Dans cette présentation, je voudrais illustrer les différentes familles textuelles de la Chaine sur Job de Nicétas et illustrer quelques-unes de ses spécificités par rapport aux chaines plus anciennes sur Job éditées par Ursula et Dieter Hagedorn. La recherche sur les manuscrits a montré qu’il s’agit d’un texte assez répandu et dont il existent au moins deux familles distinctes. L’hypothèse à vérifier est que cette chaine soit fondé sur la chaine plus ancienne mais avec l’ajout d’une partie de matériel provenant d’autres sources absentes de la chaine ancienne.

The Catena on Job of Niketas of Heraclea

In my paper, I would like to illustrate the different textual families of the Chain on Job by Nicetas and illustrate some of its specificities compared to the older Chain on Job edited by Ursula and Dieter Hagedorn. Direct inspection of manuscripts’ tradition has shown that this is a fairly widespread catena and that its tradition is divided in at least two families. The hypothesis to be verified is that this chain is based on the older chain but with the addition of some other exegetical material coming from other sources absent in the old chain.

The term Berlinka, or Skrab Pruski (Prussian Treasure, in Polish), refers to the famous collection of books originally belonging to the Prussian State Library (Preußische Staatsbibliothek) of Berlin, and that, since the end of the Second World War, are kept in the Cracow Jagiellonian Library (Bibliotheka Jagellońska).

After the first Allied air raid on Berlin in 1941, the Prussian State Library evacuated part of its collections to save them from bombings; the collections were dispersed in various parts of the German territory, between the east and west. At the war's end, the books stored in western Germany returned to Berlin, and those held in the east suffered a different fate.

From 1941, a considerable part of the Prussian book collection was stocked in wooden boxes and then transported to different places of the Prussian Lower Silesia. After the Potsdam Conference (summer of 1945), most of Prussian Silesia Province became part of the Republic of Poland. Therefore, the Polish government declared the book collection kept there as “war reparations”. From 1946, about 505 wooden boxes containing the Skrab Pruski were transferred from the former Prussian Silesia to Cracow and then gathered in the Jagiellonian Library. One of these boxes remained stored for sixty years in the Dominican convent of the Holy Trinity in Cracow and was discovered only in 2016; it contained a heterogeneous book inventory, including twenty Greek manuscripts.

My talk will be dedicated to one of these re-discovered Greek manuscripts, the Berolinensis Graec. qu. 58 (Rahlfs 1039). I examined this manuscript in March 2022 during a cataloguing and research trip organized by the project Editio critica Maior des griechischen Psalters of the Gottingen Academy of Sciences, that I am a member of since January 2021.

The Berolinensis Graec. qu. 58 (Rahlfs 1039) is a large-sized Greek Psalter (534 ff., 225 × 174 mm), dated between the end of the 10th and the first half of the 11th centuries, coming from a Greek Island and bought in Paris in 1880. The Cracow Psalter contains the Psalms and the Odes accompanied by a frame catena commentary. The catena to the Psalms presents part of Theodoret's commentary and excerpta attributed to other exegetes. Although very interesting, the scholars did not study the catena in detail before the manuscript disappeared for sixty years. The purpose of my presentation is, therefore, to present and analyze a catena witness considered lost for a long time.

The text of Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms in the 23rd and 24th volumes of the Patrologia Graeca is of unequal reliability, since it reproduces the edition published in 1707 by Bernard de Montfaucon: for Psalms 51-95,2a the text is based on a Parisian manuscript of direct tradition of the Commentary; for Psalms 1-50 and 95,2b-118 it presents the fragments ascribed to Eusebius in the catenary commentaries on the Psalter. In the last decades, critical editions of some sections of the Commentary relating to individual psalms preserved in catenae manuscripts have been published, most notably the Palestinian catena on Psalm 118 edited by Marguerite Harl in 1972, and Carmelo Curti’s edition of the same catena on Gradual Psalms (Ps 119-133) in 2003.

A team of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften is currently working on the critical edition of the whole Commentary on the Psalms by Eusebius and has already published online a provisional critical text of the work in October 2020. In 2022, the first volume of the critical edition, comprising the section on Ps 101-150, has been published by Franz Xaver Risch (GCS NF 32, Eusebius Werke 10/3).

In this occasion, after an overview of the structure of Eusebius’ Commentary inferred by the section transmitted in direct tradition, I will focus on some case studies from the fragments on Ps 118-133, given the opportunity to compare Harl’s and Curti’s edition with the new critical text. An account of the characteristics of these editions will lead into final considerations on the criteria that modern editors have followed as to highlight the specifics of each text they edit.

