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The first lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2022 Series will be given by Brad Hostetler (Kenyon College).

Brad Hostetler is Assistant Professor of Art History at Kenyon College. He specializes in the art and material culture of Late Antiquity and Byzantium, with a particular emphasis on portable luxury objects from the ninth through the twelfth centuries. His research focuses on the relationships between texts and images, including ekphraseis about, and words inscribed on, works of art. He is currently working on a book that examines the nature and meaning of relics and reliquaries in Byzantium through the lens of inscriptions, including the ways in which inscribed texts mediate and guide the faithful’s engagement with, and understanding of, sacred matter. Brad’s work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Abstract

The term “ekphrastic epigram” has been used to denote verse inscriptions that describe works of art. But, as has been demonstrated, this term is a misnomer as these poems are not technically ekphraseis. Prose was traditionally the medium of choice for ekphraseis; the need to achieve the vividness of speech was more difficult in verse, given its metrical constraints. Inscribed epigrams therefore presented a double challenge in that they also constrained the writer to a limited number of verses that could be displayed on the object. As Marc Lauxtermann observes, epigrams inscribed on works of art are too short to elaborate on the “emotional depth and narrative width” that is required to develop ekphrastic themes.

While I agree with this assessment, I also suggest that Byzantine epigrams on works of art do exhibit some characteristics of ekphrasis, albeit in a much more abbreviated form. In this paper, I examine these features, and show the ways in which some inscribed epigrams possess rhetorical properties that are similar to those required for literary ekphraseis. Just as Nicholas Mesarites, for example, led the listener/viewer beyond the facts of the images in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and challenged his audiences’ perception of the mosaics through vivid description, so too do the poets of inscribed epigrams open up their descriptions to help the viewer consider their perceptions of objects.

Practical information

Date & time: Thursday 17 February 2022, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/96375525205?pwd=Q2Y4L2tRQ2VVakEzUXJta1NVVGpudz09.

• Meeting ID: 963 7552 5205
• Passcode: 750inUfB

N.B.: A Zoom account is required to join this meeting. Please make sure to be logged in, using your Zoom credentials.

The last lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series will be given by Julián Bértola (Ghent University).

Julián Bértola studied classical literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2016, he followed the Byzantine Greek Summer School at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection and in 2017 he moved to Belgium to do a PhD at Ghent University as part of the Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams (www.dbbe.ugent.be). In 2021, he completed his doctoral dissertation “Using Poetry to Read the Past: Unedited Byzantine Verse Scholia on Historians in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts”. He is now a Postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University with the project “Byzantine scholia on historians and the literature of marginalia: reading and writing practices in the margins of medieval Greek manuscripts”.

Abstract

In this presentation I will investigate how other book epigrams can contribute to the study of verse scholia, my main research interest. Verse scholia constitute a special type of book epigrams since they comment on particular passages of the main text next to which they are copied. During my work with unedited cycles of verse scholia on historians, the co-occurrence in the manuscripts of a more common type of book epigrams, namely colophons, has proven to be of great help to better understand the context in which the verse scholia were produced.

My first case study is a long poem in hexameters (https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/6177), a scribal epigram that dedicates the volume to a patron of high social rank. I will introduce the verse scholia that occur together with this book epigram in two manuscripts of Herodotus from the 15th century. The court circulation of the exemplar from which our manuscripts derive could account for a certain didactic and gnomic tone of the verse scholia. The second case study is a shorter dodecasyllabic epigram at the end of the Vindobonensis Hist. gr. 53, a famous manuscript of Niketas Choniates (https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/types/33795). The colophon attests to the restoration of the manuscript on behalf of the bishop of Ainos. This information supports the evidence from the verse scholia copied in this manuscript that largely reproduce the wording of the chronicle in verse by Ephraim of Ainos. The manuscript and possibly its model may have been in Ainos where Ephraim composed the verse scholia. To conclude, I will present some limit cases: a poem in f. 168v of Vat. gr. 163 (Niketas Choniates) and https://www.dbbe.ugent.be/occurrences/17771 (John Zonaras). These are book epigrams that refer to specific passages, but do not correspond in full to the typology of verse scholia because of their position in the manuscript, their layout and their content.

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 14 December 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/94353659714?pwd=MUthYXBoZmVEa0hIRFUxbEw1SW9LUT09.

• Meeting ID: 943 5365 9714
• Passcode: TJ4ES8gh

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The last lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Spring 2021 Series will be given by Georgi Parpulov (University of Birmingham).

Georgi Parpulov studied history at the University of Sofia and art history at the University of Chicago. His doctoral dissertation, subsequently revised as a book (2014), was a general study of Byzantine Psalters. Last month, he published Catena Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament (Piscataway: Gorgias) and Magnificent Icons in Bulgaria (Sofia: Methodius Books). (The word “magnificent” was added by the publisher.) His Middle-Byzantine Evangelist Portraits will be published by De Gruyter this winter or in 2022. He is now working on a History of Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts.

Abstract

My talk will propose a schematic classification of Greek metrical paratexts that will hopefully be questioned and discussed by other conference participants. First, I distinguish between those metrical paratexts which have a more or less precise (potential or actual) prose equivalent and those which are essentially poetic and thus irreducible to prose. Second, there are metrical paratexts which refer to a book or to its contents and author, and there are Bildepigramme which pertain to images and thus need not necessarily occur in manuscript form. Bildepigramme can be further subdivided into ‘interior’ (i.e. as if spoken by a person whom the image depicts) and ‘exterior’ (as if spoken by the image’s viewer). The above points will be purposely illustrated with examples which have not found a place in Prof. Rhoby’s recent corpus.

