Diplomatic Transcription: The Transmission of Photius, Cyril and Theodoret in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Italy

Venetian Libraries and Foreign Ambassadors in the 1540s

Almost a half-century before the two remaining Venetian possessions on the Greek mainland, Nauplion (Nafplio) and Monemvasia, were ceded to the Ottomans in 1540, the presses of the humanist-printer Aldus Manutius had begun to associate Venice with the transmission of Greek literary culture to the republic of letters.¹ Venice was and remained the most important marketplace for Greek manuscripts old and new, with émigré and often penurious Greek scholars struggling to survive as scribes, editors and traffickers of these texts. Although Aldus and his learned community seem not to have had much access to the 752 manuscripts (482 Greek) donated to the Republic by Cardinal Bessarion shortly before his death in 1468, Venice possessed other libraries whose holdings could supply the required material.² The manuscript holdings in the libraries of the Dominican convent SS Giovanni e Paolo (Zanipolo), Benedictine San Giorgio Maggiore and the Augustinian Sant’Antonio di Castello grew over the early decades of the sixteenth century.³ The Dominican general, Gioachino Torriano, for instance, kept at the Zanipolo some 272 Greek and Latin manuscripts and a like number of printed books. In 1523, Cardinal Domenico Grimani left his massive library, built on the foundations of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s, to Sant’Antonio, where provision was made for some 8000 volumes; in Greek, Grimani had increased Pico’s 157 volumes to 392.⁴ The degree to which each institution housed what might be thought of as a ‘quasi-public’ library remains unclear, and access varied from place to place.⁵ Some libraries chained the books, with borrowing permitted only to the exceptional and well-connected few, who, nevertheless, seem to have borrowed on behalf of others. Not unexpectedly, Venetian libraries figured heavily among those in Italy Conrad Gessner inspected in compiling his Bibliotheca universalis (1545), with Bessarion’s library, the Zanipolo and that of the Imperial ambassador, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza named explictly.⁶

Demand for Greek works rose sharply in the 1530s. What the presses could or would not handle, the scribes supplied, feeding the appetite for a fuller range of texts whetted by the success of educational reforms. The growing prestige of Greek learning and its material expression had become yet more alluring to those of political and financial power outside Italy. The great French Hellenist, Guillaume Budé (1468–1540) persuaded François I to found the trilingual Collège royal in 1530 to emulate and surpass similar commitments to Latin, Greek and Hebrew at rival seats of learning. From the late 1520s, François’s attention had turned to acquiring Greek manuscripts: to the forty brought by the Byzantine scholar Janus Lascaris (1445–1534) in 1508, Gerolamo Fondulo of Cremona added fifty more from Italy, although the dating of this haul to 1529 has been questioned.⁷ The later proposed date of 1539 falls within the period when François had determined to fund the project of acquiring Greek manuscripts on a lavish scale: ambassadors to Venice were to fulfil his ambition to possess the first major library of Greek literature north of the Alps.⁸ In 1535, one of the two inaugural chairs in Greek at the Collège, Pierre Danès (1497–1557), a student of Lascaris and Budé, left his post to accompany the new French ambassador to Venice, Georges de Selve (1508–41), bishop of Lavaur, in his search for Greek manuscripts, ostensibly for the Collège, but destined for Fontainebleau. Through their offices, and those of the bishop of Rodez, Georges d’Armagnac, de Selve’s successor in Venice (1536–39), who is credited with acquiring fourteen manuscripts for the king, a total of 136, mostly secular, Greek manuscripts had been amassed.⁹ More signficantly, the bishop of Montpellier, Guillaume Pellicier, arrived at Venice as ambassador charged with the buying up of older codices and the copying of those that could not be procured. Through relentless purchasing and commissioning during his embassy 1539–42, Pellicier augmented his king’s collection by around 250 manuscripts (another 163 for himself), a significant step towards the 500–600 Greek works amassed by the time of François’s death in 1547. French ambassadors to Venice did more than simply collect books, however. The outstanding Cretan scribe Angelos Bergikios (Ange Vergèce) had been employed by de Selve, as had Nikolaos Sophianos, and Bergikios accompanied de Selve from Venice to Rome, his next embassy, in 1537, and then to Paris, where he became scriptor to the king’s library.¹⁰ Fondulo, the dauphin’s tutor, was certainly in Italy in 1539 to make further purchases. But arguably the most avid collector in Venice at that time was Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Charles V’s ambassador between 1539 and 1546. Hurtado’s library of 258 Greek manuscripts sprang up vigorously and illustriously. Like the French embassy, Hurtado’s household also included scribes, with Andronicus Nucius, a refugee from Corfu since 1537, among the most prolific working with Hurtado’s scholar-librarian Arnoldus Arlenius. The partial list of thirty-eight manuscripts in Hurtado’s possession around 1544 shows that they were predominantly newly written copies of biblical and patristic works, and, according to Hobson, characteristic of the fare reaching Venice from the Greek colonies.¹¹

The imagined libraries towards which these learned and extremely well-connected bibliophiles aspired were, of course, far from restricted to a corpus Christianorum. However, the Greek Fathers, especially those then unavailable in print or recently discovered, were an essential part of what could give such collections their prestige and allure. For some, acquisition of copies of the rarest patristic works was more about exclusive ownership, for others it served the production of an editio princeps. Moreover, where the Quattrocento had seen primarily the production of Latin translations of some of the most important works of the fourth-century Fathers, in the 1540s the scholarly scope widened to encompass both the earliest extant writings of Christian antiquity and those of later centuries.

In this regard, the present article will explore the transmission of Photius’s Bibliotheca and the works of Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus, three authors who attracted attention in later 1540s Italy when the learned mingled at the Council of Trent. We will see that tensions could arise between the humanistic impulse to make available texts of Christian antiquity and the theological and political purposes of those seeking to underpin Catholic dogma and papal authority through the consensus patrum. Searching out and copying the Greek patristic inheritance thus bourgeoned in the 1540s, the resulting materials furnishing both those collectors building impressive libraries and those for whom the Greek Fathers served more pressing doctrinal needs. Disinterested engagement with such patristic material was difficult to sustain during a period of confessionalization, yet the rich range of Greek patristic writings was not wholly reducible or applicable to doctrinal deliberations, serving instead, as with Clement of Alexandria, as models for the laity of pristine piety and learned Christian discourse, sometimes importantly set against pagan philosophy.¹² Some Greeks could be more readily arranged in the capsulae of Renaissance libraries than gathered to meet theological demands.

