Barlaam’s Paraphrase of Euclid, Elements II 1–10. A Critical Edition

Abstract

The article presents a critical edition, with a translation and an introduction, of the arithmetical rewriting of Euclid, Elements II 1–10, authored by the 14th-century scholar and polemicist Barlaam of Seminara, one of the two leading characters in the Palamite and hesychast controversies. In this way, a further item of Barlaam’s scientific writings can now be read in a critical edition. The present edition explains in detail the mathematical background of Barlaam’s work, describes all of its manuscript witnesses, reconstructs a stemma codicum that does not require any lost witness, and pays due attention to the diagrams that accompany the text.