A Corpus of Exegetical Notes on Logic Linked to George-Gennadios II Scholarios

Transmission and (Self)Reception in Late Byzantium

2023–2025

RFG01

The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Barocci 87, f. 33v

This project focuses on a corpus of marginal and interlinear notes on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, transmitted in three Greek manuscripts: Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 59.17 (ca. 1428 – 1434); Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barocci 87 (ca. 1450); and Genova, Biblioteca Universitaria, F VI 9 (ca. 1550). The corpus preserves excerpts and diagrams from late-antique exegetical treatises (Ammonius, Philoponus, et al.), interspersed with much younger material, consisting in Byzantine translations of Medieval Latin works (e.g. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, in the 14th-century translation of Demetrius Cydones) and a number of notes attributed explicitly to George-Gennadios II Scholarios (ca. 1400 – 1472 vel paulo post). A preliminary analysis on historical, philological, philosophical, and material grounds, revealed connections between the corpus and Scholarios’ activity as a teacher of Logic. What is more, Scholarios may well be himself its compiler.

RFG01 studies and analyzes the way the one who assembled the corpus made use of his sources. Special attention is paid to whether and how Scholarios profited from this corpus in writing his long Commentaries on Isagoge and Categories around 1435.

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Project lead: Athanasios Kerefidis