12. Andreas Schminck und Dorotei Getov. Repertorium der Handschriften des byzantinischen Rechts. Teil II. Die Handschriften des kirchlichen Rechts I (Nr. 328–427). Frankfurt a. Main: Löwenklau-Gesellschaft, 2010, XXVI+297 s. [= Forschungen zur byzantinischen Rechtsgeschichte. Band 28]

Reviews / Рецензии

Andreas Schminck und Dorotei Getov. Repertorium der Handschriften des byzantinischen Rechts. Teil II. Die Handschriften des kirchlichen Rechts I (Nr. 328–427). Frankfurt a. Main: Löwenklau-Gesellschaft, 2010, XXVI+297 S. (Forschungen zur byzantinischen Rechtsgeschichte. Band 28). The Repertorium der Handschriften des byzantinischen Rechts is an impressive product of a large-scale project devoted to the study of the Byzantine legal sources. It was Dieter Simon who, in 1974, put forward the idea of a comprehensive catalogue of the Byzantine legal manuscripts. In 1995, the first part of the Repertorium containing the manuscripts of secular law Nos. 1–327, was published. The second part, including the manuscripts of church law, was planned to comprise two half-volumes with descriptions of around 300 manuscripts covering canonical collections up to 1204. The present review offers a brief account of the first half-volume Die Handschriften des kirchlichen Rechts I (Nr. 328–427) that was published in 2010 (further referred to as Repertorium). The book contains descriptions of 100 manuscripts kept in 27 repositories, the majority of which for the first time are introduced in detail to the wider scholarly community. The unknown details are intriguing enough to arouse the interest of scholars and to give them a reason to single out the edition as a highly valuable contribution to the Byzantine studies. However praiseworthy this rough estimation may be, it is still not adequate to describe the real value of the diligent scholarly study that has produced the remarkable results found in the Repertorium. Firstly, the detailed information about each manuscript is just one of the numerous merits of this volume. The Repertorium continues work started in the previous volume. In general, both follow the same principles of organization of the information. The descriptions of the manuscripts are organized alphabetically according to the city and library where they are kept. Further, the description contains signature, associated dating, material, foliation (correct order of the leaves if necessary), information about the copyist and the holder, manuscript’s content, notes about the manuscript’s textological and codicological history, bibliography, and the name of the description’s author. Descriptions draw on the rich microfilm archive of copies of Byzantine manuscripts owned by the Max-Planck Institute for European Legal History (since the 1990s, the study of the Byzantine legal sources has come under auspices of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences but remains located at the Max-Planck Institute for European Legal History), which is a guaranttee of the accuracy of the information. Unfortunately, microfilms do not offer information on codicological peculiarities, on watermarks, ruling, inks, among others, and therefore these details are not included but their lack is offset by exhaustive references provided.

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Reviews / Рецензии Secondly, the relevant methodology diligently applied in the description of the manuscripts’ content enormously contributes to the excellent quality of the Repertorium. Canonical compilations are composed of multiple text units whose identification is an extremely difficult task, requiring careful attention to detail and professional expertise. The observation on these written monuments’ textual tradition shows that various additional entries were added to or withdrawn from the main corpus depending on the compiler’s judgment. In this context, an uniform title only, such as Nomocanon in 14 titles for example, would be inaccurate, untrustworthy, and noninformative. The Repertorium overcomes this challenge by offering an individual numbering and careful interpretation of each text, precise determination of the beginning and the ending of exceprts, and correct identification based on existing editions (an incipit is given if previous edition is not available). The information about the textual history is extremely useful. Comparisons made during the direct work with the manuscripts as well as the information offered by the already published studies, allow the authors of the Repertorium to indicate whether the manuscript is an antegraph or an apograph as well as to associate it to other manuscripts which stem from common protograph. The description also contains section with codicological references if parts or smaller fragments of the same manuscript are kept under other signatures in the same or another repository. An undoubted advantage of the Repertorium is the clear user-friendly organisation of the material. Six appendices are attached, namely indices of copyists, holders, dated manuscripts, manuscripts in chronological order, incipits, authors and works included. Appendices are highly informative and enable easy search and retrieval of the data. Last but not least, the information about mansucripts that is added or corrected makes it the most informative and reliable guide to the manuscripts described and the works identified. To sum up, the Repertorium sheds much needed light on the transmission of the Byzantine legal compilations and makes them accessible for further studies. The publication of this volume is an important step in the pursuit of methodological standards for legal texts description, which is particularly topical and pending as regards their Slavic tradition.

Desislava Naydenova

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