Lire à Byzance (review)

Modern students of ancient Greek literature are aware (or should be) that the great majority of the available texts survive because they were handed down from one generation of Byzantine readers to the next over a period of a thousand years. If the student wishes to find out something about the tastes of those Byzantine readers and the literary circles they moved in, this slim volume, based on a series of seminars given in Paris in 2003, is a source of help. In one sense it may create a feeling of disappointment: the overriding impression one is left with is that most Byzantines capable of reading or appreciating the written word were concerned primarily with religious and theological matters, so that the pagan classics were of interest to a tiny section of the intellectual elite. But our gratitude to that elite is all the greater for maintaining the liberal outlook of those church fathers who saw no danger and some positive good in many ancient authors.

A book of this kind inevitably compiles the results of numerous specialized investigations by other scholars in order to give a general picture. The contrast with classical antiquity and the medieval Western world is made very clear. The style is readable, though some will find the frequency of the word modalité not to their taste, and there is a slight tendency to repetition (which was not necessarily a drawback in seminar exposition). On page 7, line 2, I did not understand what l'image refers to, nor could I follow métaphores on 9 or une opération fort libre on 12, line 7. On 59, lines 2–3, read invisible. On 158 the final sentence left me baffled.

Some stimulating observations may be mentioned. 26: The account of "graphophagie" is amusing. 28–29: It is good to be able to identify a manuscript written for an illiterate emperor (the shelf-mark should be cited as Naples gr.2*, not 2). 38–39: A useful warning that the educational term ἐγκύκλιοϛ παιδεία in some contexts has been devalued to mean less than it originally did. Chapter 5: Some parts of this discussion of voice and image may seem a bit fanciful, but Cavallo is surely right to conclude that the Kazhdan-Averintsev hypothesis of stummes Byzanz is incorrect. 56: The mention of early auditoria is helpful. 114: At the Stoudios monastery the calligraphers were privileged by exemption from certain duties during Lent. 125: A good paragraph on the attempts made in convents to deal with the generally low level of literacy among the nuns. 151: The practice of learning thirty or forty lines of Homer by heart daily offers a glimpse of the schoolroom.

Now for a few details that invite comment. 5: The suggestion that many books remained unread is paradoxical in view of the fact that writing materials were rarely if ever cheap and conspicuous consumption can hardly have been widespread. 18 at note 24: sur une route principale is a mistake; the Greek refers to a well-trodden path. 37: The idea that St. Stephen of Suroz was educated at Athens in the eighth century is not universally accepted. 74–75: Here it would have been worth mentioning the variants indicated by graphetai. 83: The definition of various classes of reader seems to be a bit different from what was outlined on 36; simplement instruites causes me some difficulty. The question must be asked whether "the common reader" is a concept applicable to Byzantine society, since the English term implies a numerically substantial category. Some of Cavallo's examples in this chapter are highly important members of society; but he calls them middle-ranking functionaries. 104: It should be made clear that the monastery of Epiphanius in Egypt was a far-flung outpost where the main language in use was Coptic rather than Greek. Chapter 11: Cavallo does not cite the most striking of all Byzantine marginalia, namely...