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Research paper thumbnail of Concluding a patristic triad : critical edition of Athanasios's book Epigram (Mosquensis Synodalis gr. 145)

Cet article contient une edition critique d’un poeme exclusivement connu grâce au manuscrit Mosco... more Cet article contient une edition critique d’un poeme exclusivement connu grâce au manuscrit Moscou, Synod. gr. 145 (Vlad. 184), qui date de l’annee 899. Les 25 dodecasyllabes sont composees par Athanase, le scribe du manuscrit, et creees particulierement pour ce codex. Les vers sont dedies aux ecrits ascetiques de Jean Climaque, de Marc le Moine et de Diadoque de Photice, lesquels se trouvent dans ce manuscrit. Athanase fait l’eloge de ces trois Peres, en les comparant avec la Sainte Trinite.

Research paper thumbnail of Review: Van Deun, P. – Macé, C. (eds.) (2011) Encyclopedic Trends in Byzantium? Proceedings of the International Conference held in Leuven, 6-8 May 2009. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 212. Leuven

Research paper thumbnail of Review: N. Egender, Moines de Palestine : portraits spirituels. Préface de Marie-Anne Vannier, Paris et Perpignan, Éditions Artège, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Review: J. L. ZECHER, The Role of Death in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tradition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of The afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine book epigrams : edition, translation and commentary of two poetic cycles

Research paper thumbnail of A metrical colophon on John Klimax’s Ladder of divine ascent

Research paper thumbnail of Ascending the Ladder: Editio Princeps of Four Poems on the Ladder of John Klimakos ( Bodleian Baroccianus 141)

Four dodecasyllable poems, paratexts celebrating Klimakos’ Ladder that survive in a 14th-century ... more Four dodecasyllable poems, paratexts celebrating Klimakos’ Ladder that survive in a 14th-century ms., are published and commented on.

Research paper thumbnail of Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts

This book aims at a better understanding of middle and late Byzantine poetry by offering both stu... more This book aims at a better understanding of middle and late Byzantine poetry by offering both studies on specific authors and their texts and editions of so far unknown texts.It is only in recent years that Byzantine poetry – a long-neglected aspect of Byzantine literature – has attracted the attention of philologists, literary and cultural historians. This holds true especially for the poetry written in middle and late Byzantium.Though many collections of poems are available in modern critical editions, a considerable amount of texts still remains completely unedited or accessible only in outdated and unreliable editions. Moreover, many works of this period have never been studied thoroughly with regard to their cultural impact on society. Issues of authorship and patronage, function, literary motives, generic qualities, and manuscripts still await further study. This volume aims to take a step to fill this gap. Although it includes studies on poetry from the early tenth to the fif...

Research paper thumbnail of De antieke fabel: Wie het leeuwenvel past trekt het aan

Korte blog over de antieke fabel en een Nederlandse vertaling van Avianus 5, in het kader van het... more Korte blog over de antieke fabel en een Nederlandse vertaling van Avianus 5, in het kader van het Parabelproject van de Universiteit Utrecht en de Universiteit Tilburg.

Research paper thumbnail of Makarios’ cycle of epigrams on the Psalms Bodleian Baroccianus 194

Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 2016

This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms ... more This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms preserved in Bodleian Baroccianus 194 (15th century). Four of these poems are also present in other manuscripts and enjoyed a certain degree of popularity as book epigrams. The four others are found in this manuscript only. The cycle contains an acrostic: ΜΑΚΑΡΙΟΥ. This Makarios is likely to have compiled the cycle and to have composed the otherwise unknown poems. The Psalms themselves are not included in the manuscript. Only two short commentaries on the Psalms precede and follow the cycle. This implies that at least the four known book epigrams lost their original function as poems referring deictically to the Psalms. A verse prayer to the Trinity that was preserved on the same folio is edited in an appendix.

