Priests, Books and the Library at Saint Catherine´s (Sinai)

Byzantine prayer books (sg.: euchologion; pl.: euchologia) written in the Greek language are preserved in manuscripts dating from the late 8th century. They were used by priests during the liturgy or to celebrate a sacrament in the church, but also for performing various occasional prayers, i.e. prayers for occasions in everyday life that happened outside the walls of the church such as the blessing of fishing nets or a childs first day at school. Privately owned by priests and often copied by them, the euchologia were used, studied, sometimes heavily annotated, and even carried on journeys by their owners. They are therefore the ideal candidates to give a voice to otherwise unknown stories of Byzantine priests and to know more about the cultural and social role they had in society. The single largest collection of prayer books written in Greek is preserved at the library of Saint Catherines Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. Founded in the sixth century, it holds the oldest Christian monastic library with an uninterrupted history. The 80 euchologia associated with the collection were copied between the 8th and the 18th century, and originate from a great variety of places, including Southern Italy, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Crete, and Cyprus. The euchologia that are still preserved in Saint Catherines Monastery and those which during the 19th century were purloined and are now property of European and American collections (whole manuscripts or more often a few folia) constitute the research material for this project. The aim of this project is the systematic analysis of this extensive corpus which has so far escaped the attention of scholars, except in singular cases. The euchologia will not only be studied for their liturgical content, but attention will be payed to their materiality as physical objects. The investigation of their codicological and palaeographical features, combined with the analysis of their content, will yield new information not only about their origin, but also and most importantly about the social and cultural life of their most common producers and subsequent owners, namely the Byzantine priests. By studying the marginal annotations in multiple languages, it will be possible to gain deeper insight into how and when the codices entered the monasterys collection and which linguistic and liturgical traditions interrelated at the monastery (and when). The study of the Sinai prayer books will thus also contribute to a better understanding of the history of the entire Greek collection of manuscripts housed at the Monastery of Saint Catherine.

No Byzantine priest was ever without his prayer book-the Euchologion. Used daily during the liturgy and for performing "occasional prayers" outside church walls, it was central not only to a priest's religious duties but also to his personal devotional life. Studied, annotated, and often carried on journeys, the prayer book offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the otherwise undocumented lives of Byzantine priests, shedding light on their cultural and social roles. The largest known collection of Greek prayer books is preserved in the library of Saint Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. This exceptional corpus includes about 50 largely understudied manuscripts, copied between the 8th and 18th centuries, and originating from a wide range of regions-including Southern Italy, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Crete, and Cyprus. These manuscripts, along with the priests and scribes who used them, form the core research material for this project. The main aim of the research was to unlock the potential of these Byzantine and Post-Byzantine handwritten Euchologia, along with their dispersed fragments (membra disiecta). Through codicological and palaeographical analysis, combined with close textual readings, the project produced the first detailed study of the Euchologia at Saint Catherine's. This investigation revealed that several manuscripts had been miscatalogued, prompting a re-evaluation of what the term Euchologion meant in both Byzantine usage and modern scholarship. Many prayer books were found to be incomplete. Careful comparison made it possible to identify missing portions-some still preserved at Sinai, others dispersed across global collections, including in the United States (e.g., Bryn Mawr College). For the first time, an entire collection of Byzantine prayer books has been studied with focused attention on the individuals who interacted with them. The analysis confirmed their use as practical, everyday tools, evident in their modest materials-low-quality parchment, recycled or palimpsested leaves, and paper-as well as in extensive wear and multilingual annotations in Greek, Arabic, and other languages. The research also showed that priests were not the only users: deacons and priest-monks were often involved in copying and using the texts. In many cases, the owners' first language was Arabic, as seen in the abundance of marginal notes and ownership inscriptions. These overlooked annotations are crucial: they illuminate the manuscripts' multilingual histories and often provide dates that help establish a more precise chronology. Finally, the detailed study of individual prayers led to the discovery of a significant number of previously unknown texts for various liturgical occasions-highlighting the richness of this long-neglected body of material.