International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Petros M. Koufopoulos
University of Patras, Patras, Greece; 
[e-mail]
The Byzantine Library Buildings of the Sinai Monastery
The significance of the context of the Sinaitic library that includes a unique collection of 
manuscripts, incunabula and early printed books has been noticed and evaluated by many scholars 
since the nineteenth century. More recently several distinguished scholars such as K. Weitzman, G. 
Galavaris and N. P. Ševčenko have included in their studies views on how these reached the remote 
monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. Some were donated directly by Constantinopolitan Emperors, 
others arrived through the dependencies (metochia) of the monastery or were offered by pilgrims 
and travelers. Obviously a substantial number of manuscripts were produced in the scriptorium 
of Sinai. An epitome of the context of the library has been published by P. Nikolopoulos, while the 
most detailed publication on how these collections had been formed and in which places they have 
been accommodated inside the Sinai monastery’s building complex was included in an extensive 
article published in 1993 by the former librarian Bishop Demetrios Digbasanis.
The present communication focuses on the further identification and graphic architectural 
reconstruction, where possible, of the buildings that housed the Sinaitic library throughout its long 
history and before its organization during the 18
th
century. 
It is well known that abbot Pachomius from Upper Egypt, who lived in the 4
th
century, is 
considered the founder of monastic coenobitic life and more particularly he established the use of 
books in the daily life of the monks. He placed certain rules concerning the obligatory study of the 
scriptures, educating the illiterate and taking special care for the handling of the manuscripts by the 
monks. Reliable written sources and the writings of Sinaitic monks imply that a similar situation 
must have been the case in the early period of Sinai monastery (6
th
and 7
th
centuries) when many 
of the monks were well educated. Thus the formation of the Sinaitic library goes back to the early 
years of its foundation in the 6
th
century. It has been claimed that the 4
th
century Codex Sinaiticus 
was a gift of emperor Justinian to the newly established monastery. Anonymous of Piacenza during 
his mid-6
th
century visit to Sinai describes the presence of three distinguished multilingual elders at 
the Skete of the hermits of the Holy Bush that preceded the Justinian monastery. One of them was 
probably Martyrius, the spiritual father and teacher of St John Sinaites known as Climacus or of 
the Divine Ascent (525 - 600). Scholars indicated that John’s writings presupposes the existence of 
a rich updated library in terms of the prior to him ecclesiastical literature mainly of the 4
th
century 
and even more the presence of texts of ancient writers. On the other hand the posterior writings of 
Anastasios Sinaites in the 7
th
century reconfirms the existence of ancient Greek literature texts in 
the Sinaitic library.
It is generally accepted that during the early Christian and the Byzantine era the “place of the 
books” was located in safe places in monasteries, such as the upper floors either of the church’s narthex 
or in the towers and not in a specially built library room. Notes in some manuscripts reveal that there 
were indeed offerings to the Church of Sinai. Examining the plan of the Justinian basilica it seems that 

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the place where books had been originally stored could be the sacristy room located at the east end of 
the south aisle, where the original simple niches preserved in the walls could have been used for scrolls 
and codices. Similar niches exist in the walls of the Church’s present oil storeroom in the north aisle. 
The original form of these rooms has been identified and reconstructed graphically. 
After the Arab conquest of the Sinai Peninsula in the 7
th
c., all the manuscripts belonging to 
the numerous permanently abandoned hermitages in the surrounding mountains were gradually 
gathered in the fortified enclosure of the monastery and this might had been a turning point to the 
increase of the number of volumes in the library and to find additional storage space. 
Apart from the monastery’s main Church there is strong possibility that books were stored 
also in the central pre-Justinian tower, which was totally incorporated to the needs and life of 
the monastery from the very beginning of its foundation. Following the strong tradition of the 
“tower-keep” found in the other monasteries in Egypt, it is most likely that valuable objects of the 
community including the manuscripts were kept in the upper floors. This tradition survived until 
the 20
th
century and books were safely kept in rooms related to the Abbot’s lodgings.
In the lower levels of the tower of St. George, which is preserved attached to the middle of the 
north wall of the fortress, there are some small medieval rooms that housed for a long period part 
of the library. These are raised about one floor over ground level. Their access was through a set 
of rooms and the chapel of Sts Apostles that were built between the Church and the fortress wall 
demolished during the early 20
th
century. The early dating of the rooms’ structure, which is one 
of the main construction phases of the tower, is supported by later graffiti dated in the early 16
th
century. The rooms preserve their original plasters on the walls and were furnished with poorly 
made bookshelves using simple planks, reeds and clay. These rooms could be dated back to the 
repair of the tower that followed the 13
th
century (1201) strong earthquake. The earliest known 
account for a Library inside the tower of St. George could possibly be that of Michael Eneman from 
Uppsala in 1712 who recorded “books stacked one above the other” in a “room along the wall and 
near to the main monastery’s Church”. 
It seems that this extraordinary place had been a secondary library or a crypt for books, an 
extension to the stores of the nearby Church until 1734. It was this year when the knowledgeable 
Archbishop Nikephoros Marthalis and his bookkeeper monk Isaias collected and organized all 
the scattered books and housed them in a purposely built Library with the help of monk-masons 
Philotheos and Symeon. These new rooms were located at the south side of the Monastery, next to 
the chapel of St. Antony. After this it seems that the rooms in the tower of St. George were reserved 
to store only worn books that were no longer in use, loose folios from manuscripts, for instance 
those of Codex Sinaiticus, and parchment fragments meant for the repair of manuscripts. 
Nevertheless, the destruction of the tower of St. George during the great flood of 1798 caused 
the fall of debris from the earthen floors and terrace of the chapel of St. George into the interior 
of the library rooms and the “burial” of their contents. The tower was extensively reconstructed 
in 1801 by the monastery, assisted by Napoleon’s engineer Kleber and the original use of the place 
forgotten. After the disastrous fire during Νοvember 1971 and the excavation that followed in 1975 
the valuable remains of the old library were revealed and are known today to the scholarly world as 
the “New Finds”.

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