Research paper thumbnail of A Twelfth-Century Cycle of Four Poems on John Klimax: A Brief Analysis

In: A. Rhoby - N. Zagklas (2018) Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts. Turnhout: 387-406, 2018

This paper provides a short commentary on the cycle of four poems on John Klimax, edited in the p... more This paper provides a short commentary on the cycle of four poems on John Klimax, edited in the preceding article. The main goal is to clarify the structure of the poems and reveal their meaning by disclosing the most noteworthy intertextual references. The contribution concludes with a discussion of the important influence of Gregory of Nazianzus on this cycle.

Research paper thumbnail of A Twelfth-Century Cycle of Four Poems on John Klimax: Editio princeps

In: A. Rhoby - N. Zagklas (2018) Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts. Turnhout: 285-386, 2018

This article deals with a twelfth-century cycle of four unedited metrical paratexts on John Klima... more This article deals with a twelfth-century cycle of four unedited metrical paratexts on John Klimax in dodecasyllables, preserved in seven manuscripts. We provide a general introduction, an overview of the manuscripts and of the poems, and the editio princeps, and an English translation.

Research paper thumbnail of The visual Representation of the formulaic Colophon Verse τῷ συντελεστῇ τῶν καλῶν θεῷ χάρις

In: C. Brockmann - D. Deckers - D. Harlfinger - S. Valente (2020) Griechisch-byzantinische Handschriftenforschung. Berlin/Munich/Boston: 333-347, 2020

This article examines the visual representation of the formulaic colophon verse τῷ συντελεστῇ τῶν... more This article examines the visual representation of the formulaic colophon verse τῷ συντελεστῇ τῶν καλῶν θεῷ χάρις, trans. “Gratitude to the Lord, for every good is accomplished by him”. This colophon consists of one prosodically correct, dodecasyllable and frequently occurs in Byzantine manuscripts. Thanks to the ‘Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams’ (DBBE), more than 240 occurrences of this formula are known (August 2019). For pragmatic reasons, this article focuses on 27 out of the ca. 240 recorded occurrences of the formula under study. For these 27 occurrences, the images are available in the corpus, which allowed for an analysis of their visual representation.

(The core of this paper was written in 2015.)

Research paper thumbnail of The Afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine Book Epigrams (Renaat Meesters PhD-thesis).pdf

Preface of PhD-thesis: "The Afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine Book Epigrams: Edition, Transla... more Preface of PhD-thesis: "The Afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine Book Epigrams: Edition, Translation and Commentary of Two Poetic Cycles". Ghent University (Belgium) 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Byzantijnse boekepigrammen / metrische parateksten: terminologie en classificatie

This article presents some theoretical reflexions on book epigrams, which are also referred to as... more This article presents some theoretical reflexions on book epigrams, which are also referred to as metrical paratexts. The article focuses on terminology and the classification of book epigrams. Two different ways of classification are compared: classification according to function (e.g. colophon verse, laudatory and dedicatory epigram) and classification according to preservation (traditional, editorial and post-editorial paratexts). Some of these categories, however, overlap, as will be shown by both Byzantine and modern examples.

Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis 69 (2016), pp. 169-184

Research paper thumbnail of Makarios' cycle of epigrams on the Psalms

This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms ... more This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms preserved in Bodleian Baroccianus 194 (15th century). Four of these poems are also present in other manuscripts and enjoyed a certain degree of popularity as book epigrams. The four others are found in this manuscript only. The cycle contains an acrostic: ΜΑΚΑΡΙΟΥ. This Makarios is likely to have compiled the cycle and to have composed the otherwise unknown poems. The Psalms themselves are not included in the manuscript. Only two short commentaries on the Psalms precede and follow the cycle. This implies that at least the four known book epigrams lost their original function as poems referring deictically to the Psalms. A verse prayer to the Trinity that was preserved on the same folio is edited in an appendix.

