Manuscript Cultures
Volume 32 of 'Studies in Manuscript Cultures’ publishedAndronikos Kallistos and His Manuscripts in Italian Humanism
30 June 2023
Photo: De Gruyter
The new volume of the series 'Studies in Manuscript Cultures' is out now. 'Andronikos Kallistos: A Byzantine Scholar and His Manuscripts in Italian Humanism' by Luigi Orlandi provides the first in-depth account of the life and the vast scholarly activities of an erudite personality.
The interest in Andronikos Kallistos, a leading personality among the Greek émigrés who participated in Italian Humanism, arose at the end of the nineteenth century within the frame of the studies on Byzantine scholars of the Renaissance. Researchers have only glimpsed the depth of Kallistos’ erudite personality. To date, nearly 130 manuscripts have been found bearing evidence of his work as a copyist and philologist. However, research into both his scribal and scholarly activity remains fragmented into many isolated contributions, mainly concerning specific chapters of the manuscript tradition of classical Greek authors.
Adopting a synergistic approach to historical, philological, codicological, and paleographic data within this framework, this monograph study aims to outline an updated biography and to define Kallistos’ scribal activity better by means of a thorough examination of all surviving manuscript sources. It also attempts to reconstruct the development of his book collection, to acknowledge Kallistos’ scholarly activity both as a teacher and philologist, and to make an inventory of all the manuscripts which bear traces of his writing. Finally, it publishes Kallistos’ works.
Written by Luigi Orlandi, Andronikos Kallistos: A Byzantine Scholar and His Manuscripts in Italian Humanism is the 32nd volume of the series Studies in Manuscript Cultures. Like all previous volumes in the series, it is available open access; all contributions can be downloaded from the publisher’s website.