Dating and Historical Context of a Greek Manuscript Containing Palaiologoi Emperors’ Portraits (Paris. gr. 1783)

Abstract

This article puts forward a new later dating of the Greek manuscript BnF, Paris. gr. 1783 kept in the National Library of France and containing portraits of emperors of the Palaiologoi dynasty. The manuscript contains important texts related to the Constantinople period of court history and culture. Historiographers used to date the manuscript to the fifteenth century according to the portrait of Patriarch Joseph II (†1439), a famous participant of the Ferraro-Florence Council, which can be seen in the Italian fresco paintings of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile, the study of the manuscript’s palaeographical features shows that it was written by an anonymous scribe from Crete who worked in Venice and Rome for Italian humanists in the middle — third quarter of the sixteenth century. The handwriting of the famous Cretan calligrapher, employee of Francis I’s library in Fontainebleau Angelus Vergecius, as well as some other scribes associated with him was typologically close to the handwriting of the main scribe of the manuscript. Analogies to this handwriting can also be seen in the handwriting of Manuel Provataris, another famous scribe of the epoch, a Cretan Greek from Rethymno, employee and copyist of the Vatican Library. The new palaeographic dating of the Paris. gr. 1783 manuscript changes the date of creation of portrait drawings of the Byzantine emperors of the Palaiologoi dynasty and Patriarch Joseph II. Also, it is important to change the dating of all texts contained in the manuscript including such important texts as one of the three lists of imperial tombs of the Church of Sts. Apostles in Constantinople, as well the list of the offices of the Byzantine court. The Paris. gr. 1783 manuscript should be excluded from the circle of Late Byzantine booklore and attributed to post-Byzantine book heritage.