Transmission: 1) Photius’s Bibliotheca

Within the context sketched above, the overview of the Greek literary landscape afforded by Photius’s Bibliotheca became especially significant. The Bibliotheca is a unique document, an assembly of 280 reading recommendations (codices) made by this ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople. Now a hugely valuable record of works, and sometimes precious parts thereof, that have otherwise perished, in the sixteenth century the Bibliotheca inspired more optimistic thoughts of what might be retrieved; in this way, it supplemented Bessarion’s gathering and bequeathing to Venice of his literary collection. Eleuteri’s survey of the manuscript tradition shows there was interest in having the Bibliotheca copied during the 1540s and 1550s. Contemporary bibliophiles could thus look to Photius’s Byzantine mediation of what to include as prestigious Greek centrepieces of libraries and to Gessner’s Bibliotheca universalis (1545) to establish what was available and where in manuscript and print. Photius’s Bibliotheca guided figures like the young Spanish Hellenist Juan Páez de Castro on their tours of Italian libraries. Among the many owners of manuscript copies of Photius’s work – David Hoeschel’s editio princeps appeared in 1601 – we find many who will prove important for the following discussion: Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (referred to in this article as Hurtado), Marcello Cervini, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Johann (Hans) Jakob Fugger (1516–75) and Francisco Mendoza y Bobadilla (referred to in this article as Mendoza).¹³

The two primary witnesses of the Bibliotheca, listed in the Marciana inventories and elsewhere as ‘liber Phocii, narratio eorum quae legit’ (1468 Inventory, A188), ‘Photion de libris quos legit’ (1543 Inventory, D185) or similar, were both Bessarion’s.¹⁴ However, he seems not to have promoted the work extensively in his literary circles, as no calligraphic copy appears to have been made from these manuscripts (Marc. gr. 450 [A] and 451 [M]).¹⁵ Indeed, if Canfora’s challenging revision of Edgar Martini’s textual work is correct, it is Hurtado’s copy of the Bibliotheca written in 1543 that properly marks the renascence of Photius’s work. Until then, it was, apart from a few fragments, a work locked up in Venice.¹⁶ A small set of previously excerpted entries from the Bibliotheca (codd. 73–6, 78, 81, 85–7) – Canfora argues that they reflect Hurtado’s specific interests – were inserted in a displaced position in Hurtado’s copy, Escur. Ψ.I.9–10 (Martini S), which characterizes this manuscript family.¹⁷ Martini imagined a lost hybrid of A and M as the model for both Ott. gr. 19–20 (Martini L) and Paris. 1226 (Martini C), placing both in the late fifteenth century.¹⁸ Hurtado’s copy, Escur. Ψ.I.9–10 (S), was thus given more cursory notice as an apograph of Ott. gr. 19–20, and the resemblance is clear enough.¹⁹ However, Canfora, who considers Martini’s lost hybrid a fantasy, asserts the grounds for reversing the relationship, that C and L derive in good part from S, with the Marciana A and M also in play.²⁰ Thus, Canfora advances the case for linking L and C, the former for Cervini, the latter for the Creto-Venetian nobleman, Antonio Caliergi (Kallierges), who seems to have had A on loan from the Marciana from 12 September 1545 to 13 January 1547.²¹ Although the fascinating details and questions arising from the complex scene of scribal production that Canfora proposes cannot be handled here, his view of Ott. gr. 19–20 is the more convincing, as the scribe is almost certainly from the 1540s, either Camillo Zanetti or someone from his atelier, and this copy follows the idiosyncrasies of Hurtado’s S. The nature of the scribal hand in Paris. gr. 1226 (C), however, fits less well with that decade; Wilson noted the misattribution to Giorgios Gregoropoulos, but still considered it from that circle in the Aldine period.²² Against this might be posited the possible commissioning of C by Antonio Caliergi, who would have been able to cope with, or indeed relish, the compression and density of a script unaccommodated to non-native readers.

Ott. gr. 19–20 does, however, take us to Marcello Cervini, who was tentatively identified by Devreesse as its owner. From this identification, Canfora, and more recently Giacomo Cardinali, have suggested other texts to draw into Cervini’s orbit during the years when he served as one of the three papal legates to the Council of Trent, which formally convened in mid-December 1545. For Cardinali, eight of Cervini’s manuscripts in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana – Ott. gr. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 50 and 72 – comprise a cluster relating Cervini to Hurtado, who was then serving as the imperial representative at Trent and who had taken with him from Venice at least some of his Greek library, to serve not only the council’s official business but also the wider interests of the learned congregation.²³ Besides Photius in Ott. gr. 19–20, this cluster includes patristic works by Theodoret (Ott. gr. 16–17) and Cyril (Ott. gr. 18), to which we shall shortly turn.

Such engagement with Hurtado’s manuscripts would match what we know of Cervini’s interests. Cervini, at the centre of the diplomatic and cultural world of Paul III’s Rome, was for Jedin ‘the soul of humanism’ at the council. He had worked under Agostino Steuco, the Vatican Librarian, whom he succeeded in 1548, two years later acquiring the title, as first cardinal librarian, of ‘Bibliothecarius Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae’. Cervini was also one of Italy’s major book-collectors in his own right, and his humanistic aspirations fired his establishing of a Greek press in Rome.²⁴ Although it faltered in 1543, shortly after Cervini had arranged the printing by Antonio Blado of the first volume of Niccolò Maiorano’s editio princeps of Eustathius’s commentary on Homer, his continuing influence over what was selected for editing and translation for printing by other Roman presses, as well as those in Bologna, Venice and Florence, proved significant.²⁵

