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Andrea Scandar’s Manuscripts in the Vatican Library

1. Over the last few days, I have started preparing a presentation on the Maronite scholar Andrea Scandar of Cyprus (Indrāwus Skandar al-Qubrusī, d. 1748)1 for an upcoming conference in Munich organised by my colleague Dr Vevian Zaki and entitled ‘Once We Were Here: Traces of Mobility across the Ottoman Empire‘ (8-10 July 2025). Scandar was one of the first manuscript hunters, long before Tischendorf, who brought manuscripts from St Catherine’s Monastery to Europe on behalf of a European institution, in his case the Vatican Library. Between 1718 and 1720, he travelled from Rome to Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, all part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, acquiring on this journey 61 manuscripts for the Vatican Library, including 35 Syriac, 19 Arabic, 6 Greek, and one Hebrew.

2. Scandar’s catalogue was published already in 1721 in the second volume of the Bibliotheca Orientalis by his more famous contemporary and fellow Maronite scholar Giuseppe Simone Assemani (Yūsuf b. Simʿān as-Simʿānī, 1687-1768).2 The catalogue is prefaced by some notes on Scandar, mentioning his scholarly merits, his professorship at the Sapienza, and his three-year journey, which was overshadowed by the spreading plague (see fig. 1).

Figure 1: Beginning of the catalogue of Scandar’s manuscripts in Assemani’s Bibliotheca Orientalis with information on Scandar and his three-year manuscript hunting tour.

3. The Sinaitic origin of some of Scandar’s manuscripts is known since the publication of this catalogue or has more recently been established in research. In general, however, Scandar and his manuscript hunting tour, which he undertook on behalf of Pope Clement XI (1700-1721), have barely been researched. This also applies to the provenience and provenance history of the manuscripts themselves. No attempt has yet been made with regard to the whole collection to establish exactly where Scandar acquired which manuscript and where these manuscripts had previously been located. I will also not be able to do this in my presentation, which will only offer the first results of an initial examination of the sources currently available to me.

4. The running numbers of the ‘Scandar Collection’, as published by Assemani, of course, do not correspond to their current shelfmarks. To the best of my knowledge, no complete list is available in the literature.3 In preparation for my presentation, I compiled such a list, which I would like to share here, so that nobody else will have to take on this tiresome task again. Below, I give the main sources I have used. I also link to digital images of the manuscripts when they are available. Fortunately, almost two thirds of the collection have been digitised. In the manuscripts, although not in all of them, there are references to the old Scandar numbers (fig. 2). These might have been left by Assemani or another cataloguer. They were also an important source for the following list.

Figure 2: Old Scandar number 14 on the guard-leaf of Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. sir. 129. Source: DigiVatLib.

5. Here is the list of Scandar’s manuscripts with their current shelfmarks:

olim Scandar 1 Vat. sir. 91
olim Scandar 2 Vat. sir. 64 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 3 Vat. sir. 150
olim Scandar 4 Vat. sir. 187
olim Scandar 5 Vat. sir. 204 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 6 Vat. sir. 175 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 7 Vat. sir. 180
olim Scandar 8 Vat. sir. 222
olim Scandar 9 Vat. sir. 177 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 10 Vat. sir. 178
olim Scandar 11 Vat. sir. 149 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 12 Vat. sir. 185
olim Scandar 13 Vat. sir. 165
olim Scandar 14 Vat. sir. 129
olim Scandar 15 Vat. sir. 179 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 16 Vat. sir. 157
olim Scandar 17 Vat. sir. 164
olim Scandar 18 Vat. sir. 127
olim Scandar 19 Vat. sir. 244
olim Scandar 20 Vat. sir. 183 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 21 Vat. sir. 182
olim Scandar 22 Vat. sir. 152
olim Scandar 23 Vat. sir. 132 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 24 Vat. sir. 166 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 25 Vat. sir. 171
olim Scandar 26 Vat. sir. 168 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 27 Vat. sir. 173
olim Scandar 28 Vat. sir. 96 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 29 Vat. sir. 58 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 30 Vat. sir. 97
olim Scandar 31 Vat. sir. 147
olim Scandar 32 Vat. sir. 37
olim Scandar 33 Vat. sir. 78 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 34 Vat. sir. 11
olim Scandar 35 Vat. sir. 192
olim Scandar 36 Vat. ar. 153
olim Scandar 37 Vat. ar. 157
olim Scandar 38 Vat. ar. 143
olim Scandar 39 Vat. ar. 165
olim Scandar 40 Vat. ar. 74
olim Scandar 41 Vat. ar. 110 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 42 Vat. ar. 116
olim Scandar 43 Vat. sir. 208 (Karšūnī)
olim Scandar 44 Vat. ar. 70
olim Scandar 45 Vat. ar. 71
olim Scandar 46 Vat. ar. 72
olim Scandar 47 Vat. ar. 84
olim Scandar 48 Vat. ar. 146 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 49 Vat. ar. 35 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 50 Vat. ar. 111
olim Scandar 51 Vat. ar. 129 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 52 Vat. ar. 283 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 53 Vat. ar. 385
olim Scandar 54 Vat. ar. 247 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 55 Ott. gr. 452
olim Scandar 56 Ott. gr. 438 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 57 Ott. gr. 424
olim Scandar 58 Ott. gr. 413 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 59 Ott. gr. 414 (not digitized)
olim Scandar 60 Ott. gr. 459
olim Scandar 61 Vat. ebr. 447

