International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Codex Beratinus no. 41
contains the 
Synaxarion
of the months September to July. It dates 
on the 14
th
century. The text was written on western paper from an anonymous scribe. From a 
paleographic standpoint the script shows remarkable similarities with manuscripts from the Terra 
d’Otranto. Interesting is also its decoration with stylized floral, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic 
patterns. The decoration of the initials represents the usual images used in Italian-Greek manuscripts. 
In most of the cases these initials are rendered in the 
en négatif
method. The figurative repertoire of 
the initials of codex Beratinus No. 41 are dominated by elements representing the book production 
in Terra d’Otranto at the end of the 13
th
and at the 14
th
century.
The manuscripts mentioned above, nowadays preserved at the Central State Archive, in 
Tirana, do not provide direct information about their provenance. There are no codicographic notes 
(or colophons) presenting clear codicological and paleographic evidence orientating the researcher 
toward the cultural region that produced them. “Theoretically, all manuscripts not bearing clear 
evidence of Epirote origin, could have been written in Southern Italy and then brought in Epirus. 
Yet, manuscripts nowadays considered to be produced in Southern Italy on the basis of their 
paleographic, codicological features or stereotypical phrases in their codicographic notes, could 
well have been produced at the Epirus region at the same period”. In this context, the existence of 
the italo-greek manuscripts that are found in the Albanian milieu, as it is the case of the manuscript 
copied by the hieromonakos Nichepore in the monastery of St. George in Durrës, and the presence 
of the nowadays collection in Albania, as a part of the above cultural environment, suggests a new 
perspective of learning about the past creativity of the Medieval Albanian territories, but also it 
brings a strong proof about the cultural orientation and influences of the Albanians during the 12
th
– 14
th
centuries.

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