La production de manuscrits scientifiques dans l'atelier de Michel Apostolis : l'exemple du 'De materia medica' de Dioscoride

International audienceThis paper deals with five Greek manuscripts containing a very peculiar version of Dioscorides' De materia medica, in which the treatise has been reorganized so that all the chapters appear in the alphabetic order (this version is called Dioscorides alphabeticus): Boston, Countway Library of Medicine, Ballard 736; El Escorial, Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo, Scorialensis Τ. II. 12; Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Vossianus gr. F. 59; Venezia, Biblioteca Marciana, Marciani gr. 272 and 597. Some codicological remarks, along with a paleographical analysis, allow me to attribute these five manuscripts to the same scriptorium, during the years 1455-1470. In a philological point of view, two groups can be distinguished, the first containing: Voss. gr. F. 59, Marc. gr. 272 and Ballard 736 (moreover, all three were realised, even partly, by the same copyist); the second: Marc. 597 and Scor. Τ. II. 12 (both partially copied by the same scribe, different from the copyist of the first group). Several clues lead me to conclude that this activity took place in the scriptorium that Michael Apostolis set up in Crete after he left Constantinople: for example, Michael Apostolis is one of the copyists of Marc. gr. 272; moreover, Scor. Τ. II. 12 still bears its original binding, in which I found Cretan characteristics. We are thus facing as sort of “mass-production” of Dioscorides manuscripts, where almost no interest is given to the text itself but showing obvious commercial views, probably to meet the demand form occidental clients for original Greek texts