International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

HISTORIOGRAPHY 11
TH
 – 14
TH
 CENTURIES
Chairs: 
Albrecht Berger, Vratislav Zervan
Theophili Kampianaki
, 
The Reception of John Zonaras’ 
Epitome of Histories
: 
The Evidence of the Manuscript Transmission
Emanoil Babus
, 
Alexiade
, source de la géopolitique de l’émotion
Grigorios Papagiannis – Nikolaos Siklafidis
, 
Eφαρμοσμένη «μικροχειρουργική» κειμένων και ένας νέος τρόπος 
έκδοσης-παρουσίασης του κειμένου: το παράδειγμα της 
Αλεξιάδας
Aneliya Markova
, 
Solar Eclipses as Indicator in Nicetas Choniates’ 
Historia
Vratislav Zervan
, 
Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos und sein Verhältnis zu den lateinischen 
Namen und lateinischen Lehnwörtern im Griechischen
Albrecht Berger
, 
The New Edition of Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos’ 
Church History

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397
Theophili Kampianaki
University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; 
[e-mail]
The Reception of John Zonaras’ 
Epitome of Histories
: 
The Evidence of the Manuscript Transmission
The present paper aims to shed light on the reception of John Zonaras’ chronicle (12
th
cent.) 
by later Byzantine readers. One of the main reasons why the chronicle, known as the Epitome of 
Histories, is of great interest to modern scholars is because it preserves classical and late antique 
sources no longer extant, with Cassius Dio’s Roman History being the most prominent example. But 
why was the Epitome read in Byzantium? What were the elements of the text that mostly attracted 
the attention of Byzantine audiences? To answer these questions, I will take into consideration the 
evidence of the manuscript tradition of the work.
The Epitome was certainly one of the best-sellers of the Middle Ages; about fifty codices dated 
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries transmit the entire text or shorter parts of it. In this 
paper, I am going to look into the manuscripts of this period in terms of two different aspects; one 
is concerned with the number of manuscripts that contain the entire chronicle or only a certain 
section of it, and the other with the number of manuscripts that transmit the Epitome alone or along 
with other texts. Examining the first issue, one can gain a clear sense of what parts of the chronicle 
readers were mostly fascinated with. As to the second one, it is crucial to consider not so much the 
manuscripts that preserve exclusively the Epitome as those that contain other works too. The textual 
context of these codices offers significant indications concerning the way in which later audiences 
would view the chronicle. Special mention will be made of a small group of manuscripts that are 
anthologies, namely collections of excerpts of a great number of works, the Epitome included.
Among other things, I would like to show that Byzantine readers were much more interested in 
the chronicle as a source of Roman/Byzantine imperial history rather than a source of information 
about Jewish antiquities and the Roman Republic. I will further try to account for the presence 
of Zonaras’ work in codices which are exclusively secular in character, and also in manuscripts 
whose commissioners had very specific reading tastes. Exploring the implications of these issues, 
this paper will finally try to demonstrate that the Epitome became enormously popular because it 
was able to accommodate the needs and aims of a wide range of different readers.

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