Ὦ μωρῆς παιδίον: schedae ineditae ex ms. Vat. Pal. Gr. 92 (Pars prior)

Abstract

The Byzantine Empire had a long tradition of educational practices, including schedography. It became popular in the 10th century and continued to be cultivated until the 19th century, with a peak in the 13th century. In the late 19th century, scholars began to take an interest in the relevant texts. In the mid-20th century, there were attempts to study these texts as a curious kind of paraliterary production. Currently, in the 21st century, there have been editions of different schedographical collections. Schedographical texts are a very specific kind of written documents and do not fit well with the usual editorial practices. They were written to be read aloud, intended to teach, not to entertain, and generally, they do not have the aesthetic value of a literary text. Finally, these texts appear in collections of very different origins. In many cases we do not know their original context, which makes them difficult to be interpreted. In this article, 23 schedographical texts from manuscript Vat. Pal. Gr. 92 are published. This manuscript consists of 239 ff. and it was copied in the last decades of the 13th century in southern Italy. The manuscript contains more than 425 schedae. In contrast to other paratexts used in schools, the manuscript includes glosses with forms of popular Greek, such as, e. g., the use of σπίτι for “house”. A complete edition of the manuscript will certainly reveal more expressions similar to this one. 29 remaining unpublished texts will be published in the second part. The humorous phrase that heads this article, ὦ μωρῆς παιδίον, is the schedographical resolution of the phrase ὀμμ’ ὀρεῖς (glossed as ἐγείρεις) παιδίον, included in one of the schedae published here for the first time.

Keywords:

Schedography, Ancient Greek teaching, Byzantine philology, Byzantine school, ms. Vat. Pal. Gr. 92