International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Luigi D’Amelia
University Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy, 
[e-mail]
The 
Laudatio S. Barae BHG 212
and Some Considerations in Favor 
of Its Traditional, but Recently Challenged, Attribution to John Mauropous 
(11
th
Century)
As far as we know, the cod. Lesbos, Μονὴ τοῦ Λειμῶνος, 43, datable on palaeographical 
grounds to the 12
th
-13
th
century, is the only manuscript which preserves the Laudatio s. Barae BHG 
212 (ff. 248r-261v), an elegant and rhetorically complex hagiographical text, unfortunately mutilated 
at the end. The text tells the story of St Baras, an enigmatic Egyptian ascetic who after spending 
some time in the desert moved to Constantinople, where, according to the monastic tradition (or 
rather, to a branch of it), he seems to have founded the Monastery of St John Prodromos in the 
so-called Petra neighborhood sometime between the end of the 5
th
and the beginning of the 6
th
century. The author of the Laudatio must have had very little and vague information available about 
Baras’ life, which he tried to complete and amplify in order to fulfil the devotional needs of an 
important place of worship in the Capital. The encomium of St Baras, when looked at closely, far 
from being a mere exercise of pompous and empty sacred rhetoric, reveals a noteworthy literary 
skill and a stylistic accuracy which are not common in the hagiographical byzantine prose. The 
text was published for the first time in 1884 by Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, whose “semi-
critical” edition surprisingly shows several reading errors, as I could observe while preparing a new 
critical edition of the Laudatio s. Barae. In the manuscript the title in red ink seems to attribute 
the encomium to a certain Ἰωάννης Μαυροπόδης, who has been traditionally identified by scholars 
with John Mauropous, the well-known Byzantine scholar, ecclesiastic and also teacher and friend 
of Michael Psellos (11
th
c.). In 2002 Xavier Lequeux contested this attribution referring almost 
exclusively to data which he was able to infer from the title, in which Ἰωάννης Μαυροπόδης is also 
called “monk” and “archdeacon” of the Monastery of St John Prodromos of Petra. Since the two 
cognomina Μαυροπόδης and Μαυρόπους do not coincide and in light of few other elements, the 
Belgian scholar argued that the John Μαυροπόδης, author of the Laudatio s. Barae, should not be 
identified with the above-mentioned John Mauropous (Μαυρόπους). My paper will demonstrate 
that the Laudatio s. Barae is most likely a work by John Mauropous, and not only on the basis of 
the information provided by the title of the text in the manuscript, but also of a brief analysis of the 
literary, linguistic and stylometric features of the encomium and a comparison of them with those 
of the works undoubtedly ascribed to the Byzantine scholar.

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