From within a tradition of Christian prayer, it is not possible to approach Psalms without piety, or dissociate their recitation from the rhythms of Gregorian chant and monastic office. But understanding these poetic compositions as they might have been originally framed may require a leap of the imagination. While scholia and manuscript illustrations are usually interpreted as framing this fixed and familiar Christian usage, I will argue that these material clues could instead be aids in taking that imaginative leap backwards by pointing at performative elements in the composition of the psalms. On one hand, the tradition of scholia attached to the Psalter has a definite classical pedigree as inheritor of Alexandrian scholarship in both form and contents. As such, its interest is not exhausted in intellectual speculation or didactic lore but participates of the multifaceted exegetical tools of expert readers coming to grips with texts. On the other hand, images provide specific performative cues and, at least in Vat. gr. 752 (an 11th cent. manuscript), even present characters speaking the commentary texts.

Reflecting on these elements with reference to the specific data from the Vatican manuscript, in particular, Hesychius of Jerusalem’s glosses on the titles and David’s authorship, I speculate on a similarity between Psalter scholia and tragic scholia, that leads me to consider the psalms as songs collaterally performed in rather more animated ‘liturgical’ settings than we normally credit them with. If so, scholia attest to the gradual fossilization of this book of songs as written composition. The thesis of this paper is experimental, but the audience of this specialized conference will surely provide suitable feedback to test what mileage there could be in such a hypothesis. Benefits of reading scholiae concretely rather than purely spiritually or intellectually may perhaps eventually be reaped by all.

Die Edition der unter dem Namen des Basilius überlieferten Jesajaerklärung stellt wegen ihrer Länge und relativ breiten Überlieferung eine besondere Herausforderung dar. Diese kann tatsächlich mit einer digitalen Edition gut angegangen werden, weil eine solche schon Ergebnisse liefert, bevor die Textkonstitution und das Schreiben der praefatio abgeschlossen sind. Allerdings ergeben sich dabei zugleich eine Reihe von Herausforderungen, insbesondere was die diplomatische Umschrift der Handschriften angeht. Dies wirft Licht auf grundlegende Herausforderungen der Arbeit mit TEI-Transkriptionen.

Das paper entwickelt daher als Leitidee für den Einsatz digitaler Arbeitsumgebungen, nicht zu überlegen, was alles im XML-Code abbildbar ist, sondern wie digitale Abbildung zu begrenzen ist, um in pragmatischer und finanzierbarer Weise zu sinnvollen Editionsergebnissen zu kommen. Die Umgebung des Patristic Text Archive der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie, innerhalb derer das Projekt verortet ist, hat sich dabei als ein flexibel einsetzbares Instrument erwiesen, um mit diesen Anforderungen zurechtzukommen.

In this presentation I focus on the biblical glossary (also known as Lexeis) of the Psalms. I identify two strands in the textual transmission of this work: the biblical-exegetical and the lexicographical tradition. Referring to the printed editions and to key manuscript witnesses, I compare both traditions. I interpret the results of that comparison in terms of their significance for critical research on the Lexeis. In view of the topic of the conference, I will pay particular attention to the presence of the glossary in the catena tradition of the Psalms, and to the question how we can distinguish the individual Lexeis from other philological notes on the biblical text in the catenae. In this part of the presentation, I will rely on a list I compiled of all of the “gloses lexiques” published by Gilles Dorival throughout the five volumes of Les chaînes exégétiques grecques sur les Psaumes (1974-2018).

This paper examines the significance of the catena Palestinensis in relation to the critical edition of the Greek Psalter, specifically in the context of the “Editio critica maior des griechischen Psalters” – a long-term project initiated by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2020. The project necessitates a comprehensive re-evaluation and identification of all textual witnesses, including the complete catena tradition, which was inadequately considered in Rahlfs’ Psalter edition. The catena Palestinensis, one of the most ancient Psalter catenae, serves as a crucial resource for reconstructing the fragmentary Hexaplaric tradition of the Psalter, as well as being an essential witness to the Biblical text itself. This significance is highlighted through a comparative analysis of the catena Palestinensis with the broader catena tradition, providing valuable insights into their relationships. In this paper, the primary textual witnesses are identified, categorized, and assessed. Through a systematic investigation, the textual character of the Biblical text of the catena Palestinensis is elucidated, revealing its text-critical value for the forthcoming edition of the Greek Psalms. Ultimately, this research underscores the importance of the catena Palestinensis not only as a means of reconstructing the Hexaplaric tradition but also as a vital source for understanding the Biblical text, thus offering significant contributions to the ongoing work on the critical edition of the Greek Psalter.