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 22 June 2021, 4:00pm (UTC+2, CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/98225399175?pwd=RStMWCs0R2tkcm9idnRtcjN2Ry9zUT09.

• Meeting ID: 982 2539 9175
• Passcode: 13JwUK8U

The third lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series will be given by Ottavia Mazzon (University of Padua).

Ottavia Mazzon is currently Frances A. Yates Long-term Fellow at the Warburg Institute and a post-doc researcher at the University of Padua. Her research interests lie at the intersection of classical philology and book history, focusing on the readership and material reception of ancient Greek literature in Byzantium and in Renaissance Europe. Her first monograph, Leggere, selezionare e raccogliere excerpta nella prima età paleologa. La silloge conservata nel codice greco Neap. II C 32, is forthcoming with Edizioni dell’Orso (Hellenica, 99).

Abstract

Byzantine intellectuals frequently put together collections of excerpts aiming to preserve the most interesting passages they encountered while reading. Many of these have survived, especially from the Palaeologan period, allowing us to explore Byzantine scholars’ reading interests and to understand how they used their books. Whenever they read, Byzantine scholars did not exclusively focus on literary works they were studying. When consulting a codex, they also took notice of the paratexts and sometimes ended up transcribing them alongside the quotations they had selected from the main text; the paratexts thus became an integral part of excerpt collections.

The objective of my paper is to show how the DBBE is an effective tool for the identification of paratextual elements within an excerpt-collection and facilitates the reconstruction of the material characteristics of the manuscripts read by the excerptor(s), going so far as providing essential information for the recognition of the exemplar employed. I will do so by presenting examples from two excerpt collections from the early Palaeologan period which I have chosen as a case-study: the Rhodoniai of Makarios Chrysokephalos, preserved in MS Marc. gr. Z. 452 (coll. 796), and the excerpt-collection transmitted by MS Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, II C 32. The book epigrams preserved in the latter are partially known; Neap. II C 32 contains a poem summarizing the content of the Iliad, which accompanies the hypotheseis to each book (ff. 366r-371v).

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 16 November 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/96553291684?pwd=SyticTAxYmpLVy9sYm5RNzFHYUJjQT09.

• Meeting ID: 965 5329 1684
• Passcode: 8u5s8CW3

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The second lecture in the online lecture series Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures, Fall 2021 Series will be given by Simon Zuenelli (Universität Innsbruck).

Dr Simon Zuenelli is Assistant Professor at Innsbruck University (Austria) and chief editor of the review journal Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft. His research focuses on post-classical Greek poetry. He authored several contributions on Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and is currently preparing a monograph on the ancient Greek book epigram.

Abstract

As the DBBE effectively shows, the production of book epigrams was indeed a popular phenomenon in the Byzantine Middle Ages. Yet, the book epigram is not a Byzantine invention, but rooted in a long tradition going as far back as the Hellenistic period. The history of the ancient book epigram is currently being investigated in the project “The Ancient Greek Book Epigram”, funded by the Austrian Science Fund and carried out at Innsbruck University. In my paper, I would like to present some of the results gained so far, which can lead to a better understanding of the evolution of the Byzantine book epigram tradition. Accordingly, my paper will highlight the continuity of book epigram production between Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

More specifically, after a brief general introduction to the ancient Greek book epigram, the paper will firstly deal with the continuity on a generic level. To this end, the type of the ancient “scribe-related epigram”, where the aspect of continuity is particularly visible, will be discussed. Secondly, two important issues related to the practice of Byzantine book epigram production will be addressed, namely the question of visual presentation and that of textual fluidity (or textual recycling). Taking P.Lond.Lit 11 as an example, several striking parallels with the ancient book epigram tradition in regards of both phenomena will be presented. This analysis will eventually lead to the general discussion of how to determine the “origin” of single Byzantine book epigrams.

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 19 October 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/99768938150?pwd=RkVaRlBLeGRxSTFXUmFoU1FvUWVWZz09.

• Meeting ID: 997 6893 8150
• Passcode: Pk1QAR6S

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The first lecture in the Fall 2021 Series of Speaking From the Margins. DBBE Online Lectures will be given by Renaat Meesters (Ghent University & KU Leuven).

Renaat Meesters was a heuristic collaborator (scribe) of the DBBE from 2011 to 2013 and obtained his doctoral degree in 2017 at Ghent University with a dissertation on Byzantine book epigrams on John Klimax. Since 2016 he is a teacher of Greek and Latin at the College of Essen and a voluntary postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University and KU Leuven.

Abstract

Since its inception in 2010, the DBBE has disclosed an important corpus of medieval Greek texts to the academic community, shedding new light on a plethora of aspects of Byzantine book culture. Regrettably, there is currently no similar project for the collection, cataloguing and edition of metrical paratexts written in Latin. Despite some examples of Latin epigrams which have received a certain measure of attention, this considerable corpus remains seriously understudied.

The purpose of this paper is to promote the idea of founding a Database of Latin Book Epigrams (DLBE), inspired by the DBBE. Therefore, a broad overview of the corpus will be sketched by presenting some Latin book epigrams, mostly selected from manuscripts preserved in the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) in Brussels. These examples will be compared to Byzantine book epigrams that reveal similar generic features. The observation that Byzantine and Latin book epigrams have a lot in common, underlines the feasibility of setting up a database of Latin book epigrams, which may lead to a better and more thorough understanding of mediaeval book culture in general and of book epigrams in particular.

Practical information

Date & time: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 4:00pm (CET)

No registration required. The lecture is freely accessible via Zoom: https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/94069376394?pwd=NzNtVzRjTlphNzgzS25GSUxsQ2tzUT09.

• Meeting ID: 940 6937 6394
• Passcode: iLtrHAu2