Mercurii Grammatici Opera iambic, ed. Th. Antonopoulou, [Corpus Christianorum (Series Graeca), 87], Turnhout 2017, Pp. LXXII + 118, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.10.40 (original) (raw)

This paper concerns the Athonite manuscript Laura L 170 (1661), codex unicus of Merkourios the Grammarian works, and its dating.

A systematic socio-cultural study of the uses of Christian poetry in the late antique Greek-speaking Mediterranean is still lacking. Most literary overviews restrict themselves to an overview of the extant texts and some programmatic reflections in the poetry by Gregory of Nazianzus. This paper seeks to address this matter by a combined reading of the best-known poetic forms (including the programmatic reflections by Gregory) and the poems copied in the Codex Visionum (now in the Bodmer Collection). Since the edition of the latter was completed in 1999, they have often featured in studies on the origin of monasticism and are well known in papyrological circles, but have received insufficient attention from literature and cultural historians.

A series of moral chapters in two fourteenth-century manuscripts are composed in an unusual blend of verse and prose: three tetrastichs (hexameter, iambic and anacreontic) are followed by three prose paragraphs. Verse and prose appear to be associated, as noticed sometimes by a scholiast in the margins of the mss. A parallel for this construction is offered by Byzantine prose commentaries on the gnomic tetrastichs of Gregory of Nazianzus.

In the paper the author edited and commented upon a unique case of a kanon to the Adoration of the Magi, in the form of an ethopoiia, which is probably more a hymnographic text than a rhetorical exercise. Questions of authorship and form, with emphasis to the expanded use of dialogues in the troparia, are discussed. A desire for a kind of “dramatic” performance of the kanon is implied.

The witty and self-assertive poetry of Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous provides unique snapshots of eleventh-century Constantinople at the height of its splendor and elegance. Their collections, aptly called “various verses,” greatly range in length and style—including epigrams, polemics, encomia, and more—and their poems were written for a broad range of social occasions such as court ceremonies, horse races, contests between schools, and funerals. Some were inscribed on icons and buildings. Many honored patrons and friends, debunked rivals, or offered satirical portraits of moral types in contemporary society. In some remarkable introspective poems, Mauropous carefully shaped a narrative of his life and career, while Christopher’s body of work is peppered with riddles and jocular wordplay. This volume is the first English translation of these Byzantine Greek collections.