Research paper thumbnail of Ascending the Ladder: Editio Princeps of Four Poems on the Ladder of John Klimakos (Bodleian Baroccianus 141)

Research paper thumbnail of Muski, Phrygiërs en koning Midas

Books by Renaat Meesters

Research paper thumbnail of The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (c.1081–c.1350), parts 1 & 2.

by Foteini Spingou, Charles Barber, Nathan Leidholm, Thomas Carlson, Ivan Drpić, Alexandros (Alexander) Alexakis, elizabeth jeffreys, Theocharis Tsampouras, Mircea G . Duluș, Nikos Zagklas, Ida Toth, Alexander Riehle, Brad Hostetler, Michael Featherstone, Emmanuel C Bourbouhakis, Shannon Steiner, Efthymios Rizos, Divna Manolova, Robert Romanchuk, Maria Tomadaki, Kirsty Stewart, Baukje van den Berg, Katarzyna Warcaba, Florin Leonte, Vasileios Marinis, Ludovic Bender, Linda Safran, Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, Rachele Ricceri, Luisa Andriollo, Alex J Novikoff, Annemarie Carr, Marina Bazzani, Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Renaat Meesters, Daphne (Dafni) / Δάφνη Penna / Πέννα, Annemarie Carr, Alexander Alexakis, Jeremy Johns, Maria Parani, Lisa Mahoney, Irena Spadijer, and Ilias Taxidis

ISBN: 9781108483056 Series: Sources for Byzantine Art History 3 In this book the beauty and m... more ISBN: 9781108483056
Series: Sources for Byzantine Art History 3

In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual.

Book Reviews by Renaat Meesters

Research paper thumbnail of Review: Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies. Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oakland (CA), University of California Press, 2016. In: Byzantion 88: 462-463.

Research paper thumbnail of Concluding a patristic triad : critical edition of Athanasios's book Epigram (Mosquensis Synodalis gr. 145)

Cet article contient une edition critique d’un poeme exclusivement connu grâce au manuscrit Mosco... more Cet article contient une edition critique d’un poeme exclusivement connu grâce au manuscrit Moscou, Synod. gr. 145 (Vlad. 184), qui date de l’annee 899. Les 25 dodecasyllabes sont composees par Athanase, le scribe du manuscrit, et creees particulierement pour ce codex. Les vers sont dedies aux ecrits ascetiques de Jean Climaque, de Marc le Moine et de Diadoque de Photice, lesquels se trouvent dans ce manuscrit. Athanase fait l’eloge de ces trois Peres, en les comparant avec la Sainte Trinite.

Research paper thumbnail of Review: Van Deun, P. – Macé, C. (eds.) (2011) Encyclopedic Trends in Byzantium? Proceedings of the International Conference held in Leuven, 6-8 May 2009. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 212. Leuven

Research paper thumbnail of Review: N. Egender, Moines de Palestine : portraits spirituels. Préface de Marie-Anne Vannier, Paris et Perpignan, Éditions Artège, 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Review: J. L. ZECHER, The Role of Death in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tradition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of The afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine book epigrams : edition, translation and commentary of two poetic cycles

Research paper thumbnail of A metrical colophon on John Klimax’s Ladder of divine ascent

Research paper thumbnail of Ascending the Ladder: Editio Princeps of Four Poems on the Ladder of John Klimakos ( Bodleian Baroccianus 141)

Four dodecasyllable poems, paratexts celebrating Klimakos’ Ladder that survive in a 14th-century ... more Four dodecasyllable poems, paratexts celebrating Klimakos’ Ladder that survive in a 14th-century ms., are published and commented on.