But to return to the links between Cervini and Hurtado. Over two years from mid-1545, Hurtado borrowed at least twenty-four manuscripts from the Marciana, and we know from the diary of Cervini’s conclavist, Angelo Massarelli, that some were shared with Cervini, although regrettably the works themselves are often unidentified.²⁶ On 31 May 1545, for instance, Massarelli’s master borrowed eight manuscripts, some of which related to the eight Ottobonians listed above.²⁷ Guglielmo Sirleto’s copious letters from Rome to Cervini – the exchange is lop-sided – also show how Greek patristic texts informed Cervini’s preparations for the formal business at Trent, although how much of the enthusiastic textual detail Cervini took forward from Sirleto’s communications is uncertain. Although Cardinali argues for the Ottobonians’ ‘homogenity’, he notes that Ott. gr. 15 is a fourteenth-century copy of Byzantine legal texts, Ott. gr. 50 contains epitomes of some books of Polybius in a fifteenth-century hand, and Ott. gr. 72 Nicephorus Gregoras’s Byzantina Historia.²⁸ The epitomes of Polybius, a work unavailable in the Vatican Library, was very probably copied from the manuscript of Hurtado’s presented to the Basel printer Herwagen by Arlenius. The other five Ottobonians are, however, thought to have come from Venetian ateliers, including Ott. gr. 72, an apograph of Marc. gr. 405 written by Petros Karneades, whose hand is also found in Hurtado’s Photius.²⁹ But although Photius’s Bibliotheca was undoubtedly of great bibliographical interest to Cervini, Hurtado, his great friend Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, and Hans Jakob Fugger, all of whom acquired copies between 1543 and 1548, no mention of it is found in Cervini’s correspondence with Sirleto or in Massarelli’s diary. If these exceptions suggest that the eight Ottobonians studied by Cardinali are not quite a homogeneous cluster, the three manuscripts containing works by Cyril and Theodoret seem more strongly connected.

Transmission: 2) Cyril of Alexandria

Ott. gr. 16 and 17 contain respectively Theodoret of Cyrus’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum and Interpretatio in XIV epistolas S. Pauli, and Ott. gr. 18, Cyril’s Ad Palladium (De adoratione in spiritu et veritate libri XVII). Before focusing on Theodoret, it is worth pausing over the works of Cyril in Ott. gr. 18. Sirleto’s correspondence with Cervini in the summer of 1546 reveals a specific concern in reappropriating Cyril’s De adoratione (Ad Palladium), only one book of which was available in Latin translation, and that by the Swiss reformer Oecolampadius, whose patristic translations were considered poor, if not malicious in their alleged misrepresentation of the Greek.³⁰ Letters from Romolo, Cervini’s brother, also convey Cyrillic interests.³¹ Along with the Latin ‘Acta Conciliorum septimi et octavi’ (Marc. lat. 164), Greek ‘Conciliorum leges et canones’, and two other manuscripts, Hurtado borrowed the Marciana copy of Cyril’s De adoratione on 16 February 1546, returning it on 20 December that year, thus after Sirleto’s letter from Rome to Cervini of 23 October 1546 in which he praised Cervini for having had this work copied.³² Under ‘Cyrillus Alexandrinus’ in the Bibliotheca universalis (1545), Gessner stated that the De adoratione was unpublished, untranslated, and available ‘Graece in Italia’, but not, it seems, yet in Hurtado’s possession, unlike the ‘Commentarii Graeci in aliquot prophetas, Esaiam, Osee, Danielem’ and the ‘Practica ante tertiam synodum à Cyrillo collecta … Graece’.³³ It seems probable, therefore, that Hurtado borrowed the Marciana exemplar to produce his own copy (Escur. gr. 437 = Ψ.II.2), which was dated 12 May 1546 by its scribe Petros Karneades.³⁴ Massarelli’s diary entry for 28 August 1546 states that he sought Cyril’s De adoratione from Hurtado on Cervini’s behalf, and that a day later the work was sent to Venice for copying, the first part having been transcribed by Hurtado’s scribe at Trent.³⁵ As noted above, the Marciana copy was not returned until December, but was immediately in demand: George Tryphon was lent it between 29 April and 19 August 1547. Agostino degli Agostini then borrowed it from 26 August and 28 October 1547; lamentably it is not found in the inventory of 1575 and has never reappeared.³⁶ The Marciana borrowing records, incomplete though they are, suggest that the interest in Cyril’s De adoratione was as intense as it was ephemeral, despite the ongoing limitations of what was available in print.

Hurtado’s and Cervini’s copies of Cyril’s De adoratione also include Cyril’s Apologia XII capitulorum contra Orientales, which was thus probably in the lost Marciana original (inventories often record only the title of the first work). Cardinali highlights that Granvelle’s copy of Cyril’s De adoratione (MS Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, 168) was copied by Karneades, who as we have seen had written Hurtado’s copy of Cyril. However, the team of Mauromates and Karneades credited with Cervini’s copy, Ott. gr. 18 – the hand changes from Mauromates’s to Karneades’s at fol. 63^r – was, in fact, significantly augmented by Michael Konteleon of Monemvasia. Karneades’s scribal work ceased at the end of De adoratione XIII (fol. 249^v), whereupon Konteleon transcribed the final four books, XIV–XVII (fols 253^r–348^v), as well as all of the Apologia which follows (fols 351^r–375^r), closing with his subscription. Massarelli’s Diarium suggest that both Hurtado and Cervini had scribes with them at Trent. However, Ott. gr. 18 – Cyril’s De adoratione and Apologia – may well have been started at Trent by Mauromates, before being continued at Venice by Karneades and completed by Konteleon.³⁷

The combination of Cyril’s De adoratione with his Apologia XII capitulorum contra Orientales present in Cervini’s Ott. gr. 18 and Hurtado’s Escur. gr. 437 (Ψ.II.2) also makes up Paris. Suppl. gr. 214, its hand strongly resembling that of Konteleon. The mise-en-page for the closing calligraphical doxology, including its symmetrical surrounding with rubricated statements of ‘τέλος’, also seen at the close of Cervini’s copy of De adoratione (fol. 348^v), further suggest this scribe. Textual particularities relate these three manuscripts, the identical nature of three significant lacunae in the Apologia being the most salient.³⁸ To Granvelle’s copy (MS Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, 168) may also be added Hans Jakob Fugger’s, Monac. gr. 60, which, unlike Granvelle’s, also includes the Apologia, but unlike Ott. gr. 18 was written throughout by Petros Karneades, who added his undated subscription at fol. 359^v.³⁹ From these manuscripts of Cyril, it appears, then, that the networks of scribes and owners connecting Trent and Venice are both richer and more tightly bound together than previously noted.⁴⁰

Transmission: 3) Theodoret of Cyrus’s Eranistes and Interpretatio in XIV epistolas Pauli