In the Metaphrasis of the Psalms, Manuel Philes († after 1332) rewrote 98 biblical Psalms into more than 3,600 political verses. The first complete critical edition of the text will soon be published as the key outcome of an FWF-funded project at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Projekt nr. I 3544-G25; P.I.: PD Dr. Andreas Rhoby), to which Anna Gioffreda and I contributed as wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter between 2018-2021.

My paper discusses two significant questions related to Philes’ Metaphrasis and its role in the history of the Greek Psalter during the Middle Ages. Although the occasion behind the composition of the Metaphrasis is unclear, Philes was commissioned to compose an unquestionably massive work, namely the rewriting of biblical Psalms into a metre and a language closer to contemporary literary practices. To show how Philes, as a Byzantine author, addressed this complex task, I display his metaphrastic procedure in rewriting Ps. 32, 46, and 47; for each of them, two different metaphraseis are preserved, and Philes’ choices in linguistic register, style, and metre can be easily compared. But is it possible to assess which text Philes read? As proven by the couplet of metaphraseis of Ps. 32, 46, and 47, it is hard to evaluate whether a specific feature is a literary choice by Philes or is based on a reading in his Vorlage. Nevertheless, I display some tendencies among these and other metaphraseis in relation to the readings that are attested in the textual transmission of the Greek Psalter.

Second, what was the purpose of Philes’ rewriting? The Greek Psalter played a crucial role in both medieval Greek education and religious life; Byzantines should have known them very well. Still, Philes’ Metaphrasis was commissioned by someone who certainly considered this kind of work needed for some reason. The necessity for rewriting the Psalter into a high-standard yet diachronically closer language and into one of the most used—and performed—medieval Greek metres (i.e., political verse) must be stressed as primary historical evidence. This need was not idiosyncratic to the commissioner or to the specific historical context of Philes’ work. In fact, the Metaphrasis was later copied from Philes’ private charts despite their work-in-progress status; in particular MPs. 108 has an even broader circulation. At the same time, Philes’ Metaphrasis is not an isolated case in the late-Byzantine period. For example, some years later, John Katakalon rewrote three biblical Psalms into political verses within an enkomion to John V Palaiologos. Conversely, in 1402, Manuel II Palaiologos wrote a short text reproducing the language and the style of a biblical Psalm in order to celebrate Timur’s victory against Bayezid at the Battle of Ankara. At the end of the paper, I offer some considerations about the role of Philes’ Metaphrasis in the complex intertwining of change in language and literature; (new) socio-cultural needs; and the late-Byzantine multifaceted use of the Bible to disentangle contemporary events.

Commented editions of the Bible, attested in Western Europe from the late 8th century onwards, represent the Latin counterpart of the Byzantine catena-commentaries. Like these, they contain a special selection of biblical interpretations produced from Late Antiquity onwards, which were rearranged as for their contents and form. Small portions of patristic and early medieval treatises were selected and adapted in their linguistic features in order to frame the biblical text as marginal annotations. Commented editions addressed either ecclesiastical or lay audiences. Accordingly, the biblical books commented upon, the exegetical depth of the annotations, the paratexts and decoration changed perceptibly from one manuscript to another.

My contribution will provide an overview of the extant commented editions and of their spread across Carolingian Europe. I will discuss their remarkable quantity in the East Frankish, i.e. German-speaking regions of the Carolingian Empire and present some examples. I will analyse which kind of exegetical treatises were used as a source, which passages were selected, how these were rearranged in their contents and linguistic features, in which cases their author was declared and, more generally, how the compilers of commented editions dealt with the concept of authority. My focus will be set on the output of the scriptorium of St. Gall, which produced commented editions of the Psalms, the Prophets and the Gospels in the second half of the ninth century.

Innerhalb der langen Tradition der mittelalterlichen gelehrten Katenen-Auslegung scheint im Spätmittelalter mit der Übertragung der Catena aurea des Thomas von Aquin aus dem Lateinischen in das Mittelhochdeutsche auch eine Bedeutungsverschiebung einher zu gehen. Die wenigen erhaltenen ostmitteldeutschen Textzeugen der Catena aurea aus dem 15. Jahrhundert scheinen nahezu alle im Auftrag des Deutschen Ordens entstanden zu sein und dienten wohl – wie es sich auch an Einzelheiten im Layout aufzeigen lässt – der Tischlesung.

