Minima epigrammatica Byzantina

This paper examines three little-regarded epigrams from the early Palaeologan period (late thirteenth/early fourteenth century), which from various points of view – historical, philological and literary, as well as in relation to material culture – prove to be interesting and in need of a new interpretation. First of all, it has been shown that the text of a poem from the Makrinitissa-Nea Petra Chartular, which was edited a few years ago, can be helpfully corrected in one point, thus regaining an effective meaning and a rhetorically more powerful, well-documented construction. In the case of the second epigram - a metrical subscription to a Chrysostomos codex now preserved in Ferrara - a deeper historical analysis leads to revisiting Cyril Mango's hypothesis for the localisation of the Kosmidion monastery in Constantinople with new arguments, namely that the complex dedicated to the Anargyroi has most probably to be situated in the immediate vicinity of the Blachernae Palace on the other side of the land wall. Finally, the importance of a book epigram is emphasized, which is transmitted by all ten still existing handwritten text carriers (including the Vindob. Theol. gr. 118, probably the closest to the author) of a Dialogus contra Iudaeos (approx. A.D. 1310) by Andronikos Komnenos Branas Dukas Angelos Palaiologos (a cousin of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos) in place of the title; this short poem, conceived as a sphragis, is closely related on the one hand to the monograms found only in the Vindobonensis and in its copies, which represent a detail to further secure the author's name, and on the other hand to a longer poetic composition (Martini, Carm. 65) by Manuel Philes, to whom the epigram, which functions as the title of the work, may also be ascribed.