International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Dimitar Iliev
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia, Bulgaria;
[e-mail]
New Information about the Provenance of the Glagolitic Codex 
Zographensis from an Unpublished Marginal Note 
(Zographou Monastery Library Inv. No. 19023)
In the summer of 2015, together with a team of scholars and students from the University of 
Sofia, I worked in the library of the Bulgarian monastery of Zographou on Mount Athos. I took part 
in the initial phase of a project whose main goal is to catalogue all the books in the library, some of 
them previously unavailable and stored only in the library repository. Among the volumes, there 
are various early printed books on liturgical or theological subjects in Greek or Church Slavonic. 
Many of these editions are standard and come in significant quantities, as they were obviously much 
needed in everyday liturgical and monastic life. Usually, the individual copies belonged to different 
monks, or to different chapels and churches in the vicinity that were connected with the monastery. 
This was often reflected in various marginal notes, condemning any person who would ‘borrow’ the 
book for himself. I came across one such marginal note in a copy (inv. no. 19023) of the widespread 
liturgical compilation of evangelical texts printed by Nikolaos Glykys in Venice in 1671 (Θεῖον 
και ἱερὸν εὐαγγέλιον. Τὸ πάλαι μὲν, παρὰ Ἀντωνίου Πινέλλου τυπωθέν, νῦν δὲ τοῖς ἴσοις τύποις 
παρὰ Νικολάου τοῦ Γλυκέος μετατυπωθὲν καὶ μετὰ πάσης ἐπιμελείας διορθωθέν, ἀφιερωθέν δε 
τῷ πανιερωτάτῳ καὶ σοφοτάτῳ μητροπολίτῃ φιλαδελφείας κῳ Μελετίῳ τῷ χορτακίῳ ὑπερτίμῳ καὶ 
ἐξάρχω τοῦ πατριαρχικοῦ θρόνου). Apart from the usual curses against stealing, the copy which, in 
1786, belonged to a certain Cosmas, 
oikonomos
of the nearby chapel of Provlaka, casually mentions 
the 10.-century 
Codex Zographensis.
According to Cosmas, its provenance was from the same 
chapel: a previously unknown fact about the history of this Glagolitic manuscript, which, if true, 
can add new chapters in the history of its transmission. The present paper deals in detail with the 
content and the peculiarities of the marginal note that mentions this piece of information.

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