A work in progress by Iosif Lazaridis (@iosif_lazaridis on X), supervising research by Anthropic's Claude, from public sources and books kindly provided by Kiriakos Kazantzidis.
How the West went from graecum est, non legitur, "it is Greek; it cannot be read," to reading, teaching and printing Greek: the Greeks who taught it, the books they brought, copied and sold, the books bought, given or taken from the Greek world, the libraries that held them by 1600, and the first printed editions.
Medieval readers of Latin who met a Greek word in their texts could only write graecum est, non legitur and pass on. In the 1340s hardly anyone in Latin Europe could read Greek: Petrarch owned a Homer he could not read. By 1600 Greek was taught in the schools and universities of the West, 419 Greek texts had been printed for the first time, and its libraries held thousands of Greek manuscripts.
This page follows how that happened, from Barlaam of Calabria, who taught Petrarch Greek at Avignon in 1341–42, and Leontius Pilatus, who translated Homer into Latin for Petrarch and Boccaccio at Florence in 1360–62, to 1600: the Greeks who taught, copied, translated and edited Greek in the West; the books they brought, copied and sold, and the books that Westerners bought, were given or took in war from the Greek world; the libraries where those books were by 1600; and the first printed editions, with the manuscripts they were printed from.
It is a work in progress, released in numbered versions. A manuscript counts only if a source documents it in Latin Europe by 1600: 8,624 do, 7,116 of them with today's shelfmark, and 2,555 more are probable. Each book counts once. What we looked for and did not find is listed under How we count, with the sources that would settle it; corrections and sources from readers are welcome.
Choose the layers, then drag the year slider to see any twenty years, or press Play to run from 1340 to 1600; "All years" shows everything, including what is not dated. Teachers: the places where the people lived and worked, by the number of people there. Libraries: where the manuscripts were documented by 1600, by the number counted, with the probable ones in the dashed ring; they do not change with the slider. Journeys: people coming to the West, collectors' acquisitions and manuscripts brought to their collection from the Greek world; tick the box beside the map to add the moves within the West, in gray. Copies made in the West: dated copies by the place of copying. First editions: by the place of printing. Select a place for everything there.
Per decade, from the 1340s to the 1590s (1600 is counted with the 1590s). Only dated events are counted: teachers by the year they came to the West, copies by the year in their colophon, books from the Greek world by the year the source gives for their arrival, editions by the year they were printed. The dashed lines mark the Council of Ferrara and Florence (1438–39) and the fall of Constantinople (1453). Point to a bar for its number.
The 142 people of the list: Greek speakers who taught, copied, translated, edited or printed Greek in the West, with the dates and places of their lives as the sources give them. Select a row for their stations, pupils and sources, and to show their journey on the map.
| Roles |
|---|
The lists: core, the Greek speakers of the set; borderline, those whose part is less direct (a patron, a Westerner of Greek descent, a scholar more than a teacher); secondary, linked entries. Places are given as the sources name them.
The twelfth- and thirteenth-century translators and the first chairs of Greek, for context; they are not in the counts.
All 8,624 Greek manuscripts documented in Latin Europe by 1600 and, with the switch, the 2,555 probable ones. Each is listed under the collection where it is documented by 1600 (see By collection), with today's shelfmark where the old inventory entry has been matched to a surviving book. Search any word; select a row for all the details.
| Why it counts |
|---|
The principal manuscripts that modern critical editions rest on (Venetus A of the Iliad, the Mediceus of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Plato's Clarke 39, the Codex Vaticanus and others) and what our list says of each: counted, counted with an old inventory whose entry for it is not yet identified, probable, or in the West only after 1600. Suggested by Kiriakos Kazantzidis (@kirkaz01 on X); the check, in version 0.10, also corrected and added records. Select a row for the details and a link to the manuscript in the table above.
| Author and work | Manuscript | Siglum | Date | In our list | Evidence |
|---|
The count by collection: the old inventory or the catalog in which each manuscript is documented by 1600, and its sources. In all, 8,624 counted and 2,555 probable. Select a row to list its manuscripts.
