Cristina Cocola
I am a second-year Master student in Classical Philology (Ancient Humane Letters) at the University of Siena, interested in particular in Ancient Greek language and literature. This has informed my DEMM project. It is based on two Greek manuscripts: one at the Vatican Library (Vat.gr. 1660), which is the oldest (10th century); the other Parisinus Graecus (Par.gr. 1197), which is later (12th century). Both manuscripts provide the same text, whose author was an important protagonist of the Byzantine empire Theodore the Studite, the Greek abbot of the monastery of Stoudios (near Constantinople) was a revolutionary figure in the fields of the monastic reform and of the monks writing style (μεταχαρακτηρισμός, metacharakterismos, the process of copying from one script to another). In the 9th century Theodore wrote an enkomion (a funeral oration) for his uncle Plato, abbot of Sakkoudion, in Bithynia. In this praise, Theodore shows his uncle to be the perfect abbot, and takes the opportunity to remark upon the monks’ position during the second Byzantine iconoclasm. He argues in particular with the emperors, who were against the iconographical representation of God and the saints.
This project will align these manuscripts, which are the only two that have preserved this laudatio, and read them in parallel, providing a transcription of the two texts; we currently have only the 19th-century edition (of the older manuscript) by J.P.Migne, with his Latin translation (which presents some mistakes and misunderstandings), contained in the Patrologia Graeca.
Moreover, I would like to re-evaluate the Parisinus Graecus, which scholars have considered less faithful than the Vaticanus Graecus because of its later date. From my point of view, instead, it could be interesting to analyze it for the evolution of the language; there are numerous textual variants, which testify to another way of speaking in Greek and also to the transmission of
ancient texts.