SMC 46Manuscript Treasures from Afro-Eurasia

7 May 2025

Photo: De Gruyter

The new volume of the SMC book series explores the complex web of spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional interactions that influenced the production and reception of manuscripts in the Mediterranean world from late Antiquity to the 15th century.

In the middle of the 13th century, a Syrian priest called Salib or Saliba commissioned a set of pentaglot manuscripts – manuscripts written in five languages, in this case the five key languages of the non-Chalcedonian churches: Ethiopic, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and Armenian – for the diverse monastic communities of Wādī al-Naṭrūn, Egypt. In particular, a pentaglot psalter continued to catch the attention of readers over the centuries. Repaired in 1626, the volume aroused the interest of the French Capuchin missionary Agathange de Vendôme who purchased it in 1635 to send it to France to the antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. The manuscript was, however, seized by pirates and ended up in the hands of the pasha of Tripoli. Peiresc mobilised his overseas contacts and eventually managed to track down the manuscript and ransom it, only to later discover that he had been sent a dud. Peiresc would die before ever seeing the manuscript which would eventually find its way into the collection of Cardinal Francesco Barberini.

The story of this manuscript is told by Alin Suciu in the latest volume of the Studies in Manuscript Cultures series. It is just one example of the many fascinating stories about the production, use, and reception of special manuscripts produced in the Mediterranean region between late antiquity and the 15th century comprised in this volume. Focusing on non-Latin manuscripts, the book provides a multifaceted view of the relationship between manuscripts and their scribes, collectors, patrons, and readers, thus offering a glimpse of the dynamics affecting book production and circulation across the wider Mediterranean region and destabilising notions of cultural uniformity and national or religious identity. The visual and textual evidence preserved in these manuscripts is interpreted by drawing from disciplines such as palaeography, art history, codicology, and textual criticism. The result is a book that details the impact of makers, patrons, collectors, and readers on the making and circulation of manuscripts across Afro-Eurasia.

Edited by Jacopo Gnisci, Sophia Dege-Müller, Jonas Karlsson, and Vitagrazia Pisani in cooperation with Alessandro Bausi, the volume goes back to a conference entitled ‘Illuminating the Eastern Christian World’ held at the CSMC from 30 June to 1 July 2022, which took place in the context of the AHRC-DFG funded project on ‘Demarginalizing Medieval Africa: Images, Texts, and Identity in Early Solomonic Ethiopia, 1270–1527’ (ITIESE). The book is available open access.