52 collectors and libraries, with the 153 acquisitions recorded for them: purchases, gifts and bequests, commissioned copies, books taken in war or confiscated, and books brought by Greeks who came to the West. Select a row for its acquisitions.
| Collector or library | Where | Active | Greek manuscripts | Acquisitions |
|---|
The first printed edition of each Greek text up to 1600, from the Batrachomyomachia of about 1474 onward: the date, the author and work, the editor and whether he was a Greek speaker, the printer and the place, and the manuscript used as the printer's copy where a study identifies it. A printer's copy that is in the manuscript list links to it.
| Printer's copy |
|---|
Iosif's ruling (3 November 2026): "We count all territories under Latin bishops as the West." So all of Italy is the West, Sicily, Calabria and the Salento included after the Norman conquest (c. 1071–1091), with Spain and Portugal, France, the German lands, England, Poland-Lithuania and the rest of Latin Europe. The Greek lands under Latin rule stay the Greek world: Venetian Crete, Corfu, Cyprus, Rhodes, Chios, Naxos and Negroponte. A book copied at Candia for a Venetian is therefore in group d, and a Greek who moved from Crete to Venice came to the West.
Each counted manuscript is put in one group by where and for whom it was written, as far as the catalogs say:
A manuscript older than about 1400 with no Western place is taken to come from the Greek world (group a); a book copied in Italy is in group b or c by its scribe. Where the catalog gives neither date nor place, the group is not determinable.
Greek speakers first: men and women from Constantinople and the Greek lands (Venetian Crete, Corfu and Cyprus included) and from the Greek-speaking south of Italy, who taught, copied, translated, edited, printed or bought Greek books in the West between the 1340s and 1600. 142 people: 133 on the core list, 7 borderline (among them Anna Notaras as a patron, Niccolò Leonico Tomeo, Galateo and Aemilius Portus) and 2 secondary (Demetrios Mysos and Camillo Zanetti). Leo Allatius and Georgios Koressios are left out: their work falls after 1600. Western pupils appear with their teachers.
The first printed edition of each Greek text before 1600: 419 editions (texts written before 1453; grammars and liturgical books are marked as such). The list began from Wikipedia's list of editiones principes in Greek, checked edition by edition and enlarged; the Basel Nomocanon of 1561 is left out because it is in Latin only. Printer's copies are given where a study identifies them, above all Sicherl, Griechische Erstausgaben des Aldus Manutius (1997), and Martinelli Tempesta; 26 manuscripts of the list are linked to an edition printed from them.
For the manuscripts, the old inventories and the printed catalogs listed under By collection, all in the public domain or used for facts only: the Vatican inventory of 1475 (Müntz and Fabre), Bessarion's deed of 1468 (Omont), the Fontainebleau catalogs and Catherine de' Medici's inventory of 1589 (Omont), Pellicier's list, Orsini's library (de Nolhac), Janus Laskaris' purchases (Müller), the dated scribes of Vogel and Gardthausen, and the catalogs of some fifty libraries from Bandini (1764–70) to the Vatican catalogs of Devreesse, Giannelli and Lilla. From HathiTrust (copies downloaded by Iosif): Omont's Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs de la Bibliothèque nationale (parts 1–3), Rocchi's Codices Cryptenses (Grottaferrata, 1883) and Iriarte's Madrid catalog (1769). For the people: the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, the specialist studies cited person by person, and Wikipedia. For the editions: Wikipedia's list, Sicherl, Martinelli Tempesta, library and incunabula catalogs. Every record keeps its own sources.
Pinakes is not used, by Iosif's decision (2 November 2026): the database of the IRHT does not allow its records to be reused without written consent.
