Con ten ts

Du m ba rton Oa k s Pa per s
N u m ber Si x t y-T wo
2008

Michael Hendy, 16 April 1942–13 May 2008  1

R. W. Burgess
The Summer of Blood: The “Great Massacre” of 337 and the Promotion of the Sons of Constantine  5
Stephen J. Shoemaker
The Cult of Fashion: The Earliest Life of the Virgin and Constantinople’s Marian Relics  53
Hans-Georg Severin
On the Architectural Decoration and Dating of the Church of Dayr Anbā Bīšūy
(“Red Monastery”) near Sūhāǧ in Upper Egypt  75
Maria Evangelatou
Word and Image in the Sacra Parallela (Codex Parisinus Graecus 923)   113
Bogdan G. Bucur
Foreordained from All Eternity: The Mystery of the Incarnation According to Some
Early Christian and Byzantine Writers  199
Ivan Drpić
Art, Hesychasm, and Visual Exegesis: Parisinus Graecus 1242 Revisited  217

Romanos the Melode: Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, 12 November 2005

Mary B. Cunningham
The Reception of Romanos in Middle Byzantine Homiletics and Hymnography  251
Riccardo Maisano
Romanos’s Use of Greek Patristic Sources  261
Johannes Koder
Imperial Propaganda in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melode  275
The Old Testament in Byzantium:
Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, 1–3 December 2006  293
Abbreviations  295
 Word and Image in the Sacra Parallela
(Codex Parisinus Gr aecus 923)
M a r i a Eva ngel atou
I n the pr esent article, my aim is to exam-
ine the close relationship of word and image in
the pages of codex Parisinus graecus 923, in order to
draw conclusions or at least raise questions regarding the
method of production of this important ninth-century
Byzantine manuscript. The evidence presented in the
following pages indicates that Kurt Weitzmann’s theory
on the production of codex Parisinus graecus 923 and
its relation to pre-iconoclast manuscript illumination
cannot be substantiated. According to the alternative
approach proposed here, this codex appears to have been
a unique production, in which the close synergy of text
I would like to thank the Program in Hellenic Studies of Princeton Uni-
versity and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto for
offering me postdoctoral fellowships in the years 2004–2005 and 2005–
2006 respectively, during which a large part of my time was dedicated to
my research on cod. Paris. gr. 923. Only a portion of this research is pre-
sented here. The final version of this article was prepared during a post-
doctoral fellowship for the year 2006–2007 at the Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study. I thank my Ph.D. thesis supervisor, Prof. Robin Cormack,
for directing my attention to this important manuscript and suggesting
that I work on it. I am very grateful to Dr. Christian Förstel, Département
des Manuscrits (division occidentale) of the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris, for permission to study cod. Paris. gr. 923 in the original, and to Dr.
Ioanna Rapti for her generous hospitality. I would also like to thank Dr.
Patricia Skotti for her comments and bibliographic references. I am grate-
ful to Joel Kalvesmaki for his collaboration and conscientious work for the
improvement of the article. I am particularly indebted to the DOP edito-
rial board and the two external readers for their valuable suggestions and
to the editor, Dr. Alice-Mary Talbot, for dedicating much of her valuable
time to meticulously correct my English. Any shortcomings in this paper
are entirely my responsibility.
Figs. 10–15, 21–23, 28–30, 32, 34–35, 39–40, 42, 45–47, 49–51, 54,
62–66, 67–69, and 72 have been reproduced with the permission of Prince-
ton University Press, after K. Weitzmann, The Miniatures of the Sacra
Parallela: Parisinus Graecus 923 (Princeton, 1979), figs. 409, 454, 447,
412, 425, 419, 180, 175, 174, 153, 166, 480, 213, 554, 555, 646–47, 357, 78,
115, 161, 63, 129, 130, 420–24, 134, 393, 561, and 41. Because of high copy-
right fees, I was forced to reduce the number of images included in this
article. I thank the Committee on Research of the University of Califor-
nia, Santa Cruz for providing a substantial part of the funds needed for
reproduction and copyright fees.
DOP 62
and image was designed to promote the didactic value
of the Sacra Parallela compilation.
Codex graecus 923 of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris
is for many reasons exceptional in the surviving corpus of
Byzantine manuscripts. It is the earliest known copy of
the so-called Sacra Parallela, a florilegium of mostly bibli-
cal and patristic texts, the original of which is attributed
to the eighth-century theologian John of Damascus. At
present there is no single manuscript that preserves this
work in its original form, only codices of later recensions
that preserve parts of the initial florilegium. Dating from
the ninth century, the Sacra Parallela of Paris is the earli-
est of approximately thirty such manuscripts.1
1  The original work attributed to John of Damascus (the title of which
does not survive, but is thought to have been the Ἱερά) was divided into
three books, containing excerpts that dealt respectively with God, human-
kind, and pairs of virtues and vices. Each of these three books is sepa-
rately preserved in a limited number of manuscripts. Although they are
incomplete and abbreviated in relation to the original, these manuscripts
give us an idea of its content and great length. Selections of chapters from
all three books, compiled in continuous florilegia without a tripartite
division (the abbreviated “florilèges Damascéniens” as Marcel Richard
called them), were already in circulation in the 9th century, and survive
in various recensions, two of which (the Vatican and the Rupefucaldian)
were considered by Karl Holl the most important. The text published in
1712 by Michel Lequien (who introduced the title “Sacra Parallela” used
ever since) belongs to the Vatican recension, but unfortunately is based
on a fifteenth-century manuscript which is missing parts found in earlier
codices. It is the only Sacra Parallela text that has been published; it is
available in PG 95:1040–1588 and PG 96:9–441 (PG 96:441–544 con-
tains excerpts from the Rupefucaldian recension that are not included
in the Vatican version). The text of cod. Paris. gr. 923 is related to both
basic recensions (Vatican and Rupefucaldian), but it does not belong to
either of them (and so, obviously, its text does not always correspond to
the text published in PG 95–96). Two small fragments of a Sacra Par-
allela text (codices Paris. Coislin 20 and Paris. suppl. gr. 1155) are also
dated to the 9th century, but even if they might be earlier than cod.
Paris. gr. 923, the latter is the earliest surviving manuscript rather than
fragment of a Sacra Parallela florilegium. See K. Weitzmann, The Min-
iatures of the Sacra Parallela: Parisinus Graecus 923 (Princeton, 1979),
9, n. 24. For all the above see K. Holl, Die Sacra Parallela des Johannes