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Paper abstract:

Today, medieval Georgian manuscripts are kept not only in archives of museums and research centers in Georgia, but also outside Georgia in the libraries of St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt Sinai, the Iviron monastery on Mt. Athos, and in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (former manuscript collection of the Georgian monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem). There are more than 400 manuscripts held in these centers ranging from the 5th-7th to the 18th centuries. They contain original as well as translated works of Christian authors from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages. Most of these manuscripts were created locally by Georgian scribes living and working in Jerusalem, on Mt. Sinai, and Mt. Athos; some of them were donated to these centers by Georgians, predominantly by representatives of the royal or aristocratic families over the centuries, from Georgia or from different parts of Christendom. Medieval Georgian scholars living and working in foreign monastic centers were always connected to each other and to the monastic centers of Georgia. They supplied each other with manuscripts and enriched churches and monasteries in Georgia by sending newly translated and copied manuscripts there. They were also engaged in a close relationship with the Greeks as well as with other ethnic groups. All these aspects played a significant role in shaping Georgian scholars’ skills and working habits which could have been used in creating manuscripts.

The aim of our paper is to outline the repertory of each monastic collection, provide a general overview of the manuscripts, reveal their specificities, codicological and paleographical features, modes of dating, decorative value, reproduce the stories of their journeys, etc. Based on the colophons of translators, scribes, and benefactors, we try to reconstruct scholarly activities of Georgian men of letters who lived and worked on Mt Sinai, Mt Athos, and Jerusalem.

Special attention will be paid to (1) the earlier manuscripts; (2) autographs – manuscripts written in their translators’ hand, which are mostly concentrated in the library of Iviron (autographs of Giorgi the Hagiorite and Theophile the Hieromonk), and (3) multilingual palimpsests which are preserved in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt Sinai.