoften full-pagenot only accompany the text of the
manuscript, but also bring forth its content and meaning. They constitute works of art, which
bring out the aesthetic models and the artistic tendencies of the era. The quality and the
richness of the miniatures of a manuscript are directly related to the patrons financial state
and also to the significance of the text. The manuscripts, which are often illustrated, are
mainly those which contain texts from the Old and New Testament, Lives of Saints, Patristic
texts, works of the Greek classical paideia, as well as scientific texts which were stimulating
the interests of the Byzantines. In the case of the texts of the New Testament, to use them as
an example, we should refer to the four Gospels and particularly the Lectionaries, which were
used in Church for liturgical purposes; due to their repeated use and distinguished role in the
religious life, Lectionaries were decorated with abundant illustrations.

Oriental paper was originated in the Eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire while the occidental appeared in
much later Western Europe. The major difference between the two is the absence of watermarks in the oriental
paper. They also sometimes differ in color and quality.

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Transliteration
During the 9th-10th century A.D. we observe a revival of interest in ancient Greek
literature. This fact lead to intense copying activity of the works of ancient Greek authors
and decisively contributed to the rescue of a great part of the ancient Greek intellectual
production. Due to this humanistic movement in Byzantium, which later revived itself for a
second time during the 13th-14th centuries A.D., a large number of works of the classical and
Hellenistic periods have survived. This copying activity of the 9th century favored the
evolution of the Greek script. The Greek manuscripts, which were written until then in a
majuscule script, were now written in a minuscule. This change called transliteration
(metaharactirismos) is due to the predominance of the minuscule script and to the advantages
which the script in question presented since it occupied less space and allowed a faster and
more elegant handwriting along with the facilitation of easier reading of texts that are using
accents, breathings and the separation of words.

Content
The Byzantine manuscripts that have survived to this day contain in the great majority
liturgical and theological texts, mostly addressed to monks. However, there are a number of
manuscripts which inform us that Byzantines, according to their social rank and education,
were interested in different areas of knowledge as well. Educated Byzantines, for example,
showed interest in sciences, like arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, medicine, but also
philosophy and rhetoric. Byzantines of a moderate education preferred popular readings such
as chronicles, novels, lives of Saints, practical medicine, astrological and oneiromancy texts,
myths, proverbs, prayer-books, etc. Teachers of rhetoric, along with public servants,
government functionaries and servants of the Church, who were charged with the delivery of
speeches, often consulted rhetorical writings and dictionaries. There were also school-books
intended for everyday use by teachers and pupils, like grammar and orthography books,
dictionaries and texts in a question-and-answer form (Erotoapokriseis).

Scribes
Professional scribes, scholars and monks carried out the role of the scribe-copier of
manuscripts in the Byzantine era. The first category copied manuscripts for a living, while
the second in order to satisfy personal scientific interests. Monks worked mostly for the

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enrichment of monastic libraries, but in some cases they also professionally undertook the
copying of manuscripts. They worked in scriptoria that existed in many monasteries of the
Empire. The most famous example is the scriptorium of the monastery of Stoudiou in
Constantinople which was well-organized and where the monks obeyed strict writing rules
and the instructions of the calligrapher in charge. A scribes work was particularly tiring and
required physical and mental strength, but also concentration of the mind for the avoidance of
mistakes and the proper rendering of the text. Usually with the completion of the copy of a
manuscript, the scribe added some lines at the end of the text, a subscription
(bibliographical note), where he sometimes stated his name and the date of the copying of
the manuscript. Often he humbly praised God who had blessed him to complete his work and
requested the readers indulgence and forgiveness for any possible mistakes.

The Byzantine manuscripts surviving today are partly still found in the monastic
libraries of Greece and of the Greek East and partly in the libraries of the West. During the
last decades of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century A.D., well before its dissolution, a
great number of manuscripts headed towards the West, mostly Italy. Humanists and hunters
of manuscripts made trips to Constantinople and to the rest of the East, where they bought a
great number of texts and took them abroad. After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 A.D.,
the inflow of Byzantine manuscripts to the western world inflated given that the danger of a
complete loss of Greek written monuments increased substantially. Byzantine scholars who
sought refuge in the West, took their manuscripts with them and successfully rescued them.
However, during the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. in Crete and in other areas which were not
under Turkish domination, the tradition of the Byzantine manuscript remained alive thanks to
the copying activity which was carried on by the Byzantines. This activity was also
transferred to Italy during the period of Renaissance as well as to other European countries.
In those European countries the special importance of Byzantine manuscripts was
highlighted. The teaching and the diffusion of the Greek language in Europe was based on
these manuscripts along with the first critical editions of Greek texts and the printing of the
first Greek books. Despite the rapid development, at the time, of the printing art in Italy,
Byzantine manuscript production was not put aside; on the contrary, it constituted a unique
model for the first Greek editions that tried to imitate its aesthetic. Byzantine manuscripts
not only protected the treasures of classical learning of the Byzantine Empire but also spread
the profound accomplishments of the Byzantine civilization to the Western world and

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secured their transmission to the following generations through the dedicated philological
activity and manuscript copying of Greek scholars and European humanists.