Supervisors info:
Πάλλης Γεώργιος, Επίκ. Καθηγητής Βυζαντινής Αρχαιολογίας, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Αρχαιολογίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών.
Δρανδάκη Αναστασία, Επίκ. Καθηγήτρια Βυζαντινής Αρχαιολογίας και Τέχνης, Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Αρχαιολογίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών.
Καλλιρρόη Λινάρδου, Επίκ. Καθηγήτρια Ιστορίας της Τέχνης του Βυζαντίου και του Δυτικού Μεσαίωνα, Τμήμα Θεωρίας και Ιστορίας της Τέχνης, Ανωτάτη Σχολή Καλών Τεχνών.
Summary:
The codex Sinai. gr. 339 consists of 439 parchment folios measuring 32,3x25,4 cm each and includes sixteen of the forty-five homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus (4th c.). It is a liturgical edition codex, as this particular category of codices has been characterized, which included a fixed formula of sixteen homilies that were being read during the Divine Liturgy on certain days of the ecclesiastical year depending on the feast or/and the passage of the Gospel.
The codex itself provides a lot of information through its codicological notes, which are found at the beginning and at the end of the manuscript, about the donor, the recipient and its course. It is mentioned that it was given as a gift from the abbot of the imperial monastery of Pantocrator in Constantinople, Joseph, to the monastery of the Holy Theotokos Pantanassa on the island of Hagia Glykeria which is located northeast at the Sea of Marmara. We do not know for how long the manuscript was at the monastery of Pantanassa, whose current ruins and the seal of its monks attest to its existence beyond the available historical evidence, however at the 1st of July 1550 the codex was transferred from the monk Germanos, who was oeconomos of the metochion of Sinai in Crete, to the Holy monastery of St. Catherine of Mount Sinai.
The codex, which has the newer binding of the early 16th c., preserves its illustration in a very good condition· it is consisted of a full-page frontispiece with the portrait of saint Gregory the Theologian, twelve headpieces at the beginning of each homily (four missing because these folios were replaced subsequently without being illustrated), two hundred and twenty-five zoomorphic and figurative initial letters and nine marginal miniatures.
We focus on the numerous initial letters, which are listed alphabetically and divided into two major categories depending on their subject, zoomorphic and figurative, which in turn are distinguished on the basis of their content in secular and religious origin.
After the iconographical analysis of the zoomorphic and the figurative initial letters, is attempted the identification and the reconstruction of the environment that was a potential source of inspiration for the painter of the manuscript. It is proved, of course, that manuscripts of the same period are not the only source of forms and shapes, but the artist’s ability to come into contact with other forms of art which were at their peak in the 12th c. in Constantinople, such as monumental painting, sculpture, ceramics and metalwork, as well as the observation of the daily life of a Βyzantine, offered him a wide range of choice among different subjects, which he managed to incorporate in his work.
Keywords:
12th c.,manuscripts, initial letters, Joseph Hagioglykerites, Monastery of Theotokos Pantanassa, Sinai