Der geplante Vortrag wird zunächst einen Überblick über die Überlieferung der mittelhochdeutschen Catena aurea bieten und in einem weiteren Schritt das Übersetzungsunternehmen ‚Catena aurea‘ vor dem Hintergrund der im Deutschen Orden gepflegten Literaturproduktion beleuchten. Im Anschluss daran soll anhand von ausgewählten Beispielen aus dem Digitalisat der Handschrift Toruń, Universitätsbibliothek, Rps 68/V eine bereits bestehende gedruckte Edition vorgestellt werden.

Deriving out of the long and complex tradition of scholarly catena-manuscripts from late antique and early mediaeval times the Catena aurea by Thomas von Aquin definitively is one of the most widely transmitted compilations in the 13th century. In the late 15th century this text was almost exclusively translated on behalf of the Teutonic Order where – as textual details suggest – it was used as a text for lecture at meal times.

The proposed presentation will give an introduction into the transmission of the middle-high-German Catena aurea and situate the text within the literary tradition of the Teutonic Order of that time. Next to that a close look at selected passages will compare the details of some digitized images of the manuscript Toruń, Universitätsbibliothek, Rps 68/V and will analyze the concept of an already existing printed edition of the Gospel by Luke.

This paper describes the evolution of the three layers of exegetical material which make up the so-called Pseudo-Oecumenian catenae and to illustrate how the different types of scholia vary over selected manuscripts of the textual tradition.¹ The scholia of the Pseudo-Oecumenian catenae on the Pauline letters, and specifically on Romans, include the first original stage of numbered extracts and the second addition of unnumbered scholia. The latter, which Karl Staab called the Extravagantes/Corpus Extravagantium, can be either anonymous (with signs) or preceded by the name of the Greek Church Fathers (mostly Oecumenius, Severian of Gabala, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and John Chrysostom).² Additionally, a further set of scholia attributed to Photius of Constantinople and called Scholia Photiana (Staab, 1926) is added to the previous layers of comments. The present paper investigates the distribution of the exegetical scholia in these manuscripts, based on the works by Karl Staab and Theodora Panella, which were considered as starting points for the reconstruction of the manuscript tradition of the Pseudo-Oecumenian catena.³ This paper will answer the following questions. How were the Extravagantes and the Photiana integrated among the numbered extracts? Is there a rationale for the selection and distribution of the exegetical material and a consistency in the attribution of the scholia? How were the extracts from the Greek Church Fathers adapted within the context of the catena? And how much does the selection of the sources reflect the theological implications of the period or the doctrinal position of the compiler? This contribution builds on the results of my doctoral research to reconstruct the compilation technique of Pauline catenae, with a particular focus on the reuse of the exegetical material from the direct tradition, when available (e.g., Theodoret’s commentary on the Pauline Epistles, and John Chrysostom’s homilies). Finally, the paper considers how to edit the text of a catenary tradition, in view of a possible forthcoming critical edition of the Pseudo-Oecumenian catena on Romans. A recent contribution by Agnes Lorrain offers a valuable starting point on how to proceed with a critical edition of a catena including the mise en page of the manuscripts,⁴ and explores the difficulties and the limits of such a decision. For example, in cases where the distribution of the biblical text diverges due to the different layout of the manuscripts (frame and alternating catenae), how should the different portions of lemmata be reproduced in the critical edition? And, with regard to the evolution of the text, should only a stage of the textual tradition, namely the Erweiterte Typus comprising all the sets of the exegetical material, be considered? And, if not, how will the text of the abbreviated versions be included in relation to the other stages of the textual tradition?

¹For the Erweiterte-Typus (CPG C165.3): Venice, BNM, Gr. Z. 33 (423) (GA 1923), Paris, BnF, Coislin Grec 27 (GA 1905), and Paris, BnF, Grec 219 (GA 91); for the Normaltypus, (CPG C165.1): Vatican City, BAV, Pal. Gr. 10 (GA 1997), Florence, BML, Plut. 10. 04 (GA 1919), and Milan, BA, A. 62 inf. (GA 1980); for the Auszüge aus dem Ps.-Oecumenius-Typus (CPG C165.5): Vatican City, BAV, Vat. Gr. 2062 (GA 627); for the Abridged Version’s group: Mount Athos, Ἁγίου Παύλου, 2 (GA 1862).

²K. Staab, Die Pauluskatenen nach den handschriftlichen Quellen untersucht, Rome: Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 1926.

