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The first comprehensive study of the Excerpta, a sort of 'Byzantine Google' which repackaged many key works of Greek historiography stretching back into antiquity, and how it reshaped Byzantine court culture in the tenth century. Also tackles wider issues including the history of information management, philological practices and book culture.
List of contents
1. Imperial court and knowledge production; 2. Appropriation of the past: theory and practice of excerpting historiography; 3. Constructing a research engine of the past; 4. Information management in Constantine VII's treatises; 5. Renewal of historiography under Constantine VII; 6. Distorsion and expansion of the past in the Excerpta; 7. Classification of the past in the Excerpta; 8. The reading of the Excerpta; 9. The Suda: the lexicographer and the excerptor; Conclusions; Appendices A. Edition of the proem and the poem; B. The imperial manuscripts of the Excerpta.
About the author
András Németh is one of the two curators of Greek manuscripts at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Previously, he was a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a research librarian at the National Széchényi Library, Budapest. He coordinates various activities concerning palimpsests at the Vatican Library and is preparing the catalogue of a select group of Greek manuscripts of this library. He studies the cultural history of the Middle Byzantine period and the reception of Greek manuscripts in Renaissance libraries in Europe and is preparing a monograph on the Greek manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Corviniana.
Summary
The first comprehensive study of the Excerpta, a sort of 'Byzantine Google' which repackaged many key works of Greek historiography stretching back into antiquity, and how it reshaped Byzantine court culture in the tenth century. Also tackles wider issues including the history of information management, philological practices and book culture.
