A Descriptive Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at St. John's College, Oxford

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This catalogue publishes a revision to modern standards of the entries for the Greek manuscripts catalogued by Henry Coxe in 1852 as part of his catalogue of the St. John's manuscript collection, providing detailed codicological descriptions with photographs of the handwriting of the scribes and specimens of the watermarks in the paper. A scholarly introduction provides new information on the provenance of the manuscripts, identifying the scribes and humanists involved and setting their activities in the context of the Renaissance book trade and the establishment of early humanistic libraries especially in Italy, Spain and France as knowledge of Greek spread westwards after the fall of Constantinople. The development of the Greek holdings in the early history of the college is discussed, showing the importance of William Laud's activities as a collector and donor. An appendix lists the Greek books in the library c.1635. The introduction is full of information for the non-specialist. As well as serving as a short primer on Greek palaeography, it contains sections on the analysis of handwriting and watermarks, definitions of codiological terms and a brief explanation of seventeenth-century binding techniques.