Repertorium of the Greek copyists 800-1600

The results published in the Repertory of the Greek copyists offer additional information concerning the tradition of the Greek literature of the ancient and medieval period. The identification of the copyists leads to the reconstruction of the emphasis given to particular authors in the textual history of the classical literature. We can demonstrate, that the knowledge of the classical heritage came to us via the medieval scribes and we are in the position to study the value attributed to classical authors in the course of the centuries. One important feature of the culture during the Renaissance is the work done by Greek copyists in the diffusion of the knowledge of the Greek language and literature. The scribe and merchant Andreas Darmarios from Monembasia and his team supplied not only books for the Catholic bishops at the Council of Trient, he provided also manuscripts for the Hungarian humanist Johannes Sambucus. Many Greek codices found their way to the holdings of the Imperial Library in Vienna via the collection of Johannes Sambucus. One member of the equipe working with Andreas Darmarios is Symeon Kabasilas from Epirus, who came in contact with the Philhellene Martin Crusius, professor at Tübingen. In this period of conflicts between the Christian Churches representatives of the Protestant Church looked for an alliance with the Orthodox Church against the Pope. For this reason, they were interested in the state of the Greek Church and the Greek people under Ottoman rule. In the University Library are kept many copies written by pupils and colleagues of Crusius containing Greek texts. The survey of these activities may produce comparable data with the works copied by professional scribes for important libraries for instance the Bibliothe`que Royale at Fontainebleau. The interest on the literatur in the Greek vernacular language is important for a period, when the public tried to imitate the classical models. The expansion of linguistic studies can be seen in the work of Sebastian Mnster, who compared the Latin, Greek and Hebrew language. The evidence is kept in the Austrian National Library: The autograph lexicon written by Sebastian Münster, containing the three Biblical languages.