Cosmography, Asceticism and Female Patronage in Late Byzantine and Slavic Miscellanies (2017)
An intriguing anonymous cosmographical work appears in a range of Byzantine and Slavic manuscripts dating from the 14th to the 16th centuries. This brief text -from three to eight folios depending on the codex- departs from other Byzantine scholarly works published at the time by upholding, rather curiously among other things, that the earth was oval, in the shape of an egg. Judging by the number of manuscripts -more than forty manuscripts for the Byzantine and Slavic world together- this cosmography was popular. The manuscript tradition is rather complex, however. Several versions of the text circulated and appear in a variety of manuscript contexts, from astronomical to ascetic compilations. Two of these ascetic codices will be the primary focus of this analysis: the Byzantine codex Scorialensis Φ III-11 (14th century) and the Serbian Miscellany of Gorica, or Goricki Zbornik (1441/1442). These manuscripts have been selected for several reasons. Firstly, the presence of a cosmographical text in an ascetic compilation illuminates quite well the place of elementary scientific knowledge in an Orthodox context. Secondly, each of these codices belonged to the aristocratic abbesses of a Byzantine and a Serbian convent: the Scorialensis belonged to Princess Irene-Eulogia Choumnaina (1291-d. c. 1355), patron of the Philantropos Soter monastery in Constantinople, and the Zbornik to the Nemanjid princess Jelena Balšić (d. 1443), who founded the Church of the Holy Mother of God on Gorica Island. Therefore, these codices are also remarkable illustrations of the kind of scientific knowledge available to nuns in Orthodox convents. Yet, what may originally appear as a strong commonality between two manuscripts should not lead us astray. Not only do these codices reproduce two different versions of the cosmography, but these versions also appear in very different contexts in the manuscripts, and thereby fulfill different objectives. While the cosmographical text contributed to medical knowledge in Irene's codex; in Jelena's case, the same cosmography belonged to a spiritual journey. Hence, and thirdly, these manuscripts are also good examples of the versatility of a text that was adopted for, and adaptable to, different didactic purposes.
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