Igor Pavlovich Medvedev - 1999 - The Manuscript Heritage of Russian Byzantinists in the Archives of St. Petersburg

Steven Avery

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Игорь Павлович Медведев -
Igor Pavlovich Medvedev - (Petrovich)
The Manuscript Heritage of Russian Byzantinists in the Archives of St. Petersburg
Рукописное наследие русских византинистов в архивах Санкт-Петербурга

Used a lot by Luciano Canfora

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https://books.google.com/books/about/Рукописное_наследие_р.html?id=sxtBAAAAMAAJ

Worldcat - NYPL Dumbarton Oaks - Harvard Brown
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Рукописное наследие русских византинистов в архивах Санкт-Петербурга /
Rukopisnoe nasledie russkikh vizantinistov v arkhivakh Sankt-

 
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Steven Avery

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The original letter sent to the Orthodox Review appears that it (or is it perhaps yet another letter from Mt Athos?) might be kept in the Russian archives.


Рукописное наследие русских византинистов в архивах Санкт-Петербурга
Под ред. И.П. Медведева. СПб.: Дмитрий Буланин
1999. 631 с.


"Manuscript Heritage of Russian Byzantines in the Archives of St. Petersburg"
Pod ed. I.P. Medvedev. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin,
1999. 631 p.

Page 225


"The publication of I.P. Medvedev's "Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts" by Konstantin Simonides inscribed the "Russian page" into the "worldwide Simonias". Constantine Simoniadis - famous forger of Greek manuscripts that he sold to the British Museum, the university library Leipzig. Sensational scandals in European science 19th century In the fund 95 St. Petersburg branch of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences preserved the catalog proposed to the Russian government for buying a collection of ancient manuscripts (81 units). The catalog is preceded by a prologue with a description by Simoiidis of his life and the history of the "miraculous" acquisition of manuscripts. In the "Simoniad" was included also a negative review from Athos dated March 1863. The publication of these materials in the book under review is preliminary question mark: "Great paleographic hoax?" (p. 537). If this is a hoax, then certainly talented. What is only a description of the proposed K. Simoiidis manuscripts! Eg,"Iliad" and "Odyssey", written by the ancients capital Attic letters on the thinnest and most transparent parchment, wound on a golden twig and laid in a box, equal to an egg (p. 555). Perhaps the history of science would be incomplete without such hoaxes, and Constantine Simonides can be consider in connection with the scope of its activities the most learned of the rogues of the world. So, before us lies a volume of more than 600 pages. This work connected the scientific searches of two generations of St. scientists - the last century and our contemporaries. Through the efforts of distant descendants later for a hundred or almost a hundred years images have been resurrected and the deeds of those who made up the glory of Russian science in the field of Byzantine and Greek studies. Activities of the participants of the scientific project "Archives of Russian Byzantines in St. Petersburg" is worthy of imitation, reflecting gratitude to the departed generation of scientists and an impossible duty to them. The asceticism of St. Petersburg academicians XIX century, so clearly revealed through materials of their manuscript heritage, has in our hard times the effect of a live impact, when, after reading a book, you regret it, as once A.I. Papadopulo-Kerameus that There are not 8 hours in a day... The feat of creating the second issue of materials from the archives of the Byzantine scholars of St. Petersburg leaves hope for a meeting with the third volume.

М.А. Поляковская
M.A. Polyakovskaya
 

Steven Avery

Administrator

More information:


"Costantino Simonidis, o la pietas del falsario"
«Eikasmós» XXIV,
2013
Pages 491-503
By Federico Condello

“Constantine Simonides, or the Piety of the Forger”
Oak Moss XXIV
2013
Pages 491-503
By Frederick Condello


"From the Kefalonia of anti-British riots to the hyper-Orthodox Russia of Nicholas I and his adviser Aleksandr Sturdza, the step is short. And it is the step that Simonidis takes between 1850 and 1851, as exhaustively testified by the collection of documents which constitutes, edited by Ca., the second part of the volume. What is presented here is an updated, expanded and duly annotated version of the dossier exhumed by Igor Medvedev three to ten years ago, in St. Petersburg, at the Kunik archive of the Academy of Sciences archive{14}. Once again we are dealing with an extraordinary example, so to speak, of literature potentielle: namely the list of ancient manuscripts (pp. 206-259) that Simonidis sent, in January 1851, to the Russian scholar Andrej Nikolaevic Muravíev, figure of prominent figure of the time, perhaps approached through Sturdza, or perhaps already known to Simonidis from the time of his youth on Athos (see the well-founded reconstruction by Ca. on pp. 183-188). Such a sensational list - 81 titles, from Homer and Hesiod up to the later Byzantine age - as to induce Muravíev to involve first the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg, in the person of its Director, and then the class of History and Philology of the Academy of Sciences Russian. The correspondence and expertise that followed are substantial, and are collected here, accompanying the book list, on pp. 260-284: the attitude of the Russian scholars was «prudent, but also ambiguous», observes Ca. (p. 197); so that the final verdict - a resounding NEIT! - had to come from the Tsar himself, in August 1851. The Russian list coincides only in part with the list attached to the ΚεφαλληνιακÌ, in turn related to the book inventions of Symais. Simonidis' fantasy certainly reveals his obsessive and recursive character: the geographical interest remains prevalent, with a marked predilection for epitomes, and authors of insular Greek origins abound; yet new and amazing manuscripts make their first appearance here: e.g. the Ἡσιıδου ἔπη in «ancient capital letters with boustrophedic writing» (p. 221 nr. 2), enriched with «some unknown signs (perhaps the ancient musical signs)», and with unpublished novelties such as the Ἡσιıδου σιγαλλıεντα (sic) ἔπη written «in ancient shorthand signs»; or an Iliad with a dedication by the Chii to none other than Hipparchus son of Pisistratus (p. 223 nr. 5), «written in the alphabet with 19 letters»; an Iliad plus Odyssey, a gift from Demade to Alexander (ibid. nr. 6), «in ancient Attic capital letters, on very thin parchment of remarkable transparency»; the ῾Ομήρου ἔπη «written in Pelasgian writing» and copied by Laostefano di Simi (p. 235 nr. 30); but there is also an epitome of the entire Diodorus Siculus drawn up by Marcus of Ithaca (p. 227nr. 11) or the Golden Verses of Pythagoras «written with the original alphabet of 16 letters» (p. 223 nr. 4)15. Given all this, on the part of the Commission charged with examining the offer 16, it is not so much the expressions of skepticism or open disbelief that are striking - this is the least that can be expected - but the positive credit openings towards Simonidis, and the moved astonishment in the face of a « such an unexpected discovery» that «it would be the only one of its kind since the Renaissance» (p. 263). The fluctuating and at times suffered attitude of the Academy is even better documented by the notes and minutes which accompany the drafting of the final report, and which are stratified, by the hand of Kunik, also in the following years: until 1856, when the scandal of the false palimpsest of Uranio ‒ and the encore almost touches on, with the false Shepherd of Erma ‒ and when by now various newspapers in Europe and America denounce Simonidis's abuses in one voice. Also of these documents, in many respects revealing, the volume offers an accurate edition, introduced and commented [Page 495] by Cu. (pp. 285-351). And there's no denying it: such a marked "suspension of disbelief" is still instructive, such an irrational tendency - one might say, dictated by a sincere love of antiquity - to consider authentic what everything denounces as false."

https://www.academia.edu/6178203/Costantino_Simonidis_o_la_pietas_del_falsario_Eikasm%C3%B3s_XXIV_2013_491_503?email_work_card=title
 
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