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| Monumenta Graeca Medii Aevi | |
|---|---|
| Title | Monumenta Graeca Medii Aevi |
| Language | Latin and Modern Greek |
| Discipline | Byzantine studies |
| Publisher | Institut Français d'Athènes; École française d'Athènes |
| Country | France; Greece |
| Firstpub | 1877 |
| Media type | |
Monumenta Graeca Medii Aevi is a multivolume critical series collecting Greek texts of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods, produced under French scholarly auspices and intended to make primary sources accessible to European philology, diplomacy, and ecclesiastical history. The project intersects with institutions and figures central to 19th‑ and 20th‑century classical and medieval scholarship and has been used in studies of Byzantine administration, liturgy, hagiography, and law.
The series was inaugurated in the context of 19th‑century philology associated with the École française d'Athènes, the Institut Français d'Athènes, and the broader network of French scholarship which included the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and patrons such as the Comte de Nieuwerkerke. Early volumes appeared during the era of the Third French Republic and the scholarly milieu of Prosper Mérimée, Jules Quicherat, and Ernest Renan, while editorial practice evolved alongside developments at the British Museum and the Vatican Library where Byzantine manuscripts were studied. Publication was shaped by diplomatic and archaeological events including excavations in Athens, cataloguing efforts at the Mount Athos libraries, and exchanges with German institutions such as the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut and the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
Monumenta Graeca Medii Aevi encompasses editions of hagiography, chronicles, legal texts, liturgical books, correspondence, and medieval historiography from Byzantium and the Greek East. The corpus ranges from Byzantine authors like Procopius, Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene, and Nikephoros Gregoras to post-Byzantine figures such as Gennadios Scholarios, George of Trebizond, and authors connected with the Fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman conquest of Byzantine territories. The series treats sources relevant to the Fourth Crusade, the Latin Empire, the Empire of Nicaea, and the Despotate of Epirus, while integrating materials linked to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Council of Florence, and the Union of the Churches debates.
Editorial principles followed rigorous philological methods influenced by editors associated with the École pratique des hautes études, the Collège de France, and the tradition of the Bollandists. Contributors included scholars trained in palaeography at institutions like the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bodleian Library as well as specialists affiliated with the University of Paris (Sorbonne), University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Heidelberg University, and University of Vienna. Notable editors and contributors worked in dialogue with contemporaries such as Henri Grégoire, Paul Lemerle, Jules Pargoire, Athanase Papadopoulos, François Nau, and Karl Krumbacher. Editorial apparatuses deployed stemmatic analysis similar to practices at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the British Library and relied on diplomatic transcription standards developed in collaboration with the International Committee of Historical Sciences.
The series contains critical editions and bilingual texts of letters, homilies, chronicles, synodal decrees, and legal collections, editing works associated with Theophylact of Ohrid, Photios I of Constantinople, Symeon Metaphrastes, Leo the Deacon, and compilations derived from the Hexabiblos and the legal tradition related to the Ecloga. Editions include material on liturgy tied to the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom and hymnography connected with Romanos the Melodist and John of Damascus. The series also prints documentary corpora from the Mount Athos archives, collections of acts concerning the Venetian Republic, the Genoese colonies, and correspondence involving the Palaiologos dynasty, Andronikos II Palaiologos, and Manuel II Palaiologos.
Editors relied on manuscript witnesses preserved in repositories across Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Vatican Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, the monasteries of Mount Athos, the archives of Venice, the collections of Moscow, and regional holdings in Ioannina, Thessaloniki, and Heraklion. Codicological features were assessed using hands compared with scripts catalogued at the Escorial and the Laurentian Library, and the transmission history was traced through intermediary collections such as those of Mehmed II and archival layers from the Morea. Paleographical dating drew on parallels with dated colophons in manuscripts connected to Constantinople, Nicaea, and Thessalonica.
Monumenta Graeca Medii Aevi influenced Byzantine studies, shaping work by scholars at the University of Birmingham, the University of Chicago, the École des Chartes, and the Institute for Advanced Study, and it was cited in monographs on the Fourth Crusade, Byzantine diplomacy, and the study of Orthodox liturgy. The series informed critical editions and translations by figures like George Finlay, Steven Runciman, Alexander Kazhdan, Hugh Wybrew, and Romilly Jenkins, and it underpinned research into the legal history discussed by Hugo Falcando and the institutional studies by Nicolas Oikonomides. Its editions remain referenced in catalogues of manuscripts at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies, and in bibliographies maintained by the International Association of Byzantine Studies.
Category:Byzantine studies publications