Byzantine book epigrams from manuscripts to a digital database

Byzantine manuscripts contain, apart from ancient or medieval ‘literary’ texts, also poetic texts that are intimately related to the production of the manuscript itself, and that can be considered as ‘poetic paratexts’. They are interesting because they offer information on the reading and writing culture in Byzantium, about patronage, the circulation of manuscripts, etc. These epigrams are now only known through descriptive catalogues, which are often outdated and present a very fragmented image. Many of them are even still unedited. A collaborative team at Ghent University aims now to develop a digital database that collects these epigrams, enabling both contextual and textual queries.Byzantine manuscripts contain, apart from ancient or medieval ‘literary’ texts, also poetic texts that are intimately related to the production of the manuscript itself, and that can be considered as ‘poetic paratexts’. They are interesting because they offer information on the reading and writing culture in Byzantium, about patronage, the circulation of manuscripts, etc. These epigrams are now only known through descriptive catalogues, which are often outdated and present a very fragmented image. Many of them are even still unedited. A collaborative team at Ghent University aims now to develop a digital database that collects these epigrams, enabling both contextual and textual queries.C