International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Massimo Bernabò
Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy; 
[e-mail]
The Illuminations of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy in the Laurenziana 
Library: Apocrypha and Daily Life
A colophon states that the Arabic Gospel of Infancy (Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 
cod. Or. 387) was made in the Artuqid Mardin in the year 1299 for a Jacobite priest. The text is a version 
of the apocryphal gospels on the infancy of Jesus; it draws back to a late-antique Syriac apocryphal 
gospel. At the end of the infancy narrative, a few episodes from the canonical passion and a section 
from the Gospel of Nicodemus conclude the codex. The Laurenziana codex is the only extant gospel 
of infancy which contains pictures: over 50 partially colored drawings. Notably, the pictures do not 
correspond wholly to the Arabic text of the Gospel, but rather to an earlier Syriac version of it; all 
the same, the illustrations for the Nicodemus account of the 
post mortem
episodes of Jesus transmit 
a version of the Gospel of Nicodemus otherwise unknown. The illustrations of the Infancy Gospel 
do not have relations with canonical iconography; they show daily life episodes, especially related to 
women realm: beauty, husband, children, diseases, jealousy, temptations, sexuality.
Panagiotis Athanasopoulos
Ioannina, Greece; 
[e-mail]
The Latin Background to Scholarios’ Greek Scriptural Quotations
In late Byzantium, the translations of Latin Medieval works reveal many interesting aspects of 
the 
modus interpretandi
of Byzantine scholarship. Gennadios Scholarios (ca 1400 - ca 1472), one of 
the most prominent scholars of the Paleologan period, was not only a fervent admirer of Thomas 
Aquinas, but also a translator of some of his works. Scholarios’ 
modus interpretandi
has not been 
studied in depth as yet. Moreover, Scholarios’ way of rendering Biblical passages quoted in Latin 
texts back to Greek raises questions as regards his opinion on the text of the Bible. In this paper, I 
focus on the Scriptural quotations in Thomas’ works translated by Scholarios, in order to address 
the following questions. (a) What was Scholarios’ opinion on the valid versions of the Bible, given 
that his translations of Latin Biblical passages are in several cases 
retro-versed
? (b) Why did he offer 
a Greek translation of passages extant in Aquinas’ works but absent from the 
Septuaginta
? (c) Why 
did he integrate such translated quotations into certain works of his own?

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