³K. Staab, Die Pauluskatenen and K. Staab Pauluskommentare aus der Griechische Kirche: Aus Katenenhandschriften gesammelt und herausgegeben, Münster: Aschendorff, 1933. T. Panella, The Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Galatians, University of Birmingham, 2018.

⁴A. Lorrain, “Éditer les chaînes exégétiques grecques: quelle place pour le mises en page”, Byzantium 91 (2021), 219–263.

Bisher wird in der Katenenforschung wenig Wert auf Werke gelegt, die über eine direkte Überlieferung verfügen. Sie wurden sogar aus manchen Kateneneditionen weggeworfen. Andererseits werden in den Editionen von jenen Werken schon längst Katenenhandschriften als Textzeugen hineinbezogen. Welche Herausforderungen bringen die byzantinischen Kompilationen in dieses Feld mit sich? Wie könnten solche Editionen auch für die Katenenforschung nützlich werden? Und inwiefern ist die Katenenforschung bzw. -Edition andersherum auch als Vorarbeit zu Quelleneditionen notwendig? Solche Fragen möchte ich anhand von Theodorets Römerbriefkommentar und die Katena Vaticana zum Römerbrief (Vat. gr. 762, CPG C 160) stellen.

In describing his selections of monastic extracts for the Pratum spirituale, the sixth-century monastic John Moschos declared that he has “emulated the most wise bee, gathering up the spiritually beneficial deeds of the Fathers” in the way a bee gathers pollen from choice flowers. On reflection, this is not unlike the work of the catenist gathering extracts for their commentary, and, by extension, it also like the work one must undergo when creating a critical edition. Each manuscript must be examined in comparison with other representatives of its type, selections must be made, and a careful reconstruction in a physical and digital medium must be produced.

As it concerns the Pauline catena tradition—broadly speaking—there are four representative “types” exnumerated by Karl Staab in 1926. These are the Typus Vaticanus, Typus Parisinus, Typus Monacensis, and the Ps. Oecumenian-Typus. Of these representatives, only the Ps. Oecumenian type is found in more than two manuscripts and thus serves as the best candidate for producing an eclectic critical edition, rather than a diplomatic edition based on a codex singulus, like J.A. Cramer’s. A popular print edition of this catena type was published by J.P. Migne but based solely on one manuscript: Paris gr 219. With close to seventy such witnesses now identified; a new critical edition of this widely duplicated catena type is greatly needed. However, even the Ps. Oecumenian catena tradition is comprised of multiple layers of scholia added in various stages between the seventh and tenth centuries. Because of this, questions regarding methodology, like those below, must be addressed before such an edition can be attempted. Using the Ps. Oecumenian catena in Ephesians as a model for a modern critical edition of a New Testament catena—considering both the discussion of Agnes Lorrain (2021) and physical layout used by Houghton and Parker (2020) as examples—this paper will discuss the practicalities of how to approach each layer of scholia for inclusion, continuity between manuscripts, addressing variant readings, and the mise en page of this material in its final form, offering suggestions for future endeavours.

In the context of an increasingly growing interest in New Testament catenae, the study of manuscripts with catenae on the book of Acts has undergone significant progress. The findings of the University of Birmingham’s CATENA project have recently led to the publication of the first-ever full catalogue of New Testament catenae manuscripts, as well as a revised classification of catena manuscripts on Acts. However, no satisfactory proposal has yet been made to classify manuscripts with multi-layered catenae: such is the case of Paris, BnF, Grec 237 (GA 82), Paris, BnF, Grec 216 (GA 605), Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio, Ψ.III.18 (GA 920), Drama, Μ. Κοσινίτσης, 3 (GA 1424). These codices feature catenae in frame (or marginal) layout resulting from the overlap of multiple sets of scholia, which are either transcribed by different hands or by the same scribe at different stages. Despite noticing their stratified nature, previous scholarship has associated these catenae with a single type, basing on conventional criteria of classification such as comparing exemplars in the incipit/desinit of the catena or in selected test passages. An extended survey of inc./des. of each scholium and a systematic manuscript comparison not only confirm the co-existence of different layers in the same page(s), but also enable to identify their relationship with individual compilations in other manuscripts, some of which are collections of isolated scholia, while others are epitomes of patristic works rather than catenae strictu sensu. The present paper aims to reassess the classification of these multi-layered catena manuscripts on Acts, explore various possibilities for their inclusion and reassignment in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum, and more broadly address the question of how to classify multi-layered catenae.