International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Alessandra Bucossi
University Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy; 
[e-mail]
Prolegomena to the Edition of the So-Called 
Contra Veteris Romae Asseclas
(PG 102, 392–400)
The short text published by Joseph Hergenroether (Ratisbonae, 1857) as an appendix of the 
most famous 
Photii Patrarchae Liber de Spiritus Sancti Mystagogia
(
PG
102, 280–392) and widely 
quoted by the polemicists who wrote against the 
Filioque
is still unedited. Starting from the first 
editor of the treatise, Hergenroether, there have been various attempts to establish if the text was 
written by the Patriarch Photius and if it can be considered an epitome of the 
Mystagogia
(e.g. 
Hergenrother, Podskalsky, Sieben, Gordillo, Haugh, Oberdorfer, Barmine, Kusabu, Kolbaba). This 
short communication will present the ‘state of the art’ in research on authorship attribution and 
recensio codicum
in order to inform the international academic community about the project of 
editing the 
Contra Veteris Romae Asseclas
planned by Alessandra Bucossi and Paolo Eleuteri.
Juan Signes Codoñer
Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain; 
[e-mail]
Towards a Classification of the Works of Photius
Under the name of Photius literary works, reference books, drafts, scholia, manuscripts and 
excerpts have been preserved. Their classification cannot be attempted along the traditional lines 
of literary genres or on the basis of the content of the works, for this represents a synchronic and 
horizontal approach which does not take into account the rather hierarchical and diachronic 
nature of Photius’ heterogeneous writings. Collective authorship, rewriting, intended diffusion, 
instrumentality and originality are all of them aspects to be considered in the classification advanced 
here, which is a compromise between all these conflicting criteria. [See J. Signes Codoñer (2013), “La 
diffusion envisagée par l’auteur pour son œuvre comme guide pour un classement de la litterature à 
Byzance aux IX
e
et X
e
siècles”, in P. Odorico (ed.),
 La face cachée de la littérature Byzantine. Le texte 
en tant que message immédiat 
(
Dossiers Byzantins
11), Paris, 87-122]