Land from Natural Earth (1:50m), in a conic projection. People's stations, collectors' acquisitions and editions are placed by the coordinates in the data. Manuscripts are placed with a small gazetteer of the place names that occur in the catalogs; names that are rare, unclear or offer a choice ("Venice or Rome", "Italy", "southern Italy", "not stated; the scribe worked in Venice and Rome") are left unplaced. Of the 8,624 counted manuscripts, 1,892 say where they were copied and 1,267 of these are placed (67%); 2,114 say where they came from and 2,101 are placed (99%); 8,594 (100%) are placed at the city of their collection. 500 of 508 stations of the people, 78 of 124 arrivals in the West (both ends named), 100 of 153 acquisitions and 419 of 419 editions are on the map.
A copy counts as dated when its colophon or a dated note gives the year: 1,117 counted manuscripts, 835 of them copied in the West. Dates given only by century, as "about", or inferred from a scribe's career are not used for the charts or the year slider. Journeys are dated by the year the source gives for the arrival, often a year "by" which the book was there.
What is missing, and what would settle it (version 0.11).
| Gap | Size | What would settle it |
|---|---|---|
| Vatican inventory of 1475: entries without today's shelfmark | 677 of 775 | Devreesse, Le fonds grec de la Bibliothèque Vaticane des origines à Paul V (1965), which identifies the old inventories' entries; a catalog of Vat. gr. 933–1484 (none online) |
| Vatican old fund: codices there by 1600 (or by 1475) but not datable against the 1475 inventory | 502 (not added) | the same; if they outnumber the free entries, the excess is added |
| Catherine de' Medici's inventory of 1589: entries without a Paris shelfmark | 340 of 604 | D. Muratore, La biblioteca del cardinale Niccolò Ridolfi (2009); the BnF's online catalog (Archives et manuscrits) record by record |
| El Escorial: Greek books with no date of acquisition | 230 probable (among them the Iliad υ.I.1, Allen's E3) | C. Graux, Essai sur les origines du fonds grec de l'Escurial (1880; public domain, not yet fetched); G. de Andrés' catalogs (1965–67) |
| Munich and Augsburg: books documented only after 1600 | 231 probable | the Augsburg catalogs of 1575 (Wolf) and 1595 (Hoeschel), not online as text |
| Ottoboni: books known only from Duke Altemps' library (bought 1611) | 190 probable | an inventory of Sirleto's library before 1588 |
| Ambrosiana: books bought for Borromeo after 1600 (from Gabriel Severos at Venice, in Calabria and the Salento, at Pisa) that were probably in the West earlier | 172 probable | earlier owners' notes; for the South Italian books, the date and place of copying (a book written there after the Norman conquest was in the West from the start) |
| Messina, San Salvatore: books without a note before 1600 | 150 probable | the date and place of copying; old inventories of the monastery's books |
| Florence: San Marco and Badia books without a date | 145 probable | the San Marco inventory of c. 1500 (Ullman and Stadter 1972) |
| Oxford, Bodleian: Francesco Barozzi's books (Barocci, Cromwell) without a dated note | 260 probable | Barozzi's own notes or the 1617 catalog of his collection |
| Grottaferrata: old stock without a dated note | 188 probable | the abbey's inventories of the 15th–16th centuries (e.g. 1575), codex by codex |
| Pellicier's list: entries without today's shelfmark | about 80 of 191 | the Oxford, Leiden and Paris catalogs (Naulot's books) |
| Marciana old fund: codices not tied to an entry of Bessarion's deed | 391 (counted through the deed) | The deed has only 359 unidentified entries, so at least 32 of these books came after 1468 and are recorded only in the inventory of 1474 (as Venetus A is). L. Labowsky, Bessarion's Library and the Biblioteca Marciana: Six Early Inventories (1979), would identify them; until then they are not added. |
| Badia Fiorentina books not yet tied to Antonio Corbinelli's bequest (1424/25) | e.g. Herodotus C (Laur. Conv. Soppr. 207) | R. Blum, La biblioteca della Badia fiorentina e i codici di Antonio Corbinelli (1951) |