6. As far as I know at present, of these 61 manuscripts, the following six are of Sinaitic origin: Ott. gr. 414, Ott. gr. 424, Vat. ar. 71, Vat. ar. 72, Vat. ar. 84, Vat. sir. 11.4 It is not unlikely that even more are from Sinai, which I will have to check in the next few days. In his study of Sinai’s Syriac parchment manuscripts, Paul Géhin also mentions two Sinaitic manuscripts that seem to have entered the Vatican Library at Scandar’s time, but not through him (at least not directly). These are: Vat. sir. 81 (not digitized) and Vat. sir. 149 (not digitized).5 At least the first one is connected to Assemani. The Vatican Library also owns several autographs by Scandar. Those known to me are: Vat. ar. 690, Vat. ar. 905, Vat. sir. 399, Vat. sir. 426 (none of these have yet been digitized). Vat. ar. 690 could be particularly interesting because it supposedly contains the list of manuscripts acquired by Scandar.6 Scandar’s nephew Pietro Scandar is the copyist of Vat. Sir. 445.7

7. I did a lot of searches on Google Books and made notes on individual manuscripts that I found mentioned in a number of different places. But the following, together with the old Scandar numbers in the manuscripts, are the main sources from which I have compiled my list:

Published: 28 June 2025. Last updated: 7 July 2025. Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0. Download PDF

  1. The fullest version of Scandar’s name comes from one of his handwritten notes in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. sir. 426, published in al-Mašriq, 18 (1920), pp. 317-318, at p. 318: al-Qass Indrāwus Skandar Ibn Abū Yūsuf Simʿān al-Qubrusī al-Mārūnī (القس اندراوس سكندر ابن ابي يوسف سمعان القبرسي الماروني). Only by chance, I stumbled upon a copy of the 1716 Maronite Missal, translated and edited by Scandar, which was offered by the online auction house WorthPoint and seems to bear on its title page a waqf note in Karšūnī. The note reads as follows: ܘܩܦًܐ ܡܟ̣ܠܕًܐ ܡܢ ܐܠܟ̣ܘܪܝ ܐܢܕܪܐܘܣ ܣܟ̇ܢܕܪ ܐܠܩܒܪܣܝ ܬܪܓܡܐܢ ܐܠܡܓܡܥ ܐܠܡܩܕܣ ܠܟ̣ܕܡܗ̈ ܐܠܛܐܝܦܗ̈ ܐܠܡܘܐܪܢܗ ܦܝ ܡܕܝܢܗ ܕܡܝܐܛ ܡܨܪ. ܘܠܐ ܝܢܣܘܗ ܥܢ ܐܠܕܥܐ, i.e. ‘a bequest that was left behind by the priest Andreas Scandar of Cyprus, the translator of the Holy Missal, for the service of the Maronite congregation of Damietta, Egypt. They shall not forget him in their prayers’. []
  2. Joseph Simonius Assemanus, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana in qua Manuscriptos Codices Syriacos, Arabicos, Persicos, Turcicos, Hebraicos, Sameritanos, Armenicos, Aethiopicos, Graecos, Aegyptiacos, Ibericos, & Malabaricos, jussu et munificentia Clementis XI., Pontificis Maximi Ex Oriente conquisitos, comparatos, avectos, & Bibliothecae Vaticanae adicctos una cum iis quos sanctissimus Pater Innocentius XIII. in eadem Bibliothecam inferri jussit (Rome: Congregatio de Propaganda Fide Printing House, 1721), pp. 485-515. []
  3. However, all Syriac numbers have already been identified by Henri Hyvernat, “Vatican Syriac Mss.: Old and New Press-Marks”, The Catholic University Bulletin, 9 (1903), pp. 94-104. I thank Prof David G. K. Taylor for making me aware of the publication and for sending me a copy of it. I also thank Prof Hubert Kaufhold, who drew my attention to one of his articles in which he mentions Scandar. See Hubert Kaufhold, “Die Rechtsliteratur in der ‘Biblioteca Orientalis’, Parole de l’Orient, 47 [= Željko Paša (ed.), Actes du Congrès “L’Orient chrétien dans l’occident latin”: 300e anniversaire du Bibliotheca Orientalis d’Assémani (1719-2019), vol. 1] (2021), pp. 43-71, at pp. 48-50. []
  4. See Pasquale Orsini, “Nuovi frammenti del codice Vat. Ottob. gr. 424“, Manuscripti & Impressi, 95/96 (2014), pp. 1-14 + 4 plates; Samir Khalil Samir, “Archevêques du Sinaï au 13e siècle”,  Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 52 (1986), pp. 361-377. []
  5. See Paul Géhin, Les manuscrits syriaques de parchemin du Sinaï et leurs membra disjecta, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 665, Subsidia, 136 (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), p. 224. []
  6. See Isidoro Carini, 1892. La Biblioteca Vaticana: Proprietà della Sede Apostolica: Memoria Storica (Rome: Vatican Press, 1892), p. 102. []
  7. See Carini 1892, pp. 102-103. []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Peter Tarras (June 28, 2025). Andrea Scandar’s Manuscripts in the Vatican Library. Membra Dispersa Sinaitica. Retrieved February 11, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/148bk


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