The Byzantine Manuscripts in the Central State Archive of Albania (Tirana)

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The world of Byzantine manuscripts is fascinating but also confusing. Although they play an important part in modern studies on the history of Christian liturgy and on the textual history of the Bible, a clear overview of the vast amount of these manuscripts in their many different forms is lacking. A new approach in their cataloguing is called for. The present volume brings together a number of specialists in the field of Byzantine, liturgical and Biblical studies with the aim to develop a new methodology for codicological research of the Byzantine manuscripts, taking seriously the original environment of the integral codices in the monasteries and the churches in which they were manufactured and functioned.

Prof. dr. Klaas Spronk is Head of the Research Department Sources of the Protestant Theological University (PThU), location Amsterdam, and chairman of the CBM Academic Board.

Prof. dr. Gerard Rouwhorst is Professor of Liturgical History at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology and member of the Department of Biblical Sciences and Church History of that institution. He is member of the CBM Academic Board.

Dr. Stefan Royé is member of the Research Department Sources of the Protestant Theological University (PThU), location Amsterdam, and CBM programme coordinator and secretary of the Academic Board.

For historical reasons, the Byzantine codices contained in the Central State Archive of Albania are little known to the general public. Only a few scholars have shown interest in these codices, and then mainly in those pertaining to the Scriptural corpora. The sole catalogue of these codices is the one that has been compiled on the basis of descriptions made by Theofan Popa. Although this has several limitations, and is in many respects outdated, it remains for the present a good point of departure for the study of these codices. Since this catalogue - as well as a catalogue of the Scriptural manuscripts edited by R. Mullan - are only available in Albanian, here there is a brief presentation of the entire Archive Codex Fund 488, based both upon catalogues and a personal examination of a few homiletic codices.