Resources and Websites Recently Announced (from BBBS 2001)

David Jenkins, the librarian of the Anastos books at Notre Dame has a translation group and he has put the translation of the Life of George of Amastris on the web: http://www.byzantine.nd.edu/translations.shtml you can also find: The History of Byzantine Literature by Karl Krumbacher: Introductory chapters at the same address. [From BEDLAM mail list 26/02/02]

Judge Christopher Young has acquired various eighteenth and nineteenth-century travel and archaeological works in first editions by inter alia Beaufort, Fellows, Newton, McKenzie and Irby, Curzon, Hobhouse, Wordsworth, Finlay and Wortley Montagu.

Ellhnovglwssa palaiovtupa (Early Printing in Greek 1469-1700). This new site has been developed by Michael Jeffreys as part of a research project, funded by the Australian Research Council, which is examining the manuscript and printed background to late Byzantine vernacular and early Modern Greek literature. The website, which is to be expanded and updated annually, is an attempt at an analytical and illustrated catalogue of early printing in Greek, beginning with 200 examples. The catalogue is designed to concentrate on books in Greek rather than those produced by Greek writers and printing professionals.

For each book the following are provided:

(a) Digitised pictures of the title page, colophon (if any) and any other pages which may be regarded, subjectively, as making up the book's identity.

(b) Transcriptions of the text on these pages, both in the original languages and in a standard Latin-script version.

(c) Lists of libraries which claim to possess copies of the book, together with shelf-marks (where known) and the source of the information given.

(d) Brief bibliographical descriptions and lists of references to standard handbooks.

(e) Separate lists to enable users to find the books, using chronological and alphabetical systems, and the Greek and English languages.

There is also a bibliography to expand the abbreviated references used on the site.

Two other analytical features are at present only provided in scattered cases:

(i) Details of variants in the presentation of a single edition

(ii) Means to compare on screen pages which are worth comparing, like the developing title pages of particular liturgical books.

The URL is http://babel.mml.oc.ac.uk

Coin Collection

Professor Elizabeth Jeffreys writes that the Simon Bendall collection of over 800 late Byzantine gold, electrum, silver billon and copper coins has been acquired by the Ashmolean Museum with generous assistance from Resource, the National Art Collections Fund, the Carl and Eileen Subak Family Foundation, and the Friends of the Ashmolean.

The collection relates to the period from 1204-1453. The exile of the emperors from Constantinople 1204-1261 produced a series of coins from other mints in the minor empires of Nicaea, Epirus and Thessalonica, and the successful re-capture of the capital produced a new type showing the Virgin restored within the city walls. However, even after the recapture of the city the symptoms of decline are evident. The coins illustrate a startling deterioration of artistic quality, which mirrors the decline of the empire, but the shift from gold to silver which also occurs at this time may owe more to economic forces than to political ones. Thus the coins provide political, economic and artistic insights. The collection also illustrates Byzantium's relations with the West. The earliest coins are fully Byzantine, and are often remarkable and very beautiful examples of medieval Greek art. This style clearly influenced the iconography of the Venetian grosso c.1200, but a century later, it is equally clear that it is the Venetian type which influences new Byzantine issues. In the same way, the influence of the Crusader States established in Greece is shown in the Byzantine coinage which strikes its own billion tornese after the Crusader model. The transition from Eastern Empire to medieval European state is clearly shown. Finally the coins also illustrate the dynastic struggles of the time. These are the broad issues which will lend themselves well to a planned exhibition on the end of empire to coincide with the 550th anniversary of the capture of Constantinople in 2003.

But a collection of this sort is also susceptible to much more detailed scholarly work. The studies, attributions to new mints, and the detailed study of the circulation, will all be possible based on this unique collection of material. It is for this reason that the collection of minor varieties is so important, numismatics in this respect resembling comparative work on prints of different states. This remarkable collection is at once a scholarly archive, and a sampler of medieval art in miniature accessible to all.

Further inquiries should be addressed to Dr. Nicolas Mayhew, Keeper of the Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford OX1 2PH; nick.mayhew@ashmus.ox.ac.uk

New Websites

Electronic Catalogues of Greek Manuscripts of the British Library:
http://molcat.bl.uk/msscat/INDEX.ASP

The Open University's site on Carthage:
http://www.open.ac.uk/carthage

The Centre d'Études Byzantines de Strasbourg:
http://byzance.dr10.cnrs.fr

The Bulletin d’Information et de Coordination of the Association international des études byzantines is now electronic:
http://www.eie.gr/aieb

The website for the Suda On Line project is
http://www.stoa.org/sol/
New editors are needed. Contact Elizabeth Vandiver at ev23@umail.umd.edu

For previous announcements:
BBBS 26 (2000)