Sulla Datazione e sui copisti dell’Eusebio della collezione Marsili (Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, mss. 3643-3644)

After briefly outlining the history of the Greek codices acquired in Constantinople (1691–92) by Luigi Ferdinando Marsili and now preserved in the University Library of Bologna, the contribution examines, codicologically and palaeographically, the manuscript witness of Eusebius of Caesarea’s apologetic works (the Praeparatio evangelica and Demonstratio evangelica), today divided, after an 18th-century restoration, into two volumes (BUB 3643–3644). This double codex is a well-executed edition, copied on large-format oriental Arabic paper according to a script type widely attested in Constantinople in the later 12th century, shortly before the city’s capture in 1204. Two hands can be distinguished, one per volume. The first concludes BUB 3643 (Praeparatio evangelica) with an elegant dodecasyllabic subscription identifying himself as the monk Nicephoros Hexapterygos, a member of a family linked to the Patriarchate of Constantinople—among them Theodoros Hexapterygos (ca. 1170–†paulo post 1234), later a teacher of rhetoric, including to Georgios Akropolites, under the Empire of Nicaea. The second, anonymous copyist of BUB 3644 (Demonstratio evangelica) writes in a notably refined hand showing chancery influence. Both volumes underwent extensive restoration. In BUB 3643, fols. 1–79 and 181–182 were supplied; in BUB 3644 (and parts of the first volume), missing final lines, lost through damage, were reconstructed. These additions, datable by their script (a characteristic Fettaugen-Mode with the typical results of the beta-gamma style) to around 1300, should likewise be attributed to Constantinople, where, in the early Palaeologan period, efforts were undertaken to recover surviving portions of the book heritage damaged during the Fourth Crusade and the Latin occupation.