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s library was particularly well-stocked with Theodoretan works. However, where Hobson’s edition of Hurtado’s ‘Venetian Catalogue’ identifies both no. 144, ‘Theodoreti Cyrensis Episcopi Commentarii in omnes D. Pauli epistolas’ and no. 145, ‘Theodoreti eiusdem Commentarii in Psalmos’, with Escur. gr. 256 (Y.II.1), according to de Andrés, these were respectively by Pseudo-Oecumenius and anonymous.⁴¹ Theodoret on the Pauline Epistles and the Psalms might instead be Escur. I.I.5 (CD 475), which perished in the disasterous fire at the Escorial Library in 1671.⁴² The ‘Venetian Catalogue’ also records ‘Theodoreti Commentaria in Ezechielem et Danielem’ (no. 233) and recent copies of several other exegetical works: ‘Theodoreti dubia et solutiones Biblicae. Idem super Cantica Canticorum’ (no. 164), and, in combination with writings of other patristic figures, both ‘Theodoretus in Hieremiam prophetam’ (no. 169) and, ‘The commentaries of Theodoret: on Zephaniah; on Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah; on all 12 Prophets; on Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk; on Isaiah; excerpts from his commentaries on Ezechiel; his discourse on love and charity’ (no. 201).⁴³ As all these were lost in 1671, Hurtado’s role in the transmission of Theodoret in the 1540s becomes less easy to trace.⁴⁴

However, Sirleto’s letters from Rome to Cervini at Trent in the period leading up to and following the formal opening of the Council of Trent are peppered with mentions of the works of Theodoret and Cyril. Slightly later, in August 1546, Sirleto extolled Theodoret’s Interpretatio in XIV epistolas S. Pauli as especially useful to those in authority (‘quelli massime’), and was able to point Cervini – a debt to Gessner? – to a copy in Bessarion’s library for transcription.⁴⁵ Sirleto’s promotion of the Interpretatio as reinforcing Theodoret’s Eranistes (‘Contra haereses’ in the correspondence) suggests Cervini’s knowledge of the latter work, which is the fullest expression of Theodoret’s Christology.⁴⁶ The three dialogues of the Eranistes set ‘Orthodoxos’ against ‘Eranistes’, the voice of the Monophysite theology of Eutyches that Theodoret associated with heresies old and new, from Ebionitism to Apollinarianism.⁴⁷ That the Eranistes includes, at the end of each of the three dialogues, significant dogmatic florilegia of earlier ecclesiastical authors – indeed, it manifests the idea of patristic authority for Christian theology – would only have made it more attractive to its commonplacing sixteenth-century readership. Ettlinger states that this use of patristic quotation constituted a major development in theological argumentation in the fifth century, in which Theodoret followed Cyril in attempting to refute him.⁴⁸

But if any bibliophile stimulated by such opinions had assumed that the Marciana possessed a copy of the Eranistes in the late 1540s, they would have been disappointed. Ott. gr. 39 (Ettlinger O) had been transcribed in Rome from Vat. gr. 624 (V, twelfth-thirteenth century) by Petros Bergikos, nephew of Angelos; Petros dated his subscription 15 March 1536 (fol. 139^r) and, according to Sosower, Cervini probably took possession of the copy shortly thereafter.⁴⁹ The Venetian copy (Bessarion MS 85 = Rehdiger 240, now lost), once it had been transcribed by George Basilicos for Pellicier around 1542 (MS New Haven, Beinecke 713), fell into the hands Lodovico Beccadelli, who purchased it from Bartolomeo Zanetti, a regular Marciana borrower, who may have supplied it to Basilicos before alienating it forever.⁵⁰ It was not in the Marciana inventory of 1543, one of perhaps as many as 200 losses.⁵¹ Gessner thus stated that Theodoret’s Eranistes was available in Rome (probably Vat. gr. 624, rather than Beccadelli’s), by implication not in Hurtado’s library or elsewhere in Venice.⁵² So, for Eranistes, Rome’s gain was Venice’s loss: Venetian scribes struggled to locate a model from which to make copies; Hurtado seems not to have procured a copy old or new; Pellicier had departed with his; Hans Jakob Fugger’s, tellingly, was an older copy acquired later.⁵³

From early 1547 (Γαμηλιών, later January to earlier February, states the colophon), Peruschi’s editio princeps of the Eranistes would have met the needs of many, with Hervet’s Latin version following immedately. The Greek was based on Cervini’s Ott. gr. 39, which must therefore have been in Rome, rather than on the older copies of Beccadelli (Bessarion MS 85) or Vat. gr. 624, or, it seems, MS, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rossianus 9 (R), which had been written in Rome at Cervini’s request under Sirleto’s guidance by a desultory young Greek between January and March 1546. The business of that transcription features repeatedly in their correspondence, which also mentions the manuscript’s subsequent collation by Sirleto.⁵⁴ In a letter to Cervini of 22 May 1546, Sirleto identified the manuscript he used for comparison as Beccadelli’s, indicating that it was very likely the alienated and now lost Marciana copy.⁵⁵

However, as Sirleto informed Cervini, the Marciana did hold a copy of Theodoret’s Interpretatio in XIV epistolas S. Pauli. Yet no pertinent borrowing record for this twelfth-century manuscript (Marc. gr. 36) exists before 26 October 1547, when it was among an unusually large collection of manuscripts taken away by George Tryphon, which included Photius’s Bibliotheca, the Acta of the Eighth Ecumenical Council ‘contra Photium’, and Cyril’s Thesaurus.⁵⁶ A second copy in the inventory, ‘Theodorici expositio super epistolas Pauli, in pergameno’, does not correspond to any known holding.⁵⁷ Marc. gr. 36 seems to have been the exemplar for Cervini’s Ott. gr. 17, which has both the undated closing scribal subscription – Θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον καὶ Γεωργίου πόνος (the gift of God and the labour of George, f. 294^v) – and the statement of Cervini’s ownership, γαρδενάλες σάντα κρόξε λεγάτος τριδεντίνος συνόδου (Cardinal of Santa Croce, legate of the Council of Trent, f. 122^v). Although undated, the correspondence implies that the manuscript cannot have been produced before autumn 1546. As noted earlier, Hurtado’s copy seems not to have survived, so cannot be compared with the copies made at that time, including Cervini’s Ott. gr. 17. Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, whose deep friendship with Hurtado dates to their meeting in 1543, was at Trent and no doubt aware of the Greek manuscripts passing through Cervini’s chambers, so may have commissioned his copy of the Interpretatio in XIV epistolas S. Pauli (MS Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, 169) at Trent. Karneades, the scribe involved in the production of both Hurtado’s and Cervini’s copies of Cyril’s De adoratione, also produced Granvelle’s copy of Theodoret on Paul, which was then bound in characteristic red morocco, almost identical to that enclosing his copy of Cyril’s De adoratione (MS Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, 168).⁵⁸ Although Karneades provided no subscription for Granvelle’s copy, he signed and dated another copy for Hans Jakob Fugger to 25 February 1547 αφμζ’ ἐν μηνὶ φευουαρίω κε’ (Monac. gr. 18).⁵⁹ Although Mondrain sees Fugger’s collecting as having commenced in 1548, to this Theodoret may be added a copy of Photius’s Bibliotheca (Monac. gr. 30) dated 25 October 1547 by the scribe, Emmanuel Bembaines.⁶⁰

