Important textual witnesses in Viennese Greek palimpsests

The goal of the proposed three-year project is to recover the European cultural heritage hidden in the lower layers of selected palimpsests preserved in the Austrian National Library in Vienna through editing and analysing the following important textual witnesses for the benefit of the numerous fields of research to which they are relevant: Aelius Herodianus, De prosodia catholica in Vind. Hist. gr. 10; Florilegium Basilicorum Vindobonense in Vind. Hist. gr. 10; historical fragments in Vind. Hist. gr. 73 (P. Herennius Dexippus ?); Eusebius Caesariensis, Chronicon in Vind. Iur. gr. 18; Passio S. Georgii in Vind. (lat.) 954. The Austrian National Library possesses a considerable number of Greek palimpsests. Many of the erased texts were studied and described during the cataloguing from the sixties to the nineties of the 20th century, other palimpsests could only be examined in more detail during the last decade, especially thanks to modern technical developments, i. e. digital imaging, text databases. The renewed systematic analysis of the Viennese Greek palimpsests began during the European project "Rinascimento virtuale - Digitale Palimpsestforschung" (2001- 2004) and was further carried out, in cooperation with foreign scholars, under the project "Greek palimpsests" of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2005-2008. Given its eminent significance, this high-profile research is to be continued under the current project focusing on the above-mentioned important textual witnesses. Additionally, an analysis of the Athos palimpsest of the De cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae will be included. Multispectral images will aid in deciphering and analysing otherwise illegible texts of great cultural value. Scholars specializing in particular authors and works will be involved: Klaus Alpers, Oliver Primavesi, Bernard H. Stolte, Gunther Martin, Ernst Gamillscheg, Michael Featherstone. The highly competent project editions and detailed analyses will bring to light texts crucial to various fields of research and will thus serve as a basis for further scholarly studies. The examination of the manuscripts in question will provide interesting insights into Byzantine culture and book production from the 6th to the 13th centuries; further light will be thrown on various aspects of the historical recycling of parchment, e. g. cultural backgrounds, centres and periods. To achieve the best possible dissemination, the project`s outputs will be published both in print and online (open access, project web site). Moreover, a creation of innovative online editions, accompanied by the multispectral images, on a suitable platform is intended in order to enable a wide scholarly discussion on these important texts and to make this cultural heritage generally accessible to the interested public.

The project combined centuries of well-established textual research with achievements of highly innovative digital imaging and image processing under the goal of bringing to light important texts hidden in five palimpsests preserved in the Austrian National Library in Vienna and in one palimpsest of Athos, thus recovering the valuable cultural heritage. The goal of the project has been successfully reached. With the help of most advanced methods of exact sciences considerable new parts of the original texts of great value have been deciphered, reconstructed, identified, and examined from various perspectives, thus making them available for the benefit of further research in the numerous fields to which they are relevant. The wide spectrum of aspects of the texts and manuscripts in question required interdisciplinary research and new approaches, the best specialists in the authors and works in question were involved. Special digital images resulting from multispectral capture have enabled scholars to read parts of the text that had hitherto been invisible. One of the most significant achievements of the project is the revealing of new fragments on Gothic incursions into Roman provinces in the Balkans in the middle of the third century AD by Jana Gruskov and Gunther Martin, the so called Scythica Vindobonensia, in the four palimpsest folios of the Vienna manuscript Hist. gr. 73 (fols. 192r195v). These fragments, coming most probably from the lost work Scythica by the third-century historian Dexippus of Athens, are undoubtedly among the most important additions of the last decades to the Corpus of texts from classical antiquity. Among the new evidence, we get a longer passage from an address of Decius (Roman Emperor from 249 to 251) to his army and an account of a Gothic attack under Cniva on a Thracian town, very likely Philippopolis (nowadays Plovdiv in Bulgaria). Another fragment, fols. 192v and 193r, deals with the Greeks preparations against an attack by the Scythians (an archaizing collective name for Goths and other East Germanic tribes) on their march south after an unsuccessful attack on Thessalonica. The Greeks take defensive measures at Thermopylae to repel the barbarian force.