Houghton Library and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies present “Harvard’s Medieval Greek Manuscripts in Time and Context,” a hands-on workshop by Niels Gaul, A. G. Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

With over 30 codices (and numerous fragments) dating from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Houghton holds one of the finest collections of medieval Greek manuscripts in the United States. In this workshop, we will look at some of its stars—including a palimpsest and an archaizing scroll—across a wide range of genres: (miniature) psalters, aristocratic Gospels, and provincial lectionaries; poetry, philosophy, and historiography; bestiaries and schoolbooks. We will consider these manuscripts as artefacts that kept evolving through time, from the wishes and intentions of their original scribes and patrons to the traces left by later readers, users, and collectors; endeavor to place some of them in their wider paleographical and historical contexts; and explore the connection to early printing.

"Harvard’s Medieval Greek Manuscripts in Time and Context" will be offered in the morning and once in the afternoon, and space is limited. Please register for one session only. This is the listing for the afternoon session. Follow this link to register for the morning session: Morning Session.

Workshop attendees are encouraged to attend Gaul’s public lecture, "Codex and Character: Byzantine Authors in/and their Books," October 21, 5:30 PM, at Houghton Library.

Image: Lectionary of the New Testament Acts and Epistles in Greek: manuscript, around 1050–1100. MS Gr 7, Vol. 2. Gift of Edward Everett, 1820.