Transmission: 4) The Loca difficilia of Theodoret of Cyrus

Another core member of Cardinali’s cluster is Ott. gr. 16, a manuscript listed as ‘Theodorici opera’ in an old inventory of Cervini’s library, then as ‘Theodoretus in loca difficilia sacrae scripturae ligat. in corio viridi cartis 294’ in a later catalogue of Cervini’s collections united in Rome.⁶¹ Cervini’s copy of Cyril’s De adoratione (Ott. gr. 18) was also bound in green leather.⁶² Ott. gr. 16 contains Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Josuah, Judges, Ruth), followed by those on I–IV Kings and I–II Chronicles (Paralipomena), and a short work now listed as the Prologus in Prophetas et editiones. A single scribe seems to have produced the manuscript with little interruption, his hand resembling that of Μιχαήλος or Michael Konteleon, if they may be separated. Ott. gr. 16, a manuscript linked to Ott. gr. 19 and 72 through similarities of decoration and binding, opens onto a complex scene of scribal interplay in the Venetian milieu of its production, including one Venetian manuscript carried to Paris for Jean Picot’s editio princeps of the Quaestiones (1558), as Theodoret’s elucidations of ‘loca difficilia’, ‘dubia’ or ‘selectis questionibus ambiguis’ (τὰ ἄπορα) came to be known.⁶³

Neither the Vatican Library nor the Marciana held the Quaestiones and Prologus. However, Gessner recorded the following:

On the Pentateuch; Difficult biblical passages and their explanation as far as Chronicles, otherwise entitled Difficult passages in the Octateuch and their explanation; On the Song of Songs. On the Psalter. On the prophet Jeremiah, and Lamentations. On all the letters of Paul. Two discourses concerning the nature of the human body, or God’s creation. All these survive in the possession of Diego Hurtado, ambassador of the Emperor, and elsewhere in Venice.⁶⁴

Gessner’s ‘tum alibi, tum apud Diegum’ is unhelpfully ambiguous; was ‘In Pentateuchum’ a truncated (or misdescribed) Quaestiones, especially as the complete work’s handling of the last three books of the Octateuch is relatively slender? But where nothing resembles it in Hurtado’s Venetian Catalogue or other accounts of his library, the rambling description of the second item corresponds to no. 164, ‘Theodoreti dubia et solutiones Biblicae. Idem super Cantica Canticorum’, especially given Gessner’s reversing of the biblical order of ‘In cantica’ and ‘In Psalterium’. No reference is made anywhere to the Prologus. Hurtado’s manuscript (no. 164), recorded as ‘recens’ and arguably seen and listed by Gessner, seems another casualty of the Escorial conflagration (Escur. I.I.6 = CD 476). One of Pellicier’s manuscripts (Pellicier MS 21 = MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Phillipps 1413) is a catena of Theodoret’s Interpretatio in Cantica Canticorum and the Three Fathers, and it is tempting to think that Hurtado’s ‘In cantica’ was copied from the same source.⁶⁵ Moreover, just as Hurtado’s lost volume including Theodoret’s Quaestiones (Escur. I.I.6) also contained the Excerptum de Psalmis from the Libellus memorialis (Hypomnesticon) of the seemingly apocryphal ‘Josephus Christianus’, now considered to be primarily excerpts from Flavius Josephus, so did another of Pellicier’s manuscripts (Pellicier MS 10 = MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Phillipps 1405).⁶⁶

Cervini’s copy of the Quaestiones, Ott. gr. 16, is closely related to Monac. gr. 209, a tenth-century manuscript which entered Hans Jakob Fugger’s library by 1557, probably far earlier.⁶⁷ Sosower considers Monac. gr. 209 identical to a manuscript (no. 161) in the library of Cardinal Domenico Grimani (1461–1523), who left much of his very extensive collection, particularly of Hebraica and Greek manuscripts, to Sant’Antonio di Castello in Venice.⁶⁸ Although part of the collection went to his nephew, Cardinal Marino Grimani, some of whose Greek and Hebrew holdings passed to the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore upon his death in 1546, Monac. gr. 209 was probably the copy recorded in inventory of Grimani’s books made prior to their transfer to Sant’Antonio.⁶⁹ In 1546, Cervini, through Sirleto and others, set about purchasing a number of books from the executors of the debt-ridden Marino for the Vatican Library, especially those to be sold in Rome.⁷⁰

Agostino Steuco (Vatican Librarian 1538–48) was probably familiar with Marino Grimani’s books and their relationship to those Domenico bequeathed to Sant’Antonio. In 1546 he was still in Rome, and his intended influence at the Council of Trent (then at Bologna), particularly on papal supremacy, was cut short by his death in Venice. Steuco, a member of the Congregation of Augustinian Canons of San Salvatore of Bologna, which had responsibility for Sant’Antonio, and whose scholarly training at Bologna had been supported by the Grimanis, was appointed custodian of the library established at Sant’Antonio’s soon after Domenico’s death in 1523. He exploited the library’s outstanding collection of Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts and printed books in the production of his Recognitio veteris testamenti ad Hebraicam veritatem (1529), a work Steuco dedicated to Marino.⁷¹ However, no less noteworthy in the current context is Steuco’s extensive use of Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum in this defence of Jerome’s reputation and the superiority of the Vulgate’s Latin translation of the Hebrew Old Testament over that of the Greek Septuagint: his ‘Praefatio’ celebrates the richness of the Greek patristic sources he was to able to bring to bear.⁷² Even a cursory inspection of Steuco’s Recognitio reveals the frequent recourse made to a manuscript containing Theodoret’s Quaestiones as part of a Greek catena of ancient commentators. Across all five biblical books covered in the Recognitio, Steuco repeatedly quotes Theodoret on a particular biblical phrase – often an entire quaestio (sometimes more) is given in Greek, with Steuco’s Latin version following – and there are occasions when another patristic commentator’s words are also attributed to Theodoret.⁷³ Although Steuco’s Recognitio deserves study in this regard, the prominence of Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum in this printed work clearly suggests that Sant’Antonio possessed a copy; Gessner may have known this too.

