A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Volume 2
Cataloging newly discovered manuscripts and fragments in one of the largest collections of Greek manuscripts in North America
Description
A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Volume 2 unveils the rich diversity and enduring legacy of the Greek manuscript tradition preserved in one of North America's largest collections. Building on the acclaimed first volume, this second and concluding volume offers comprehensive illustrated descriptions of eighty-four manuscripts and fragments housed in the University of Michigan Library's Special Collections Research Center. The discovery of twenty-three previously unknown manuscripts and fragments significantly expands our understanding of Byzantine and post-Byzantine book culture, illuminating the remarkable continuity of Greek scholarly, liturgical, and artistic traditions from the ninth through the nineteenth centuries.
Each entry integrates codicological features, handwriting analysis, textual content, decoration, binding, provenance, and references to earlier scholarship as well as high-quality color plates to illustrate representative pages, script types, and illuminations. Among the exceptional highlights are a fragment of The Great Calculation According to the Indians by Maximos Planoudes, preserving portions of this rare mathematical treatise otherwise lost; an illuminated 1371 copy of The Heavenly Ladder by John Klimax, created by the renowned scribe Joasaph II of the Hodegon Monastery in Constantinople; and a newly identified manuscript containing rare patristic homilies linked to the sixteenth-century Choniates scriptorium in Venice.
Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann is an independent scholar. She is the author of A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Volume 1.
Pablo Alvarez is Curator of the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Michigan Library. He is a collaborator on A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Volume 1.
Julia Miller is an independent scholar.
Reviews
"Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann is the most active and productive codicologist of Greek manuscripts working in the USA. The second volume of the University of Michigan’s rich collection is an outstanding companion to its predecessor and a model of its kind.”
- John M. Duffy, Harvard University
“This second volume of the University of Michigan’s Greek manuscript collection features eighty-four detailed descriptions—including twenty-three previously unknown discoveries—and spans a millennium of history. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann’s rigorous scholarship makes this richly illustrated catalogue an indispensable triumph for researchers and bibliophiles alike.”
- Stratis Papaioannou, University of Oxford
“Kavrus-Hoffmann’s expertise in Greek texts, codicology, and paleography makes her uniquely qualified to compose these entries for the Greek manuscripts of the University of Michigan library at Ann Arbor. The author’s mastery is reflected in each entry, as well as the appendices, rendering these volumes invaluable for the motivated amateur as well as the advanced scholar. The quality of the plates is also superb.”
- Kathleen Maxwell, Santa Clara University
“A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts is a necessary, detailed codicological, paleographical and textual description of a collection of Greek texts. Kavrus-Hoffmann’s state-of-the-art presentation of Greek manuscripts will be a great help to researchers and academics”
- Christian Gastgeber, Austrian Academy for the Sciences
"The second volume of A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts has great merit, and represents a completion, to the same high standard, of the work begun with the first volume. This collection of previously unpublished Greek texts will be of much service to readers."
- Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, Macquarie University