Research paper thumbnail of Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts

This book aims at a better understanding of middle and late Byzantine poetry by offering both stu... more This book aims at a better understanding of middle and late Byzantine poetry by offering both studies on specific authors and their texts and editions of so far unknown texts.It is only in recent years that Byzantine poetry – a long-neglected aspect of Byzantine literature – has attracted the attention of philologists, literary and cultural historians. This holds true especially for the poetry written in middle and late Byzantium.Though many collections of poems are available in modern critical editions, a considerable amount of texts still remains completely unedited or accessible only in outdated and unreliable editions. Moreover, many works of this period have never been studied thoroughly with regard to their cultural impact on society. Issues of authorship and patronage, function, literary motives, generic qualities, and manuscripts still await further study. This volume aims to take a step to fill this gap. Although it includes studies on poetry from the early tenth to the fif...

Research paper thumbnail of De antieke fabel: Wie het leeuwenvel past trekt het aan

Korte blog over de antieke fabel en een Nederlandse vertaling van Avianus 5, in het kader van het... more Korte blog over de antieke fabel en een Nederlandse vertaling van Avianus 5, in het kader van het Parabelproject van de Universiteit Utrecht en de Universiteit Tilburg.

Research paper thumbnail of Makarios’ cycle of epigrams on the Psalms Bodleian Baroccianus 194

Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 2016

This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms ... more This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms preserved in Bodleian Baroccianus 194 (15th century). Four of these poems are also present in other manuscripts and enjoyed a certain degree of popularity as book epigrams. The four others are found in this manuscript only. The cycle contains an acrostic: ΜΑΚΑΡΙΟΥ. This Makarios is likely to have compiled the cycle and to have composed the otherwise unknown poems. The Psalms themselves are not included in the manuscript. Only two short commentaries on the Psalms precede and follow the cycle. This implies that at least the four known book epigrams lost their original function as poems referring deictically to the Psalms. A verse prayer to the Trinity that was preserved on the same folio is edited in an appendix.

Research paper thumbnail of A Twelfth-Century Cycle of Four Poems on John Klimax: A Brief Analysis

In: A. Rhoby - N. Zagklas (2018) Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts. Turnhout: 387-406, 2018

This paper provides a short commentary on the cycle of four poems on John Klimax, edited in the p... more This paper provides a short commentary on the cycle of four poems on John Klimax, edited in the preceding article. The main goal is to clarify the structure of the poems and reveal their meaning by disclosing the most noteworthy intertextual references. The contribution concludes with a discussion of the important influence of Gregory of Nazianzus on this cycle.

Research paper thumbnail of A Twelfth-Century Cycle of Four Poems on John Klimax: Editio princeps

In: A. Rhoby - N. Zagklas (2018) Middle and Late Byzantine Poetry: Texts and Contexts. Turnhout: 285-386, 2018

This article deals with a twelfth-century cycle of four unedited metrical paratexts on John Klima... more This article deals with a twelfth-century cycle of four unedited metrical paratexts on John Klimax in dodecasyllables, preserved in seven manuscripts. We provide a general introduction, an overview of the manuscripts and of the poems, and the editio princeps, and an English translation.

Research paper thumbnail of The visual Representation of the formulaic Colophon Verse τῷ συντελεστῇ τῶν καλῶν θεῷ χάρις

In: C. Brockmann - D. Deckers - D. Harlfinger - S. Valente (2020) Griechisch-byzantinische Handschriftenforschung. Berlin/Munich/Boston: 333-347, 2020

This article examines the visual representation of the formulaic colophon verse τῷ συντελεστῇ τῶν... more This article examines the visual representation of the formulaic colophon verse τῷ συντελεστῇ τῶν καλῶν θεῷ χάρις, trans. “Gratitude to the Lord, for every good is accomplished by him”. This colophon consists of one prosodically correct, dodecasyllable and frequently occurs in Byzantine manuscripts. Thanks to the ‘Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams’ (DBBE), more than 240 occurrences of this formula are known (August 2019). For pragmatic reasons, this article focuses on 27 out of the ca. 240 recorded occurrences of the formula under study. For these 27 occurrences, the images are available in the corpus, which allowed for an analysis of their visual representation.

(The core of this paper was written in 2015.)