Domenico Grimani’s hopes of preserving his collection from the deplorable treatment he knew Bessarion’s initally suffered were in vain, as some of the volumes at Sant’Antonio were sold to, among other book-collectors, Hans Jakob Fugger, to raise funds for their impoverished ‘custodians’.⁷⁴ Some twenty-three Hebrew manuscripts (twelve formerly Pico’s) and at least three Arabic codices went to Fugger, possibly because having works copied in these languages was either more difficult or undesirable, unlike the many Greek works in fresh copies he gathered.⁷⁵ Tomasini’s skeletal listing of the library of Sant’Antonio in 1650 shows no Theodoret present.⁷⁶ But Grimani’s losses proved as felicitious as copious: what remained by 1687 was then consumed by a fire originating in the refectory. Back in the early 1540s, Hurtado, like Pellicier, was in receipt of copies of manuscripts held at Sant’Antonio, some written by the librarian, Valeriano Albini (Pellicier’s favourite scribe), whose inclusion of name, place and date in his elaborate scribal subscriptions shows the significance of Grimani’s donation as a source of exemplars.⁷⁷ Significantly, Albini, Steuco’s pupil, may have assumed Steuco’s responsibilities at Sant’Antonio in 1538, when his master became Vatican Librarian.⁷⁸

Monac. gr. 209, if Fugger’s copy of Theodoret’s Quaestiones was that from Grimani’s library, may have left Sant’Antonio when Hurtado’s copy of the work was made, if it was the model for his ‘Dubia et solutiones’ (Escur. X.I.6). Moreover, the contents of Monac. gr. 209 correspond precisely to those in Cervini’s copy, Ott. gr. 16, including both the Praefatio to Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum, absent from not a few important witnesses, and the doubtful tail-end work, Prologus in Prophetas et editiones (Monac. gr. 209, fols 159^v–160^v; BHG 1590x). The Prologus – certainly of interest to Steuco – discusses the Greek translations the Hebrew Bible from the Septuagint through to the later Greek translators, Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, and St Lucian of Antioch, reviser of the Septuagint.⁷⁹ The title of the Prologus in Ott. gr. 16 (fols 297^v–299^v) is identical to that in Monac. gr. 209, and written handsomely in red ink below a line of decoration.⁸⁰ That Theodoret quoted from a Greek version of the Old Testament that in places differed considerably from the approved Septuagint was another awkwardness, like the Nestorian dispute with Cyril of Alexandria, that prompted repeated apology in the first printed editions and translations of his works, and may have lent this Prologus pertinency to those who could read it in Greek manuscript. Hervet included an ‘Ad lectorem’ on the matter in his Latin version of Theodoret’s Interpretatio in XIV epistolas S. Pauli published in 1552 and dedicated to Henry II, where he also recorded that Cervini had made available the copy he had commissioned at Trent.⁸¹ Moreover, Ott. gr. 16 and Monac. gr. 209 both omit Q5 Exodus, relating them to Class C of the modern edition; the introductory titles given to the treatment of each of the biblical books are, a couple of very minor lapses aside, identical, with the standard formula – for Deuteronomy, say, Τοῦ αὐτοῦ μακαρίου Θεοδωρήτου εἰς τὸ δευτερονόμιον – varying for Exodus, Θεοδωρήτου εἰς τὴν ἔξοδον, and also common to both manuscripts.⁸²

But although Ott. gr. 16 and Monac. gr. 209 are thus closely related, another manuscript stands between them, as Françoise Petit showed in her work on catenae graecae. Cervini’s Ott. gr. 16 is an apograph of Madrid 4710, which was, like Pellicier’s copy (Berlin, Phillipps 1405), transcribed from Monac. gr. 209.⁸³ Monac. gr. 209 is a hybrid starting with the collection or catena of patristic scholia including Theodoret’s Quaestiones from Genesis to Q29 on I Kings (fol. 105^r), before borrowing from another, uncompounded source of Theodoret’s work alone, one that included the Prologus.⁸⁴ Unlike Phillipps 1405, which was, as Petit’s collation revealed, copied from Monac. gr. 209 with scrupulous fidelity by a single scribe, Madrid 4710 was the work of several hands, which resulted in a mise-en-page that was less consistent and aesthetically pleasing.⁸⁵ Madrid 4710 and Phillipps 1405 are thus far from identical twins, and helpfully so, as the inconsistencies and discontinuities of the former, faithfully followed by the sustained single hand that transcribed it, betray Cervini’s copy as an apograph of Madrid 4710, a manuscript which came into the possession of Hurtado’s cousin, Francisco de Mendoza y Bobadilla (1508–1566), latterly Cardinal of Burgos.⁸⁶ In both cases, the incomplete marginal numbering of the Quaestiones is slavishly reproduced, rather than supplemented; the closing sentence to Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum – Τέλος τοῦ βιβλίου τῆς Ροὺθ – is also very rare but common to these two manuscripts.⁸⁷ It is also clear that before Ott. gr. 16 was made, Madrid 4710 was subject to hands supplying additions and corrections, which tallies with its having been copied in Venice soon after its own production from Monac. gr. 209.

Monac. gr. 209, likely Grimani’s at Sant’Antonio, ended up in Hans Jakob Fugger’s hands; Phillipps 1405 was in Pellicier’s; Hurtado, Gessner records, had by 1543 his own fresh copy of ‘Dubia et solutiones in Biblia, usque ad Paralipomena’, possibly copied from Monac. gr. 209. Cervini’s Ott. gr. 16, copied from Madrid 4710, was not far behind.⁸⁸ But who owned Madrid 4710 when it served as the model for Cervini? It entered Mendoza’s library, but was probably not commissioned by him.⁸⁹ Mendoza, elevated to cardinal priest in 1544, was expected at Trent, but instead remained at Rome as Charles V’s imperial representative, a post Hurtado assumed in 1547 on quitting Trent and Venice.⁹⁰ Mendoza had, in de Andrés’s view, little time for the building of a manuscript collection, while Graux’s account of his library shows its Italian foundations being laid relatively slowly towards the end of the 1540s.⁹¹ Therefore, although scribal subscriptions show that some Greek manuscripts were copied in situ for Mendoza from models found in libraries at Bologna, Florence and Venice, Rome was where most of his copies were produced, and several years after the production of Madrid 4710.⁹² It is as such unlikely that Mendoza owned Madrid 4710 when it was used as the exemplar for Cervini’s copy.

