The Lambeth Palace Greek MSS Descriptive
Catalogue, compiled by Dr Christopher Wright and Ms Maria Argyrou with
the technical advice and support of Mr Philip Taylor at RHUL Hellenic
Institute, History Department, in close collaboration with Lambeth
Palace Library, is now freely accessible online in the public domain:
https://www.royalholloway.ac.u
Lambeth Palace Library (LPL) is the historic library of the archbishops of Canterbury and the
principal library and record office for the history of the Church of
England. Founded as a public library by Archbishop Bancroft in 1610, its
collection have been freely available for research ever since.
Officially designated by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council as
outstanding in national and international importance, the LPL
Collection, which includes Western medieval and Byzantine manuscripts,
focuses on ecclesiastical history.
The Greek Manuscript Collection consists of fifty-five
Greek codices acquired by LPL since its founding in 1610, including
those received in 2006 from Sion College, an institution for clergy
founded in the City of London in the late 1620s. Dated between the tenth
and nineteenth centuries, these manuscripts include Gospel and Acts
and Epistles Books and Lectionaries, an Octateuch with catena,
patristic and other theological texts including works of John
Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus, liturgical and
hymnographic texts, classical texts by Aeschylus, Dionysios Periegetes,
Pseudo-Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycophron and Demosthenes, chronographic
and legal texts, post-Byzantine texts including an anonymous Chronicle
in vernacular Greek and Damaskenos Stoudites, On Animals, and
descriptions and collations of LPL manuscripts. Among the most
important manuscripts is MS 461, containing a theological treatise on
the procession of the Holy Spirit by George Scholarios (later
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadios II), with his autograph
signature, notes and corrections.