Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

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… Continue reading Andrea Scandar’s Manuscripts in the Vatican Library

New Materials on Grote (Part 4)

1. This is the fourth post in a series in which I document new biographical material related to the collector Friedrich Grote (you can find the first three posts here, here, and here). Already for the second time I was unexpectedly approached by someone because they came across a source on Grote by coincidence. This… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 4)

Miscellaneous Identifications II: The Christian Arabic Undertext of the Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest

1. This is the second post in a series in which I document identifications associated with the work of early Christian Arabic scribes (you can find the first post here). Quite inadvertently, the material that I would like to present in this post has even led to three and not just one identification: the identification… Continue reading Miscellaneous Identifications II: The Christian Arabic Undertext of the Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest

“Simonides Is Still Alive!”: An Interview with Author Rüdiger Schaper about His Biography of a Manuscript Forger

1. Hunting for rare books, collecting mania, true forgeries, falsified history, fictional elements in biographical writing – these are just some of the topics I talked about with author Rüdiger Schaper. He has dedicated a biography to the famous forger Constantine Simonides.1 After the publication of Codex Sinaiticus by Tischendorf, Simonides went public with the… Continue reading “Simonides Is Still Alive!”: An Interview with Author Rüdiger Schaper about His Biography of a Manuscript Forger

Stray Leaves from an Ancient Triodion

A guest post by Georgi Parpulov* 1. A triodion is a liturgical book containing hymns for the church festivals of the “movable” cycle, i.e. those whose date changes from year to year depending on the date of Easter. The earliest surviving manuscript of this kind seems to be MS Athens, National Library of Greece, 626, copied… Continue reading Stray Leaves from an Ancient Triodion

Greek Fragments in Göttingen and Bryn Mawr and Their Previous Owners

1. Last year, Georgi Parpulov published a short piece entitled “Membra disiecta sinaitica Graeca” in Fragmentology 5 (2022).1. Although the article is only 7 pages long, in it Parpulov accomplishes a lot: he identifies 18 dispersed fragments of Greek manuscripts from Sinai – not counting the joins identified among Sinai’s New Finds. These 18 manuscripts… Continue reading Greek Fragments in Göttingen and Bryn Mawr and Their Previous Owners

New Research #6

The latest issue (2/1) of The Vatican Library Review, a journal that was newly founded last year, contains two contributions dealing with some of the undertexts of the palimpsest MS Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Sir. 623. Here are the titles and abstracts of the two contributions (both are open access and linked below):… Continue reading New Research #6

An Arabic Medical Manuscript with Greek Maculatur

1. When I started studying the history of the fragmentary Sinai manuscripts kept at the Bavarian State Library in Munich, the digitized acquisition list of Oriental manuscripts (fig. 1) proofed very helpful. In 1921, the library bought six Christian Arabic fragments of Sinaitic provenance from the collector Friedrich Grote (1861-1922).1 Interestingly, the library’s acquisition list… Continue reading An Arabic Medical Manuscript with Greek Maculatur

A Greek-Arabic Liturgical Manuscript in Princeton’s Scheide Library

1. The largest batch of Sinaitic diaspora manuscripts ever to circulate on the European antiquities market was probably the one offered by the Leipzig-based antiquarian, book dealer, and publisher Karl Wilhelm Hiersemann (1854-1924). His Katalog 500, with the thematic title Orientalische Manuskripte, offered 54 manuscripts in 8 languages. The majority of these is probably of… Continue reading A Greek-Arabic Liturgical Manuscript in Princeton’s Scheide Library

New Research #4

The Italian publishing group RCS MediaGroup (Milan) has just issued a small booklet by Giulia Rossetto (Austrian Academy of the Sciences) entitled La biblioteca/βιβλιοθήκη. It appeared as no. 33 in a series called “Il Greco“, which is published weekly together with the newspaper Corriere della Sera. The text, which is aimed at a wider readership,… Continue reading New Research #4