We’ll see shortly who may have owned Madrid 4710, but for now another question arises. How did Monac. gr. 209 come into Hans Jakob Fugger’s hands? Mendoza, like Hurtado, certainly possessed the status and diplomatic contacts to circumvent the ostensibly tight borrowing constraints at Sant’Antonio, if that’s where Monac. gr. 209 lay. The books were chained, borrowable only with the express permission of Marino Grimani, who was rarely in Venice.⁹³ It might have been appropriated by Hurtado, if it served as the model for Escur. I.I.6; Gessner’s Bibliotheca hardly clarifies the matter.⁹⁴ However, once Monac. gr. 209 had been copied to produce Madrid 4710, it was from Madrid 4710 that further copies arose. Further clues about the relationships between these manuscripts start in the correspondence between Antonius Eparchus and Cervini.

In 1543, Eparchus and Cervini discussed the copying of various manuscripts, including, in Eparchus’s letter to Cervini from Venice on 18 August 1543, one explicitly described using a full but, in including ‘λύσεις’(solutiones), unusual title of Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum.⁹⁵ The work’s title in Monac. gr. 209 makes no mention of solutiones; neither does Madrid 4710; but we recall that Hurtado’s copy is recorded as ‘Dubia et solutiones in Biblia’.⁹⁶ Given that Cervini ended up with a copy of Madrid 4710, it seems to have come from Eparchus in 1543. Furthermore, if Eparchus had access to Madrid 4710, he found wider uses for it, including the amending of a defective eleventh-century manuscript, Vat. gr. 631.⁹⁷ This was certainly the manuscript that he sold to Cervini in the spring of 1551, where the inclusion of ‘Gregorii orationes cum commentariis’ (i.e., Georgius Mocenus, Scholia in Orationes Gregorii Theologi, fols 148^r–227^v) which follows Theodoret’s work points clearly towards Vat. gr. 631; the number of quaestiones on all but Exodus and Leviticus is misreported.⁹⁸ This manuscript offered the Quaestiones only as far as the first third of Q20 on Judges and possessed a particularly defective text of the Quaestiones in Genesim. Eparchus seized the opportunity of improving at least the head of the manuscript, inserting copies of Qq 2–67 on Genesis from Madrid 4710 at the start of the gross lacuna between Q37 and Q67, which also patched a number of smaller holes, and also the Praefatio and Q1.⁹⁹ Why the quaestiones on Judges and the two on Ruth were not supplied at that point to complete the Questiones in Octateuchum remains a mystery, but should not throw undue doubt about Eparchus’s direct use of Madrid 4710 for what was added to Vat. gr. 631.

Besides Madrid 4710 and Vat. gr. 631, Eparchus owned another copy of Theodoret’s Quaestiones, Monac. gr. 351, which appears disguised in the purchase list of 100 manuscripts bought by the city of Augsburg in 1544.¹⁰⁰ There it hides behind the Sibylline Oracles: ‘Σιβυλλας (sic) τῆς Κυμαίας χρησμοὶ ἐν λόγοις η’’.¹⁰¹ Xystus Betuleius’s (Sixtus Birken) editio princeps of that work, printed by Oporinus in Basel in 1545, was immediately followed by a Latin version by Castellio, whose dedicatory epistle reported Xystus’s words: ‘You ask where I obtained the exemplar. I obtained it from our library, among those books recently purchased from a certain Greek in Venice by our master.’¹⁰² The text of Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Monac. gr. 351 finishes at precisely the same place as in Vat. gr. 631, a third of the way into Q20 Judges, and possesses Q5 Exodus. According to Petit, Monac. gr. 351 draws on Madrid 4710 for Qq 2–70 on Genesis, and for the remainder on Vat. gr. 631, which, given Eparchus’s selling of Monac. gr. 351 in 1544, further confirms Eparchus’s ownership of, or access to, Madrid 4710 before that date. Curiously, Monac. gr. 351 starts at Q2 Genesis (fol. 49^r), but this may reflect where copying commenced from Vat. gr. 631, where Qq 2–67 Genesis is the insert from Madrid 4710 that is placed after the first line of Q38 of the original; another possibility is entertained below.

Postscript: The editio princeps and After

If the scene of copying Theodoret’s Quaestiones in 1540s Venice was complex, that of Jean Picot’s editio princeps (1558) was not. It relied on a unicum which, although Venetian in origin, was not a representative of the complete text (although lacking Q5 Exodus) from the Praefatio through to the Quaestiones in Ruth, as provided in Grimani’s (probable) Monac. gr. 209 through Madrid 4710 to Cervini’s Ott. gr. 16, and possibly Hurtado’s lost Escur. I.I.6 too. That manuscript, perhaps purchased in Venice around 1542, was brought to Paris by ‘Asulanus Venetus’, Giovanni Francesco d’Asola, the brother-in-law of Aldus Manutius, who, with Eparchus, assisted the growth of François I’s library at Fontainebleau.¹⁰³ Although this ‘Asulanus’ seems not have survived the printers, the resulting edition indicates that it was derived from Madrid 4710 for Qq 2–67 Genesis, the remainder of Genesis through to Q20 Judges from Vat. gr. 631, thus another Eparchan production.¹⁰⁴ Petit sees the debt of the ‘Asulanus’ to Madrid 4710 as mediated through Monac. gr. 351, but, like Hurtado’s copy, the ‘Asulanus’ lies beyond consultation. Picot patched holes using Paris. gr. 130–2, a catena mentioned above, yet still fell short of even the first seven biblical books, ending at the close of Q20 Judges. Picot believed that Theodoret had handled the whole Bible, and recalled (perhaps erroneously) a printed Latin version of the quaestiones on Kings, repeating the remark in 1564, while extolling Theodoret, with Photian echoes, as the sharpest of biblical commentators in his Latin version of the commentaries on Jeremiah, Baruch and Lamentations.¹⁰⁵ Picot’s editio princeps also failed to sift out the words of other Church Fathers from Theodoret’s discourse. However, Vat. gr. 631 and Monac. gr. 351 cannot be the source of the remainder of Q20 Judges found in the editio princeps, and thus probably also in ‘Asulanus’. Moreover, a copy of Theodoret’s Quaestiones owned by the Cardinal of Lorraine, Charles de Guise, MS Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, 375 (E291), was written and dedicated to the cardinal by Constantine Palaeocappa, and ends at just that point, which contrasts with another copy dated to Paris, 1552 by Palaeocappa, now divided, and also possibly owned by the Charles de Guise, which ends at the same point in Q20 Judges as Vat. gr. 631 and Monac. gr. 351.¹⁰⁶ It may have been that Palaeocappa copied Theodoret’s Quaestiones twice, but from different manuscripts, the ‘Asulanus’ and possibly Monac. gr. 351.