Research paper thumbnail of The Afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine Book Epigrams (Renaat Meesters PhD-thesis).pdf

Preface of PhD-thesis: "The Afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine Book Epigrams: Edition, Transla... more Preface of PhD-thesis: "The Afterlife of John Klimax in Byzantine Book Epigrams: Edition, Translation and Commentary of Two Poetic Cycles". Ghent University (Belgium) 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Byzantijnse boekepigrammen / metrische parateksten: terminologie en classificatie

This article presents some theoretical reflexions on book epigrams, which are also referred to as... more This article presents some theoretical reflexions on book epigrams, which are also referred to as metrical paratexts. The article focuses on terminology and the classification of book epigrams. Two different ways of classification are compared: classification according to function (e.g. colophon verse, laudatory and dedicatory epigram) and classification according to preservation (traditional, editorial and post-editorial paratexts). Some of these categories, however, overlap, as will be shown by both Byzantine and modern examples.

Handelingen van de Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis 69 (2016), pp. 169-184

Research paper thumbnail of Makarios' cycle of epigrams on the Psalms

This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms ... more This article provides the editio princeps of a cycle of eight dodecasyllabic poems on the Psalms preserved in Bodleian Baroccianus 194 (15th century). Four of these poems are also present in other manuscripts and enjoyed a certain degree of popularity as book epigrams. The four others are found in this manuscript only. The cycle contains an acrostic: ΜΑΚΑΡΙΟΥ. This Makarios is likely to have compiled the cycle and to have composed the otherwise unknown poems. The Psalms themselves are not included in the manuscript. Only two short commentaries on the Psalms precede and follow the cycle. This implies that at least the four known book epigrams lost their original function as poems referring deictically to the Psalms. A verse prayer to the Trinity that was preserved on the same folio is edited in an appendix.

Research paper thumbnail of Ascending the Ladder: Editio Princeps of Four Poems on the Ladder of John Klimakos (Bodleian Baroccianus 141)

Research paper thumbnail of Muski, Phrygiërs en koning Midas

Research paper thumbnail of The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (c.1081–c.1350), parts 1 & 2.

by Foteini Spingou, Charles Barber, Nathan Leidholm, Thomas Carlson, Ivan Drpić, Alexandros (Alexander) Alexakis, elizabeth jeffreys, Theocharis Tsampouras, Mircea G . Duluș, Nikos Zagklas, Ida Toth, Alexander Riehle, Brad Hostetler, Michael Featherstone, Emmanuel C Bourbouhakis, Shannon Steiner, Efthymios Rizos, Divna Manolova, Robert Romanchuk, Maria Tomadaki, Kirsty Stewart, Baukje van den Berg, Katarzyna Warcaba, Florin Leonte, Vasileios Marinis, Ludovic Bender, Linda Safran, Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, Rachele Ricceri, Luisa Andriollo, Alex J Novikoff, Annemarie Carr, Marina Bazzani, Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Renaat Meesters, Daphne (Dafni) / Δάφνη Penna / Πέννα, Annemarie Carr, Alexander Alexakis, Jeremy Johns, Maria Parani, Lisa Mahoney, Irena Spadijer, and Ilias Taxidis

ISBN: 9781108483056 Series: Sources for Byzantine Art History 3 In this book the beauty and m... more ISBN: 9781108483056
Series: Sources for Byzantine Art History 3

In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual.

Research paper thumbnail of Review: Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies. Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, Oakland (CA), University of California Press, 2016. In: Byzantion 88: 462-463.

Research paper thumbnail of Renaat Meesters, Review: Th. Russell, Byzantium and the Bosporus. A Historical Study, from the Seventh Century BC until the Foundation of Constantinople, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017. In Byzantion 88: 464-465.

Research paper thumbnail of Review: Zecher (2015) in Byzantion 86: 25-26.pdf

Review of Zecher (2015) The Role of Death in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tr... more Review of Zecher (2015) The Role of Death in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tradition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, in Byzantion 86: 25-26.