The necessity and challenges of a liturgical series in the Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts

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The presence of a great number of Byzantine liturgical manuscripts in monastery, state and institutional libraries reflects the fact that liturgy occupies the center stage in the Byzantine Tradition. Even so, minimal attention has been given by scholars to liturgical manuscripts; their description in most manuscript catalogues is at best insufficient, and there is no detailed classification system. The authors then present the “state of the question” regarding the cataloguing of liturgical manuscripts and argue that, despite the challenges present, an annotated checklist of Byzantine liturgical manuscripts grouped per liturgical book type would be a significant contribution to the fields of liturgical and paleographical studies, and propose a course of action.

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.