booklet of abstracts - Oxford University Byzantine Society

Session five9:45 | Saturday 5 March 2011 | Lecture TheatreChairPrerona Prasadkeble CollegeThe movements of manuscriptsbetween Byzantium and theArabic world and the hypothesisof the role of the Graeco-Arabictranslation movement in therevival of literary production inByzantiumJakub SypiańskiUniversity of Paris I–Panthéon-SorbonneBetween the ninth and tenth centuries, interestin Greek manuscripts increased both inByzantium and in Muslim countries. Both phenomenahave much in common, but despitethe geographical proximity, their appearance atalmost the same time is sometimes consideredincidental. Paul Lemerle, author of classic studiesof the Macedonian Renaissance (Le premierhumanisme byzantin) rejects any connectionbetween them. His view has been recentlyreviewed by Dimitri Gutas, a specialist in theGraeco-Arabic translation movement in theAbbasid caliphate. According to him, thesetranslations could have possibly given impetusto the resumption of literary production inByzantium after the ‘Dark Ages’. In addition,revived demand in the caliphate for the Greekmanuscripts of texts needed for translationactivity could have resumed the activity ofcopying manuscripts in Byzantium.In this light, an almost complete correlationbetween the list of works translated intoArabic in Baghdad and a list of manuscriptsfirst copied in Byzantium in ninth century, areparticularly interesting. In my paper I intendto focus specifically on one aspect of thistheory. I want to explore the Byzantine andArab narratives of manuscripts deriving fromthe other side of the border. Some of these storiescan be considered as contrived, thereforein addition to exploring the ways by which themanuscripts moved around, I would like toexamine how we can explain the appearanceof fictional stories on this topic.Jakub Sypiański’s research interests arethe intellectual relations between Byzantiumand the Arab world until the tenth century. Inbroad terms, they include all areas of culturalcontacts between Byzantium, the Arab worldand the Latin West in the middle ages.Psaltika and Asmatika inthe liturgical history of theByzantine EmpireOlga GrinchenkoBrasenose College, OxfordThe Byzantine Rite is known for its magnificentservices, beautiful music, and meaningfulpoetry. Despite the large number of the liturgicalmanuscripts which have come down tous, the history of the Byzantine office is yetto be written. My paper will be dealing witha particular type of the Byzantine liturgicalmanuscripts – Asmatika and Psaltika. Theseare collections of hymns (mostly kontakia)to be sung by a choir (Asmatika) and a soloist(Psaltika) in the Orthodox Office datingfrom the late tenth to fourteenth centuries.At first glance all manuscripts resemble eachother and have a similar tripartite structure;however, each copy is absolutely unique.In my paper I will provide a comparativeanalysis of the content of the manuscripts,describe their liturgical and calendrical features,and bring attention to the enigmatic16 | Between Constantines