| Principal manuscripts of modern editions with no evidence in the West before 1600 | 16 of 162 (e.g. Plato T, W, F, O; Marcus Aurelius A; Epictetus' archetype) | Mioni's Marciana catalogs; Hunger and Hannick's catalog of the Vienna Supplementum (1994); the libraries' provenance records |
| Catherine de' Medici's books among the principal manuscripts (Aristotle's Poetics A, the Suda A, Plutarch's Lives A, the Almagest A, the Codex Ephraemi) | 7, counted with her books, entries not identified | D. Muratore (2009) |
| Hippocrates A (Paris. gr. 2253): earlier owners Domenico Grimani (d. 1523) and Henri de Mesmes (d. 1596), as listed by Biblissima | probable | the BnF's provenance record |
| Copyists named in the repertory of Roman manuscripts (RGK III A) but not yet in our list of people | about 50 (e.g. the Collegio Greco students, Italo-Greek clergy of Calabria, the Terra d'Otranto and Sicily) | a decision on how far the list of people should go; the RGK entries |
| Undated copies by Greek copyists who came West as adults and have no known copies from the Greek world (e.g. Georgios Hermonymos, Demetrios Damilas, Demetrios Moschos, Ioannes Rhosos): counted under the rule "worked only in the West", though a copy could in principle predate the copyist's arrival | counted | RGK I and II (their biographies of these copyists); paper and watermarks of the undated copies |
| Konstantinos Rhesinos (38 Roman manuscripts) and Konstantinos Mesobotes (30): where they worked | their copies probable or not counted | E. Gamillscheg, Biblos 43 (1994) and Codices Manuscripti 17 (1994) |
| Greek copies in Latin fonds of the Vatican (Vat. lat., Urb. lat., Barb. lat.) by copyists who worked in the West | 31 not added | a check that each is a Greek manuscript rather than a Latin one with Greek passages |
| Constantine Laskaris' books at Madrid: Wilson's numbers (gr. 127, 19, 137, 33, 141, 317) against Iriarte's | 6 | J. M. Fernández Pomar (1966); G. de Andrés (1987) |
| Group (from the Greek world, copied in the West, etc.) not determinable | 3,750 | date and place of copying in modern catalogs |
Still missing: Naples (Cirillo), the Escorial's acquisitions (Graux 1880), Augsburg (1575, 1595), London Burney and Harley vol. 3, Rome Chigi and Barberini, Brussels, Copenhagen; the in-copyright studies for the Vatican (Devreesse 1965), Ridolfi (Muratore 2009) and San Marco (Ullman and Stadter 1972). Pinakes is not used, by Iosif's decision (2 Nov 2026).
Each release has a number, 0.x while the work is in progress. Corrections from readers will be logged in the entry of the version that applies them, with the reader credited if they wish.
The books sent by Kiriakos Kazantzidis
The key manuscripts of modern editions
Madrid, Grottaferrata, Oxford, Berlin, London, Cambridge, Wolfenbüttel, the Corvina
Paris (Omont's Inventaire sommaire)
The Vatican catalogs
Some 40 more public-domain catalogs
Catherine de' Medici, Urbino, Ambrosiana I, Ottoboni, Reginenses
Palatine, Marciana, Vienna, Ambrosiana II, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, Breslau, Oxford
The Laurentian, the Escorial, Munich; "the West" defined
The first inventories
People, editions, collections
The data of version 0.11, as shown on this page, for anyone to use with credit. The events file gives every movement with a date and two places with coordinates, for maps and films.
Counted and probable, 11,179 rows: shelfmark today, collection, date, contents, scribe, places with coordinates, group, why it counts, source.
The 142 people with their dates, roles, arrival in the West, stations, pupils and sources.
The 419 editions with editors, printers, places and the printer's copies.
The principal manuscripts of modern editions, with their status in our list and the evidence.
Every movement: people's moves and arrivals, acquisitions, manuscripts reaching their collections, copies made, editions printed and printer's copies changing hands.
All the tables in one file, as JSON, or as a workbook with the table of collections and the collectors' acquisitions.