Register for a CSMC lecture
Thursday, 4 November 2021, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm CET
Understanding Greek catena manuscripts (and their form and content)
Prof Dr Reinhart Ceulemans (Leuven)
In Greek Christian exegesis from Late Antiquity and Byzantium, the commentary and the homily were not the only principal forms of Biblical interpretation. They were rivalled by catenae ('chains'), compilations of exegetical excerpts taken from earlier and contemporary literature. The first exegetical catenae must have been made around 500 CE, but they did not appear out of thin air. There are reasons for why catena manuscripts have the composition and format they have (which range from a marginal set-up with distinctively separate excerpts to full-page manuscripts with a seemingly continuous commentary section, and almost everything in between), and for why preferences in this respect changed in the course of Byzantine history. In this talk, I will discuss those reasons while focusing on the question of how the catena, the catena type, and the catena manuscript relate to one another.