Remedies to the defects and incompleteness of the editio princeps took a while to appear, and keep us within the circle of the Cardinal of Lorraine. In the mid 1560s, Johann Birckmann pulled together all the Latin renderings of Theodoret’s works then available in print, including Picot’s, to produce the two-volume Opera issued by him at Cologne in 1567.¹⁰⁷ Although the wheels of scholarly advancement were slowly turning, they did so erratically: it was only in the enlarged Latin Opera printed by Birckmann in 1573 that Gentian Hervet’s augmentation of Picot’s work on Theodoret’s Quaestiones in Octateuchum came into public view. In 1561, Hervet had entered the service of the Cardinal of Lorraine, and was thus present at Poissy ahead of another stint at the Council of Trent, 1562–3. He had remained close to many of the most important figures buying and commissioning manuscripts throughout the Council, and had been set the translation of the works of Cyril, Theodoret and others along the way. In 1555, for instance, he dedicated to Cardinal Pole, at Jean du Morvillier’s encouragement, his translations of Palladius’s Historia Lausiaca and Theodoret’s Religiosa Historia. Morvillier, whose household Hervet was then in, received the dedication the following year of his Oratio in Concilium on marriage, and had, as was the diplomatic habit, borrowed Marciana manuscripts during his tenure as French ambassador to Venice between 1546 and 1550.¹⁰⁸ In his second phase at Trent, fresh from the publication of his Latin version of Theodore Balsamon’s authoritative commentaries on Orthodox canon law translated from Jean du Tillet’s important manuscript (Paris. gr. 1331), an opportunity arose for Hervet to buy a Greek book containing Anastasius Sinaita on the Hexaemeron and Theodoret’s Quaestiones. Assuming that Picot’s editio princeps was sufficient, Hervet narrated, his interest lay initially with Anastasius, but then, perusing the manuscript ahead of purchase, realised it contained all the quaestiones on Judges, the two on Ruth (thus completing the Octateuch), as well as those of Kings and Chronicles. For the sake of scholarship, he recorded, he suffered considerable expense to provide in Latin translation those Theodoretan writings that the manuscript in the Royal Library, and thus Picot’s edition, lacked.¹⁰⁹ Picot’s text was in bad shape (‘mancae ac mutilae’), Hervet added, yet his version was so faithful that Hervet considered retranslation a sin, so he merely completed, rather than revised. Now in Hervet’s hands, rather than those of a magnate, the manuscript’s chances of survival were reduced, and it now seems lost. Nevertheless, given its yoking of Anastasius with Theodoret, it may have been another of Palaeocappa’s productions, as the scribe has since been exposed as a forger, on one occasion passing off Anastasius’s work, with convenient additions, as that of the apocryphal Samonas of Gaza, first in a manuscript for the Cardinal of Lorraine, then a printed edition dedicated to him, in order to offer recondite Greek patristic support for the cardinal’s doctrinal position on the Eucharist.¹¹⁰

Diplomatic Transcription

Venice was far from the only scribal centre producing Greek manuscripts in the 1540s, yet it was no accident that transcription and printed publication of Greek works had thrived there from the late Quattrocento. Irigoin and Mondrain, among others, have established the importance of a mid-sixteenth century political elite with large purses to empty on the acquistion of Greek manuscripts through which to establish the prestigious centrepieces of the authoritative libraries they attempted to build. Magisterial commissions and international rivalry only amplified the personal ambitions of some. Hurtado, Cervini, and Granvelle were discerning collectors with thoroughgoing humanistic backgrounds, others less so, as Mondrain observed of Hans Jakob Fugger. Yet the religious politics of the 1540s, from the eventual convening of the Council of Trent in December 1545 to the Diet of Augsburg 1547-48, following the final battle of the Schmalkaldic war at Mühlberg, brought together in varying combinations these figures and their sundry book-hunting agents and bibliophilic secretaries. Those like Cervini at Trent combined passionate humanistic interests with theological and doctrinal commitments in the service of the Church. Hurtado made available to kindred spirits the Greek manuscripts in the magnificent collection he brought to Trent from Venice. For the location of exemplars and scribes for transcription, or the purchase of older copies purveyed from monastic libraries across the Aegean, Venice was never far away.

Interest in Photius’s Bibliotheca exemplifies how patristic and other texts were pursued by some driven less by doctrinal needs, and more by the desire to recover and explore the sacred and profane writings of the Greek inheritance, as well as Byzantine works commenting on and consolidating those traditions. Nevertheless, we can no more see scholars transcending the confessionalizing forces of the Reformation, than handle the texts they perused as if they stood apart from the material forms and modes of production through which they were transmitted. Yet it would be reductive to cast Hurtado, Pellicier, Cervini, Granvelle, and the other hands shaping what was collected as uniformally motivated. Motives may have been mixed, even contradictory, which can in part be seen in the paratextual contextualization of some Greek Fathers that sought to dampen their potentially dissonant effects on being issued in print. The opportunity to read in manuscript, then print, a rapidly expanding range of Greek Fathers in extenso deepened and complicated the interpretation of the literary culture of the early church and textually enriched and dilated the historical accounts of its endeavour to define and defend orthodoxy. The picture is far from complete, as we await studies dedicated to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century reception of many Greek Fathers, including Cyril and Theodoret.

This article has prioritised the tracking through diplomatic channels of Hurtado’s Photius and a handful of patristic texts associated with Cervini to show the intricate, even sometimes adventitious, connections between scribes, scholars and patrons. There is an overarching sense of the vitality of textual exchange and mobility, of an involved web of intimate interactions in the filling and unpacking of diplomatic bags, the migration and attachment of scribes, and the epistolary discussion, whether in private correspondence or printed prefaces. Handling a few texts sharpens the focus to reveal just how complex and closely knit the relations were among both the learned diplomatic elite serving king, emperor or pope, and the scholars and scribes on which these texts depended for the realization of their cultural translation from Byzantium.